The Reviver (30 page)

‘Have you ever heard of Unity?’

Vernet said he had not. Annabel and Jonah spent another twenty minutes with him but got nothing else. Annabel left him a card with her number, bearing the name Sarah Townes, just in case he remembered any more.

In the taxi to the airport, Jonah found his mind churning, unable to make the pieces fit.

‘Yarrow spoke to Vernet three years ago, Annabel. Why so long? Why so long before he did anything?’

Annabel shook her head. ‘Maybe not before he did
anything,
Jonah. Whatever Vernet says, he must have given Yarrow enough to go on. Yarrow could have tracked the story down and found the man who’d told Vernet in the first place. If that’s true, unless Vernet remembers what else he told Yarrow, we don’t stand a chance. And if Yarrow’s story to my dad left out something crucial, we’re equally screwed. Shit. I can’t believe we found Vernet and this is all we get. A campfire ghost story.’

She settled into grim silence for the journey to the airport, scribbling notes and looking more and more frustrated. Her terse mood kept up during the flight home; at Richmond International they went their separate ways, with Jonah strangely distressed by how distant she suddenly seemed.

‘I’ll hear from you?’ he said as they parted. ‘About Eldridge?’

She mumbled something non-committal and headed off to where her car was parked, leaving Jonah struggling to deal with how he was feeling.

In his apartment, he heated up some chilli in the microwave and ate it on the couch, flicking around the channels without settling anywhere, with Marmite huddled up and insisting on some attention. The meeting with Vernet had seemed immune to failure on the trip out. He understood how tired Annabel must be, and how disappointed that her best lead, while proving interesting, had really led nowhere. Jonah knew that if it had been him in her position, he would have shut the door and nursed his wounds for a while. Maybe that was all this was. Perhaps it would be for the best, he thought, if she stopped looking. Perhaps it would be for the best not to find Victor Eldridge too.

Jonah couldn’t help but think about what Vernet had said:
Something long dead. Something not human. They wanted to bring it back and make it stay.

Wondering what kind of answers might come for him, and for Annabel, Jonah suddenly felt cold.

23

Annabel got home from the trip feeling uneasy, and not just about what Vernet had said.

The disappointment of reaching a dead end had been made worse when she’d noticed something in the way Jonah was looking at her. It was a look she’d seen many times before, and one she knew she may have to dampen down.

There was a reason her relationships all failed. She had an unofficial rule: don’t get involved with a guy you actually like. That way, distance was easier to maintain, and the inevitable breakup less painful.

She liked Jonah. She always had, she confessed to herself – ever since her father had told her about the boy who’d revived his mother yet still wanted to do whatever good he could with what most people would have called a curse. She’d been fifteen at the time. Things like that leave an impression.

When she’d recognized his name on the day of her father’s revival, it had seemed fitting that he be the one to do it. But actually seeing him had left her unsettled, and at the time she’d not given much thought to why.

It had been the morning after her father had made his appearance in Jonah’s stolen body when she’d understood what had unnerved her, finding it hard not to look at Jonah’s grey-blue eyes. Complications like that were to be avoided at all costs, especially now. She wondered what her father would have said about the situation, if he hadn’t taken that pill and left her alone.

She would have to dowse any interest Jonah had in her, and make sure that he knew she had no interest in him. Tackling it directly might not prove easy, but if things worked out the way she’d planned, it wouldn’t be a problem.

*   *   *

Jonah wasn’t entirely surprised when Annabel called him at nine the next morning. She said little, only asked him to come to her father’s house to discuss their next move, but her tone was upbeat again, her enthusiasm clear. He wondered where she got it from, those mental resources to fall back on. He knew he could do with some.

She greeted him at her door and brought him through to the kitchen.

‘I’m sorry for yesterday, Jonah. My hopes had been too high. This morning, though, I did a little planning.’

‘About what we do next?

‘Way I see it, either we wait for Vernet to tell us something he forgot, or we stumble into whatever else Yarrow found out. Neither of those appeals to me. So…’

‘Uh oh.’ Jonah smiled, but only on the outside. There was a look in Annabel’s eyes that he was starting to recognize. One that he wasn’t keen on.

‘I figure we have to find someone else who knew what was going on. Someone else who’ll be able to fill in the blanks.’

‘Who?’

‘Michael Andreas.’

Jonah laughed.

‘I mean it. He’s notoriously hands-on. He’ll know something.’

‘Good luck seeing him. I tell you what else he’s notorious for: being hard to
meet.
Even if you do, what makes you think he’ll tell you anything?’

‘Jonah, what’s the one thing a reviver needs a subject to do during a revival?’

Jonah shrugged. ‘Talk.’

‘Exactly. If they talk, you can tell when they’re lying. You can tell when they’re evasive. I’m a journalist. What you do with the dead, I do with the living. I get the man to talk, and I’ll know. And as for getting to see him? I’m going to be the grieving daughter wanting to write a piece about my dad and his contribution to revival. Andreas was such a big part of Baseline, he’s a natural element of that. I’ve put out some feelers. If we get a bite, it’ll hopefully be soon.’ She smiled at him.

Jonah shook his head and smiled back. ‘I love the way impossible odds don’t faze you. But you could’ve just told me all that on the phone. Why did you insist I come out here?’

‘Partly because I wanted to apologize face to face. But there’s also something I owe you. You helped me find Vernet, and now it’s my turn.’ Near the sink was a folder, a handful of sheets of paper inside. She took it and handed it to Jonah.

‘Eldridge,’ he said, glancing at the first sheet. ‘Your guy in London again?’

She nodded. ‘Eldridge isn’t exactly in good condition. He spent the last four years in and out of a psychiatric hospital in North Carolina. Eight months ago he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. It’s run on and on, but he got a place in a hospice in south Baltimore that specializes in psychiatric patients. He’s been there four months now. He doesn’t have long left.’

‘What are the chances he’ll even agree to see us?’ Jonah asked. Annabel smiled and raised her eyebrows; Jonah felt his stomach knot as he saw that look in her eye again and realized what it meant. ‘Christ, Annabel. You don’t waste any time. When?’

‘We’re going there this evening, although I don’t know if Eldridge is aware of it yet. And this time we may as well go as ourselves. With Vernet, I didn’t want to scare him off, in case he had more of a connection to Yarrow that we thought. Here, though, we’ll play it like we’ll do with Andreas. Grieving daughter doing a piece on revival and her father’s legacy. Getting the views of various revivers, and surely those of a
dying
reviver are even more poignant? In the end, though, there’s one big advantage Annabel Harker has over Sarah Townes, and that’s what’s really getting our foot in the door.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘The hospice he’s in makes a specialty of handling psychiatric patients free of charge if they can. Catching the people who fall through the cracks, and the cracks are pretty big. But they struggle to keep that going.’

Jonah looked blank.

‘I’m going to
donate.
We leave in an hour and a half. First, I need to eat. I’m fixing some pasta. You want some?’

‘I guess I could do with eating something.’

‘Good.’ She showed him to the living room and pointed out a door in the far wall. ‘I won’t be long. There’s a rec room through there, try and relax.’

‘Thanks,’ said Jonah as she left, managing not to add:
I know.

He walked through to the rec room and stood by the pool table, taking in the room and feeling a strong sense of
home.
He glanced around, finding with ease the remote for the huge-screen TV on the wall, and flipped on the power for the main audio unit. He ran through a dozen channels before settling on music. He wanted to be active, but mindlessly so, and playing pool seemed a good choice, a little music in the background to take the edge off the oddness he was feeling.

He racked the balls and showed off his ineptitude for ten minutes as his mind began to wander. In the corner of the room was a small bar. On top, there were several framed family photographs.

He picked one of them up. It showed Daniel with his wife.

‘Robin,’ he said. Robin Harker. Jonah winced at the agony of it, the ongoing, relentless agony. He set the picture down quickly, his hand drawing back as if the photo were dangerous. He turned, intending to play more pool, but another memory surfaced.

Annabel standing in the doorway, eyes red with tears.

‘Didn’t you think I’d be upset, Dad?’ she said. She was younger; her accent far less English than the one Jonah knew. ‘I
needed
you there.
Mom
needed you there.’

‘I couldn’t do it,’ said Daniel, his back to her. ‘I couldn’t.’

‘She didn’t understand, Dad.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Daniel turned around. Jonah groped for the context; then it hit him, and it hit hard. Robin was dead. Daniel couldn’t deal with it. He’d refused to attend the revival.

‘It was your last chance to say good-bye, Dad. It was
her
last chance. Don’t you realize how much that hurts? She
missed
you, Dad. Jesus. She missed you.’

Annabel looked at Daniel with such disappointment, it was unbearable; he looked away from her.

‘Christ, Dad. Don’t you even give a
damn
how hard it was for me?’

Daniel said nothing, until his daughter turned and walked off. He started to cry. ‘Annie, I’m sorry. Please.’ She strode to the door and didn’t look back. Daniel went after her. ‘Please, Annie! I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
’

His daughter went out into the night, not shutting the front door, leaving a black gaping hole. His wife was dead. His daughter hated him. Daniel Harker fell to his knees, crippled by it all.

Jonah was suddenly aware of the present. He felt the heat of panic, disorientation. He felt thirsty.

‘Jesus,’ he said. He felt his pocket. He was still carrying the bottle of pills Stephanie Graves had given him. Just in case.

Maybe it was to be expected. Familiar surroundings. Old, bad memories. Someone
else’s
old, bad memories. Remnants of the kind he was more used to.

Annabel came through with two bowls of penne. ‘You OK?’ she said. ‘I thought I heard something.’ Jonah shook his head and reached for his bowl. As she passed it over, her hand brushed his.

Reflex kicked in. He pulled his hand away; the bowl thudded to the ground, intact but contents spilled. She looked at him, puzzled.

Angry with himself, Jonah looked at the mess, then back at Annabel. ‘Sorry. It’s habit. People get chill really badly from me.’

‘You know I don’t get chill.’

‘I know, but contact makes me … jumpy. Hard habit to break. You must have met revivers before. I can’t be the
most
fucked up person you know.’ He smiled but bent down the moment he’d finished speaking, just in case he saw the answer in her eyes and didn’t like it. He started gathering the spillage back into the bowl.

‘I met a few,’ said Annabel. ‘When I was a kid. While Dad was writing the second book, we’d have them over. Some people have a real fear of revivers. Not me. Maybe because I didn’t get chill. Mom and Dad didn’t get it either.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, handing the bowl back to her. ‘I’ll get a cloth, and—’

‘It can wait. Jonah, you have to promise me something.’ She looked at him until he nodded. ‘Don’t ever apologize for things that aren’t your fault. And don’t ever be ashamed of what you are.’

She watched him, waiting. ‘OK,’ he managed.

‘Good. Now, follow me.’ She tapped his bowl. ‘There’s more in the kitchen.’

They ate in silence at the kitchen table, hunger taking over.

Finished, Jonah looked at the clock on the wall. It wouldn’t be long before they left to see Eldridge, and there was something Jonah had to ask her.

‘What did your dad tell you, Annabel? About why I wanted to track Eldridge down?’

‘You shared the remnant problem. Eldridge had the same thing, a revived subject taking control.’

‘That was all he said?’

She nodded.

‘There was something else, before my remnant problems started. Something happened in a revival. It was dismissed as hallucination, written off as overwork. Eldridge had a similar revival experience, just before
his
remnant troubles boiled over. They wrote his off as overwork too. There’s a connection here, and I want to understand it.’

‘What happened?’

‘The revival subject in both cases panicked. They thought something was
coming,
something dark and terrifying, something
predatory.
Eldridge’s subject just stopped being there. Mine, I let go before that could happen. And then … Then it
spoke
to me. Nobody else witnessed it. But it spoke.’ His voice fell to a whisper. ‘Something long dead. Something not human.’

She looked at him, pale. ‘So what Vernet said … It didn’t strike you as just talk.’

‘No. Whatever it was, there was one overriding sense I had of it.
Evil.
I want it to be explained away. I want it to have been all in my mind. But I don’t think it was.’

*   *   *

They arrived at the Walter Hodges Hospice just after 5 p.m. Much of the front of the main building was enclosed in scaffolding; at the base of the scaffold was a placard, a cartoon of a smiling circle with a single giant hand, thumb up, ‘Thanks for your donations!’ printed below. The hospice was adjacent to a larger and more modern medical centre that looked in much better health than its ailing sibling. They parked in the shared lot at the rear of the building complex; Annabel had taken her mother’s red Porsche Boxster, insisting Jonah ride with her rather than take his own car. He’d spent the journey going over the information Annabel’s hacker had unearthed.