As he shifted to better reach the engine block, he felt a cool breeze around his ankles, playing just inside the cuff of his slacks. His hands ached; they were even more chapped. When he was a kid, he used to lick the back of them, not realizing at first that it made them even more chapped in the long run. It had been a hard habit to break. Even now, as they stung, he resisted the impulse to relieve the discomfort for just a second.
Outside, the wind blew again, more leaves rattling the windows. Inside, something shifted and clicked. Something settling in the garbage can, maybe.
Adam rubbed his arm against his cheek, realizing only as he did it that his arm had a smear of grease on it. There was no point wiping off his face, though, until he was done for the night.
There was another click from inside the shop. He paused in his work, wrench hovered above the engine, top of his skull touching the open hood overhead. Something seemed different, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
The radio was no longer playing.
Adam warily eyed the old radio. He could just see it, two bays away, on the other side of the Pontiac and a pickup truck and a little Toyota. The power light was off; possibly it had finally died.
But still, Adam asked the empty garage, “Noah?”
It was unlike Noah to be intentionally scary, but Noah had been less Noah than usual lately. Less Noah and more dead.
Something popped.
It took Adam a second to realize that it was the portable work light he had hanging from the edge of the hood. It had gone dark.
“Noah? Is that you?”
Adam suddenly had the terrible and looming feeling that something was behind him, watching him behind his back. Something close enough to blow a chill around his ankles again. Something big enough to block out some of the light from the incandescent bulb by the side door.
It was not Noah.
Outside, thunder suddenly crashed. Adam broke. He scrambled out from beneath the hood, spinning, pressed back against the car.
There was nothing there but concrete block, calendars, tools on walls, posters. But one of the wrenches on the tool wall was swinging. The other side of the garage was dim in a way that Adam couldn’t remember it being.
Go away, go away —
Something touched the back of his neck.
He closed his eyes.
All at once, Adam understood. This was Cabeswater, trying to make itself understood. Persephone had been working with him to improve their communication: Normally, he asked it each morning what it needed, while he flipped tarot cards or scryed into his bathroom sink. But he hadn’t asked since school began.
So now it forced him to listen.
Cabeswater, Persephone had said once, quiet and stern, is not the boss of you.
Something clattered on the table by the opposite wall.
Adam said, “Wait!”
He dove for his messenger bag as the room darkened further. His fingers found his notebooks, textbooks, envelopes, pens, the forgotten candy bar. Something else fell over, closer by. For an airless minute he thought he had left the tarot cards back in the apartment.
It won’t hurt me. This will be scary, but it won’t hurt me —
But fear hurt, too.
Just because it tantrums, Persephone had added, doesn’t make it more right than you.
The cards. Crouching by his bag, Adam snatched out the velvet bag and tumbled the deck into his hands. Persephone had been teaching him all kinds of meditation methods, but there would be no meditating now. Shivering, he shuffled the deck as oil in the pan beneath the Pontiac began to tip, a furious ocean.
He slapped down three cards on the concrete floor. Death, the Empress, the Devil.
Think, Adam, think, get inside it —
The closest fluorescent buzzed harshly, suddenly over-bright, then just as suddenly out.
Adam’s subconscious fled through Cabeswater’s consciousness, both of them tangled up in this strange bargain he’d made.
Death, the Empress, the Devil. Three sleepers, yes, yes, he knew that, but they only needed one, and anyway, what did Cabeswater care about who was sleeping on the ley line, what did it need from Adam?
His mind focused on a branched thought, traveled along a limb, to a trunk, down to roots, into the ground. In that darkness and dirt and rock, he saw the ley line. Finally, he saw the connection and where it broke and understood what Cabeswater was asking him to repair. Relief washed over him.
“I get it,” he said out loud, falling back, catching himself on the cold concrete. “I’ll do it this week.”
The shop immediately returned to normal. The radio had resumed playing; Adam hadn’t heard the moment it had started up again. Although Cabeswater’s means of communication could be terrifying — apparitions, black dogs, howling winds, faces in mirrors — the point was never to intimidate. He knew that. But it was hard to remember it as the walls shifted and water beaded on the inside of windows and imaginary women sobbed in his ear.
It always stopped as soon as Adam understood. It only ever wanted him to understand.
He heaved a big breath next to his tarot cards. Time to get back to work.
But.
He heard something. There should not have been anything, not anymore.
But something was scraping on the shop door. It was a dry, thin noise, like paper tearing. A claw. A nail.
But he’d understood. He’d promised to do the work.
He wanted to tell himself that it was only a leaf or a branch. Something ordinary.
But Henrietta was no longer someplace ordinary. He was no longer someone ordinary.
“I said I understood,” Adam said. “I get it. This week. Does it need to be sooner?”
There was no response from within the garage, but outside, something light and uneasy moved past one of the windows, high off the ground. There was just enough light to see its scales.
Scales.
Adam’s pulse sped, his heart beating so hard that it hurt.
Surely Cabeswater believed him; he had never let it down before. There were not rules, but there was trust.
A noise came just outside the door: tck-tck-tck-tck.
The garage door hurtled open. It sounded like a freight train as it roared along its tracks on the ceiling.
In the grim evening, in the deep-blue-black rain of it, a pale monster reared. It was needle claws and savage beaks, ragged wings and greasy scales. It was so against everything that was real that it was hard to even see it truly.
Terror owned Adam. The old terror, the one that was just as much confusion and betrayal as fear itself.
He had done everything right. Why was this still happening if he’d done everything right?
The horror of an animal took a scratching, slithering step toward Adam.
“Shoo, you ugly bastard,” said Ronan Lynch.
He stepped out of the rain and into the shop; he had been hidden in the dark in his jacket and his dark jeans. Chainsaw clung to his shoulder. Ronan lifted a hand to the white beast as if casting off a ship. The creature drew its head back, side-by-side beaks parting.
“Go on,” Ronan said, unafraid.
It took flight.
Because it was not just any monster; it was Ronan Lynch’s monster. A night horror brought to vicious life. It floated up into the dark, strangely graceful once its face was out of sight.
“Damn, Ronan, damn,” Adam gasped, ducking his head. “Oh, God. You scared the shit out of me.”
Ronan smirked. He didn’t understand that Adam’s heart was actually going to explode. Adam wrapped his arms over the back of his neck, curling into a ball on the concrete, waiting to feel like he wasn’t going to die.