Page 84

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Fever, but it’s okay. He’s here.”

“Who?”

“The Wolf, silly. Who else?” She conjured a smile.

Adam looked around. There was no one there but them. Maybe she was hallucinating. Maybe one of the rough drawings on the cardboard walls was talking to her. Adam hoped it said something soothing. She did not look well.

His Sight didn’t show him a banshee, or a possession, but the light within her, the spark of life, was dim.

When he’d first met Vic, Adam had taken a thread of his own life and interwoven it with Vic’s.

The elves did it when they married. Adam hadn’t understood the repercussions. It had been a rash move. It had saved Vic, but it had also changed both of them, forever.

He could do that now, bind himself to this lost girl.

But no. He shook his head.

He didn’t have that in him anymore, that ability to throw parts of himself away after strangers.

There it was, what Dr. Cahill had been trying to tell him. That was the part of himself he grieved, the innocence he’d lost.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I can’t help you. Maybe I can find someone who can.”

Maybe there was someone at the school. Maybe Seamus would make a trade.

“I don’t need it, silly,” she said weakly. “I’m going to paradise. That’s what he promised.”

Adam left her lying there.

Outside, he let the spirit realm’s twilight air scrub some of the sick odor from his lungs, though he probably inhaled more campfire smoke than anything else.

What now, hero? You didn’t even get what you needed.

He still didn’t know where the spirits of the empty people had gone. He didn’t know who had bought the bottles or unleashed the banshees.

He might not be able to help Lily, but he could at least not take advantage of her as she lay ill and badger her for intel.

A noise started, several voices chanting, deep and low. Adam cocked his ear to listen as it grew gradually louder.

The sound sent ice down his back, but he crept around the corner of the cardboard church. In the distance, in the part of the graveyard that backed against a wildlife preserve, stood an effigy.

He’d seen its like before. They’d used twigs, branches, and old planks from shipping pallets to build a statue of the Wolf. Red paint was splashed across it, marking the ground and some of the tombstones.

Maybe Lily had seen the Wolf, or at least a Wolf.

The Lost Ones circling the rickety thing wore his mask, though they were mostly plastic. Some were leather and Adam worried about where the hide had come from.

The chants were uneven, but they felt like prayers. He got the gist. They were pleading for him to return, to show himself to them, and bring them to glory.

Had Ian known what he was doing when he’d made this cult? Had he even considered what would happen to it when he was no longer around?

No, of course not. The version of his nephew that had grown into the Wolf took after Wilcox. He’d only seen the cult as a tool, the way his grandfather saw the witches he used and the people who worked for him, the way he saw Annie, his only child.