“You tell me.”

  The skulls pulled together, their jaws flapping as though they whispered among themselves.

  “No.” Heath stood. “The black of the ground is pure. Perfect. Uniform. The gravestones aren’t uniform, because no two people are exactly alike, and each leaves a unique marker behind as they pass through.”

  Ghede Brav puffed on his cigar, grin on his face like a proud father.

  “The sky should be perfect too. But it’s not.”

  “You’re sure about that?” asked Ghede Brav.

  “That’s not a natural color for the sky. Not even an interpretation of one, like the black of the soil. That gray-white’s a natural color for … for one great big cloud.”

  Heath whirled to look at Ghede Brav, five smoky skulls arrayed about the Lwa’s head like a halo.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” said Heath. “That gray-white color isn’t the sky. It’s what bars me from returning to my body.”

  “DING DING DING DING DING,” said the skulls.

  “Told you thinking about the sky would have implications,” said Ghede Brav with a chuckle. “Sounds to me like someone’s earned himself a swig of rum.”

  Ghede Brav pulled his flask out of his coat and tossed it to Heath.

  Heath worried that the rum might be some perfect interpretation of rum and overwhelm him, but refusing a drink from the Lwa didn’t sound like a smart idea. He unscrewed the cap, raised the flask to Ghede Brav in toast, and brought the flask to his lips.

  The immediate, initial taste was sweet cane rum with a hint of molasses. But that lasted only a moment.

  What followed was the worst fiery pain Heath had ever experienced. As though the rum were distilled from molten steel. Or maybe plasma from the sun itself.

  Heath fell to his knees. He couldn’t even scream. Couldn’t swallow, for fear of burning himself away from the inside. But his lips wouldn’t just open and spit it out either.

  “Dangerous, drinking a Ghede’s rum,” said Ghede Brav as though remarking on ordinary weather while Heath began rolling on the ground. “They use it to test our horses, you know. All those peppers and spices. Way too hot for a human being to stand. Like drinking fire itself.”

  No sweat on Heath this time. No sensation of muscles contracting. Only the fiery pain in his mouth that he didn’t know what to…

  Fiery pain…

  Fire…

  Heath rolled onto his back, flinging his eyes open wide. With every fiber of his being, Heath spat the rum at that great cloud. It came out like he was a flamethrower, straight into the sky and burning its way through the gray-white mass. Within the hole it left, Heath saw the most perfect royal blue sky he could imagine.

  The moment that hole opened up, Heath felt himself floating upwards toward that perfect sky. The fire spread through the cloud, burning it away in silence and revealing more and more of that rich, deep blue color by the moment.

  Down below him, Heath could hear Ghede Brav laughing with his skulls.

  “Pretend all you like, little fool,” said Ghede Brav. “You’re one of ours, whether you want to be or not.”

  As Heath passed the burning cloud into the perfect sky everything around him shimmered into darkness.

  14

  Heath awoke with the driest mouth he could ever remember. His tongue felt like a side of beef, smoked and dried and stuffed into his mouth. But not before someone rubbed the whole cow down with hot peppers.

  No burn from the peppers though. More of a rough aftertaste like his tongue had a hangover. Might have explained why his head was pounding too, a steady one-two drumbeat of an ache that could have kept a whole ship of rowers in sync.

  The odorous mixture of pot, old urine, and muddy rain told Heath he was lying on the Witch’s Castle floor even before his eyes alighted on their first graffiti pentagram. That one was orange, had two points up, and the word “Slayer” written above it, which Heath could only assume was some kind of vampire thing.

  Heath sat up, air rasping in and out of his open mouth with a strangled sound.

  “Heath!” yelled Colin, who stood just off the stone floor on the mud of the trail. Colin’s long blond hair was tangled and matted with sweat and effort, and he wore his thin rain jacket unzipped to let at least some air reach his Metallica tee shirt.

  But Colin didn’t run to Heath. He ran to his backpack, which was next to Heath’s in the back corner of the room.

  What had happened to Heath? He couldn’t remember anything but the dark room and the glowing red grimoire. And where was Nariko? Shouldn’t Nariko have been there too? And who were those men on the ground outside? Three of them, in trench coats.

  Heath puzzled through those questions in his head while his mouth tried hard to get at least a little saliva flowing. Not much success there. Heath’s breaths continued to rasp, and he kept making these sharp, broken sounds.

  Then Colin was there, open plastic bottle of water in his hand, offering it to Heath. Heath took the bottle in his shaky right hand and spilled water on his face as he sprinkled his tongue. Just a little at a time, while his tongue sopped up the water and began to recover something like its normal size.

  The rest of his mouth ached with jealousy, and Heath risked letting a sip pass his lips and swirl around inside. He didn’t even have to swallow yet, but by the time he’d drained the bottle he could close his mouth and breathe through his nose. His tongue still felt thick and hung over, but it could move now.

  “I was afraid we’d lost you there,” said Colin.

  “Thankth for the wa-er,” managed Heath.

  Colin handed him another bottle, and Heath drank it slowly.

  “Nariko’s out there somewhere,” said Colin. “We had our hands full keeping the first wave of flunkies at bay. I handled the spirits while Nariko took down the people. Something like ten of the trench coat brigade. Man, that girl has moves.”

  Colin made himself smirk with his choice of words, and that was normal enough to make something in Heath’s gut unclench. If Colin was making sex jokes, even to himself, then the world hadn’t fallen to pieces while Heath was … out of commission.

  “What … about the thp…” – Heath cleared his throat – “spirits?”

  “Oh, you know,” Colin waved a hand dismissively. “The usual assortment. Nothing too bad.”

  Heath raised an eyebrow at Colin’s attempt to deflect attention from his own work, but Heath knew Colin had been fighting for their lives every bit as much as Nariko had. And without the power boost she got from this place.

  “Any major players show up?”

  “Just one,” said Colin, slowly. “Ah, Heath, we all need showers and food. Maybe we better get you home before—”

  “So my uncle has the book.”

  “Kind of yes, and kind of no.” Colin’s brow furrowed down as though he knew what he’d seen, but couldn’t quite make sense of it. “I’m not sure. There was this break in the fighting and your uncle pulled up on a little two-person, off-road cart like a stripped down dune buggy.”

  “Driver,” said Heath, who didn’t like the sinking feeling in his stomach.

  “White guy, maybe twenty. Nondescript, you know? Skin not too pale or too tan, brown hair short but not too short. Wore khakis and a tan polo shirt. Never looked at any of us.”

  “One of his zombies,” said Heath with a shudder.

  “Really? Why not a big guy?”

  “So no one will notice him in a crowd. Or maybe my uncle was punishing him for something. That’d be traditional. But go on. What happened next?”

  “Your uncle looked around, grinning wide. Got out and Nariko started toward him, murder in her eyes. I expected your uncle to laugh or something, but no. He held up his hands like he was surrendering. Didn’t drop that cane though. He said, ‘I didn’t come to fight you. I just came for…’ then he made this ah-ha sound and snapped his fist closed in the air.”

  Heath sighed and hung his head.

  “Yeah, maybe you know what that means off the top of your head, but the rest of us? Nariko and I looked at each other, and when I looked back your uncle was back in the passenger seat, holding up the Black Book. But I didn’t know where he could have gotten it from, because I swear, Heath, we looked everywhere for that thing.”

  Heath shook his head slowly, and said, “But my uncle wasn’t grinning then, was he?”

  “No,” said Colin, like he was impressed. “He was frowning even when he held the book up. And he said, ‘when that boy shows up again, tell him I’ll be waiting for the rest of it.’”

  “Damn it,” said Heath, shifting to sit more comfortably on the stone floor. “Nothing about this goes easy, does it?”

  “What—”

  “I’m bound to the book right now because I claimed it. But the book knows I don’t want to use it, maybe even want to destroy it if I can. It doesn’t like that. So it tried to kill me, and it offered the first real contender the only thing it could.”

  “The bookmark,” said Nariko arriving at the edge of the stone floor, silhouetted against the trees. Her hair was loose and flowing in a breeze Heath couldn’t feel from here he sat, but she was sweaty and muddy from fighting.

  “The bookmark,” confirmed Heath. “It looked like the book to draw a claimant, but I’m betting the actual book,” – Heath looked down to his right where The Black Book of Saint Cyprian sat in the center of the room – “is right where I left it.”

  “Jesus!” said Colin, jumping to his feet. “Where did that come from?”

  “Probably been here the whole time,” said Nariko coming in, her eyes running over and over Heath as though assuring herself that he really was here and he really was alive. “Probably hid until its owner said something.”

  Heath nodded, and tried to give Nariko a smile. But she didn’t return the smile. She looked even more worried, in fact, when she said, “Heath, what happened to your silver flask?”

  Suddenly Heath realized he was holding something in his left hand. He held it up and a shiver worked its way across his skin. Suddenly it all came back to him. The land of the dead. The conversations. The cloud-barrier. And the reason his mouth tasted so foul.

  “This isn’t my silver flask,” he said. “This tin flask belongs to Ghede Brav.”

  The wind whispered through the trees outside, and Heath would have sworn he heard the laughter of those smoky skulls.

  15

  An hour later Heath, Nariko and Colin were freshly showered and back in their bathrobes in Colin’s kitchen. The wrappers from a Meat for Your Beast drive-through lunch spread on the table in front of them like the casualties of war. Colin still slurped noisily from his fresh raspberry milkshake, and the smell of criss-cut fries blended oddly with Colin’s floral potpourri.

  Over food, Heath had told his friends all about the place between and what happened there. And now, for the first time in hours, Heath felt both full and relaxed. And after the rain and cold, the warm kitchen felt downright cozy. He felt that comfy-sleepy feeling creeping across him, as though he could just close his eyes and fall asleep there at the table.

  The image of the Black Book flashed in his head, glowing red and malevolent.

  So much for sleep.

  “Did you kill any of the trench coat brigade?” said Heath to Nariko. “Or were they just unconscious?”

  Nariko shrugged. She’d nodded off in Colin’s car on the way here, and had barely managed to make it through lunch … dinner … whatever that meal was. The sky was dark outside, but clear, which was as much as Heath could tell about the time. Didn’t help that he could see Nariko fighting a yawn.

  Colin didn’t fight it. He yawned wide and loud, dragging Nariko into the yawn and, a moment later, Heath.

  “Can we talk about killing later?” asked Colin, his voice just this side of a whine. “I think we could all do with an hour or two of sleep before we push this thing any harder.”

  “Seconded,” said Nariko, stretching her arms high in that silk Welsh flag bathrobe and tilting her head far to one side. Heath remembered that look from lazy Sunday mornings, and a sense memory urged him to slide his arms around her and snuggle in.

  Heath shook his head to clear it. This was not the time to…

  That memory was still there, tingling along his arms and making the front of his body feel incomplete without Nariko held against him.

  Heath shook his head again. Colin asked something, but Heath held up a forestalling hand. What was…

  The book?

  Laughter in Heath’s head now. Not the amused laughter of Ghede Brav and his skulls, but malevolent laughter.

  “Where’s the book?” said Heath.

  “On the…” started Colin, but his words trailed off as he turned. “It was right there on the counter.”

  Heath reached into the pocket of his Batman robe and pulled out the grimoire.

  “You guys take a nap,” said Heath. “Apparently I need to spend some time with this thing.”

  “Gee,” said Nariko sitting forward. “I think I just got my second wind. You aren’t dealing with this on your own. I made you a promise, remember.”

  Her voice sounded sure, but Heath could see the exhaustion in her eyes. She’d been pushing as hard as Heath had.

  “I’m not going to make a deal with the thing,” Heath said. “Take a nap. Both of you. That way—”

  “Call your landlord,” said Nariko. “You were supposed to give him the book. So give him the damn book and let him deal with your uncle.”

  “You did sign that contract,” said Colin, who made no effort to sound less ready to sleep than he must have felt.

  “No,” said Heath. “We have some time, and if the book happens to get destroyed—”

  “We fought off flunkies from three major players for this thing,” said Nariko. “No way word hasn’t spread yet that you have it in your hands. If you don’t tell your landlord, someone else will.”

  Heath imagined getting home to find out his garden dug up and everything he owned burning in a bonfire that Suit’s lawyers would somehow make legal.

  “Fine. But you guys get some sleep.”

  Nariko started to say something, but Colin put a hand on her wrist.

  “Even Heath can’t leave this house or bring anyone into it without waking me up. And I’m pretty sure we’ll both feel it if the book does something.”

  Nariko finally nodded, and she and Colin retreated to find the sleep that Heath desperately wished he could claim himself. But he could feel the book in his head now. Separate its voice from his own.

  It was the laughter, wasn’t it? I tipped too much of myself.

  Please, Heath thought. You think you’re the first spirit to ever think at me from the inside? Now shut up or I’ll shut you up.

  To Heath’s surprise, the Black Book had nothing to say to that, so he pulled his phone out of his other bathrobe pocket and dialed his landlord.

  Took six rings before anyone answered. “Mr. Cyr. About time. I take it you have my book?”

  “I have a book, but—”

  “Mr. Cyr, don’t try to negotiate with me. We have a signed contract.”

  “Yes, but the bookmark you gave me has been stolen. Don’t you want me to get it back?” said Heath, his sluggish, overtired brain trying to think fast. Why had he called now?

  In the back of his mind, Heath could hear the grimoire’s laugh.

  “The bookmark was stolen?” Silence on the line, and over the buzz of their moderate connection, Heath could hear voices in the background. At least one man and one woman. “Mr. Cyr, did you claim the book?”

  “I had to. To get it in the first place. Some major movers are—”

  “I see,” said Suit with a sigh. “Mr. Cyr, I’m afraid you have erred, and the fault is partially mine for not explaining your task with sufficient specificity. I’ve spoken to so many who want the Black Book that I’d forgotten you would not know some of the basic information.”

  “There’s nothing in my contract about—”

  “I know. And don’t worry. I’m not voiding my offer. But if you wish to claim the reward, you must give me the opportunity to take the book from you before someone else does.”

  “Take the book?” Any thoughts or hopes of sleep were gone now, chased away by a fear that tightened Heath’s veins and pumped his heart faster. “You don’t mean by force.”

  “Don’t move from where you are, Mr. Cyr. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  The connection cut. Heath stared at the phone, wondering how Suit could trace a cell… GPS signal. Had to be. Suit had money, and that bought people who could track that sort of thing. And Heath knew that Suit had already sent men with guns to take the Black Book by physical force once before.

  Heath could definitely hear the grimoire laughing now.

  “Guys,” called Heath aloud. “I hate to say it, but you need to get up. We’ve got company coming.”

  “But he can’t just kill you,” said Colin for the third time.

  The three of them stood just inside Colin’s front door again, with the blinds still drawn. The living room with its sea-foam carpeting and pale blue furniture looked more ready for a shoot from some style magazine than ready to get shot up by gangsters.

  But “gangster” was now the word that came to mind when Heath though about Suit. The kind with the money to buy men who would kill for him.

  “I still say he’s breaking the contract,” said Nariko.

  “He’s not,” said Heath. “Nothing in the contract guarantees that I’ll survive giving him the book, and I did agree to give it to him. Heck, he’ll even have technically fulfilled the terms because I’ll have lived in my apartment for the rest of my life.”

  Nariko sighed, and Heath heard the unspoken words. Dumb in all the wrong ways.

  She’s right you know.

  Quiet, you, thought Heath. Aloud he said, “I’m still hoping I’ll get a chance to reason with him. There has to be some way short of violence that I can pass the book to him.”