Fragility Unearthed Read online

  “And we need to do that right now?”

  He nodded fast. “Believe it or not, the last thing I wanted to do was knock on your door tonight.”

  “Give me a minute.” If Levi and I were both leaving, someone had to be on call for the kids. I padded to the side of the bed and kissed Malcolm’s cheek. He smiled but didn’t wake. “Malcolm, I need you to wake up. Please.”

  He breathed in through his nose, and his eyes fluttered open. “What’s up?”

  “I have to go somewhere with Levi. Can you keep an ear out for the kids? I’ll probably be back before they wake. Just in case.”

  Malcolm grabbed my arm. “You have to go where with Levi?”

  “He needs to show me something. He’s been trying to get it out since his possession. He can show me. Like it’s opened up. I have to go. Now.”

  He waved his hand in the air. “In the middle of the fucking night?”

  I kissed his nose. “Don’t be jealous. I married you. He gets it. He accepts it. Okay? This is about something important. Otherwise I wouldn’t go.”

  Malcolm sat all the way up. “Well then, fuck it. Chase is probably sitting up. We’ll ask him. I’m coming.”

  “You don’t have to …”

  He narrowed his eyes, and I knew the argument was futile. Malcolm was coming with us. “Listen.” I caught his attention. “You’ve spent no time with Levi since you got back. He’s not as he was. When he was first revived, he couldn’t talk at all. He could say my name and boom. That was pretty much it. My mom cleared him. It was the last thing she did. Still, some things are blocked. That much time with Top Hat and I can’t blame him. He’s not as you remember him. This may not go smoothly. We’ll see. Keep your temper and your patience or stay here.”

  He nodded once. “I’m not letting you out there unprotected. You’re four months pregnant. You should be resting and nesting or whatever women do. We’re living in Victoria’s house, and you’re terrified. I’m coming. For both of you.”

  “Okay.”

  Chase had been awake still, and he was happy to stay that way for the kids, presuming we didn’t get back before they woke up. I didn’t know where we were going at two in the morning, but if Levi said it had to be now, then it had to be now.

  We walked together, all three of us, to the car. I got behind the wheel, Levi in the passenger seat and Malcolm in the back. No one said very much. I followed Levi’s directions, which didn’t amount to more than “left,” “right,” and “over there, turn.” Eventually we pulled up to a high school I’d never seen before on the other side of town. I quickly realized why I’d never seen it—it was no longer active. Barbed wire surrounded the outside, and wooden planks covered the windows.

  “Empty building where no one is looking,” Malcolm muttered. “What’s inside?”

  Levi grimaced and rubbed his eyes. “Come. Kendall.”

  It couldn’t be good that he’d reverted to one word answers. I wasn’t going to stress him out. Instead, I touched my ex’s arm. “Okay. We’ll go look.”

  One streetlight illuminated the building, and in its glare I could see shadows moving. Medium-sized ones, not babies, but probably not the ones that could possess someone either. Malcolm waved his hand, pointing toward the light and blowing the shadows all over the place. They wouldn’t be in our way.

  I took Malcolm’s hand when we got out of the car. He squeezed my fingers. “They’ll report that we’re here. I don’t want them watching.”

  Levi froze next to me. “I hate the shadows.”

  “He hasn’t had to really see them since the possession.”

  My ex looked down at the ground. “I’m not a coward.”

  “Hey.” Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t think I could have survived it. Demons are hard enough. I’ve had them in me. The whole thing feels like hot pain. Your son endured it. But, honestly? Top Hat pounding on me. You’re stronger than me. I’d never have come back.”

  Levi’s eyes glowed with intensity in the moonlight. I’d never seen him look so ethereal before, almost like he was one of us, like the universe had given him the same strange powers my friends had. Only, they hadn’t. My ex had none of the power to keep him safe.

  “I did something.”

  That’s what he’d been telling us. Maybe we’d finally know what, exactly, Levi had done. He walked toward the abandoned high school with his head down. I was incredibly proud of him. Small acts of bravery went so unnoticed. A non-talented person, heading into to danger he knew he couldn’t fight, to show us something he couldn’t explain because he was so damaged.

  I’d seen that set of the shoulders before. I’d seen it on Grayson; I’d seen it on Dexter. I’d seen it on Molly. They were young. They were new. Things could hurt them, and yet they endured. The kids thought they had to be like me—because we could see the paranormal. They didn’t know—and maybe I hadn’t realized it until just then, either—all the ways they were so much like Levi.

  I wasn’t brave in the same way. I could defend myself. Levi was so much stronger than I was.

  Malcolm touched my lower back, and we followed.

  We got through the barbed wire with little trouble. Someone else had clearly made the effort before us. We simply walked through the already made holes. The boarded up door was a different story. I wished Levi could have articulated more. Henry broke into things really well. We would have brought him too.

  Malcolm raised his hand and threw the boards off the door with a jolt of power. I looked up at him and shook my head. “Sometimes I forget you can do that.”

  “Good thing I don’t forget it.”

  The door was still locked, but as Malcolm threw himself against it several times, it opened. With the door open, Levi walked us inside.

  “You know, somehow the shadow possessed people must get in here. And they can’t do what Malcolm just did.” I don’t know why I was filling the silence.

  Levi pointed to the back of the high school. “They get in that way. They have a key. I was—or Top Hat was—in possession of it for a while. But if we go in that way, we’re going to get caught on their video cameras. I want us to have a few minutes undetected.”

  “You seem to have regained the ability to speak.” Malcolm never said anything without a purpose. I thought at first he questioned Levi’s inability from earlier, but it seemed he was merely curious. I had to stop assuming they were going to snipe at each other every chance they got. I wasn’t the main objective of the moment. There were bigger things at play.

  We walked in silence in the empty building. There was nothing left to indicate it had ever been a place where kids came to learn. It was just empty hallways.

  “I have a question. One no one has answered for me yet.” Levi spoke low, his head still down. “Why Austin? Why are they so fixated here? You’re all here. Why don’t they move to say, Vermont? Why stay here?”

  “The lines.” Malcolm and I answered together. He grinned at me. There were some topics on which we were equally versed.

  I finished. “It’s like earthquakes. Right? Tectonic plates. This is where they come through. Could have been anywhere, but it’s here.”

  “And we didn’t accidently end up here, then?”

  Malcolm fielded that one. “There are no accidents when it comes to us. Even before, even when we thought we were normal.”

  Levi shook his head. “I am normal. Or at least I will be again.”

  I hoped he was right.

  We finally reached the auditorium, or at least what had once been an auditorium. Now it was a big room with a giant hole in the floor.

  Levi gripped at his throat and pointed at it.

  “Anytime something comes that you can’t speak about, it just goes away.” Malcolm patted Levi’s back. “Sorry, brother.”

  Whatever Levi thought about the endearment he either couldn’t or didn’t comment. Instead, he stayed where he was while Malcolm and I walked toward the hole. Malcolm linked our hands while we approached. At n
ight, there was little light in the room, and what was lit up did show small shadows dancing. They wanted out.

  “Any idea whatsoever what this is?” Malcolm asked me.

  We stared down together. At first glance, it simply seemed like what I’d initially thought about it. A hole. In the floor of the high school auditorium. Of course, there was also an altar. And on the altar, attached directly into the stone, a white piece of plastic. The strange plastic device looked like it was shaped like a rainbow or an upside down “u,” like the letter “n.” A half “o.”

  Malcolm squatted. “What the hell is that?”

  I finally understood. Or at least I thought I did. The shadows had needed Levi to make a design for a semi-conductor. They needed their energy to work with the energy here. That was what my ex-husband did for a living. The u-shaped thing on the altar, it was a big, giant semi-conductor.

  They needed to come through. They had needed his help. The small bursts of shadows arriving were clearly not getting the job done fast enough for them.

  “I did something,” Levi cried out. I could hear the frustration in his voice, and it pained me.

  I turned to look at him. “You made that? Or designed it? So they could make it? The plastic thing?”

  His response was to point at it wildly several times from where he stood across the room.

  I looked down. “Is this a semi-conductor?”

  Levi’s job was to make things that didn’t normally react together, react. That was as much as I could possibly understand it. Science had not been my best class in school.

  I’d listened through the course of marriage, but I’d never really understood. “They needed you to make them a semi-conductor so they can rise. Is that it? You want us to see how they’re going to do it? Did you make more than one? If I jump down there and somehow yank it out, will that stop them?” Plug the hole?

  “You aren’t jumping anywhere.” Malcolm rolled his eyes. “If it takes any jumping, I’ll do it.”

  Levi covered his ears and rocked. “They wanted me to make them one. The pain. It hurts. Like he’s still in there, screaming.”

  I crossed to him fast and grabbed his hand. “Levi, he’s not there. It’s residual shadows, but it’s not Top Hat. I promise you. I get that it hurts. I can’t stop that. I wish I could.”

  Malcolm came to my side. “Maybe with Chase back, he could help.”

  “I didn’t do what they wanted. It isn’t going to open the altar. It will blow, but it won’t open.”

  Having delivered his statement, Levi collapsed. I’d never been so glad that Malcolm forced himself along before. He caught Levi and hauled him over his shoulder.

  “Is he okay? Is he having some kind of brain bleed?”

  “I don’t know, but we aren’t going to find out here.”

  He was right.

  Although the ten minutes it took for Levi to wake up in the back of my car were the longest of my life, he woke unscathed. His head pounded, and he was grumpy as all hell, but his mind was intact. He sat back in the seat and groaned.

  I tried to breathe. Malcolm was driving as I fretted in the backseat. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve been better. I got it out. Right? I told you.”

  I patted his arm. “You did.”

  “Great. Kendall, they won’t be able to get through that altar. It’ll blow. It’s going to look like, I don’t know, some kind of bomb. A gas explosion. I have no idea what they’ll say. It won’t work. The Master won’t be happy, so none of them will. Top Hat—I still can’t say his name, damn it—is terrified of him. They won’t be stopped though. This will blow, but they’ll know what went wrong. They’ll fix it.”

  I met Malcolm’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He finally spoke. “What kind of conditions do they need to do this? Why the high school?”

  Levi closed his eyes. “It’s empty. They need time to dig in a big empty space. It took them five months on this one. They’ll have to pause. Reassess. Six months from now they’ll have it down.”

  “You bought us time,” Malcolm finished. “Thank you, Levi. We know what to look for now. Huge help.”

  My ex snorted. “Have a great honeymoon.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I woke the next morning with Molly laying across me. Malcolm faced us, on his side, his eyes closed in sleep. No one needed me immediately, so I allowed myself the second to notice the new dynamic in my life. I could have both my children and Malcolm in the bed with me at the same time. I didn’t have to send him on before they all woke up.

  Stroking her dark hair had to be one of my favorite things in the world. When had she gotten in the bed with us? I’d slept through the whole thing. My husband’s eyes flew open, and he smiled at me before he pointed at Molly.

  “She okay?” he whispered.

  I nodded. “Sometimes she does this. She’s the baby. I let her.” Although I guessed she wouldn’t be for much longer. Her little brother or sister would be with us soon. I hadn’t given a single thought to how she’d manage that. She’d been the baby for seven years.

  “Mommy.” She raised her head. “There are ghosts all around us. They can’t get in. But they want to. They’re screaming all the time. They’re banging on the walls to come. They want us to move them on. Why aren’t we?”

  Malcolm scrunched up his forehead. “Shit. Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “We have to be safe. That’s all there is to it, baby. There may come a time when we can move on all of those ghosts. If we’re safe. I have to make sure the safety comes first.”

  She groaned. “I hear them at night. It’s hard to sleep. Usually, I go to Daddy. Last night he said to come to you.”

  Malcolm rolled his eyes. “I see Levi is feeling better.”

  “Sending Molly in on the night of our wedding? Yes, he’s doing just fine. Come on baby. You want waffles?”

  She nodded and jumped from the bed in the way that only children could, the fog of sleep leaving her a lot of faster than it would me. I sat up and rubbed my belly. “This is going to get harder and harder.”

  “I’d like waffles.” Malcolm covered his head with the blanket. “Marrying you means seeing the dawn, huh? And not because I’m just getting home.”

  I elbowed him. “You can’t take it back. You married me.”

  “Waffles. Coffee. I’ll get up.” He spoke from under the covers.

  I kissed him through the quilt. “Think of it this way, in five months you’ll never sleep at all. Maybe an hour here or there.”

  He flipped the quilt off himself. “Me? All by myself? Where will you be the whole time?”

  “Right there by you. We’ll be zombies together.”

  Malcolm’s eyes were huge. I think I had scared the big, bad Warrior. He pointed a finger at me. “Don’t laugh. Don’t you laugh at me, Kendall.”

  I didn’t. At least not while he was in earshot.

  ***

  After breakfast, I had to tell my kids their grandfather wouldn’t be coming back. I’d hardly dealt with it myself, but pretending for my kids was something I was really, really good at. All the years that I’d rejected my parents, I wished I could take back. I wished I could go back and tell my younger self that time moved fast and it was over in a blink of an eye. If I’d remembered my own death, I might have understood this concept when I was still young, and I could have kept my parents in my life.

  But time didn’t move backwards, not for me at least. I’d never get to say that to my younger self.

  I’d only get to live with the ache of not having them, of knowing they were no longer here.

  “Hey, Kendall.” Annika caught my attention. We all stared at a white board we’d put together with the information Michael had given me.

  I turned to look at her. “What’s up?”

  “I was thinking. And please forgive me if I’m overstepping my bounds here.”

  Chase, who sat on Victoria’s counter, kicked her lightly in the side. “You’re not. Face it, you’re one of
us now. Share your thoughts.”

  She grinned at him like he was the only person in the universe. “I was thinking maybe we could use the facts that he’s in your father’s body and he has little understanding of humans, against him.”

  Logan shook his head. “Are we sure he doesn’t know a lot about humans?”

  “I just think …” Annika took a deep breath. “I think he’s been focused on things other than whether or not your father needs to have a shot every month to stay alive.”

  I blinked, trying to make sense of what she said. “He didn’t. As far as I know.”

  “The point is”—Victoria set down her coffee—“he doesn’t know that. Your father is gone now. He can’t ask him.”

  “We call from a phone number he doesn’t have pretending to be a medical person. He needs a shot. If this Master person doesn’t want to lose the body—and it must be a pain to find good ones—then maybe he’ll show up to get the shot. You guys can’t beat him yet. But you could at least know where he was. Follow him.”

  I thought it was a brilliant idea. “Annika please, any time you want to share an idea, share it.” I turned to Ross. “Can you come up with something to say on the phone?”

  Ross grinned. “Are you asking me to use my best doctor voice?”

  “Yes.”

  The doorbell rang. We all looked at each other. Levi was upstairs sleeping off the night before. The kids were in the backyard. With the exception of Jenny, whom I didn’t think any of us had called, no one was expected.

  Peter shook his head. “Expecting a package? Troy change his mind?”

  Henry scooted his chair back and made for the door. “Nothing to do but find out.”

  I recognized the voice at the door. Detective Claudia Sun. Oh hell. I closed my eyes and groaned.

  Malcolm touched the back of my neck. “What is it?”

  “The police. I’m probably being arrested.”

  His eyes flared. “Like hell.”

  “Stay out of this if you can’t be calm. Do you understand? The last thing I need is for you to be arrested, too.”