“He’s in the middle of having a baby,” I said. “And I don’t think that’s going as smoothly as they hoped. He’s too preoccupied to be doing magical surgery on your brain. He’ll fuck it up for good.”
“Then you do it, Shame,” Terric said. “You know me better than anyone, right?”
Could you? Eleanor asked.
All this talking to living people had made me forget that there were two ghosts standing in the room over by Davy.
“What?” I said to both Eleanor and Terric. “No. Absolutely not.”
“You said we were tied,” Terric said. “That we use magic together better than most. So use magic. On me. Open up my brain, Shame.” He flashed me a smile. “Trust me, it’s not an offer you’re going to get more than once in a lifetime.”
Yes, Eleanor said. You should. You should do this, Shame.
“No. Not having memories is bad,” I said. “But having your mind broken because an untrained Death magic user—hello, me—tries to pop your lid is a one-way ticket to Lobotomyville, Terric.”
“All right.” He leaned back. Gave me that “how about we run this theory through its paces?” look. I hated that look. “Give me another option.”
“We call a Closer from the old days,” I said. “Someone who knows the drill.”
“Okay, good. Now tell me how this Closer is going to access enough magic to break what’s been done to me. You said only Soul Complements and Krogher’s drones can tap in to that much magic.”
I scowled at him. Hated when he made sense. Hated when he showed me how very wrong I was.
“You can access magic, Shame,” he said evenly, as if carefully picking a lock and waiting to feel the tumblers give. “It’s inside you. And you know how to use it. If Zay’s not an option, then you’re the only one who can get my memories back.”
“Another Soul Complement could do it,” I said. “Someone who was a Closer.”
“Got one of those in your pocket?”
“No.”
“So we go with my plan.”
“What is the plan, exactly?” Dash asked.
“Crazy over there wants me to restore his memories,” I said.
“I heard that part,” Dash said. “You’re not a Closer, Shame. If I remember correctly, you failed that part of the magic-user test.”
I pointed to my chest. “Choir here, Bible boy.”
“He has magic and ability to use it. He also has incentive to try to do it right,” Terric said. “Good enough for me.”
“Since when did you become the reckless one?” I asked.
Terric gave me a smile I hadn’t seen in years. “Being tied to you? Please. I’ve always been the reckless one. Stop being such an old woman about this. No big risk, no blue ribbons.”
Good Lord, he sounded like Cody.
“So what I’m hearing,” Dash said, “is we have no plan.”
This was a bad idea. A very bad idea. But I didn’t have a better one.
Terric raised one eyebrow. Daring me.
There was a chance, a very small one, that this could work.
Plus, I could never turn down his dares.
“I’m not doing this on my own,” I said. “Not without instructions and a Closer. Dash, call Hayden. Tell him we’ll meet him out at Mum’s inn.”
Chapter 23
SHAME
“What happened to it?” Terric bent just a bit to see the inn out the car window.
The remodeling was in the “nuclear warhead came knocking” phase, about a quarter of the place demolished, a quarter of it propped up by wooden bracers and another quarter of it caged under scaffolding.
“Mum happened to it,” I said. Then, at Terric’s questioning look: “She’s finally doing that remodeling she always wanted to have done.”
I got out of the backseat—Dash had insisted on driving and Davy wouldn’t stay at the Den no matter what we threatened him with—and paced away from the inn toward the river.
Before going in there, near Hayden—hell, near Dash and Davy—I needed some air. The food hadn’t slaked my hunger, and the last life Death magic had sucked down—Mina—was gone.
Death wanted to be fed. It dragged against the inside of my skull, heavy, needful. Being around Terric helped. But I did not want to slip up now.
Sunny and Eleanor drifted alongside me. They hadn’t said much since I’d been thrown in the box. Maybe being tied to me was draining them too. They seemed paler, thinner. Sunny caught me looking at her out of the corner of my eye and flipped me off.
Well, at least she wasn’t any less angry at me. It was the little things that counted in a new relationship.
I opened the cage on Death magic, just enough to let it seep out from beneath my feet, seeking nourishment.
All those hearts beating hot behind me, easy to take.
Shame, Eleanor said.
But I wasn’t reaching for the lives Death wanted. Wasn’t reaching for what would sate it fully.
Trees, bushes, grass would have to do. I pushed Death that way, sent it toward the river, toward the tangle of green and brown and bloom, and drank its meager broth.
There was a never-ending hole inside me. All the plants in the world weren’t enough to fill it. But it helped.
“Morning,” Hayden said from the porch. “What’s the emergency?”
“Hayden,” Terric said. “It’s good to see you. It’s been a while.”
Hayden frowned. “Saw you just over a week ago. You okay?”
“No,” Dash said, “that’s why we’re here. We need your help.”
Davy got out of the car and stood there a moment staring at me. I was half-turned toward the inn, so I saw Hayden take in the situation and lean back a bit on one leg.
“Shamus?” He somehow shoved an entire “what have you done now?” into the two syllables of my name.
I turned toward the house, elbowed Death magic back behind the walls in my head, and locked it down. I crunched my way across gravel.
“Nice to see you, Hayden,” I said. “Love what you haven’t done with the place.”
“You boys in trouble?” he asked.
“Are trouble,” I said.
Hayden grunted and stepped out of the way of the door. “Well, come on in. Let’s hear what it is this time.”
Terric and Davy and Dash all walked past him and through the door he held open with the stump of his arm. He’d lost a hand the last time we stopped an apocalypse. He hadn’t let it slow him down much.
I was hoping he’d step into the inn before me so I could keep some distance between us, but he waited for me.
“Shame. You need a doctor, son?”
I shook my head. “Naw, I’m good.”
You’re a mess, Sunny said, floating into the room before me.
Hayden wasn’t buying it either. “You’re scratched up and bruised,” he said. “You have that hungry look in your eyes, and you’re wearing a monkey shirt. You’re a mess.”
“Yeah, well,” I said.
“Killed anyone lately?” he asked.
“Define lately.”
“Want to try that again?” he said.
“I’m upright,” I said. “Let’s call that proof that I am fine.”
“There might still be clothes up in your room. Put on long sleeves before your mother sees those holes in you.”
“She’s here?” I stopped short, not wanting her to see me, not wanting to explain why and how I’d completely lost this fight with the monster within me.
I’d killed Mina. I’d killed Sunny. I couldn’t tell my mother that.
“She’s in the kitchen pulling together some food. If you’re fast and quiet, you’ll get past her.”
I was neither of those things right now, so I just stepped into the inn, noisy and slow.