Salt and Iron (21 page)

The hammer. The nail. Jesus
Christ
. His hands are shaking, so he drops the first nail, grabs the second, takes the hammer in his other hand.

“Make it quick.”

“Done,” he whispers. He pulls a cold sort of calm around himself, sets the nail as if upon a piece of wood, and drives the hammer down.

GABE DOES
not scream. He does not writhe. He lies still and inert, as if the nail was nothing at all.

“Gabe?
Gabe
!”

Gabe sighs and sags against the floor, suddenly lying flat, his wings a carpet of ash under him. A half dozen glass marbles go skipping across the ground. “My hands hurt, Jamie,” he whispers. “My hands hurt. What happened?”

James looks for Skinny Mary, but she’s gone. They’re all gone. It’s all gone. The ballroom and the checkered floor and the candles and the house and… but Gabe is here, stripped to the waist, hands cracked and burned and bleeding on the forest floor. It’s night, or near enough as makes no difference. He can hear the contented cooing of a bird somewhere in the cottonwoods and the rumble of traffic on the highway. He looks around. Orange and white lights. The motel parking lot twenty feet away.

“Jamie?”

“C’mon, Gabe, you gotta get on your feet.”

“What happened? Why’m I…?”

“C’mon, I’ll tell you everything in a sec.”

“God, my hands
hurt
.”

“I know. I’m gonna look after you.”

Gabe lets James haul him up, lets James half carry him through the wood and up the embankment, to the motel where they follow the darkness as far as they can, and then he tries to hide Gabe from anyone who might be looking, from the motel office where the blue light of a TV is flashing like a strobe or from the highway. He gets the key in the door and bundles Gabe in.

“Holy Jesus, my hands, Jamie,” Gabe whispers.

“I know. You burned ’em bad. Don’t look. Come on, into the bathroom.”

He fills the sink with cool water and leaves Gabe standing there, soaking his hands, takes a pail of ice from the machine and comes back, pours it into the sink by handfuls. Gabe’s blinking at himself in the mirror by the time James is done, blinking at himself like he can see again.

“My face,” Gabe says. “I musta got hit in the head, because I don’t remember anything, and my face is a fucking mess.” He looks at James. “Why’re we in a motel? What’s going on?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Gabe licks his lips and shakes his head. “I was with Rob and the others. And the Thing got Dad.” His voice breaks. He shakes his head. “I don’t know after that. Everything’s broken up.”

“You got turned,” James says softly. “But you’re okay now.”

Gabe stares at him. “You rescued me?”

James shakes his head. “No. You did.”

THERE’S A
knock at the door a moment later, and he leaves Gabe standing with his hands in the ice-water sink and goes to the door. It’s Yuko. She’s got the first aid kit from the SUV in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other. She meets his eyes.

“You okay?”

He nods. “I think so.”

“What about him?”

He shrugs.

“Look, this is going to be hard to understand, but…. You think you’re out, but you’re not.”

“What?”

She twists, her features deforming. He lurches back into the room, tries to throw the door shut, but she’s put her boot in the way. “Listen to me, Jamie, you’re not out yet. Gabe’s been changed back, but that’s not all there is.”

“No,” he says. “No, this is right. He’s back to how he was. He can see again. And he’s himself again. And the wings are gone.”

“And you don’t see time anymore.”

He exhales, teeth chattering.

“It’s everything you want, isn’t it?” she asks, setting down the first aid kit and then drawing a forty of the Birnam Wood out of the paper bag. He wants it instantly, with a powerful lover’s longing. She smiles. “Why do you think people go meet the sidhe and never come home?”

Jamie.

She peels the foil off the neck of the bottle and works out the cork. “Why do you think people come to the sidhe and ask to be changed?”

Jamie.

She pours out a generous two-finger measure and passes it over to him, then one for herself.

“Why do you think they always say you should never make deals with the sidhe?”

Jamie, c’mon, wake up.

She smiles and raises her glass to her lips. “
Slainte
,” she says.

He puts the cup down and opens his eyes.

HE WAKES
shivering. It’s dawn—no, just before dawn. He’s soaked with dew, like maybe he’s been lying out here all night. Gabe is kneeling beside him, one hand, curled and blistered and useless, held against his belly, the other passing through James’s hair.

“Hey,” Gabe whispers. “Hey.” He smiles, relieved.

James realizes Gabe can see him. Gabe’s hand is warm, but not warm like they were, not fever hot. Now it’s James who’s the wrong temperature.

“Thought you were dead,” Gabe whispers.

A shiver passes through James, and then another. “Cold,” he says. It comes out as a croak. “Thirsty.”

“Come on,” Gabe says. He helps James up with his good hand. James can see blisters pearling the skin of his fingers and the back of his hand, but it’s nothing compared to the other one.

“We gotta get you to a hospital, Gabe.”

Gabe shakes his head. “Can’t feel it,” he says. “I think it’s okay.”

It’s not. He doesn’t have to have a medical degree to know that no part of a living human body should ever look like that. But he’s too cold to think. He can’t exactly argue.

“C’mon, Jamie, you’re shaking.”

They climb the little embankment, both of them keeping heads down, neither of them looking back the way they had come. At the door to room thirteen, James fumbles the key into the lock and pushes open the door. Inside, the tangle of the bedclothes, the paper bag on the floor, the bottle of bourbon on the table. He closes the door behind them and exhales, teeth chattering hard.

“We out?” he asks. He looks at Gabe. “I did this already. With you. And then Yuko came to the door with whiskey. And then you woke me up. Are we out this time?”

Gabe shakes his head. “Dunno. Come on. You’re shaking.”

He looks down at himself, clothes clinging to him and damp and covered in bits of leaf and streaks of dirt. “I’m freezing,” he whispers. Chilled, as the saying goes, to the bone. Like he’s been underground for days. “I’m f-freezing.”

Gabe’s hand catching his shoulder, tugging him. “I’m getting you into the shower.”

He nods and follows. “You can see?”

“Yeah. Out the front of me.”

Gabe grins at him, and he looks, oh God, he looks like his old self.

“Oh man, James, you look like you’re going to faint.”

“Don’t feel good,” he admits.

Gabe tugs him into the bathroom, helps strip the damp, filthy clothes from him.

“Your skin is like ice,” Gabe whispers.

He knows. It’s like he’s been in a fridge, or in a root cellar. His hands are ashy; they tremble.

He gets into the shower, careful not to make it too hot, but he still hisses with surprise and then because the heat makes pins and needles in his skin. Gabe waits for him, ’til the little room is full of chlorine-scented steam and James isn’t shivering anymore. When he comes out, Gabe tosses him one of the thin, scratchy towels from the rack and points at the mirror. Someone’s left words written there, soap residue in the steam.

we are not saved

He looks at the mirror for a long time.

“We both owe a debt,” he says softly.

Gabe nods. “She’ll call it in when she calls it in,” he says. “No point in worrying. You warm now?”

He nods.

“Good. Come on. Let’s get some rest.”

HIS PHONE
wakes him, chirping cheerfully from the nightstand. A text from Abe.
See you in 10.

He blinks, sitting up in bed. The meeting. He looks at the date on his phone. He hasn’t missed the meeting; no time has passed at all. “Fucking sidhe,” he whispers. He lays a hand on Gabe’s shoulder, taking just a moment to wonder where the feathers went, and the bone structure of the wings. “Gabe?” he asks softly.

“No,” Gabe mumbles.

He smiles and slides down into the bed again, and for a moment they could be lovers who stayed up late in an embrace, rather than fugitives who fell into bed, Gabe out cold the moment he settled, James so exhausted that he cried a little until sleep came.

He thinks about rousing Gabe, and then thinks about the burns on his hands and his arms, the way his skin is slashed and shredded. He pulls back the covers a little to see, and they’re not like they were last night. His left hand is fine, no blistering, no wounds. The right hand, which was a charred claw last night, is sheathed in a weird, glossy, bleach-white skin, like some kind of crude glove, or as if he’d dipped it almost to the wrist in paint. He covers up Gabe’s hands again and sits for a minute. Then he slides out of bed and pulls on his filthy, still-damp clothes.

He goes and gets a bottle of water from the pop machine at the end of the causeway and then comes back and puts it on the bedside table, beside the glued-down remote for the TV. He kneels down by the bed again.

“Be back soon,” he whispers. “There’s cold water on the bedside table if your hands hurt.”

“’Kay,” Gabe mumbles. He rolls his shoulders and burrows into the blankets. “Stop worrying and go back to sleep, Jamie.”

He grins. Then he gets up and goes across the silent highway, up the embankment where the little pine bushes are struggling in the weeds, and up to the diner.

It’s been recently updated. Red booths and Coke-machine-themed knickknacks, and Elvis playing on a low-quality speaker. It’s cool inside, like diving into a pool after the stuffy heat of the outside. There’s a pair of old, white-haired men talking at each other from two separate booths, and a guy and a girl sharing a table on the other side of the place, and Abe. Abe sitting with a coffee steaming in front of him in a booth in the farthest corner, right back by the kitchen. He looks up when James enters and straightens up, like he’s going to get to his feet, and then changes his mind.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah,” he says before he thinks about it, “yeah I’m… I’m not hurt.”

He takes a look at Abe while Abe fiddles with the cutlery and the napkins. His hands are a little clumsy, like he’s tired, or drunk, or over-caffeinated.

“Hey,” he says, sliding into the booth. Abe looks at him. “You okay?”

Abe lets out a long, shaking breath. “Benecio, you know?” he says. “And Gabe.”

“Gabe’s….” He’s not sure what to say, but “
okay
” is probably wide of the mark. “He’s alive.”

“Is he? I mean, like, really?”

James nods. “Yeah, he is.”

Abe laughs faintly and slides both hands through his hair. “I guess that’s better than nothing,” he says. “I mean, I guess. Fuck.”

He covers his eyes with one hand, and James waits while he catches his breath. He should probably be this upset too, but he’s too tired. He hasn’t got the energy anymore.

Abe grabs his hand. “Don’t get hurt, okay?” he says. “Jesus, James, I know we fight, but….”

“Yeah,” James says. “I know. Me too.”

Abe nods, and then the two of them sit back because the waitress is coming over. Short, dressed in unevenly faded black, with a short little apron that jingles with change and a glass coffee carafe in one hand. “Morning. Coffee?” she asks, and James looks up at her to say
Good morning
and
Yes, thanks
, and stares. She looks down at him, her eyes reflecting him back like mirrors, time breaking and reforming around her like an aurora.

“Coffee?” she asks again.

“Uh.” He swallows. “Yeah. Thanks.”

She turns over his cup and pours. “Menu?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“Menu?”

“Yeah, he’ll have a menu,” Abe says. “Sorry. Just… just in town for a… funeral. We’re a little distracted.”

“No trouble,” she says and smiles and gives them a couple of plastic-covered menus, a little tacky in places like they’ve just been wiped down. She turns and goes, and Abe looks at him.

“Seriously, man, you okay?”

James looks at him. “Yeah. Just….” He’s thinking of the destiny he fixed in Shadow, and wanting to do it. First time for everything. He smiles a little. “Yeah, it’s good.”

Abe’s expression is, well, Abe looks to James like he’s trying to approximate an amused expression, having heard tell of such a thing but never actually seen it before. “Okay, yeah, because you sure look it.”

“Yeah. I’m a bit surprised myself. Anyway, never mind. Look.” James starts putting cream in his coffee so he doesn’t have to look at Abe while he talks. “Look, there’s something going on at the Firm. It’s not good. I think you need to know about it. All of it.”

Abe slumps down a little in his seat, stretching out his legs under the table. “Rob said there was something serious, I mean, something worse than I already know about, I mean, what happened to Gabe and to Benecio. He didn’t say what. He wouldn’t say. It was the Thing, wasn’t it?”

James nods. “Yeah. It was.”

Abe exhales. “I asked Rob. I asked him a couple times.”

James grins, because Rob, you know? Rob. He dips his spoon into his coffee and swirls it. “It’s more complicated than you think. That’s probably why Rob didn’t…. Look. You remember when we were kids and we used to pretend there was a lady in the attic of the Firm?”

Abe nods, frowning.

“There is.”

He takes a drink to moisten his mouth.

“The Thing. It’s always given us trouble, and it turns out it’s been attacking sidhe too. Nobody knew what it was or where it came from, but it was making unseelies. It’s what killed Benecio. It’s what got Gabe. It… turned him.”

Abe’s mouth drops open. His eyebrows slope together. “Oh Christ,” he moans.

“Look, it’s… well, okay, it
was
that bad. It really was. But the sidhe, well, they’ve been helping me. They. I mean, Gabe’s gonna be okay.”