by J. S. Bailey
“Even if Thane is human, he’s still evil. We can’t rely on someone like him to tell us the truth.”
Phil gave a curt nod. “Very well. We’ll just leave Bobby and Randy alone and see if they come back uninjured.”
“But he’s the Servant!” Kevin said in a high-pitched voice. “It’s our duty to keep him safe!”
Frankie scowled. “You’re telling me this?”
“Dad, we don’t have any other choice.” Carly maintained a defiant pose, and Lupe nodded in agreement.
“I say we put it to a vote,” Lupe said. “All in favor of calling Thane, raise your hand.”
Everyone but Frankie lifted a hand into the air. “It looks like that settles it,” Phil said, secretly pleased that Frankie hadn’t gotten his way.
Splotches of pink formed on Frankie’s cheeks. “It settles nothing! Carly, you and Lupe have never been Servants and never will be Servants. Your opinion doesn’t matter.”
“Even if that is the case,” Lupe said coolly, “you are still outnumbered two to one.”
Frankie looked from Phil to Kevin and frowned. “I won’t have any part of this. If you’re going to summon a monster, I won’t be held responsible.”
With that, he turned on his heel and stomped out of the solarium. The front door slammed seconds later.
Phil rubbed his eyelids.
“Are we ready, then?” Kevin asked, looking terrified once more.
“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.” Phil cleared his throat. God, don’t let this be a mistake. “Thane? If you can hear us, show yourself.”
Nothing.
“Why are you ignoring us if you wanted us to see you before?” Carly asked.
“Maybe he’s busy,” Lupe whispered.
Part of Phil hoped that Thane would stay away. They really had no business getting involved with someone like him. But what else were they supposed to do?
To his surprise, Kevin spoke next. “Who are you, Thane? And why were you here before?”
“You don’t want me to be here,” hissed a voice. “You only want to know what I know.”
Thane was sitting in one of the wicker chairs with one leg crossed casually over top the other. Phil swallowed and conjured forth every ounce of courage he could muster. “We have some questions for you.”
“So I’ve heard.” Thane’s dark eyes narrowed. “Why should I tell you anything? It’s not my concern if your men die. The world would be much better off without them, especially the scrawny one.”
“Where did you come from?” Kevin asked.
“Don’t you know about the birds and the bees? No, you don’t. You’ve never had a woman in your life because in reality you’re a queer. You looked at all those men when you were a boy and wanted them oh so much, but then you found Jesus and vowed to never have sex with anyone because that would only lead to sin.” Thane winked.
He’s redirecting the focus away from himself, Phil realized. Thane wanted to make Kevin forget the question he’d just asked.
Kevin’s breathing quickened. “Stop. Just stop. You know I haven’t done anything.”
“Oh, but you wanted to. You must be crushed with loneliness, wanting someone to love but knowing you shouldn’t.”
Somehow a look of determination appeared on Kevin’s face. “If you want to pick on me, why don’t you come do it face to face? I know you’re not really here. That means you’re too afraid to show up and speak to us in person.”
Thane’s expression soured. Kevin must have struck a nerve.
“So what are you?” Carly asked, her arms folded tightly across her chest. “A ghost?”
Thane shot her a filthy look. “I might as well be.”
“What is your name?” Lupe asked. “Your full one, that is.”
“Like I’m going to tell you, whore.”
It seemed Lupe wasn’t going to fall for the distraction. “So Thane isn’t your name?”
Thane rose and stood directly in front of her. “You know what I can’t stand?” he asked. “People who can’t mind their own business.”
Lupe looked as though she’d been struck. She blinked wide eyes at the apparition. “No,” she whispered.
Phil sensed that something was horribly wrong. “Lupe? What is it?”
Thane vanished. Phil made an instinctive turn, half expecting to see Thane rematerialized behind him, but they appeared to be alone.
He turned back to Lupe. “What’s going on?”
She straightened her spine, looking resolute. “I’m not sure. But we need to go. Now.”
BOBBY DIDN’T know what to expect when Jack fell silent. Was Vincent going to come back and escort them to wherever Jack and his boss were waiting, or would they come to them?
The Spirit told him nothing other than to be vigilant.
That, he could do.
“Don’t drink the wine,” Randy said as he cast a glance to Lily. “You’ll want full control over your senses.”
Bobby nodded. He wasn’t about to eat or drink anything that he found in this place, anyway.
“We should go up front and wait,” Bobby said, tension squeezing his chest.
They filed out of the room, Randy holding the wine bottle and Adrian leading Lily by the hand. Bobby found the gesture jarring. He hadn’t thought it possible for Adrian to care for a child, especially a stranger.
Just as Bobby was about to plant his rear on one of the chairs in the living area, Adrian beckoned to him. Gritting his teeth, he went to her side just as she let go of Lily’s hand.
“What?” His voice came out terse, and it made him feel ashamed. Acting like a moody toddler wouldn’t improve their situation.
Adrian’s blue eyes glistened with tears. “I know you don’t want to, but I’d like to talk to you alone.”
He glanced toward the entrance to the suite. “But—”
“We can talk in the back.”
“It’s okay,” Randy said. For a fleeting second Bobby saw wistfulness in his expression. “I’ll keep an eye on Lily. And on the door.”
Bobby sighed—there was no getting out of this. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
They returned to the bedroom where they’d found Lily and closed the door, then faced each other. Adrian dabbed a hand at her eye and cleared her throat. “I’m not asking for your forgiveness.”
“Okay.”
“There’s no excusing what I did.”
He wondered where she was going with this. “I know.”
“I—I just wanted to see you. And apologize.”
Bobby had no fitting response to that, so he said, “Where have you been all these years?”
Her expression tightened. “For a long time, I’ve been in Ann Arbor. After I left Eleanor I bounced from town to town for a while.” She closed her eyes and let out a long breath. “Your siblings…they didn’t receive me as well as you have.”
He felt a twinge of pain at the mention of her other children. What’s done is done. Just let it go.
Color rose in her cheeks as she continued. “Peter looks a lot like you, only his eyes are brown. His last name is Imbus. He wouldn’t talk to me.” She shivered. “Then in Michigan there’s Kylee Turkelson and Jenna Lyman.”
Bobby’s heart ached. “How old are they?”
“Peter’s eighteen, Kylee’s sixteen, and Jenna’s fourteen. None of them knew that the rest of you existed.” Adrian leaned back into the wall and ran her hands over her face. “I married a man in Ann Arbor but we didn’t have any children. He was very much against me coming to see all of you, so I left him in the middle of the night and set out on my own. I was afraid he might try to come after me, but he seems to have been the least of my worries. Do you think we’ll get out of here alive?”
“I don’t know,” Bobby said with all honesty, remembering Caleb’s warning to preserve his own life over everyone else’s.
Adrian put a hand on her chin. “We could try to overtake whoever shows up. Your friend looks like he has some muscle.�
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Bobby pasted on a grim smirk. “We’ve got the wine bottle. Randy can crack someone over the head with it.” Only after he’d spoken did he remember the camera and speaker in the ceiling. He silently cursed himself. No doubt someone was listening in to their plans and would come in with guns blazing.
He gestured for her to follow him out of the room. “Let’s go into the bathroom,” he whispered.
Adrian nodded.
Once inside the bathroom, Bobby checked the ceiling and saw no visible cameras, which didn’t necessarily mean anything. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll each need to find something to use as a weapon. Randy can take the wine bottle, you can use that candle back in the bedroom, and I can use…” His gaze traveled to the ceramic soap dispenser perched at the back of the marble vanity.
Bobby picked it up and tested its weight in his hands. Could he throw it in such a way to knock someone out with it?
Adrian disappeared through the doorway and returned with the newly-snuffed jar candle, which was now unfurling wisps of smoke. “I hope this works.”
Me too.
Bobby led the way back to the living room and recounted his plan to Randy, who nodded. “Lily,” Randy said, “I need you to shut yourself in the bathroom right now. We don’t want you to get hurt.”
Lily appeared entirely unfazed by Randy’s warning. “If I do, Vincent will save me.”
“But Vincent isn’t here right now. So will you please go back to the bathroom and close the door?”
Lily shrugged and headed down the suite’s hallway. The bathroom door clicked shut.
“All right,” Bobby said to his two companions. “I’ll listen at the door. If I hear someone coming, Randy should be ready with the bottle raised and Adrian and I will move into the kitchen with the other stuff ready to throw at them. Sound good to you?”
“Not really,” Randy said, “but right now I think it’s the best we can do.”
They moved into position. Adrian held the jar candle from her place in the kitchen and kept blowing on it to harden the wax, Randy picked up the wine bottle and held it like a cudgel beside the door, and Bobby pressed his ear up against it to listen for the approach of feet.
Please help us, he prayed. Don’t let anyone hurt us.
A minute or two crept by. Bobby’s pulse continued to quicken, and he prayed he wouldn’t pass out.
From somewhere beyond the door, another door opened and closed, followed by the sound of many footfalls.
“They’re coming,” he whispered and dashed into the kitchenette beside Adrian.
An eternity passed before the knob turned and both a gray and a black aura reappeared with the same intensities as before. Bobby tightened his grip on the soap dispenser, hoping his aim would be true.
The door swung open. Randy lunged forward and brought the bottle crashing down onto the head of the first person who entered. A slender figure crumpled to the floor like a dropped marionette.
It was Vincent.
Bobby had hoped it would be Jack.
Randy repositioned his hands on the neck of the unbroken bottle as voices moved toward the door.
A familiar dishwater blond head came through the opening. In unison, Bobby and Adrian launched their makeshift projectiles at Jack the moment he stepped over Vincent. The candle bounced off of Jack’s shoulder, and Bobby’s soap dispenser whizzed over Jack’s head and hit Randy in the chest before cracking in half on the floor and oozing a puddle of orange soap onto the carpet.
Jack laughed. “See, Troy? We didn’t have anything to worry about. They’re harmless as flies.”
A straw-haired man in a blazer stepped in behind him, and bringing up the rear was a seven-foot tall chunk of human muscle carrying a gun. The former scowled. “Harmless? Look what they did to Vincent.”
Jack squatted down beside the healer and held his hand to Vincent’s neck. “He’s got a pulse. No worries.”
“No worries? We need him awake for tonight’s show.”
Something about the word “show” made the hairs on Bobby’s arms stand on end.
“About the show,” Jack said. “I thought we could spice things up a bit and use these instead.” He gestured toward Bobby and the others. Adrian threw him a look of alarm.
“Show?” she squeaked. “What kind of show?”
The man called Troy shook his head. “You’ve overstepped, Jack. They aren’t the right type. I can’t believe you even had them brought here.”
“Then give them each their own room.” Jack smiled.
Bobby’s thoughts went to Lily sitting on the end of the bed in the tile-floored room, as calm as a lamb, waiting patiently for someone to cause her unspeakable harm.
“What exactly do you do here?” Bobby asked, his voice coming out in a growl.
“I have an idea,” Jack said. “Why don’t we show them the interview video?”
“How about not? This is wasting my time. There’s a meeting in Corvallis I have to get to by nine.” Troy pulled up his sleeve to check a watch.
Jack shrugged, pulled out a gun, and shot Troy point-blank in the head before the man could put up any kind of resistance. He crumpled to the floor beside Vincent, blood trickling from his temple.
Adrian let out a shriek, Randy blanched and flinched away, and Bobby stared dumbly at the dead man as ringing sounded in his ears.
The giant with the gun let out a grunt. “I wish someone had done that months ago. Twerp’s been demanding way too much of us lately.”
Jack held onto his own weapon, and at first Bobby feared he would shoot them next. Instead, he holstered it. “It’s time things changed around here,” he said, looking at each of them in turn. “If the three of you want to see tomorrow, you’ll follow me out of here and let Farley bring up the rear. If you try anything, you’ll end up like Troy.”
Bobby remained rooted to the floor. “Where are we going?”
“To my new office. You should have stayed away, Bobby. If you’d left me alone, I might have done the same with you.” Jack stepped out into the hallway. “Now come on.”
Bobby’s skin crawled at the implication of Jack’s words. Thane had wanted Bobby to go after Jack. And because he’d listened to Thane, this had happened. Had Thane known this was where Bobby would end up?
They turned down another gray corridor lined with sconces and doors that probably led to more suites. Jack halted outside an unmarked door and keyed a code into a pad mounted out front.
Bobby wanted to ask what would happen to them now but knew it would be better to keep his mouth shut.
Inside the room was an ordinary desk and sitting area with a flat-screen television mounted on one wall. “I like Troy’s offsite office better,” Jack said as he sauntered to a shelf full of DVDs, “but this one will have to work for now. Lucky for you he kept copies of his videos here to pass the time.” He pulled out one DVD, examined its label, and nodded.
“Why not just kill us?” Randy asked. “You didn’t have any objection to that last week.”
Jack moved toward a DVD player stacked on top of an old VCR on a low table beneath the television. “It’s what Graham paid me to do. Now Graham’s a vegetable, and I can do whatever I want.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
Jack put the disc into the player. “You’ll see.”
LUPE GOT behind the wheel of Bobby’s Nissan, and Carly clambered into the passenger seat while Phil and Kevin piled into the back. “Where are we going?” Carly asked as Lupe whipped the car backward out of Phil’s driveway.
Lupe threw the car into forward gear and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The fire of determination burned in her eyes. “A place Graham told me about.”
“Can you please slow down?” Kevin wailed. “You’re going to get us killed!”
Lupe eased off the gas a bit but maintained a steely grip on the steering wheel.
“It won’t help things if we get pulled over,” Phil commented from behind Carly as Lupe ran a stop sign. Carly could
hear the fear in his voice, immensely grateful that her father wasn’t there to chastise him.
“We won’t get pulled over,” Lupe said in a dark tone.
And she was right. Ten minutes later, they arrived in the parking lot at Arbor Villa Nursing Home. Without providing an explanation, Lupe strode to the front door with purpose in her step.
Carly turned to an equally-clueless Phil and shrugged.
Lupe was already talking to a woman sitting behind a reception desk when they came through the entrance into a lobby with butter-yellow walls and a tile floor that made Carly’s shoes squeak. “Yes, he’s here,” the receptionist said to Lupe. “Are you a relative?”
A relative?
Just what was going on?
“No, but a—how do you say?—mutual friend is sick and we thought he would want to know. Can we see him?”
“Wait one moment, please.” The woman disappeared through a doorway on the other side of the desk.
“So what’s the big secret?” Carly asked, staring after her.
Lupe shook her head, her expression tight. “I don’t want to say until I know for certain.”
Just then the woman reappeared wearing a smile. “He says to come on back. He’s in room 39. Do you need someone to show you the way?”
“No thank you.”
Again, Lupe set off ahead of them. Dread gnawed at Carly’s insides. Something terrible was going to happen. She just knew it.
Carly eyed the numbers above the doors on the right-hand side of the hallway. Twenty-one, twenty-three, twenty-five. Some of the doors they passed sat several inches ajar, and Carly caught glimpses of frail, stooped figures huddled beneath blankets in beds. A few of the nursing home residents had visitors, but the rest Carly saw were alone. Maybe those people’s families weren’t home from work yet. Or maybe they didn’t have families at all and they were living out the remainder of their lives without loved ones to care for them.
As they passed room 35, Carly’s surroundings vanished in a swirl of color and she found herself in a bustling place crowded with people and happy voices.
It took several moments for her to get her bearings. She was standing in front of a prize case containing stuffed animals, novelty basketballs, colorful change purses, and more.
