Page 8 of Fortress (A Monster By Any Other Name #4)

T hey’d been more stressed about leaving Sahuarita than they’d wanted to admit, though they knew it was time to go long before they finally packed up. Even before late April, when Alex mentioned she had friends coming who needed a place to crash, Jake could feel the change in the wind.

They’d built a safe base in Sahuarita: the people were friendly and no longer curious, Alex’s meals were better than most restaurants, and they had a good routine. But for all of that, Jake didn’t think either of them would be happy stuck there much longer. More than once, Toby had mentioned research he’d done at the library that could be useful on a future hunt or some information he wanted passed to Roger that could indicate a monster rather than a string of bad luck. Jake had been itching to get out of there, to throw their duffels in the trunk and ride out. He thought that Toby felt the same, especially since he’d gotten a clean bill of health from Dr. Nguyen.

Well, Jake had looked forward to the anonymity of the road, until he made the call back to Methodist Hospital.

“I’ve done my best, but I’m sure they took X-rays,” Dr. Nguyen told him. “Might’ve done blood work too. All of that’s important to make sure Tobias’s in the best shape he can be.”

The second after she said it, Jake remembered Dr. Kendra Turner. He could’ve kicked himself. Probably she’d meant for him to call after one week, not twelve, but he still found her card intact in the pocket of a pair of jeans that he luckily hadn’t washed yet.

Jake made the call in the library parking lot while Toby was finishing up his volunteer shift. He turned the crumpled card in his fingers, the phone ringing in his ear.

Just as he figured he’d try again later (or toss the card and not worry about it; Toby was doing fine), she picked up, sounding professionally brisk. “Dr. Turner speaking.”

“Uh—hey, this is Jake Hawthorne. You got a minute?”

“Ah,” she said, after a moment. “Jake. Yes, if you’ll hold on?” A pause, long enough to close a door or find a file, before she returned to the phone. “What can I do for you, Jake? How’s Tobias recovering?”

“Oh, awesome.” Jake glanced automatically back at the library. “He quit the sling a couple weeks ago, says he can sit up and lie down without it hurting. Much, anyway.” Jake still had some doubts about how Toby’s idea of “doesn’t hurt” compared to most people’s, especially since his breath still hitched when he got out of bed in the morning.

“Did you find a doctor for follow-ups?” she asked, her tone just as neutral, but he knew her opinion of him weighed on his answer.

He bit back a snappy retort. “Yeah. Found a good one. She gave Toby a look-over about a dozen times since you saw us. She used to work in Phoenix, you might know her—”

“No, don’t tell me,” she said quickly. “I might be asked again, and I’d rather not lie.”

“Who’d be asking?” Jake snapped—but he already knew.

Well, not precisely who, though the name Dixon wasn’t a surprise. He didn’t know a cousin Alice or how much of a cousin she was, but it was bad enough that they had shown up just hours after he and Toby had cleared out.

Jake moved back to the shadow of the library wall, scanning the streets, swearing silently at himself for leaving Toby alone— though a quick glance through the window showed Toby helping someone work the printer.

“What’d you tell her?” he said, a hint of growl in his voice.

“What we had on record. The injuries, the reported cause of those injuries, the fact that we could detect nothing supernatural in his physiology. She wanted to confiscate our blood work, but an unfortunate laboratory mishap contaminated the vials, and they had to be discarded. Embarrassing, really.” Dr. Turner’s voice was still impassively smooth, but Jake detected something underneath that would have made him grin under other circumstances, if he’d felt much beyond cold, escalating panic from the moment she said Dixon .

Hawthornes weren’t afraid of anything, not even what could kill them, not even what went bump in the dark—but as long as he could remember, he and his father had run from Dixons.

“Those, uh, vials.” Jake swallowed, mouth dry. “Any chance you... I don’t know, got anything from them before the accident?”

“I did. There was nothing to worry about. Nothing notable beyond mild anemia, as I recall. Tobias should get more iron in his diet. That can come from red meats, but those have other health disadvantages if they’re his exclusive nutrition source, so dark green salads like spinach are better in the long term.”

“He won’t mind that.” Jake had to get off the phone. He had to get to Toby, get them both out of the open, a million things he should have done weeks ago to put them further under the radar, but he hadn’t done any of them, and fuck , they could be fucked . “Hey, I gotta go, but—thanks. Really.”

“Be safe.”

The ASC had been so close on their heels that the Hawthornes could have held the door for them on their way into the hospital, and what had Jake done? Strolled over to a town not three hours away and put his feet up for the next three months.

It took most of Jake’s self-control to keep cool in front of the civvies when he walked through the library and stopped at the end of the aisle where Toby was shelving. “You ready to head out?”

“It’s not six o’clock yet, and I’d like to—” The smile died on Toby’s face as he looked up and saw Jake’s expression. He put the book in his hands back down on the cart. “I’ll let Mandy know.”

The drive back to Alex’s was quiet, neither willing to break the silence over the radio.

“What’s up?” Toby asked when they had finally sat down in the apartment. He was tense, bracing himself, but his gaze was steady on Jake.

“So—” Even as he began, Jake knew this was probably the worst intro he could have managed, but ripping the Band-Aid off was the only way he knew to handle it. “Turns out the ASC showed up about three hours after we blew the joint.”

Toby blanched as Jake continued, trying to undo the worst of the scare. “They didn’t get anything useful. I think Dr. Turner had the lab smash your test tubes—”

“What test tubes?” Toby said, his voice utterly expressionless.

“Some blood they drew, I guess, to run tests—”

“You let them take my bl-blood? For t-tests ?” Toby stood, and Jake blinked at him. Toby’s fists were clenched, his mouth set in a thin, hard line, his eyes snapping in barely contained outrage. Part of Jake wanted to savor the sight of Toby actually angry at him, but the part with the most sense knew better than to push Toby any further.

“It’s a routine thing,” he said defensively. “I mean, they didn’t even ask me.”

“Jake.” It was hard to tell whether Toby was more angry or terrified; his face was still white but his eyes had gone dark, boring unblinking into Jake. “Didn’t you th-think—don’t you kn-know what they could have found ?”

“An iron deficiency?”

“This isn’t funny !” Bright spots appeared on his cheeks. “How c-can you j-joke —”

“Toby, I’m not!” Jake lifted his hands. “That’s all they found, okay? All it means is you get to have more salads—”

Toby wasn’t appeased. “They could have f-found—” He gestured to indicate limitless possibilities too awful to name. “And that would’ve—th-that could’ve—” Either fury or fear pushed words out of his reach, and he dropped his hand back to his side, vehemence flickering like a flare burned out. “I don’t know how you’d be able to l-look at me if—”

Jake had a powerful and completely unhelpful desire for a drink. “Toby, I could sit here all day and tell you that nothing they could have found would’ve changed anything. Fuck, I have told you that, but that doesn’t matter because they didn’t find anything. That’s two doctors now who have taken a good hard look at you, inside and out, and said you’re in the clear. We should throw a fucking party.”

Toby threw him a look instead, then shook his head as though to ward off a mosquito. “They got too close. M-maybe we should...”

“Leave town?” Jake felt a wave of relief in his bones. They had been in one place too long. Necessary as it had been for Toby’s healing, Jake was ready to hit the road. At least there they would be a moving target.

“Yeah.” Toby took a deep breath. “I’ll call the l-library, let them know that we have to go.”

“I’ll tell Alex,” Jake agreed.

They left Arizona quick enough to shake the dust from their trail, but their path east wasn’t aimless.

Jake had been racking his brains for the best way to celebrate Toby’s seventeenth birthday, especially since Toby had brought him the best fucking homemade breakfast in bed a guy could ask for. In Sahuarita, Jake had pursued a lot of little ideas. The Eldorado’s back seat had another box of books he’d picked up at the secondhand shop and a couple CDs from Shady Raptor Records, each carefully wrapped in salvaged funny papers. But no matter what he could come up with, there was an essential problem with anything that Jake could give Toby.

What could possibly be good enough for Toby’s first birthday outside Freak Camp?

Nothing that Jake could manage without shaking down heaven and earth, that’s what. He had some tentative ideas, like maybe a book on plants to match Toby’s newfound fascination with spring and flowers. As the weather warmed, any daylight hours outside the library Toby had spent taking notes outdoors, flipping through his biology book and another borrowed book on the local flora.

But once they started driving, Jake knew exactly where they should head.

Toby had asked if they should scan for a hunt before choosing a direction, but Jake had shaken his head, told him Dude, you just stopped rattling when you walk, let’s not push our luck .

They slowed down through St. Louis. Jake pulled off the I-44 highway toward Soulard, muttering about an old restaurant that had the best hot dogs ever, or at least he’d thought so in junior high. When they found it, Toby got a simple hot dog with mustard while Jake chose the chili cheese dog, and both were damn good (though Jake admitted there were one or two other places that might give them a run for their money now).

“Whaddaya say we hole up at that place down the street for the night?” Jake asked around his last mouthful, washing it down with his last swig of soda. “Or maybe the weekend, there’s lots to see in the Lou.”

Toby turned to look at the Hilton Hotel that Jake nodded toward, then looked back at him in surprise. Jake had to admit the surprise had merit. They usually bunked in smaller motels on the edge of town—a step up from the dumps Jake had lived in with Leon but still could best be described as homey . Once or twice they’d hit a Holiday Inn when Jake hadn’t liked the look of any of the nearest motels, but they’d never shelled out for a Radisson.

Jake shrugged. “Figured we could treat ourselves after making it out of Arizona, right?”

Toby still looked puzzled but didn’t question him. But as they walked inside the spacious lobby, his eyes widened. Grinning, Jake took Toby’s hand, swinging it on their walk to the front desk. A little sweet talk with the attractive young receptionist, and he managed to wrangle a deluxe for the price of a regular room. He winked at Toby as they headed to the elevator, and Toby smiled tentatively back.

The smile grew when they stepped into the suite and Toby took in the vista: a bedroom and separate living room; a bathroom that, even from the door, Jake could see had an actual jacuzzi; and furniture that aped actual classy stuff that you would find in a mansion, all dark wood, intricate carvings, and sapphire brocade. This decor included the king-size bed that dominated the bedroom. They could probably sleep spread out without either of them in danger of rolling off the bed.

Instead of their usual routine of unpacking toiletries and setting security measures, Toby drifted to the huge bed and sat down on it. After a moment, he lay back with a soft exhale, full of wonder and contentment.

Jake handled the salt lines himself and joined him, stretching out with a throaty groan that made Toby’s eyes widen. “Can you believe some assholes live like this all the time?” Jake told him.

Toby’s smile was wider, beautifully unselfconscious. “Is it bad that I don’t think I can get up right now?”

“Nah, sounds perfect. We’ll order room service later.” Jake squeezed Toby’s fingers. “Looks like we’re stuck here together.”

Toby still didn’t suspect anything the next day as they pulled up in front of the Missouri Botanical Gardens. He frowned at the lettering across the front of the building, craning his neck to see it through the windshield. “Why are we here?”

Jake could barely keep his grin off his face, but he didn’t want to spoil the surprise. “Tell you inside,” he said, getting out of the car and leaving Toby to follow.

He slowed down once they got their tickets and found the entrance to the gardens. Other visitors walked the paths: solitary individuals, some families with small children, but beyond steering Toby toward the more secluded, quieter pathways, Jake barely noticed anyone else. His focus was Toby, how he peered and then gaped at the neatly trimmed shrubbery and the brilliant flowers hanging from the branches, both breathless and bemused.

He glanced over at Jake every so often, eyes shining, to see if Jake was marveling with him, and Jake let out the grin that he’d been holding.

They didn’t speak until they crossed a bridge that brought them to a large tree with dark bark, its branches drooping with clusters of pale pink flowers. Toby stopped underneath, gazing upward while a couple stray petals drifted down on him, and Jake stopped beside him.

“You planned this,” Toby said, eyes locked on the blossoms as one drifted down from its perch toward their heads. “It’s beautiful, and you wanted us to be here today.” He lowered his gaze to look at Jake. “Why? Why are we here?”

This was more than Jake could take. He tugged Toby in for a kiss, moving one hand to touch Toby’s cheek and jaw. It was slow, sweet, hardly any pressure behind it. When they stopped, Jake turned his mouth to Toby’s ear and whispered, “Happy birthday, Toby.”

Toby jerked back, shock in his face now, though he didn’t drop Jake’s hand. “I... I forgot.” He half laughed, but it sounded a little choked. “You, y-you’re the one who first told me about b-birthdays—I remember, but I’d forgotten. Even when—you brought me—but I’d f-forgotten completely the last few—”

“Hey, it’s okay.” Jake pulled Toby to his side, one arm around his shoulders. Toby leaned his head against Jake’s chest, struggling to even out his breathing.

“I’m not supposed to forget things,” he said, low, against Jake’s shirt.

Jake rubbed Toby’s shoulder with one hand. “You remembered mine just fine.”

“Yeah, because it’s yours .” Toby straightened to lift his head, smiling again, if a little wobbly. “But you told me mine, and I forgot.”

“Well, so long as you remember mine and I remember yours, we’re good.” Something hurt in Jake’s chest—not exactly like something cracking, but like an old bruise pinched. “Hey, you made me breakfast. I wanted... something for you, for the same reason.”

“I made you breakfast because I love you,” Toby said, matter-of-fact as he was when taking inventory on their ammunition or listing out the variables for one of his math problems. “Just like you did this for me.”

Jake stilled completely, not even able to breathe. Maybe he’d gotten pollen in his ears. He couldn’t have heard Toby say that . Not when Jake had never heard him say it before. Just because, what, Jake had taken him to some gardens? If he’d known, he could have done this months ago. Hell, in the very first week. And what was Toby doing, giving Jake something like that on his own birthday?

Then Jake tightened his arm around Toby, pulling him close even as Toby peeked up at him for a reaction. Jake dropped his chin to steal a kiss, first on Toby’s lips, then throat, then anywhere he could reach. With a smile Jake could feel against his skin, Toby kissed him back.

The thing that amazed Tobias the most was how he hadn’t suspected the surprise at all. Sure, he had known that Jake pointed them south on purpose, but he couldn’t have imagined the botanical garden, and his birthday hadn’t even been on his radar.

The next morning, sitting at the table by the window with a fresh newspaper he found outside their door, his eyes kept straying to Jake, still asleep in bed. For the first time, Tobias realized he really believed that Jake had meant it when he’d said that Tobias would be the only one for him.

That didn’t mean that Jake would always feel that way, of course, but it was thrilling enough for now.

Still smiling, Tobias highlighted another passage in the article, cross-referenced the information with what he’d found on the local library’s online archive, and sat back. He probably shouldn’t be happy, looking at yet another sign of supernatural activity right in the St. Louis area, but it felt good to be researching again, with the promise of hunting in the near future. The question was whether Jake would let them look into it.

Tobias understood the importance of letting bones knit properly before exposing them to stress. Or at least he understood the theory. But camp had taught him what his body could take, what stresses it could handle before it broke again, and Jake didn’t need to worry about him. He felt more than ready to kick some supernatural ass.

Jake moved and mumbled in the bed, rubbing one hand over his face and then blinking at Tobias with bleary eyes. “Working on something, Toby?”

Tobias held up the paper with his careful notations. “Our next case.”

Jake blinked, and he looked for a second like he wanted to argue, like he would say again that Tobias’s shoulder wasn’t healed enough, that he had to rest up just one more week or one more month. Then he shook his head slightly and sat up in the bed, rubbing the back of one hand along his morning stubble. “Local?”

“Yes. Maybe twenty minutes north of here.”

Jake stretched out a hand. “Lay it on me.”

Giving him a slight smile, Tobias handed the paper over.

The situation felt like a straightforward haunting, though maybe one of the more gruesome ones. There had been a few suspicious incidents in the neighborhood (culminating in a suspected freak that the ASC had picked up two years ago), but none of that had been enough to prevent the Mitchelson family from choking to death a few days ago. Official reports dismissed it as “asphyxiation, cause unknown, gas leak suspected,” but Tobias wondered if whoever wrote the reports was as wary of the ASC as he and Jake were.

The more significant indication of repeating supernatural activity was the discovery that the Dalton family had died in a similar way sixty years ago in the same neighborhood. The old records described them as “drowned in nothing but air.” The newspaper article from the period had contained a distorted image of the family taken just a week before the incident, the six members of the Dalton family staring soberly at the camera, the occasional hand or face moving too quickly to be perfectly caught by the technology. They looked, Tobias thought, almost like they knew that something was coming for them, though perhaps that was a projection. Photographs had been different then, and not everyone smiled like they did on the TV.

When Tobias and Jake rode into the quiet suburb, a public works van idled on the corner, and a handful of hazmat-suited workers were moving in and out of the Mitchelson home. A couple of small boys, worn basketballs forgotten in their arms, watched from closer than they should have.

Both of the Mitchelsons’ next-door neighbors had been out of town when the family died, but the Grant family across the street had been home. Tobias and Jake parked on the edge of their property and watched the public works crew for a few minutes. It seemed like what a couple of average guys would do, and no one watching them would guess they were looking for any hint that the official investigation had uncovered a supernatural cause. The Hawthornes had to be careful, not so much for the supernatural threat, but because the ASC would be on this town in two heartbeats if it got any kind of confirmation that what had happened here was not part of the natural order of the world.

Tobias adjusted his overshirt, grateful he no longer had a sling. He’d understood the necessity for it, but every moment he had worn it made his spine itch.

“Okay, Toby,” Jake said. “We’re looking into genealogies, old town history, neat junk, that sort of thing. I’ll distract ’em with my charm, and you can ask the questions, okay?”

“Got it, Jake.” They’d talked about their game plan in the hotel room as well, and Tobias couldn’t help but smile as he followed Jake to the Grant family’s door. He half suspected that Jake might be more nervous than he was to get back into hunting.

The woman who cracked the door open couldn’t have been much older than Jake. From what they could see through the narrow opening, she had her dark hair pulled back tight and dark circles under her narrowed eyes. “Yes?”

Jake gave her his most engaging smile, despite the chain spanning the gap. “Hi, we’re in the area looking into some of the history of the St. Louis area for my kid brother’s class project on energy disasters, and we’re wondering if you knew anything about the family that died in the gas leak?”

She stared at him for a moment, unblinking, and Tobias shifted uneasily. Something felt off, though he couldn’t put his finger on it. Then her eyes widened.

“You’re goddamn hunters,” she breathed.

Tobias stepped in front of Jake, because if words could be poison, they’d already be dead. She’d said hunters the way Jake said cops and other hunters said freaks , and the way monsters in camp had breathed Crusher .

“How dare you come here.” Her voice shook and her eyes had narrowed in fury, and this was going wrong so very quickly, Tobias didn’t know what had given them away, what had gone wrong. He’d worried that people would figure out that he was a monster, not that they would guess that he and Jake were here to save them from one.

“You goddamn bastards take away my brother,” she said, volume rising, “and you have the guts to come back here and—get the fuck off my porch! You think you can ask your questions and get fucking answers when he’s—get out of here, I’m not telling you shit, go! Go , you motherfuckers!” She slammed the door shut, and a bolt shot home.

There was nothing to be said. As one, they turned and walked away, Jake bringing his arm around Tobias’s back as they hustled off that porch and to the Eldorado.

Inside the car, Jake jingled his keys in his hands, looking rattled. Tobias pulled his hands close to his chest, trying to get them warm, even though the day had been pleasant just before. “We could try another house,” Jake said, eyes focused on the street ahead, “but I don’t like going in blind when I don’t know what the fuck happened back there. Let’s hit a bar, do some recon before we stick our heads in a wasp’s nest.”

Tobias couldn’t do much more than nod. He still felt shocked that anyone in the real world would treat hunters (even those they just believed to be hunters, without proof) that way. He didn’t want to think about the repercussions if they’d really represented the ASC—or what might have happened to that woman’s brother. It twisted his stomach unpleasantly. He’d seen countless monsters arrive at Freak Camp—monsters of all ages, sizes, and temperaments—but he’d never once thought about those they’d left behind as anything but glad to have them removed from their lives.

But Jake was right. They still had a case before them, and they needed more info before they tried to confront any more hostile witnesses who might recognize them as hunters.

As it turned out, the little town had had enough contact with the ASC that most of the locals could spot a hunter from twenty paces. Or at least as soon as they started asking questions.

Jake looked unnerved when the first response to his faux-casual “Heck of a weird thing, wasn’t it, that Mitchelson death?” was “Why, you hunters? Fuck, you are, aren’t you?” The jumpiness didn’t ease when the barkeep called out, “Hey, hunters are back!” loud enough to be heard in the far corners of the bar.

Within moments they were surrounded by a handful of fellow drinkers asking about cases they’d worked, where they’d been, how many freaks they’d put down. Tobias kept his eyes down, even when one skinny guy with an afro poking out from underneath a Red Sox cap said, “Hey, little young for this, ain’t you?”

That comment would’ve made him tear for the door if that didn’t mean leaving Jake. Instead Tobias breathed out carefully through his nose, didn’t look up or respond, and kept close to Jake. It hadn’t been said like that , anyway.

But the press of bodies reminded him of a gang of vamps circling some poor bastard in camp. He wasn’t panicking yet, but there was a buzzy sort of adrenaline under his skin that he didn’t think was a good sign. He’d felt this way when he’d scaled the truck to get at the troll or when he’d tackled the yeti. He didn’t think it was very safe to feel like that in a bar full of reals who posed them no physical threat (at least as far as he could tell).

That didn’t mean these guys couldn’t blow Tobias and Jake’s cover out of the water if they started talking to the ASC. Jake tried at first to bluff their way out.

“Are you guys serious? Us? No way we’re hunters.” He pulled out his best nothing to find here, officer grin. “Why would we—”

But no one was buying it. “You’re asking about the Mitchelsons,” said a heavyset guy with thick glasses and a battered wedding ring the color of aged copper. “And trying to get information about it.”

“You’ve got a fucking rad car,” said the Red Sox cap guy with enthusiasm. “But you’re real young to be asking questions.”

“I’m legal!” Jake said as the bartender handed him another beer.

“You’re also carrying,” said a guy with long braids tied back. “And the trunk of your car’s too heavy.”

“Which makes you hunters or serial killers!” The round-faced guy with droopy eyelids, who completed the quartet (a little drunker than his buddies, and a little more of a threat in Tobias’s eyes), laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.

His friend—acquaintance?—with the braids gave him a look, then turned back. “So, hunters.”

Jake took a drink.

Eventually he gave in and answered the questions. “Yeah, we’re checking it out” and “No, no solids yet, but we think spirit” and later, after the alcohol had kicked in (or he had gotten over the shock of being discovered), “Man, we tried checking out the neighborhood, but this nutcase chick told us to get the fuck off her porch before she called the cops. You guys know anything about that?”

The drunkest guy raised his glass cheerfully. “You must’ve met Karen Grant. Crazy freakfucker.”

Tobias flinched, then shifted closer to Jake’s side, hoping no one had noticed.

“Pretty sure she wasn’t fucking him,” said the guy with braids who’d introduced himself as Darryl, rolling the edge of his bottle around the counter. “I mean, her brother?” He must have caught something on Jake’s face, because he elaborated. “There was suspicious shit going down at the community college where her brother went. Guess they narrowed it down to him, because the next day he was gone—poof, just like that.”

“Let me guess,” Jake said. “‘They’re a government agency, starts with A, ends with C?” He was trying for humor, but there was something tight in his tone, and Tobias could have sworn that he was paler than he had been just moments before.

Darryl tapped his nose with one long finger. “Damn, that wasn’t pretty. The Grants called the cops when the ASC showed up, didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on. Their girl never stopped screaming.”

“I heard they’re still trying to get blood off the porch,” Steve, the red-faced guy, said, taking a swig of his drink. “I heard they cut the freak’s throat, and it healed up just like that. Not a fucking mark on it.”

Tobias swallowed hard, keeping his eyes on the counter and the Coke that Jake had bought him. This wasn’t camp. This wasn’t memories of camp, or even something that he could remember happening to him. This was someone else’s life, and having a panic attack right here and now would not help him, or Jake, or the victims of the new supernatural threat terrorizing the town. “W-what was he doing?” He hoped his voice did not quaver too much.

“I heard he was cutting up cats and shit, making sacrifices, that sort of thing, made him fucking invulnerable or some shit,” Steve said, downing the last of his beer.

Arnie, the one in the baseball cap, clarified. “He was researching some of the more arcane shit in the library, started sleepwalking and talking about a voice that was coming for him, fucked-up stuff, man.” He noticed his other buddies staring at him, and his eyes widened. “You hear stuff! I live down there, guys, you can’t say you’ve never talked about that shit. That’s crazy shit, guys, I ain’t into that shit, I’m no freaklover!”

“Whatever. And now we’ve got the Mitchelson shit in town too. Right after Grandma Mitchelson’s centennial birthday,” Darryl added. “They even threw this huge fucking party maybe two weeks before, had a bonfire, let the old lady show off stuff she’d saved up, jewelry and things. Happy family shit on a mega scale.” He sighed. “Sucks.”

Tobias’s head snapped up. He knew, then, he fucking knew , and he tried to give Jake a look , something to let him know that they had to get out of there that moment because not only did Tobias know what had been killing people, but they might already be too late to stop it from happening again.

Whatever Jake saw in his face got him moving.

“Well, thanks for the advice, dudes. And if you could keep this under your hats for the next few days, we’d appreciate it.” He threw a couple twenties onto the bar, his movements charged, lacking Jake’s usual good humor and careless energy. “Have a round on us.”

“Good luck! And if you get stuck, you can always call 666!” Steve called after them and then laughed into his next drink, while the other two chuckled and Darryl stared after their departing backs.

Tobias hurried after Jake. The cool air outside was refreshing after the claustrophobic bar interior. “W-why would we call 666?” he asked, catching his breath. Terror had not hit him that hard in a while.

“It’s a bad joke,” Jake said, distantly. He wasn’t looking at Tobias. “For a while, folks talked about having a special hotline for the ASC, like 911 but for supernatural shit. Assholes like that think it would be funny if it were 666.”

“But there is a number for the ASC.” Tobias had filed reports, when he was allowed to work in the library. He could repeat by heart the phone number and all eight specialized extensions.

“Yeah, Toby, it’s a really stupid joke.” Jake looked vacant, and more tired than their day warranted. “You okay?”

Tobias blinked, because sure, they were both a little shaken, but that wasn’t why they’d had to leave, and then he realized that Jake was still back there, thinking about whatever he had been thinking about when the reals (though “the assholes” kept floating to his mind as another name for them) had been telling them about that poor woman and her freak brother. “I think I have a lead on the case.”

Jake blinked, turning to look at him directly at last. “Damn. Okay. Where are we going, Toby?”

Tobias told him and, moments later, Jake gunned the Eldorado out of the bar parking lot.

Later, Tobias would wonder at the belongings that people had, the stuff that made up a real life. The floor was covered in stuffed animals, papers, clothes—including a dress shirt, the cuffs torn where the cufflinks had been yanked out. All this debris was tangled at the feet of the monster now possessing one of the cleanup crew workers, his hands grasping to close their airways. Whether the hazmat suits hadn’t been enough protection against the artifact (the cufflinks were either cursed or haunted, Tobias would’ve needed more research to say for sure), or the workers hadn’t been smart enough to run an EMF scanner over the entire house, Tobias didn’t know. But he knew that that particular possession had cost this family their lives and now seemed intent on taking even more.

Tobias had figured out, recalling the old photographs in the online newspaper records, that the killer wasn’t a flesh and blood monster seeking prey or a spirit that slept and woke according to a strict schedule. He had seen a set of cufflinks in an old photograph of the Dalton family taken before their tragic death, and one of the men’s wrists was blurred in the image. He’d thought at the time it was just a flaw in the photograph, but ghosts had been known to cause that sort of distortion. And his gut said that it wasn’t just an action blur.

The workman wearing the cufflinks now looked at them with wide, wild eyes, the whites bloodshot, his pupils washed out by black-light blue.

“You cannot stop us,” he hissed, hands stretched out like claws. Tobias had already seen those claws in action on another crew member, currently gasping on the floor in his torn hazmat suit. The claws hadn’t left any visible wounds, but they had dropped him immediately to the floor, writhing, struggling and failing to breathe. Jake had hit him with blessed salt, forcing some of it into his mouth, and the man had been able to get air into his lungs again, though he remained on the floor, pale and shuddering.

“We’re sure as hell going to try,” Jake said, and he fired a blessed salt shotgun round dead center into his chest.

He didn’t go down then. It took both Tobias and Jake pinning him to the floor, cutting the cufflinks off his wrists (they had fused into his skin) and lighting them on fire right in the middle of the living room. Then, finally, the man ceased screaming and thrashing.

Jake used a curtain to snuff the flames, and then to wrap the man’s bleeding wrists. The Hawthornes were panting hard, but any shakiness was just from adrenaline.

The man who had been attacked by his coworker was still awake, chest heaving, watching them with large eyes but making no attempt to speak. Tobias picked up a telephone from a nearby end table, dialed 911, and pressed the phone into the man’s hand. As he slowly lifted it to his ear and they heard the operator say, “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” Tobias and Jake rushed out of the house.

They’d just left the subdivision when they heard sirens wailing on the street behind them.

Tobias held onto his shotgun as they drew closer to the hotel. With his free hand, he withdrew the map from the door pocket, spreading it open to find the best route out of town.

After bringing their duffels out of the hotel, Jake opened the trunk. Tobias handed him his bag to store, then moved away, most of him already on the road, planning their route, hoping that they could get far enough away before the hunters were back on their trail. As he started to open the shotgun door, however, he realized Jake hadn’t moved.

Tobias turned back. “Jake? You okay?”

As Jake finally closed the trunk, the fading evening sun illuminated his face, showing unexpected strain, something Tobias would not have expected at the end of a successful hunt without injury to either of them. Concerned, Tobias took a step forward.

“Toby.” Jake paused, leaning forward onto the trunk with both hands. “Toby, I fucked up.”

Incredulous, Tobias scanned Jake over for any sign of what he meant, where he might be bleeding. They’d put the monster to rest, no one had died... “What do you mean?”

Jake bit his lip. “Toby, you’ve... you’ve got a family out there. Parents, maybe a pack of siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. People who probably remembered your birthday this week too.”

Tobias blinked at him, confused. The comment seemed so completely out of nowhere, they hadn’t even—but then he knew. The Grants. The boy dragged away, his sister still weeping and screaming years later. Jake was wondering if Tobias had anyone like that. But he’d already considered the possibility.

Slowly, Tobias said, “That . . . seems unlikely.”

Jake’s shoulders twitched, almost a flinch. “Seriously, Toby. Chances are someone’s out there who remembers you, who knows your whole name, what time of day you were born, all that. They could tell you your whole history, who you are. Because it’s not just from that—that shithole.”

Tobias said nothing, not to Jake’s harsh intensity, nor when his voice rose louder, higher, sharper.

After a breath, Jake continued more quietly, but with a different kind of desperation. “Look, Toby, I’m sorry. I never thought—I mean, I could have looked for your family while I was waiting to get you out, while the fucking paperwork went through. I should have looked for them instead of thinking I could just, I dunno, call you a Hawthorne and keep you all for myself. You deserve to have a real family.”

Tobias took a sharp breath and braced himself with one hand against the Eldorado’s frame. He needed something under him, the smooth metal reassuring him that the world wasn’t going to give way under his feet. “Jake.” Tobias had to take a moment to swallow. Jake waited, eyes steady on him now, finally. “We’ve been over this. D-don’t you think I’d remember them if I had them?”

“If you had—”

“A family,” Tobias said. “People who loved me.”

Jake shrugged slightly, a hunch of his shoulders upward. “I dunno, brains are weird. It doesn’t mean—”

“Jake, I don’t remember anyone .” Tobias tried to keep his voice level. “Just Becca. And you. I have a family now, and I’m a Hawthorne. Tobias Hawthorne. You told me so.” The last words were more pleading, more question, more accusation, than he meant them to be.

Jake straightened, though he didn’t step around the car. “Yeah, Toby. ’Course you are.”

Tobias took another steadying breath. “Then I don’t need any other family. We don’t know how, what happened—who might have tipped off the ASC, anyway. And even if they didn’t—they think I died. Like Karen does. They buried me years ago. I’m not going back to haunt them.”

If anything, Jake looked more unhappy at that, but just coughed and said, “If you’re worried about someone dousing you in lighter fluid—”

Tobias snorted. “Yeah, Jake, that’s it. C’mon, let’s go.”

Settled in the front seat, Toby readjusted the map on his lap, fingers tracing interstates and roads as he talked with Jake about where to go next and how far they’d get tonight. He knew he ought to be more worried about how close the ASC might be behind them, especially considering the number of people who might describe their faces, but he’d never felt anything but safe with Jake behind the Eldorado’s wheel, accelerating on the open road. Here, no one could touch them. This was where he—where both of them—belonged.