by J. S. Bailey
Bobby was probably reeling right now. He’d be reeling even more if he delayed too much longer and Thane went ahead and executed another of the young man’s friends. He wasn’t sure which one he should choose next—maybe the Jovingo girl, or possibly Randy Bellison, whom Thane had been so close to eliminating before.
In any case, he would refrain from looking into Bobby’s mind. Thane had so few surprises in his life. It would be nice to have some once in a while.
AFTER BREAKFAST, Thane drove into town to pass the time while he awaited Bobby Roland’s next move. The boy would do his best to come up with some ludicrous plan to defeat Thane, who could not be defeated forever. Bobby had survived so far only through too many instances of dumb luck.
Nobody’s luck would hold out indefinitely.
Thane didn’t know where he was going until he got there: a music store that sold instruments as common as pianos and as diverse as didgeridoos. Smiling at the unexpected nostalgia, he went inside.
He hadn’t touched a musical instrument since the night of the accident. He’d been practicing something for the school ensemble—he couldn’t remember just what—and laid down his violin, intending to practice more once he and Mick got back from testing out the Mustang. Music had been his passion, and when he’d learned he would never be able to play to his heart’s content again (or do much of anything else), his very soul had shattered.
Harper Music Company sat in a strip mall so busy that Thane had to park as far from the door as possible and braced himself against the biting wind until he made it inside, where a gawky teenager sat at an upright piano playing a Mozart piece while the boy’s parents and an employee hoping to make a sale lurked nearby. Thane bypassed the piano and absently leafed through a display of songbooks for a few minutes, then drifted toward the back of the shop where violins and cellos sat on display behind a glass case.
He reached a hand toward the case without thinking, remembering the feel of the violin beneath his chin and his hand on the bow, dragging out melodies so beautiful they brought tears to his sappy teenage eyes. He didn’t know what had happened to his old violin; hadn’t even searched for it when he arrived at his parents’ estate. They’d probably kept it, more likely than not, despite the fact none of them played. His violin had been a family heirloom that would get passed along to Pamela or Leon’s children, if they ever had any.
“Can I help you, sir?”
Thane turned and almost had to do a double-take. A quadriplegic woman in a motorized wheelchair almost exactly like the one he’d left behind at Arbor Villa sat feet away from him wearing a Harper Music Company uniform shirt and a lanyard dangling a nametag reading “Becky.”
Becky appeared to be about forty-five and had short curly brown hair starting to gray. Thane blinked and tried to recover from his shock, but he still felt shaken for a reason he had yet to place. “I—I was just looking. I used to play the violin a long time ago.”
A wistful look filled the woman’s eyes as she said, “So did I, before my accident. I played the French horn, too, and the flute.”
“I’m sorry,” Thane said automatically, not sure what exactly he was sorry for.
“Oh, it wasn’t anybody’s fault, not really.” Becky sighed. “Another driver’s brakes went out, and they hit me—nothing anyone could have done about it. Since I couldn’t play anymore, I started working here, which is the next best thing.” Her smile brightened. “Do you remember what brand of violin you used? We have a few different models in stock.”
“I’m not sure. It belonged to my grandfather. Um, if you don’t mind my asking, how were you able to get a job here? A—a friend of mine was in an accident similar to yours, and he lived in a nursing home for twenty miserable years.”
Becky’s eyebrows narrowed. “You don’t need to walk to be able to answer people’s questions about music. I admit, life is hard since my accident, but I haven’t let it stop me.”
“But how can you take care of your house? How can you take care of yourself?”
Her cheeks flushed—apparently Thane had prodded the woman just a bit too much. “I don’t live alone, you know. Now is there any model you’d like to try? I can get someone to open the case for you.”
“Oh, I’m just browsing. And I apologize for any offense. I just didn’t know that anyone in your condition could ever live like you. My friend…people told him he wouldn’t be able to do anything again.”
“That’s ridiculous. It sounds like your friend’s support system was a tad bit lacking.”
“You could say that,” Thane said. He could feel his face darken with rage. Another long chat with his parents would shortly be in order.
THANE BURST through the front door and stood fuming in the wide entryway, loathing the sight of the opulence his parents had claimed for themselves while he’d languished in hell. He realized more than ever how much of an inconvenience his accident had caused them. A crippled body had no place in a home so beautiful, did it? His very life had become a skeleton they’d shut away in a closet, never to be seen by outsiders.
The house seemed too quiet. “Shirley? John? Are you here?” He couldn’t bring himself to call them “Mom” and “Dad,” not anymore. They’d done nothing to deserve such titles.
The soft tap-tap of footsteps approached from the left, and Meryl appeared holding a dust cloth. “They left just after you did—to visit friends, I believe. Is there anything I can get for you?”
Thane tried not to roll his eyes at the woman’s formality. “Actually, yes. Do you know if they have a violin?”
A faint smile lit up Meryl’s face. “The antique one? Your father keeps it in his study. Would you like me to get it for you?”
Thane’s heart thudded. “No thank you—I’ll manage.”
John Bagdasarian’s “study” was a bookshelf-lined room without windows that would have been more aptly called a library, in Thane’s opinion. A giant hearth took up most of one wall, liquor bottles and clean glasses sat on a sideboard, and Armenian and Irish flags hung on the wall opposite the fireplace above two armchairs covered in garish upholstery.
The room had looked virtually identical to this while Thane’s grandfather still lived, save for the addition of the Irish flag. He supposed it was John’s way of preserving the old man’s memory.
Thane eyed the violin case propped on one of the bookshelves. Feeling a tingle of boyish excitement he’d not felt in decades, he took the case down, set it on the small table between the two armchairs, and unlatched it.
Memories came flooding back to him as he beheld the old instrument he had played nearly every day before the accident: practicing on a lesser violin that belonged to his first instructor, ignoring the pain in his fingertips as he struggled over notes for weeks, finally working out the difficult chords in his first piece, then graduating to this violin and never looking back. He’d had so many dreams of joining an orchestra, of performing solo, to be like Itzhak Perlman or Jascha Heifetz, the latter of whom had played Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 so perfectly that Thane had vowed to become just like him.
Thane propped the violin under his chin and started to drag the bow across the strings in a warmup exercise when someone behind him said, “Hello there.”
If not for his immense love of the instrument, Thane would have dropped it on the floor in surprise. A twenty-something woman he’d never seen before in his life leaned casually against one of the bookshelves, wearing a denim jacket, a leather knee-length skirt, and black leggings. Her hair appeared too black, like she’d had it dyed.
His grip tightened on the bow. “How did you get in here?” he asked, his voice cold.
“Through the door, same as you.” Her eyes reminded him of a snake’s. “I have a very quiet tread.”
“I can call the police.”
“Do I look like a thief to you?” She ambled closer and eyeballed him like he was an exotic specimen. “Sit down, Nathaniel.”
Thane sat. Actually sat. Why was he even listenin
g to her? He had no clue who she even was. He started to send out his thoughts so he might probe her, but—
“My name is Mia Swanson,” she said, taking the second chair and crossing one leg over the other. She propped her chin on her hand and her elbow on the arm of the chair and examined him with unnervingly dark eyes. He briefly wondered if she was a demon but decided that demons didn’t need doors to go where they needed.
“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” Thane said.
“I didn’t expect it to. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, though I do know a little about you.”
“I very much doubt that.”
“Oh?” Her smile conveyed only mischief, not friendliness. “Mother of Mercy School? Chess Club? An upcoming birthday—your fortieth, I think? What I don’t know for certain is why you vanished for twenty years like you never existed.”
Thane bristled at her words. Why had she been digging into his history like this? “It isn’t any of your business. Get out of here.”
“Nathaniel, please stand.”
Thane stood.
“Now turn in a circle.”
Thane turned in a circle.
“Now take that violin and smash it.”
No, Thane thought. No no no no no…
He watched as his hands gripped the violin’s neck and swung the instrument downward at the end table with as much strength as he could muster. The wood splintered and the neck snapped, and tears sprang into his eyes at the sight of such destruction. How could he have let himself do something like this?
“What are you?” Thane asked, laying what was left of the old violin on the table. He would have to get Meryl to discard it later because he didn’t think he could bring himself to do the honors.
“Just a woman,” Mia said. “Now what are you? Tell me everything, starting at the beginning.”
Thane opened his mouth and started talking, and as the words of all that had happened spewed forth like an unstoppable tide, he had the sick feeling that everything he had gained from his true Father was like children’s playthings compared to the ability this young woman possessed.
When at last he finished, Mia just stared at him. He couldn’t tell if her expression conveyed shock, revulsion, or admiration. Perhaps it showed all three.
“How do you do that?” Thane asked, feeling drained. He didn’t even try to probe her mind. She would just control him to do whatever she wanted.
“Do what?” she asked, all too innocent.
Thane decided to change tactics. “What are you going to do with what I’ve told you?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’ll think of something, though. Maybe I’ll help you find this Bobby guy. He sounds like a real pain.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Sure you do. You haven’t nabbed him yet, have you?”
“He has some powerful allies.”
“So do you. That’s who your ‘Father,’ is, right? Tell me one more thing. You sold your very own soul just to be able to walk again. Do you think it’s worth the price?”
Thane pictured himself immobile in his chair, staring out the window of the nursing home, hating life and everyone in it. “Yes.”
“Interesting. Where’s Bobby now? I want to know.”
Unsure of what Mia would gain from learning Bobby’s whereabouts, Thane sent his thoughts outward. He kept reaching and reaching and soon found there was nothing for him to grasp at.
Thane blinked. Tried again. His awareness shot out in all directions, but Bobby remained elusive.
“What’s the matter?” Mia asked. It occurred to Thane that she didn’t possess the ability to read minds.
Thane gnashed his teeth together. Bobby Roland was out of range, which meant only one thing: he’d hopped in a car and fled.
“MY HEAD is killing me.” Bobby kneaded his temples and stared bleary-eyed at the menu laid out on the table in front of him. After leaving Autumn Ridge the night before, he’d driven eastward along a twisting road through the Umpqua National Forest, where endless ranks of silent evergreens stood watch as they passed beneath them. They pulled off once at a truck stop in what Bobby had come to think of as the Middle of Absolute Nowhere. He purchased two five-gallon gas cans (just in case) and then had them and the gas tank topped off by a weary attendant before continuing on their way.
Now they’d stopped at a diner in a town called Lakeview, where Carly claimed to have stayed a few times on trips with her old school friends.
Carly lifted her gaze from her menu. “I’ve got Advil in my purse.”
“I don’t think it’s strong enough to help this headache. It’s like I’ve been brained.”
“Suit yourself.”
A server came and took their order (Bobby asked for eggs, bacon, and a twenty-ounce coffee that was sure to make him unstoppable), and Bobby laid his forehead down on the table. They’d stopped once during the night so he could rest his eyes a bit, but sleep had eluded him. He couldn’t keep going like this. Falling asleep at the wheel wouldn’t help him stop Thane.
Carly said something, and Bobby lifted his head. “Hmm?”
“What are we going to do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you had a plan.”
“Nope.”
Carly looked like she was about to supply him with a snide comment, but her expression softened. “I guess we should start thinking of one, then. Do you think Thane can hear us all the way out here?”
“Don’t know.”
“You aren’t really much help this morning, are you?”
Bobby felt too tired to argue. “I feel like I need an army.”
“You’ve got me. That’s a start.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt, though. You heard what Thane said.”
“Yes, and I’m not going to let him scare me. When I started working with Randy, I knew I should expect trouble at some point. It didn’t keep me from doing my job, did it?”
“This isn’t your job, though. You help people at the safe house. This is trying to stop a psychopath from murdering everyone I care about. I mean…I want to be able to do this alone so no one else gets hurt, but I can’t. Doing it alone means you’re all as good as dead, because if I die, there’s no telling what Thane will do to you all anyway. Not to mention evil having free rein, and all.”
He dragged in a breath and observed the rest of the diner, where a few other early-morning patrons scrolled through iPads over their breakfasts. None seemed to be paying him or Carly any attention, so he went on. “And what does that even mean, anyway? Evil having free rein. I mean, a Servant died in 1914 without a replacement and then the First World War broke out, but what about World War II? How was that any less evil than the first one?”
“No one ever said it was.”
“Then how did the Servant’s death give evil free rein, if the next full-blown war was just as bad?”
“Who knows? Maybe another Servant we don’t know about kicked the bucket.”
“What, you think there’s two lineages of Servants out there, and both of us have to stay alive to keep evil in check?”
Carly shrugged. “Could be. Could be more than two. Could be there’s only one and I’m just crazy.”
The server brought their food to the table, and despite Bobby’s hunger, his stomach turned at the sight of the bacon on his plate.
Carly stabbed a breakfast sausage onto her fork and bit off the end. “It makes you think, though. What if there really are other people like you? The world is constantly going through conflict, and the moment one of you dies without a replacement, it all goes to hell. It would explain a lot if you weren’t alone.”
Bobby took a sip of coffee and stared sadly at his breakfast. “Basically you’re saying the world could go to hell at any second even if I don’t die without a replacement, assuming there has to be a certain number of Servants alive all at the same time.”
“Yep. Sobering thought, right?”
“I thi
nk I liked it better when I assumed there was just one of me.” Bobby closed his eyes. Give me a little more guidance here.
“Let’s get back on track,” Carly said. “Problem Number One: Thane.”
“Problems Number Two and Three: Bradley and Ellen.”
“Let’s focus on one problem at a time. What do we know about Thane’s abilities?”
Bobby leaned back in his seat. “He alters perceptions and makes us think we see and hear things that aren’t there. He can influence thoughts but can’t control them. Somehow he managed to kill your great-grandpa and give Graham an aneurysm.”
“So he can obviously exert some control over people’s anatomy, then.”
“Right. I think he has limits, though. When we saw him in the nursing home, he had to concentrate hard just to generate an apparition in our minds. He might have a hard time influencing a lot of people all at once, so if we found a way to distract him, maybe we could, you know, stop him.”
“Kill him, you mean.”
“I don’t want to do that.”
“Bobby, the man can do stuff with people’s minds. Locking him up isn’t going to stop that, and you’ve already told me he’s perfectly possessed so he can’t be cleansed.”
A man at a nearby table turned his head toward them and stared a moment, then returned his attention to his phone.
“Won’t killing him make me just as bad?” Bobby said, lowering his voice. “I’m not a vigilante.”
“You also won’t let evil have free rein if you can help it. I know you’ll make the right decision. You always do.”
Do I? Bobby wondered.
BOBBY CRANKED the heat all the way up in the car once he and Carly finished breakfast, and they sat in the small parking lot letting the engine idle.
