Page 69 of All Her Ghosts

And maybe he’s not my mother, only looking me in the eyes to lie, but I don’t trust him any more than I trust that lurking abomination in the distance. That he knows so much about it—what it is, what it will do, where to go instead—smells like a worst-case scenario backup plan.

“Not there,” I snap, fingers tensing. “And not a word on the radio.”

The man obliges. He swerves, nosing the helicopter back up to an altitude above the broken buildings, but not before I get a good look at the field.

Entirely devoid of ghost lights, the grass salt-yellowed and dead.

“Is that where your team is?” I demand. “Is that where they’re waiting?”

A vein flickers in the pilot’s temple. His hand tightens on the controls, muscles cording all the way up the back of his neck, down his arm.

“What team? Youslaughteredmy team.”

My vision narrows, white around the edges. The helicopter motor whines. Frost creeps across the windshield.

Slaughtered.The word pounds in my head, brighter than a migraine.Slaughtered.As if he is not, at this moment, carrying the dead and murdered body of an innocent man.

As if he didn’t help tokill him.

“Oh no,” I snarl sarcastically between my teeth. “The entirely predictable consequences of your fucked-up actions.” My fingernails sink a little deeper in his neck, party trick sending an electric threat down his soul’s spine. “This is a trap, isn’t it? How did you contact them? Where are they waiting?”

“Does it matter?” Bas snarls, tearing his eyes away from Cain’s still body for the first time in more than an hour. “Of course it’s a trap. It was a trap seventeen years ago and it’s a trap now. It was never going to be anything else.”

My un-heart aches at the look in his eyes. It feels too much like the world breaking, like a hand outstretched but never truly reaching.

I don’t want to argue with him. Not when he’s cradling his father’s remnant, stony shoulders braced like a gargoyle’s, absorbing every motion so the little light won’t flicker quite so bad. Still trying to eliminate suffering when the sufferer is already dead. What could I possibly say to that?

I tell the pilot, “Fly along the river.”

He obliges, but begrudgingly. Flying so low we could somersault onto the broken rooftops of abandoned buildings, dirt devils stirring in the wake of our propellers, we inch along the river’s northern bank,following a deserted stretch of a highway. A rusted green sign hangs cockeyed above the road, just barely legible:

i-199 exit 58c

macdougall memorial research center

“MacDougall?” I frown, chewing my lip, an itch flaring in the back of my brain. “Why do I remember that name?”

“Founding member of the DNR,” Bas supplies, grim. “He did some kind of soul weight experiment that started this whole mess.”

Mom’s basement lair. All her metal equipment with its flaking paper labels—property of this godforsaken place.

“That’s it then.” I grip the pilot. “Follow it.”

He shakes his head. “I told you, I can’t get any closer—”

“To the big glowing gate, we heard,” Bas snarls. “Fine, whatever. Bitch baby out, we don’t care. Just set us down here.”

“Bas,” I start, but the way he looks at me, the words die in my mouth.

“I can’t sit here anymore,” he admits, so quietly I almost don’t hear him over the roar of the engines. “I have to get out. Have to gethimout.”

I nod, sharp. I tell the pilot, “Bring us down.”

He obliges faster than he should, landing so quick his skids skip on the chucked-up pavement. We bounce to a stop, rotors slowing outside a four-lane truss bridge. Yellow paint flaking, the steel structure frames the unfinished spires of the ghost gate like a suspect Emerald City at the end of an extremely disreputable yellow brick road. My stomach churns. Clamping fear between my teeth, I jerk my chin at Bas, gesturing for him to get out first. I can’t move, can’t quit threatening this awful man until we’re all out safe, but staring at his father’s body, Bas hesitates.

“We’re already taking the important part with us,” I tell him gently.My voice still rings wrong, too loud after the helicopter roar—a slap when I meant to soothe. “We don’t need the rest.”

Jaw hard, Bas nods. Bundling the soul tight to his chest, he leaps outside. Freed from the flying iron box, Cain manifests in a wash of summer mist, blue light billowing to stand beside his son. Aware, his memories intact, his eyes find mine across the distance.