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“I don’t know how to say this. But Isaiah’s…” Jericho paused, fumbling for words. “Corpse… could attract more dead. He’s a Diviner. They… might want him. He could become one of them.”
“No,” Theta said, steely-eyed. “He would never.”
“Mabel did,” Evie said quietly.
“Not Isaiah.”
“We need to bury him,” Sam said, nodding at Jericho. “We need to give him a proper grave.”
“You mean here?” Theta said, incredulous.
“It’s gotta be done, Theta,” Sam said.
Theta felt a pull toward this starkly beautiful land, but it was far from New York and all Memphis knew. How would Memphis ever visit his brother’s grave out here?
“Theta, you have Miss Addie’s spell book. Surely there’s somethin
g in there for making sure the dead don’t come back,” Evie said gently.
“You’ll never get Memphis to leave Isaiah here. I know him,” Theta said.
They fell into arguing. The light was fading, the last of the sun bleeding out over Devils Tower.
“Wait! Wait!” Jericho held up a hand and everyone stopped. “Where’d Memphis go?”
Memphis staggered up the rocky incline leading to Devils Tower carrying his fallen brother in his arms. “Just hold on, Ice Man. I’ll fix this.”
Behind him, his friends were shouting his name. Coming after him. Memphis kept going. Just a little farther. He stumbled and fell to his knees, barely registering the pain of it. Isaiah lay in the sweet grass of Wyoming. Memphis had hoped they’d see the West someday. Maybe ride the palominos, or watch the elk come down from the Tetons. All things he’d read about in books back at the 135th Street Library in Harlem. “I’m gonna fix this,” he said again. He screamed at the sky. “You’re not taking him! You hear me, you greedy son-of-a-bitch? You take and you take and you take! Well, you can’t have him—I won’t let you!”
“Memphis! Memphis!” Theta jogged after Memphis and got down on her knees beside him. She tried to take his hand, but he wouldn’t let her. “Don’t do this, Memphis. You can’t. It’s unnatural.”
“Nothing about this is natural,” Memphis murmured. “It’s an unnatural world.”
“You remember what your mother told you? You can’t bring back something once it’s gone. Think about Miss Addie and Elijah.”
“You all want to bury him. Well, you can’t.”
Theta looked down at Isaiah. His lips were as pale as the night’s last hour of moonlight. When she spoke, her voice was thick with tears she was doing her best to hold back. “Hey. Hey. You remember that day you and Isaiah snuck in to see Babe Ruth hit a home run? Or when we helped paint the barn on the farm? We’ll always have that. We’ll always have Isaiah that way, and we’ll carry him around with us forever.”
“No.” Memphis’s voice was a croak. His lips quivered. Tears coursed down his cheeks. “No.”
“He deserves a grave, Memphis,” Henry said, joining them.
“No, no, no!” Memphis’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not letting him die. I’m gonna heal him. I can do it. I know I can.”
His mother had told him that this, above all things, was forbidden. You can’t bring back what’s gone, she’d warned. He would see about that. Memphis laid his hands on top of Isaiah’s cold, stiff body. Jericho made to stop him, but Memphis was too quick. He pressed his palms to Isaiah’s still chest, right above the no-longer-beating heart. He opened himself up, willing the healing magic to come down. His fingers twitched and smoked. He would do it. Nobody could stop him.
“You give me back my brother. Give me back my brother!” Memphis gathered Isaiah in his arms, hugging him close. A roar filled his ears. The earth around him swept up into columns of dust. Lightning shot from the sky and electrified the top of Devils Tower, and then leaped down the side of the butte, where it reached into Memphis’s body. Memphis felt as if he were being pulled into that electrified sky, through the clouds, and drawn into darkness.
It was suddenly quiet and still. Memphis no longer held Isaiah. He was surrounded by a circle of the dead. They didn’t advance. It was almost as if they were asleep standing up, eyes open, seeing nothing. Behind them was an endless forest of dead trees and walls made of skulls. An ossuary fit for a King of Crows.
“Will you make a bargain with me at last?” the King said. Lightning strobed across his face. He was shadow and light.
“Give me back my brother,” Memphis said.
In his right hand, the man in the hat held the crow, silencing it, silencing Memphis’s mother. She was warning him, Memphis knew. He didn’t care. He would do whatever it took to have his brother back.
The King of Crows tilted his head in his strange, jerking fashion. “What will you give me for him?”
