Servants of the Storm

by Delilah S. Dawson

  He’s always had one hell of a strong will. I have to accept for the first time that my childhood friend, now at seventeen, is a man on a mission. My mission.

  Isaac must see it too. He gets out, shuts the trunk, and nods at the red drink, saying, “Take two big gulps of that, Scrappy-Doo. You’ll feel a lot better.”

  Baker drinks, but he doesn’t stop at two gulps. Isaac has to pull the bottle forcefully away from him after the sixth swallow. Baker shakes his head hard and hops up and down a few times like a boxer getting ready for a fight.

  “Where are we going?” he asks.

  “I’ll tell you in a minute,” I say.

  We pack into the car and head for downtown like ten Grendels are on our tail. I normally drive pretty fast, but Isaac’s going even faster, and I feel like everything is rolling downhill, building momentum. Taking care of Mr. Hathaway has got me all energized, and I’m ready to kill some more demons. Baker’s fingers tap extra fast against the bench seat in back, fueling my own anxiety.

  We’re quiet until we get close to downtown. It’s afternoon, but the streets are getting crowded. Black bunting is hung on the streetlights, but the people walking under it don’t look like they’re in mourning. They look like they’re sleepwalking, all in the same direction, like the kids at Riverfest heading toward the dome. I’m glad we’re headed in the opposite direction.

  “And I ask again, where are we going?” Baker drapes his arms over my seat, his chin almost on my shoulder.

  I grin at him and reach back to ruffle his hair. “To a jewelry store. Right?”

  Isaac pulls up to a well-lit curb and frowns. I expected us to end up in one of the darker parts of town, but we’re on a popular square where everything has been restored, brighter and prettier than ever. Isaac pulls out his phone and grows increasingly frustrated as he taps away.

  “It should be here. Right there.”

  But the place he’s pointing at is a smooth, recently painted brick wall. There’s a restaurant on one corner of the block and a hotel on the other end, and in between . . . nothing.

  “Looks like they rebuilt right over it,” I say, trying to look at his phone, but he scowls at me and holds it up to his ear. The distinctive sound of a disconnected number fills the car, and he puts the phone back in his pocket.

  “Sorry, Mario, but your princess is in another castle,” Baker says, flopping back against his seat and rubbing his eyes like he just woke up.

  Isaac gets out of the car in a huff and slams the door. He walks down the block, running a hand along the wall like maybe the door’s there but it’s just completely impossible to see. I can’t help thinking that things would be a lot easier if he would let me know what he’s thinking. Ever. But I know someone who will.

  “Welcome back, by the way.” I unbuckle and turn around to grin at Baker. “What do you remember?”

  “Everything.” He looks haunted as he settles back against the bench seat. “Riverfest, and people with weird ears, and blood on a roller coaster, and Carly.” He focuses on me, his face softening. “And kissing you.”

  I blush. “What else?”

  He pauses, staring off into space for an uncomfortably long time. I fiddle with my pinkie stitches and wish Isaac would hurry back and get going to the next idea instead of staring at what’s obviously a blank wall. He finally slides behind the wheel and slams his door with a squeal that makes me wince. Baker’s breath catches, and he glares at Isaac.

  “And him. I remember him. He was the one who started all this.”

  “It’s not his fault, Baker. They make him work at Charnel House. They made him drug us.”

  Baker shakes his head. His cheeks are pink, his blue eyes bright, his lips set in a thin, white line. In all our years together I’ve never seen him so mad.

  “Before that. He was in my shop class at school. And he was at Carly’s funeral. He talked to you at the funeral, right before you flipped out.”

  “You did what?” I say. I turn to gauge Isaac’s reaction and very nearly slap him again, except that Baker grabs me from behind the seat.

  Isaac lurches back against the window, trapped, his hands up. Like he could stop me. “Listen, I—”

  “Dovey, think,” Baker says, his fingers pressing into my shoulder. “Don’t you remember? He was there. He asked me what your name was, and he knew y’all were best friends, and then he was standing by you at the casket. His hair was shorter, and his suit was too nice, and as soon as you started freaking out, he said something to you and backed away. And then he disappeared. Never came to shop class again.”

  “You were there.” I glare into Isaac’s eyes, black to black, daring him to deny it as bits of memory flash in my mind. Now I know why he looks so familiar when he looks hopeless and distraught, why I asked him to pull back his hair that one time. Now I remember him looking into my eyes at Carly’s funeral and breathing one word: “Forget.” I try to struggle away from Baker, but he’s stronger than he looks. “You were there, Isaac. And you didn’t tell me.”

  “Let me explain.”

  “That’s what Kitty made you do, isn’t it? When you were undercover, doing what Crane called ‘seriously nasty shit.’ You narced on me, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t have a choice. You weren’t the only one.”

  “No wonder you told me to give it up, to give Carly up. You put me on their radar. You told them I could see things.”

  “You are one raging jagoff,” Baker says, hands hot on my shoulders, tight with the same fury burning through me.

  Isaac doesn’t have to say anything. We all know it’s true. I slam back into my seat, shrugging Baker off and punching the dashboard.

  “Oh, goddamn. My mama always said not to trust pretty boys. You boinked a demon, and then you gave me right to them. They drugged me because of you. All those pills. All the time I’ve lost. A year of my life. You’ve been lying all along.”

  “Not about anything that counts,” he says, eyes pleading. “Not since you came back to Charnel House. I’ve been trying to make it right. Ever since . . .”

  “Ever since what?”

  “Let’s just say, ever since I realized I had something to lose.”

  “I think maybe you should give me back my daddy’s gun,” I say, voice low and deadly.

  He swallows hard, his face shadowed with stubble and darkness and pain. Without a word he puts the pistol in my hand, butt first.

  “I should shoot you, Isaac Raleigh. Right now.”

  “Then you’d have one less person on your team.”

  “You’re not on my team.”

  “I am now.”

  “Prove it.”

  Isaac holds out his right hand. The intact pinkie stands out a little from his other fingers. He puts a Swiss Army knife in my right hand, the one he keeps on his belt and used to trim the thread for my stitches.

  “Take my other distal. If that’s what it takes. You can have it.”

  He looks deadly serious. I stare at his pinkie.

  “What?”

  “You’ve got two pinkies. You’ve got two distal bones. If you think you can’t trust me and you don’t believe that I’m in this with you one hundred percent, take my other one.”

  I sit there, openmouthed and dumb, staring at his finger and then at the knife in my hand. I have a hundred questions and no time to ask them.

  “Why would I want your other distal? I’m not a demon.”

  He sighs heavily. “As insurance. If anything happens to the one Kitty already took, you’ll be my master. Do it, Dovey. Get it over with so we can fight these bastards.”

  “Why don’t you take it yourself, then? Destroy it?”

  “You can’t take your own,” he says. He points to a narrow white scar. “I tried it once, believe me. Anesthetic and all, and it wouldn’t cut through. Second-worst night of my life.”

  “So why don’t the demons take them both?”

  “If the first one is burned, the second one flat-out won’t com
e off. You’re free forever. Demons can only take one, but a cambion or human can take the other. Don’t ask me to explain the stupid rules. It’s really freaking complicated, and there’s a whole book about it sitting on my desk at the inn. Did you ever expect religion to make sense? Quit asking questions and just do it.”

  I don’t make a move, and he growls and grabs my hand, wraps it more firmly around the knife. The blade is old and notched, and he puts his hand flat on top the glove box and pulls the knife to his knuckle, right on the old scar. The thin edge cuts into the skin a little, and a dribble of blood appears on the edge.

  “Do it, Dovey.”

  I look at Baker. He’s enraged but tightly controlled, arms crossed and leaning back against his seat. He nods once, but I don’t know what it means. And I don’t care. Isaac lets go of my hand, but the tension remains, and I can feel the resistance of his skin and bone against the blade. I press harder, and he shudders. Something in me wants to do it, wants it so badly that I can taste it in the back of my mouth, coppery and desperate and so, so hungry.

  But somehow I know that if I do it, I’ll lose part of myself that I can never replace, even if I do manage to save Carly. I need Isaac on my side. But I need most of all to hold on to whatever piece of my soul still remains my own.

  “I can’t.” I jerk my arm back and drop the knife on the console between us.

  My hand is shaking, and I don’t know if it’s with anger or sadness or sleep deprivation. But I know I can’t cut through his skin and bone, even if he has wounded me just as deeply. Taking his distal, using him, possessing him—I might as well have all-over black demon eyes at that point.

  “Then what?” he says. “What do I have to do?”

  “Come help me fight them,” I say.

  26

  I PUT THE REVOLVER ON the console between us. Isaac exhales in relief and leans his head back against the seat.

  Baker snorts. “I think you should have cut him. Or shot him.”

  “We need him,” I say. “Three people isn’t enough. Two’s even less.”

  “He might be lying. Maybe he’s still on their side.”

  I look at Isaac. I think of the tension in his body while he talked to Kitty at the club, the way he rubbed my back in Crane’s trailer. I think of him sewing my finger in the early morning and coming after me at Riverfest. I just wish I knew if he changed his mind because he felt guilty or because he wants to make things right or because he’s starting to have feelings for me. Not that it really matters at this moment. Not that I should care.

  “I think he knows which side he’s on now,” I say quietly.

  Baker chuckles and leans forward with his familiar, impish grin.

  “So what did I hear about you boinking a demon?” he asks Isaac.

  Isaac groans.

  “Let’s just go,” he says. “I’d rather face more demons than listen to Scrappy-Doo talk. The Liberty?”

  I shake my head. “Carly gave me that necklace. She mentioned it in my dream. It’s important. It has to be.” I pull my half of the gold heart out from under my shirt, and Baker leans close.

  I feel the warmth of his breath on my face as he murmurs, “ ‘Friends.’ And the other one said ‘Best’?”

  “Yep.”

  “And that’s all we’ve got?”

  “Yep.”

  “So what now? Does the narc have a Magic 8 Ball or know a fortune-teller? Is there a secret map?”

  “No. There’s nothing. We have no idea what we’re doing,” Isaac says. “I’ve been reading up on demons for two years, and it’s always like this. They don’t leave tracks, and they don’t leave books with anything but scraps of riddles, and they don’t leave behind people who know too much.”

  “Maybe not people,” I say slowly, and I’m already out of the car. We’re not far away from the only source of knowledge that’s gotten me out of a dead end so far.

  I tuck the shotgun inside my coat and wait for the boys to get out. Isaac has no choice but to shove the revolver down the back of his jeans and cover it with his leather jacket. He picks up his now bloodstained knife, folds it, and hands it to Baker.

  “Just don’t stick it in my back, okay?” he says.

  “Truce,” Baker says, and they bump fists.

  “Boys are ridiculous,” I say to myself.

  I walk, then jog, then start running. My hopes lift with every step. Baker and Isaac are behind me, and we must look like major idiots, tearing through the streets. My arm aches from carrying the shotgun under my coat, but it’s a good reminder of just how dangerous things have gotten and how serious they’re going to get if this ploy actually works.

  “Where are we going?” Baker pants beside me.

  “To see a man about a horse,” I answer.

  After a while we’re all huffing and puffing, and I’m starting to remember that even though it has a small downtown area, Savannah is a big-ass city to go running around on foot. We should have taken the car. But we’re too close now, and I see the unmistakable shapes up ahead.

  The carriages wait in a line down Bay Street, the draft horses dozing with their legs cocked and ears back against the wind. I slow to a walk near the horses, because even though they’re used to taking a lot of crap, they can still get spooked. And right now I imagine I’m pretty spooky.

  I walk down the line, the boys behind me. I pass huge black horses and a beautiful white one in a flowered bonnet. But these drivers are all dressed in everyday clothes. And none of them has a parrot. When I get to the last one in the line, I stop and sigh so loudly that the driver looks up from his tablet in irritation.

  “Hey, do you know where the captain is?”

  “Who?”

  “The carriage driver with a parrot who dresses like a pirate. His horse wears a pirate hat too.”

  The way the driver looks at me makes me feel even more ridiculous, and I’m suddenly deeply aware that I’m carrying a sawed-off shotgun under my dad’s coat and that most of the people in Savannah don’t even know that they’re surrounded by demons and zombie servants.

  “You think you’re funny?” the guy says and points at me. “You people are what’s wrong with this city.” I gasp and look up, daring him to go on—that is, if he has the guts to look in my pitch-black eyes. He doesn’t. Picking his tablet back up, he waves a hand dismissively. “Get out of here before you scare off the people with money. Freakin’ homeless kids.”

  Baker’s hand wraps around my arm, and I try to pull away and tell the driver exactly what’s wrong with his precious city. Carly stopped me from getting into a fight with Jasmine once, and I’m calming under Baker’s touch the same way I did under hers. Although his grip is stronger, I feel the same strength, the same support, the same warmth.

  “Let it go. We don’t have time for this jagoff,” he says near my ear.

  “There’s another carriage stand near River Street,” Isaac says, and Baker groans.

  “Jesus, I hate that place.” Still, he doesn’t hesitate when I start jogging in that direction.

  Anger is driving me, and it doesn’t matter that it’s aimed at some ignorant old man in a wagon. The afternoon is getting long, and once upon a time Baker and I would have been getting into costume and makeup at the Liberty. Will Mrs. Rosewater even miss us? Or are we like Tamika now—lost to memory? We don’t have long to stop whatever Kitty has planned for later tonight. Funny how the school play has gone from something silly to the most important thing in the world.

  “Wait.” I stop suddenly and spin around to halt Isaac with a pinkie-less hand against his chest. “What exactly is planned for tonight? I’m in a hurry and all, but you’re making it feel like the end of the world.”

  Baker moves to stand beside me, and even though Isaac is taller than both of us, he takes a step back, his black eyes going cagey.

  “You know it’s the anniversary of when Josephine touched ground,” he says, and it’s not really a question. Of course we know. “And Josephine is going
to be away . . .”

  “Spit it out, jagoff,” Baker says.

  “So Kitty arranged the show at the Liberty.” I glare at him, flat and deadly, and he shakes his head like he doesn’t even know where to begin. “She’s basically going to get as many people as she can in one place and take all of their distals so that they’ll be easy servants down the road. She’ll drug them first, and no one will know or remember what happened.”

  “Why?”

  “See, demons can’t feed on a human once they’ve lost their distal. So you can either have food or a servant. But everyone coming to the show is from the suburbs. Dawn’s area. So Kitty’s basically stealing Dawn’s food to make servants for herself. It’s a power grab.”

  I think back to the . . . thing . . . in the albino alligator. To the way it screamed in my head, louder than the hurricane. “And Josephine’s okay with that?”

  “Josephine has no idea. She’ll be out doing some ritual with Dawn and Marlowe, who are her favorites. I think Kitty wants to start a fight and take over from Josephine. Maybe start her own storm.”

  “So if there’s another big demon fight, there’ll be another hurricane?” I ask.

  He nods. “That’s how it works. I mean, do you think it’s a coincidence that you guys are doing The Tempest?”

  “Not really,” I say. “But can we have hurricanes two years in a row? Won’t people . . . notice?”

  Isaac looks utterly exasperated. “What are people going to do? Complain to Mother Nature? Pray harder? That’s the whole point of natural disasters—to make people feel hopeless so the demons can feed.”

  “But soon all the people at the Liberty tonight will stop being food. And when they die, they’ll be servants,” I say. And that’s when it hits me. “They’re going to use the distal servants to help get the bones, aren’t they? So Carly’s going to be . . .”

  Isaac nods.

  “Dooming even more people, yes. The audience, the cast. Every human in that building is losing a pinkie tonight, Dovey.”

  “And you’re supposed to be there too, aren’t you? That’s how you know.”