Wide Open (30 page)

When she finally spoke, Hallie’s voice sounded odd and echoey.

“How does his magic work?” she asked. “Do you know?”

“What?”

“When we left, he didn’t have any magic. He couldn’t make those fireballs. Do you know—have you dreamed about that? Does using the magic drain him for a while? How long before he follows us?”

“Uhm.” He licked his lips. “Fifteen—I don’t know—twenty minutes, maybe.”

“How sure are you?” Hallie asked. She knew she sounded like she didn’t care that he was injured, like she didn’t care that they were in trouble like you wouldn’t believe, like she wasn’t worried. Eddie Serrano would have known—maybe her father, too—when she sounded like that, like everyday business as usual, when she didn’t say,
Are you all right?
or
I’ll take care of things,
or
Don’t worry, it’ll be fine
—that was when she was crazy with worry, so much worry, she couldn’t talk about it, because if she talked about it, she couldn’t go on. “How sure?” she asked again.

“Not very,” he said. “Look, I don’t think … I wasn’t supposed to be here.” He looked around the cab of the truck, half-amazed, like maybe he really wasn’t there at all, like maybe he was in a dream and he’d lost track.

“You’re an ass,” Hallie said. “You thought you would die back there? You
dreamed
it? And you didn’t think to mention it to me? Or stay the hell out of the way? Or, you know, not die?”

Boyd huffed a short laugh. “Well, I didn’t,” he pointed out. He shifted in the seat and pushed the heel of his hand down hard on the folded T-shirts, which made him grunt and slide sideways an inch or two before he caught himself and leaned tiredly against the window.

“You need help,” she said.

He nodded. He pulled out his radio, but the antenna and the front panel had gotten smashed all to hell. He dug in his pocket for his cell phone and retrieved it with a grimace. “We can call it in,” he said. “You can leave me here. It—I would be all right.”

“I’m not going to leave you here,” Hallie said.

Dell was up against the dashboard and the windshield, and for the first time, Hallie wanted to reach out and take her hand, to say,
We’re in this together, right?

Right.

She just needed a plan.

“When Lorie died,” she said. She leaned across the seat and slowly moved Boyd’s hands so she could check his gunshot wound. “It was the fire giant/thing/whatever again.”

“The one no one sees?”

“No one but me,” she agreed. The bleeding, she was pleased to see, had slowed though the wound was still seeping blood sluggishly. Boyd looked even paler than he had a few moments ago, and when she put her hand on his arm it was shaking. She turned sideways so she could see him and still take in a good 360 degrees around the truck. So she could be ready. “It came and we tried to run. And, I don’t know, stupid, the only choice, I’m not sure. But it was
there
. The church was already burning.

“It reached down.” Hallie still remembered the descent of that hand, just above her head. “It reached down for me. Then it stopped. That’s when it killed Lorie.”

“Because it couldn’t kill you?” Boyd struggled to sit up straighter. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know,” Hallie admitted. “Is it? How does his magic work? What do you know?”

Boyd shook his head. “Blood. Sacrifice. Power from the blood and from forcing the different cultural magics together. Like a … like a forced melding. But beyond that, I don’t know.”

“Are ghosts magic?” she said.

Boyd frowned. “What?”

“Yeah, sorry, never mind.” This was a stupid conversation. Or a conversation she shouldn’t be inflicting on him. Which made it stupid. She opened the pickup door and got out, retrieving her shotgun from under her feet and the box of shells from behind the seat. She reloaded the shotgun. It was a pump-action Remington and held four shells plus one in the chamber if she wanted. There were still two shells left, but Hallie’d learned the hard way that it paid to be prepared for the worst.

The ghosts had done something to Martin when he’d touched them. She was pretty sure, though trying to remember exactly what was tougher. She remembered his hand coming up, the blue white ball of flame. She remembered the needle-sharp pain in her head, down her spine. Dell floating beside her. It was unfair that she wasn’t here for real, that Hallie couldn’t talk to her. She was never going to be able to ask Dell why she’d gotten involved with Martin in the first place, what she’d known and when, never going to sit down across the table from her and share experiences neither of them would ever tell anyone else.

Hallie shook her head sharply, finished reloading the shotgun, and tossed the box of shells back behind the seat.

She climbed back into the cab, and when she shut the door, Boyd said, “Supernatural.”

“What?”

“Ghosts,” he said. “Ghosts are supernatural.”

Hallie looked at him. He had his back angled against the door and his bad leg propped half across the seat. He was a mess, his face pale as porcelain, his pants shredded, at least the one leg, and his shirt crumpled, dirt ground deep into the creases. And there was something about his eyes, like he wasn’t quite seeing her, even when he was looking directly at her. “Are you delusional?” she said.

He laughed.

Okay, yeah, not the smartest thing she’d ever said. And he’d been shot, so if he was delusional, it wasn’t a surprise. She humored him—sort of. “Supernatural is magic, right?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t … think so.”

“Magic is supernatural?”

He thought about that, then nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, okay.”

She thought about that herself, then nodded sharply and started the truck again. “Ghosts and magic,” she said as she backed the truck around. “Okay.”

When they were back on the county road, Hallie said, “Can I use your phone?”

Boyd looked at the phone on the seat like he’d forgotten he had it. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure. What happened to yours?”

“I lost it,” Hallie said, picking up Boyd’s phone, and tried to figure out the buttons without actually taking her eyes off the road.

A minute later, “Brett?”

“Jesus, Hallie! Where are you?” Brett sounded both angry and scared and not remotely calm.

“Where are
you
?”

“Where am I? Where do you think I am? I’m at the church. We’re all—”

“Is Ole there?”

“Yeah.
Everyone,
Hallie.”

“Is the ambulance there?”

“No.” Boyd’s voice was unexpectedly strong, though when Hallie looked at him, he was still slumped against the door.

“Yes,” Hallie said. “I can drop you off there. You can get—”

“Don’t go after him alone.”

“I think—” Hallie kept picturing that last moment over and over—Martin and the ghosts and her. “Yeah, I think I can. Plus,” she couldn’t help adding, “you’re not in any shape to help me.”

“Hallie?” Brett’s voice sounded tinny and far away.

“Yeah,” Hallie said to her, “listen, I’m—”

“No.
Listen
.” Boyd’s voice might be weaker, but there was a thread of determination running through it that demanded Hallie’s attention. “I—I’m not sure I can explain this,” he said.

“Hold on,” Hallie told Brett. She slowed to turn west onto another old gravel road.

Boyd wiped the back of his hand across his face and left a streak of blood along his jaw. Hallie bit her lip. “Something’s—,” Boyd began. “Something’s happening to me. Blood loss. Shock. I don’t know. But I can see—I keep seeing.” He stopped, frustrated. “It’s like when I’m asleep, but I’m not. Right now, I’m not asleep.” He stopped again, like he’d meant to explain everything to her in a logical, coherent way, only the words came out all wrong.

“What, like you’re having visions right now?” Hallie asked him. “What are you seeing? How?”

“I think … I think it’s important for me to be there.”

“Where?” Hallie demanded, and part of it was a test. Because he couldn’t possibly know what she had in mind.

“The Seven Mile,” he said. “I need to be with you when you lure Martin to Seven Mile Creek.”

Or maybe he could. Shit.

“Brett,” Hallie said into the phone. “There’s been a change of plans.”

34

Hallie could see the strobe of crossbar lights at St. Mary’s church from a mile away despite the persistent gloom. The fire appeared to be mostly out, but there were cars lining the road for at least a quarter mile, a good half dozen sets of flashing lights in the church parking lot itself; sheriff’s cars, an ambulance, and, Hallie guessed by now, a state trooper or two.

Hallie pulled up just short of the long line of cars and pickup trucks, backed into a grassed-over lane. She put the truck in neutral but kept the engine idling. She checked Boyd’s wound. He said something to her that she couldn’t understand and so ignored.

“Boyd,” she said.

“No,” he said, sharp and hard in a way she hadn’t heard before. “This is my decision, not yours.”

“I could make you—,” she began, then couldn’t go on with it, because he was supposed to be dead, had
expected
to die, and he hadn’t. It was all, suddenly, a huge pile of
shouldn’t happen
and
didn’t exist
and
couldn’t be
—ghosts and sorcery and prophetic dreams and fire. And Lorie, dead up there when she shouldn’t be, didn’t deserve to be.

Her hip ached from hitting the ground earlier. She wiped a hand across her face. “You know what?” she said. “Fine. You do what you want.”
But you can’t make me care
. Like telling herself that would make it true. She didn’t look at him as she scrounged greasy old rags from under the seat and wiped up some of the blood on the seat beside him.

“Hallie,” Boyd said.

“Shut up.”

“Damnit, Hallie. I robbed an ambulance for you!” Brett’s voice directly outside Hallie’s window startled her so bad, she slammed her left elbow hard against the doorframe. Then, before Brett could see Boyd, could register the bullet wound and the blood on the seat, Hallie hopped out of the pickup truck and shut the door behind her.

“Tell me what’s going on, Hallie,” Brett said. She pulled pressure bandages, gauze, and a couple of bottles whose contents Hallie couldn’t identify from underneath her coat.

“Did you bring water?” Hallie asked.

“Hallie—”

“Do you remember much from that first aid course we took in high school?”

“I’m six hours away from my EMT certification,” Brett said after a pause.

Hallie blinked. “You are?”

“You’ve been gone, Hallie. Things happen.”

A sharp flash of lightning, ten miles or so to the east, lit bright against the clouds.

Shit
.

“Do you trust me?” Hallie asked.

Brett looked at her. A pickup truck and a car following drove slowly up the road. Another bright flash of lightning, closer, and Brett’s face looked like flint or steel, hard planes and edges. The pickup truck went on up the road, but the car slowed. The passenger window rolled down.

“Everything all right?” It was Jake Javinovich.

“Yeah,” Hallie said. “We’re all good.” By which, she meant no.

“What’s going on up there?” Jake asked, leaning forward, his arm laid along the back of the seat.

“Fire, I guess,” Hallie said. “Figured we’d stay out of it.”

“Yeah.” Jake’s head bobbed up and down. “Okay, yeah.” He rolled up his window and drove on.

Brett let out a deep breath, like she’d been holding it. “All right, Hallie,” she said. “But this had better be good.”

*   *   *

“Jesus Christ!” Brett said a minute later, when they were around on the passenger side of the truck and she got a look at Boyd’s leg. The swearing was an indicator, because Brett didn’t swear that often, not like Hallie. “I can’t fix this!” she said.

“Just…” Boyd spoke before Hallie could, like he needed to retain something, some small bit of control. “The bleeding’s stopped. Mostly. You can wrap it, right?”

“Hallie,” Brett said, like reason was still on the table. “We’ve got to get him up.…” She gestured with her chin toward St. Mary’s and the ambulance.

“Yeah. That’s what I said.” Hallie helped Boyd slide over to the middle of the pickup’s bench seat. “I’m sorry,” she said to Brett. “We don’t have time.” Brett looked at her for a long, uncomfortable moment; then she sighed and climbed into the cab.

Lightning flashed again, nearly overhead, the sharp crack of thunder immediate.

Hallie drove them back out onto the county road for a mile and a half, then turned west along a well-traveled gravel road. When she came back out onto pavement again, about five miles altogether from the church, she pulled into a small layby and got out of the truck. She left the driver’s door open.

She held Boyd’s gaze as she took out his phone again and called Martin.

“Hallie,” Martin said, smooth as silk, like she hadn’t shot him twice in the chest an hour ago.

“Let’s finish this,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Martin said. “You could join me. We could do this together.”

Hallie gripped the phone so tight, she was surprised it didn’t break. Martin didn’t wait for her to respond, but kept right on talking about saving the world, about how it would be worth the cost, about the sacrifices that had to be made.

You
sacrifice, you son of a bitch,
Hallie thought, boggled that he was that self-centered, that he actually couldn’t understand why anyone couldn’t be talked around to his way of seeing things.

“Martin,” she broke in as he was in the middle of a long convoluted sentence about drought conditions in southern Florida. “I wouldn’t kill for power.”

“You shot me,” Martin pointed out. “Twice.”

“You threw a fireball at me.”

“I don’t have to talk to you, Hallie,” Martin said.

“Because—what? You can kill me anytime you want? We both know that’s not true.”

A short silence on the other end of the line. “What do you want?” This time his voice was sharp edged and dark.