his present.
Electronic music bled into his awareness, reminding him that his body was actually in Ronan’s car. In this other place, it was easy to tell that the music was the sound of Ronan’s soul. Hungry and prayerful, it whispered of dark places, old places, fire and sex.
Adam was grounded by the pulsing backbeat and the memory of Ronan’s closeness. The Devil. No, a demon. The knowledge was not there, and then it was.
North, he said.
A ring of glowing white surrounded everything. It was so bright that it seared his vision if he looked directly at it; he had to keep his gaze focused ahead. A very faraway part of him, a part that thudded with electric beat, remembered suddenly that it was the light of the phone charger. That was the part of his brain that was still present enough to whisper directions to Ronan.
Turn right.
Cabeswater muttered into his deaf ear. It whispered of taking apart, of disowning, of violence, of nothingness. A backwards step of self-doubt, a lying promise that you knew would hurt you later, a knowledge that you were going to get hurt and you probably deserved it. Demon, demon, demon.
Go go go
Somewhere, a dark car raced along a night road. A hand gripped the wheel, leather bands looped over the wrist bone. The Greywaren. Ronan. In this dreamplace, all times were the same time, and so Adam had a strange, lucid beat of reliving the moment Ronan had offered his hand to help Adam up from the asphalt. Stripped of context, the physical sensations exploded: the surprising shock of heat from that skin-to-skin grip; the soft hiss of the bracelets against Adam’s wrist; the sudden bite of possibility —
Everything in his mind was ringed by the searing white light.
The deeper Adam moved through the music and the white-ringed dark, the closer he got to some sort of hidden truth about Ronan. It was hidden in things Adam already knew, half-glimpsed behind a forest made of thoughts. For a bare moment, Adam thought he nearly understood something about Ronan, and about Cabeswater – about Ronan-and-Cabeswater – but it slid away. He darted after it, deeper into whatever stuff Cabeswater’s thoughts were made of. Here, Cabeswater hurled images at him: a vine strangling a tree, a cancerous growth, a creeping rot.
Adam realized all at once that the demon was inside.
He could feel the demon watching him.
Parrish.
He was seen.
PARRISH.
Something brushed his hand.
He blinked. Everything was that glowing circle, and then he blinked again, and it resolved into the bright iris of the phone charger plugged into the cigarette lighter.
The car was not moving, though it had only recently stopped. Dust still swirled by its headlights. Ronan was absolutely silent and still, one hand resting on the gearshift, made into a fist. The music had been turned off.
When Adam looked over, Ronan continued looking out the windshield, clenching his jaw.
The dust cleared and Adam finally saw where he had brought them.
He sighed.
Because the helter-skelter drive through the cold night and Adam’s subconscious had brought them not to some disaster in Cabeswater, not to some schism in rocks along the ley line, not to whatever threat Adam had seen in the glaring headlights of his car. Instead, Adam – freed from reason and turned loose in his own mind, set upon the task of finding a demon – had directed them back to the trailer park where his parents still lived.
Neither of them spoke. The lights were on in the trailer, but there were no silhouettes in the windows. Ronan hadn’t shut off the headlights, so they shone directly on the front of the trailer.
“Why are we here?” he asked.
“Wrong devil,” Adam replied quietly.
It had not been that long since the court case against his father. He knew that Ronan remained righteously furious over the outcome: Robert Parrish, a first-time offender in the eyes of the court, had walked away with a fine and probation. What Ronan didn’t realize was that the victory hadn’t been in the punishment. Adam didn’t need his father to go to jail. He had merely needed someone outside the situation to look at it and confirm that yes, a crime had been committed. Adam had not invented it, spurred it, deserved it. It said so on the court paperwork. Robert Parrish, guilty. Adam Parrish, free.
Well, almost. He was still here looking at the trailer, his pulse thudding lowly in his stomach.
“Why,” Ronan repeated, “are we here?”
Adam shook his head, his eyes still on the trailer.