Servants of the Storm (21 page)

I pick Baker back up after dark.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask him for the tenth time.

He grins at me like I’m an idiot. “Look, Dovey. There’s some
seriously messed-up stuff going on. I saw Mr. Hathaway today and almost lost my shit. If I can help you, I will. You don’t have to ask anymore.”

“Baker. Seriously. We’re going to Riverfest. There are going to be demons everywhere.”

“I know. I thought that red stuff would wear off and I’d be an idiot again, but I still remember everything. Do you think they’ll notice?”

I pull over and put the car in park. “You have to stay home. If they know you can see them, they’ll take your finger too.”

He shakes his head, buckles his seat belt. “Screw that. I’m not letting you go alone. There has to be some way to make me dumb. Do you have any of the pills? Or could we go to that restaurant?”

I look down, scratch at a black stain on the steering wheel. I don’t want to say what I’m about to say. But I say it anyway. “I . . . might have some of the clear stuff from Charnel House in the car. But we don’t know what it’ll do to you.”

“Being ignorant will protect me. You said so yourself. Hand it over.”

I reach into the backseat for the Chinese take-out bag and put it in his lap. Anything he does from here on out is his choice. The determination on his face makes him look five years older as he pulls out the bottle of clear liquid.

“So I’ve technically already had this stuff, right?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty much the opposite of the red stuff. Makes
you kind of dreamy, kind of stupid. Isaac gave it to you at the bar. You acted drunk and fell off your stool.”

Before I can tell him more, he’s uncorked the bottle and taken several long gulps. I fumble to pull it away, and he splutters shimmery liquid onto his scarf.

“Jesus Christ, Baker! How much are you going to drink?”

He turns to me, intent and deadly serious.

“You have a hex to keep you safe, Dovey. I don’t. I need to be exactly what the demons want me to be. I need to be stupid and dreamy and . . . I don’t know. Drunk. And if I’d given you half a chance, you would’ve talked me out of it, because you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.” He puts the half-empty bottle back in the bag and leans back, his mouth a grim line. “And now it’s too late for you to stop me.”

I shake my head, half-scared and half-impressed. “You are one crazy mofo.”

“Correction: I’m a good friend. You’ll take care of me. I’m not worried.”

“Then it must be working already.”

I start the car and pull onto the road, and Baker turns on the radio. We’re silent as I take the parkway and speed up, anxious to get there. It’s kind of scary, how many people are counting on me. My parents and Baker are drugged, Gigi’s in hiding, Carly’s . . . well, she needs my help. I’m terrified we won’t find her at Riverfest. But I’m also terrified of seeing her as she is now.

“Where are we going again?” Baker’s voice is dreamy, unconcerned.
He slumps down in his seat, his fingers tapping idly on the car door.

Yeah, the clear stuff works fast.

“It’s a surprise.”

After a while on the highway, his face lights up.

“We’re going to Riverfest? That’s awesome! I thought it was closed. But the lights are so bright.”

I scan the horizon where he’s looking, and bright lights are nowhere to be seen. There’s a break in the clouds, just ahead, and I can see the skeletal outline of a roller coaster dusted by moonlight. I remember passing by Riverfest as a kid and getting all excited and begging my parents to take me. Now it just looks like abandoned Tinkertoys. The biggest roller coaster, the Frog Strangler, used to be covered with neon-green lights. Now it’s blacked out except for two lights that shine malevolently, like cat eyes. Like Mr. Hathaway’s eyes. The whole park is pitch dark, but here and there things move subtly. Wrongly.

But nothing should be moving. Riverfest was under eight feet of water for weeks and never opened again. I remember hearing at school that some kids went there to skateboard and leave graffiti and have huge parties, but I was too out of it with the numb fuzz to care.

“Oh, cool! The Free Fall,” Baker says. He pauses expectantly as if watching the machine go up and down. “I used to love that one.”

I shake my head. Part of me wishes I could see what he’s seeing, the lights and magic and excitement. But all I see is an
accident waiting to happen, a carefully arranged trap. As I turn into the parking lot, I notice dozens of cars parked crookedly. A few kids are walking toward a tram that’s waiting, lights off, in the dark. I can tell by the tilt of his head and his odd stillness that the guy driving the tram is . . . wrong. Probably a distal servant. A corpse.

“If we hurry, we can catch the tram,” Baker says. “Just park, Dovey. Let’s go. I haven’t been here in forever.”

I pull into a space and grab the knit hat I brought. I trust Gigi’s hex, but I want as much protection as possible. My hair is in fat pigtails under the hat, and I’ve got on a scarf and my cargoes and my dad’s old winter jacket. And, since it’s a cold night, mittens that also hide my missing pinkie finger.

Baker’s hand slips as he gets out of the car, and he almost slams the door on his fingers. We walk to the waiting tram and duck into the last seat just as the car takes off on silent wheels. Baker drapes himself over the seat, his hip almost touching mine.

“I always wanted to come here with you,” he says, voice dreamy.

“You did. A couple of times.”

He waves a hand. “With you and Carly. Or the whole group. Never with just you.” His hand lands on my shoulder, soft and tentative. “Those other times didn’t count.”

Warmth surges through me at the naked tenderness in his gaze. I can’t believe he drank so much of the clear stuff, not knowing what it would do to him. He all but sacrificed himself for me, and for Carly. I lean my head against shoulder.

“Thanks, Baker,” I say. He tips his head against mine and sighs contentedly. And even if he’s half-drunk, and even if I’m not sure how I feel about how he feels about me, I feel better.

The clouds have skidded off, and everything is sharp and crisp in the moonlight. The tram moves more smoothly than seems possible, and everything as far as I can see is still and silent, except for us. I look at the matted hair on the back of the driver’s head; it’s all gooey. His hands turn the wheel with a jerky, unnatural motion that I recognize from the girl I chased out the back door of the Paper Moon. She was fast, but now, with my mind clear, I remember the odd, shambling lurch of her gait. They can be quick, I guess, but the distal servants can never be graceful. I turn away to watch my Buick disappear in the darkness as we roll toward the park’s back entrance. I do not share Baker’s confidence and excitement.

The tram rolls right through the open gate and stops in front of a turnstile. A shiver rolls over me when I see the corpse standing there, waiting for us. It’s not Carly, and it’s not the girl I chased to Charnel House.

But I know who it is. My heart plummets into my feet. I dash away tears before they can make shining tracks down my cheeks. My childhood friend, the hugger, the sweet girl who always turned on the lights when a movie scared me, who stood up for me just last week. Her eyes are black and empty, her toga torn and stained.

“Dude, I didn’t know Tamika worked here,” Baker says. “Maybe she’ll get us some free stuff.”

I guess he doesn’t see the roughly stitched line around her
neck. Or her dead black eyes. Or the missing part of her pinkie finger. Just like Carly. She must have been easy to catch, running out the back door of the Liberty, upset and crying. Or maybe Old Murph grabbed her before she even got outside. But she belongs to them now, and probably forever.

Baker hops out of the tram before it stops moving and walks to the turnstile.

“Hey, Tamika!” he says.

I follow at the same pace as the other kids. A sleepwalker’s pace. Tamika beckons Baker forward wordlessly and gives him a pill. He tosses it back before I can elbow around the other kids and stop him, enters through the turnstile, and thanks her, like she just did him a big favor and slipped him a free pass. When it’s my turn, she gives me the same pill, and I drop it down my shirt and wave a hand in front of her eyes.

Nothing. There’s nothing there.

“Good-bye, Tamika,” I whisper, choking on the words.

I shake myself, trying to forget the flat deadness of her eyes, so different from when she hugged me just a couple of days ago. I wonder how many people have just disappeared like that, their friends and family and teachers smiling dumbly as if they’ve completely forgotten. Her best friend wasn’t even worried. Is that how the pills were supposed to make me act about Carly? Was I supposed to just smile like Nikki and forget that my own best friend was gone? There are huge patches in my memory. Maybe, for a while, I did forget.

When I dash away my tears and catch up with Baker, he’s
walking toward the Free Fall. Almost all of the lights are out, save a couple that shine weakly, flickering on and off. I scan every hint of movement and every strip of light for a sign of Carly, but the distal servants aren’t just walking around—they’re working. We’ll have to go from ride to ride to find her.

Over in the shadows a corpse stands at the dark control panel for the Free Fall, pushing buttons without looking down, but we’re too far away to see if it’s Carly, so I hurry to walk beside Baker. The Free Fall is at the top of its tower, but no one is screaming. A guy in a trench coat who looks to be both human and alive stands near the start of the line and beckons us closer, his eyes slitted as if checking us over. I imitate Baker’s dopey smile as we pass through the turnstile and under the awning. The guy’s dark eyes crawl over me like skittering roach feet, and I realize he must be a cambion.

Baker’s sleepwalking too now, half placid and half zonked. It must be from the pill Tamika gave him. Even though there’s barely anyone in line, Baker walks calmly through the maze of bars. I want to just duck under and save myself the time, or run from corpse to corpse looking for Carly, but the crawling tickle between my shoulder blades reminds me we’re being watched. I follow Baker through the bars, feeling a different kind of fear from what I felt the times I came here before Josephine. Then it was the thrill of adventure, just enough terror to make you scream and laugh and want to do it again while your parents watched, smiling. Now, in the cold dark, without any understanding of what
I’m expected to see or do, I look at the creaking, rusted metal and tremble. This machine should not be working.

But it is.

There’s a heavy clank, and I look way up to watch the Free Fall in action. There are four people on it, and they scream, but not the normal amusement park scream. It’s the scream you want to scream in dreams, when the monsters are about to get you. They’re terrified. Sincerely, pissing-your-pants terrified. The machine lets them drop halfway, then pulls them up with the laborious creaking of dragging chains. They don’t stop screaming. I want to get the hell out of line and go away.

“Aw, man. This is going to be great,” Baker says calmly.

I lean closer.

“What do you see?”

“Riverfest. Lights. Rides. People laughing. Prizes. Magic.” He sighs in contentment. “I love this place.”

The corpse girl working the controls pushes a button, and the ride drops again. It’s not Carly—I can see the girl’s mangled blond bob now. I lean out from under the awning and watch four sets of legs falling faster than seems possible. The people scream, and one of them is crying. In seconds they’re almost to the ground, and I know the ride is out of control, and it’s going to crash and crush them to death.

But it stops just before that can happen, jerking the people back up for a soft bounce. Their screams keep going, though, and I’m just about to drag Baker away when I hear a deep sigh. In the shadows
to the side of the ride is a guy huddled over, shaking and moaning softly. His fingers are wrapped around the metal bars, his reverent face riveted on the screaming riders. As they bounce up and down, his body bucks with them. At first I think he’s kind of good-looking, but then I see that he has long, slender ears with tufts at the top like a lynx, and his shadowed face is riddled with black veins. A higher demon, the same kind as Kitty. I have to be very, very careful.

“Take them up one more time,” he says softly to the girl at the controls, and she pushes a button on the machine. There’s a grinding noise, and the Free Fall cabin ratchets upward jerkily, the passengers hollering even more loudly than before.

I look at Baker, but he’s zoned out. The air is full of screams, of the echoes of screams from all over the park. Every hair on my body is standing up, and my teeth are chattering with more than the cold.

“Ready for your ride, pretty morsel?” the lynx-eared demon asks me, his grin showing jagged teeth. I didn’t hear him approach, not even the whisper of shoes on concrete.

It’s almost impossible to peel my eyes off the Free Fall as it rises again, but I let my head swing down and over to face him. I make my smile dreamy, my eyes unfocused.