Chapter 28
Sam fumed as he rode in the back of a taxi toward the Gold Coast and Sullivan’s mansion.
For a while, he’d thought Alistair had been right all along, that he never should have gotten involved with Sullivan.
But if he’d found some other job, or left the city, or whatever it was Alistair wanted from him, he would never have unlocked the resurrection hex.
Never had the chance to make his family truly happy, once and for all.
And damn it, he was going to fix things for Alistair, too, whether he wanted him to or not. They’d rebuild The Pride, and the next time the ritual was performed, he’d make sure Alistair’s parents and Forrest were included among the dead to be restored.
It would be performed again, naturally. Sullivan wasn’t one to let the power of life and death go to waste.
No, he’d use it to secure his own empire.
If he kept it tightly in his control, he’d be able to do whatever he wanted.
The most rich, the most powerful, people in the world would come to him hat in hand, begging him to bring back lost children, spouses, parents, lovers.
Or even looking for assurance he’d restore them to life, once their time came.
Maybe he’d do some charity cases as well. Forget free milk; he could offer free resurrection.
It wouldn’t be equal, of course. The powerful would be the ones to benefit, just like always. And of course, Sam and Alistair would be bound to the gangster forever, because Sam knew how to make the hex, and that wasn’t knowledge Sullivan would risk getting out.
Sam pushed aside his unease. He would pay whatever price Sullivan required, if only he could set things to right, make up for his mistakes.
Two wrongs didn’t make a right.
But this wasn’t a case of two wrongs. It was one wrong, and one right to correct it.
Once a failure, always a failure.
He couldn’t lose his nerve now. Opal was depending on him. Dad was. The Gattis were. Even Alistair was, whether he’d admit it or not. Worrying had never gotten Sam anywhere; now was time for action.
Night had fallen by the time the taxi let him out in front of Sullivan’s estate. The men on guard recognized him immediately, and he was escorted up the drive to the house.
Inside, a party was in full swing. The sound of music blared from a record player, accompanied by laughs and joyful shouts. Mrs. McIntyre stumbled into the hall as he passed by, her face flushed and a martini in her hand.
“Choirboy!” she shouted, all propriety forgotten. “Have you come to celebrate? The war is over! We won!” She turned before he could reply and yelled, “Someone get this man a drink!”
“No, thank you,” he said, trying to disengage.
“Aw, come on.” She grabbed his arm drunkenly. “Do you play billiards?”
“Choirboy isn’t here to party.” Turner came up from behind them, cane tapping lightly as he no longer needed to lean on it except when he was tired. Then he cocked a brow. “Are you?”
“No,” Sam said.
“You two aren’t any fun,” Mrs. McIntyre said. She started to take a drink, then realized most of her martini had splashed out while she waved it around. “I should get a refill.”
“You do that.” Turner watched as she staggered away in search of more booze. “Your friends are upstairs. Where’s your familiar?”
“He’s not coming.” Sam tried not to let his bitterness show, but judging by the look Turner gave him, he’d failed.
“Oh well. It’s not like his physical presence is necessary for you to use his magic.” Turner gestured toward the stairs. “This way.”
When they reached the second floor, Turner let them into a small drawing room that held an air of disuse. Maybe it had been part of Mrs. Sullivan’s domain, neglected while she was away, grieving the loss of her child.
But not for long. Tomorrow, she’d be able to hear his voice again on the telephone. As soon as she could reach Chicago, she’d hold him in her arms.
It was the right thing to do. The only thing.
Wanda sat on a couch, glowering at a drink in her hand. “Sam,” she said, unsurprised to see him. Then: “Everyone else went to bed. Where’s Alistair?”
“We had a fight.”
“Damn him.” She finished off her tumbler, poured straight whiskey in from a bottle at her elbow. “You told him what’s at stake, didn’t you?”
“I did. He…wasn’t happy.”
“Of course he wasn’t,” she muttered. Her clothing was smudged and stained; everything else she owned had gone up in the blaze. “None of us are, but we don’t have any options left.”
“It’s just business, Miss Gatti,” Turner said with a shrug. “You understand that, but not everyone does.”
“Alistair always was a stubborn fool.” She turned her attention back to Sam. “So you walked out. For good?”
“I hope not.” Though once Forrest was back…
It would only make sense for Alistair to choose him over Sam.
Forrest was handsome, and from what Sam had gleaned, had been a good man.
Would his mind have healed…wherever he was now?
Surely whatever came next would offer a surcease of sorrow.
Surely he’d be returned hale and whole. The hex was about restoring both body and soul, after all.
“He’s stubborn, but he isn’t stupid,” she said. “You’ll see—he’ll come crawling back once he’s cooled off.”
He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “Is there somewhere I can sleep, Lenny? If you think Mr. Sullivan will be all right with it, that is.”
“He’ll be happy to have you, I can promise that.” Turner stepped back out the door and gestured. “This way.”
Soon enough, Sam found himself in a comfortable bedroom in the mansion’s guest wing. A maid brought towels, comb, and toothbrush; he thanked her as she left. He brushed his teeth in the small en suite bathroom, stripped down to his underwear, and climbed into bed.
Was Alistair sleeping? Or awake and raiding the liquor cabinet, still mad that Sam was working with Sullivan? Would this crack between them widen into a gulf once Forrest came back?
Sam rolled onto his side and tried not to think about it. The point was, Alistair would be happy. Wanda would be happy. Sullivan would be happy. Dad and Opal would be happy.
And compared to that, what did Sam’s feelings matter?
* * *
Alistair stared at the door Sam had departed through, wanting to run after him. But they’d only end up shouting at one another in the streets if he did that. Sam was fucking determined to—
The phone rang.
Either Wanda was calling from Joel’s place, or it was Opal yet again. Either way, a deserving target for his anger. Stomping to the phone, he snatched it up and snarled, “Yes?”
“Don’t hang up!” Opal yelled into his ear. “You have to tell Sammy—”
“You and your whole family can go to hell. Call here again, and I’ll report you to the police for harassment.” He slammed down the phone. It was an empty threat, but maybe it would get rid of her once and for all.
A few hours later, he sat at the bar of The Cloven Hoof, a little speakeasy at the north end of the Loop.
It was smaller than The Pride had been, and though there was a band playing, it was more of a place to sit and drink than get up and dance.
He skulked in one dimly lit corner, working on his second gimlet and listening to Holly sing about a lover done wrong.
He’d been relatively sure she’d seen him come in, though she hadn’t given any sign from the stage. But when her voice released the last tremulous note and she took her bow, she shifted into robin form and flew straight to his table. Easier than walking through the crowd, he supposed.
She switched back to human form, held up a finger to the nearest server, and dropped into the seat across from him. “Alistair. What are you doing here?”
“Getting drunk.”
The server brought a martini for Holly; magic had turned it a luminescent blue. “How many have you had?” she asked, popping an olive in her mouth.
“This is just my second. I’m planning on being here a while longer, though.” He stared at his gimlet. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
She winced. “I…I heard about The Pride. But Wanda’s okay, isn’t she? They said none of you were hurt by the fire.”
He thought about mentioning that he’d been stabbed in the shoulder at Bellinowski’s funeral, but decided not to bother.
“She’s okay, if you think going all-in on Sullivan’s schemes is okay.
” Holly’s lips parted, but before she could say anything, Alistair went on.
“We should’ve listened to you. Packed it in and hopped on the first train to LA.
I came here to tell you that, though I wasn’t sure if you’d already pulled up roots and gotten out. ”
She sighed. “Yeah, well. I’m going to. I just…I don’t know. I didn’t want to leave Wanda in the middle of the gang war, I guess.”
“The war’s over, so you should leave as soon as you can.” He finished off his drink and waved for another.
“Tell me what’s happening.”
So he did. All of it, from the Egyptian hex to Wanda’s deal to restore The Pride. Every word seemed to pile another stone on top of his heart, weighing it down past the floor, the ground, the sewers, into some place as dark and cold as the bottom of Lake Michigan.
“We’re never getting away from Sullivan now,” he finished. “If this fucking hex works—and Sam seems pretty damn sure it will—he’s going to be more than just another bootlegger. More than the Liquor King of Chicago.”
Holly’s dark eyes seemed to look into some memory he wasn’t privy to. “Are they really going to bring back the dead?”
Before he’d left the house, Alistair had gone to their bedroom and opened the drawer where he kept his mementos: his bronze Distinguished Service Cross, the ring Forrest had given him when they bonded, and Forrest’s enlistment photo.
Looking at his dead lover’s face, he had to ask what would happen if Sam was right. If Forrest could come back.
Would he be the same? Alistair certainly wasn’t. Too much life had happened since they parted at the train station, let alone since he’d felt Forrest die.
And his parents? He couldn’t really remember what they’d looked like, not in detail.
They’d come from Italy separately and met in America, their English heavily accented.
They’d had black hair and olive skin like him, and they’d both been unbonded familiars: his father a greyhound, his mother a water buffalo.
They wrote long letters back to their families in Italy, but he didn’t know what part of the peninsula either of them had come from, or who his kin were there.
Fur and feathers, he’d been so young.
The ancient hex seemed to offer hope to the bereaved, but he feared it was a poisoned pill, an adder curled in a rose. It was too good to be true, and so he didn’t, couldn’t, trust it.
Especially not in Sullivan’s hands. Even if it worked perfectly, if life could be restored to those who’d gone before without any consequences, Sullivan would find a way to corrupt it. It would become another way to collect power and wealth.
Sullivan would keep its secret his for as long as he could.
But what if the government decided it would be better in their hands?
Sullivan would eventually end up dead, and the same corrupt assholes who outlawed liquor while drinking from their own private bar would command the power of life and death.
The next war, soldiers would be resurrected and sent right back into the meat grinder. Depending on how the hex worked, it might even be more efficient to kill the wounded than treat them. Just bring them back restored, right there on the front.
“I think, whatever happens, it’s going to be a disaster,” he answered Holly at last. “We’re going to be tied to Sullivan for the rest of our lives, and the best we can hope for is not to die alongside him.
The Pride’s time has come and gone. We should have let go and found another, safer, way.
Now we’ll be chained to its resurrected corpse.
And Sam…he thinks he can fix his family, but he’s not the one who broke them.
Who knows, they might even be happy for a day, or a month, or a year.
But how long until they fall right back into old patterns? ”
“Yeah.” Holly’s gaze came back to the room, and she took a big swig of her martini. “I guess you’re right. I understand why Sullivan’s doing it, though. Besides the power it might give him, I mean. He lost his kid.”
“I know, but this…it’s wrong. I can feel it.” He shook his head. “It’s shitty, and it’s not fair, and I wish I could change the past, but…”
“Yeah,” she repeated. Then she upended her martini glass and drained it. “So what are we going to do about it?”
He lifted his glass. “Get drunk.”
“Really? Alistair Gatti? The man I met under fire in the Argonne Forest?” She cocked her head in disbelief.
“Alistair Gatti, who helped take down Ursino, defied Fabiano, and never met an argument he didn’t want to be a part of?
Who somehow, against all odds considering what an asshole he is, got Sam Cunningham to fall in love with him?
And now I’m supposed to believe the only thing that Alistair Gatti can think to do is give up? ”
Anger flickered through the darkness inside him. “Fuck you, Holly. What am I supposed to do, get out my claws and fight Wanda? Fight Sam?”
“No—I want you to fight for them.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. He wanted to argue, to say he’d done everything he could. But that flicker of anger had kindled something, even if it was just his contrary nature.
“To hell with it.” He tossed back his gimlet. “Let’s do this.”