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Introduction

REUNION

By Christopher Farnsworth

Bestselling Author of BLOOD OATH and THE PRESIDENT’S VAMPIRE

A girl detective. A boy genius. A warrior princess. A young magician. Four young people with extraordinary gifts.

For years, they solved mysteries, caught crooks, and slayed monsters. They were secret heroes, keeping an idyllic small town in the middle of America safe from the things that lurked in the dark.

Then, the year of their high school graduation, the darkness came for them.

During what the media called “New Year’s Evil,” a demonic force rose to turn their hometown into a literal Hell on Earth.

They gathered to stop it. They fought. And they won.

The rest of the world never discovered the truth behind the disaster. For 20 years, the four tried living like normal people.

Now their past is coming back to haunt them.

The darkness is gathering once more. They’re summoned back to their hometown to face it, along with everything else they left behind. Whether they want to or not, they’ll have to be heroes again.

THE GIRL DETECTIVE

Carrie Keene — born with an eidetic memory, Carrie has been fighting crime since grade school, graduating from stolen bikes to federal felonies. But when she finds the sign of a murderous cult at a crime scene, she knows that she has to return home and re-open the case that everyone else would just as soon forget.

THE BOY GENIUS

Danny Sharp — the insanely smart heir to a high-tech fortune, Danny spent his childhood building jetpacks and robots, catching mad scientists and industrial spies. After losing his start-up in a corporate takeover, Danny returns to face the same evil that killed his father, and now waits for him.

THE WARRIOR PRINCESS

Alana Bright — born to a refugee from a mystical world, Alana always knew she was different. She carried a magic sword and killed the monsters that came out at night, keeping the daylight world safe. Once the final battle was over, she was ready to be normal. Her days are spent with her daughter, and she’s happy. But an old evil won’t let her walk away — and she will have to pick up her sword again to protect the people she loves most.

THE YOUNG MAGICIAN

Eric Weiss — a misfit plagued by disturbing visions, Eric learned early that all the demons and horrors he saw were real. This generation’s Merlin, Eric lost his powers two decades ago and has been doing card tricks in Vegas ever since. When his abilities return, he knows that his nemesis is alive again, too. Only this time, he’s not sure he wants to sacrifice himself for the greater good.

Together, they will have to finish what they started. Last time, they saved the world. This time, they’ll have to do something much harder.

They’ll have to save each other.

In a story that’s like Stephen King rewriting Nancy Drew, REUNION is about what happens when the good guys grow up.

Advance Praise for Reunion

“I’m a longtime fan of Christopher Farnsworth’s brilliant thrillers. Now I’m equally enthralled by REUNION, an incandescent horror novel where ancient legend meets the American heartland, with characters so real and engaging, I felt like I’ve known them since childhood. Farnsworth’s new novel is dark fantasy at its finest.”

— Elizabeth Hand, author of Hokuloa Road and Generation Loss

“Christopher Farnsworth combines myths old and new into a harrowing, gripping novel where the past and present of a small town's unlikely band of heroes collide, with the fate of the world — and their friendships — in the balance. Fans of Stranger Things, Yellowjackets, and well-told fantasy will love it.”

— Gwenda Bond, New York Times bestselling author of Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds and Mr. And Mrs. Witch

“REUNION is a gleeful horror/thriller mashup, about a group of former child heroes vanquishing the foes they thought they'd conquered back in high school. If you're thinking REUNION sounds like a poignant parable for the travails of adulthood, you're not wrong — but it's also hilarious, shocking, and genuinely suspenseful. There is no limit to Christopher Farnsworth's imagination.”

— Ben H. Winters, New York Times bestselling author of Underground Airlines and The Quiet Boy

“Like the Nicolas Cage of high-octane fiction, Christopher Farnsworth is a National Treasure — and REUNION is a classic slice of weird Americana, served like the best apple pie you ever tasted if it was laced with cyanide. You’ll scream, you’ll cry, and then you’ll go back to the home you left behind to face the darkness with your friends beside you. I wish I was reading it for the first time again myself.”

— Lavie Tidhar, World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Violent Century and By Force Alone

“With heart-pounding action and sly dialogue, REUNION is a book you’ll be thinking about long after putting it down. I loved it!”

— Brendan Reichs, New York Times bestselling author of Nemesis

“REUNION is the book I've waited for my whole life. When I was a kid, I inhaled all the adventures about young heroes — the Tom Swifts, the Nancy Drews, the kids who discover magic — and desperately wanted to know what happened to them when they grew up. Christopher Farnsworth gives us the answers in this banger of a book about four chosen ones who have to return home to take care of unfinished business. If it was just a witty, thrilling genre mashup, that would have been enough for me, but REUNION is more than that — it's also an affecting story about the pressures of being a child prodigy, the debts owed to family and friends, and the hard work of living the rest of your life. It's frickin’ brilliant.”

— Daryl Gregory, award-winning author of Spoonbenders and Revelator

Dedication

To Randy,

My companion on a thousand idiot adventures,

old bean to my old man,

my best friend.

Map

Quote

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

Nobody that matters, that is.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

Prologue

That Was Then

MIDDLETON. THEN.

Danny was the last to arrive, as usual. He pulled up to Eric’s house in the new Beemer he bought to replace the ElectriCar.

Eric went out to greet him in the driveway. He hadn’t been sure Danny would make it. Not because he thought Danny was scared — Danny didn’t get scared, not that Eric had ever seen. But he was the one still insisting there must be some kind of rational explanation, hanging onto his skepticism like it was a cross that might keep a vampire at bay.

(That didn’t always work, though. Eric knew from experience.)

So maybe Danny did get scared, after all.

Now he was here, unloading stuff from the Beemer’s trunk as if there’d never been any doubt he’d show. Eric helped him carry the duffel bag inside. Eric’s mom was spending the holidays with her new boyfriend at a crystal healing retreat in Sedona (she’d told Eric it was her Christmas gift to herself).

The girls were in the living room. Alana was wrapping her fists in long, leather cords, carefully fitting the iron spikes of her cestus over her knuckles. Carrie was strapping herself into a bulletproof vest, stolen from a locker at the station. They didn’t have any women’s sizes, so she looked like Eddie Murphy wearing his fat suit in The Nutty Professor.

Eric dropped Danny’s bag on the floor.

“Careful with that,” he snapped.

“Sorry. What is it?” Eric said.

Danny unzipped it and began assembling something out of the components inside, his movements quick and sure. “Dangerous,” he said. “I’d like to avoid anything exploding before we actually want it to explode.”

Carrie stepped over to take a closer look. “Seriously, what is it?”

Danny attached a pistol grip to a long barrel, then slapped in a battery pack.

“We know light hurts them, right? I figured a burst of coherent light should be enough to scatter them completely, just like a real shadow. So I pulled apart one of the industrial lasers in the lab and mounted it to a — ”

“Jesus Christ, Danny, are you saying you built a ray gun?” Carrie asked.

He gave them his usual look, as if he was gazing down from the great height of his mountainous IQ. “No,” he said, insulted. “It’s a PEW. A Plasma Emitter Weapon. It pushes light through a series of ruby crystal diodes to exponentially increase the output of — ”

He stopped when he saw the looks on their faces.

“Fine. It’s a ray gun.”

Eric looked at it, frowning. “What does it… do?”

Danny hefted the device and pointed it at the ceiling. “Hopefully, burn those things into oblivion.”

“No, I got that,” Eric said. “What does it do if it hits any people?”

Danny shrugged. “Should carbonize skin and bone at about ninety feet.”

“Jesus Christ, Danny,” Carrie said.

Danny scowled at her. “Does that thing shoot Nerf darts?” he asked, pointing to the holster on her waist.

Carrie put her hand on the butt of the gun. She had her father’s back-up weapon, a .44 Ruger Police Special. As far as he knew, it was locked away in his gun safe. But she saw him enter the combination when she was six years old. She remembered. Carrie didn’t forget anything. Ever.

Now Carrie felt the gun, heavy and solid, weighing her down like an anchor. Even with everything that had happened so far, the gun was what made it all real. They were going to go out there tonight. They were going to fight. And they were probably going to die.

But first, they were going to kill some things, and some of those things would be wearing the faces of people they knew. There would be blood, and pain, and no matter what else happened, they would be responsible for it. All of them.

So instead of answering him, she asked, “Are we ready to go?”

“Ready,” Alana said, her hand lightly on the hilt of her sword, which was strapped to her side. They’d never seen her in full battle gear before. For a moment, they were all struck dumb. In her armor, with her weapons, she looked magnificent. She practically shone with her own light.

She put a heavy coat over it all, and they managed to stop staring.

“Here,” Danny said. He took out little devices about the size of a deck of cards. Each one had a glass screen on the front. He showed them how to turn it on, and each screen lit up with rows of symbols.

“Personal communicators,” he said. “They use cell-phone signals, but they have cameras and computers inside as well. We can send pictures or video or text to one another if we have to. We can use these to keep in touch.”

Danny showed them how to tap each little symbol — the communicators had a touch-screen instead of a keypad — to make everything work.

“Cool,” Eric said. “When does Sharp Industries release these to the public?”

Danny made a face. “Never. My dad said nobody’s going to pay a thousand dollars for a cell phone. He hated the idea.”

All of them caught the past tense. None of them knew what to say.

Carrie broke the silence. “Well then,” she said. “I guess it’s time.”

Eric snapped his fingers, and a brilliant ball of light exploded in the air. This was the big show now. He had to be perfect. There were no second chances. Not tonight.

Danny hefted his not-a-ray-gun. Alana had her sword. Carrie put her coat on over her holster and the vest.

They were as ready as they would ever be. There was no sense putting it off any longer. They opened the front door. For a moment, they paused and stood on the threshold.

The boy genius, the girl detective, the young magician, and the warrior princess.

The street was empty. The streetlights seemed to be clouded, muddled by some extra layer of darkness. The few remaining drifts of snow were dirty, almost black. A bitterly cold wind picked up, and they all shivered.

The End waited out there for them. They could feel it.

Despite everything they had been through, everything they’d already done in their lives, they were scared. None of them had to say it.

Carrie took Danny’s hand, and he let her. Eric and Alana tried not to look, but for them, this was shockingly public behavior, as if they’d started kissing and tearing each other’s clothes off right there.

For one wild moment, they all had the same idea. What if they went back inside? What if they pretended none of it was real? What would happen if they just stayed home?

Then a car went past, filled with some of their classmates, all dressed for the Party Like It’s 1999 Dance. They had the stereo up and the windows down. They didn’t notice the murk filling the air. One of them threw a bottle out the window and it smashed against the curb, which everyone inside the car seemed to find hilarious. The driver stomped on the gas, and they barely missed a mailbox as they roared out of the neighborhood.

It seemed even quieter once the car was gone.

Eric couldn’t take the silence anymore. “Alana, I hear Mike Fuller is still looking for a date. You could be underneath him in a couple of hours if you want.”

“At least I can get a date,” Alana said. “Your big Saturday night is a box of tissues and a bottle of lotion.”

Carrie rolled her eyes, dropped Danny’s hand. “Hey. Will and Grace. Are we doing this or what?”

They looked at one another, then sort of shrugged and shuffled their feet. Even Danny smiled. Because he knew, like they all did, that they didn’t really have a choice.

Eric closed the door behind them, and they walked out into the night.

Some kids got to go to dances and go to parties and make out and sneak their parents’ booze. Some kids got to stay home, where it was warm and safe. Some kids got to grow up.

While other kids went out to face the things that waited in the dark.

All About Eric Weiss

NAME: Eric Weiss

ALL ABOUT ME!

Answer the questions and tell us about yourself. Please write clearly.

1. Who is in your family?

Me, my mom, and my dad.

2. Do you have any pets? What are their names?

I used to have a goldfish, but it died.

3. What does your father do?

He’s a lawyer.

4. What does your mother do?

She is a housewife runs a charity, paints, and learns yoga and Japanese.

5. Who is your hero?

Leonardo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tony Hawk

6. What do you want to do when you grow up?

I want to test video games for Nintendo.

1

The Young Magician

Eric Weiss realizes he is drowning. Actually drowning, not fake-drowning for the tourists from Boise and Beijing and Dusseldorf and Lexington. The quick-release bar on the water tank is stuck, so he can’t get out.

And all he can think is: God, he hates the matinees.

First of all, people bring their kids. As if he’s a clown giving away free balloons. Magic is not for kids, Eric thinks. He knows that better than anyone. The sign out front says, very clearly, Magic For Adults. Which means that there are showgirls. And what they show are their tits. Magic — stage magic, anyway — depends on distraction. That’s their job. They remove more and more of their glittery outfits as the show goes on.

As usual, they were down to their G-strings by the time Eric was wrapped in a straitjacket, chained up, then attached to a winch and dangled over the reinforced dunk tank.

Just like always, he’d given his lecture to the audience, hanging upside down over the tank. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to remember. This is real,” Eric told them. “If I am not out of these chains in three minutes, I will drown. So please, keep your eyes on the timer. Maybe dial 9 and then 1 on your cell phones. My life literally depends on it.”

That kept everyone’s eyes on the big clock on the wall instead of on him. Misdirection again.

Then, splash, he was in the water, and one of the girls drew the curtains around the tank.

Before tonight, Eric had this routine down so he could get out in two minutes. This is how it usually works: he pops his shoulder out of its socket and shucks off the straitjacket. (This is why he takes a Vicodin every night before bed and why he can’t shoot a basketball anymore, but hey, nobody said show biz was easy.) Then he takes the key to the padlocks out of his hidden pocket, and presses the button on the trick manacles on his feet.

This all went fine. He can hold his breath underwater for at least four minutes. He’s been doing this twice a day, five times a week, for four years now. And he’s done similar acts all over Vegas for almost fifteen.

Usually all he has to do next is flip the hidden latch on the tank, and get out. He’s supposed to climb the hidden catwalk, go around to the back of the theater and zipline to the stage, flying right over the heads of the audience, thus bringing a small moment of wonder into their jaded, dreary lives before they return to the buffet and the slots. Easy-peasy.

But the goddamn latch won’t open.

Which means Eric is actually drowning.

He’d noticed the latch was sticking yesterday, and he asked Gordon, the ancient stage manager, to check it.

Right before the show, he’d asked again. “Did you have a chance to look at it?”

“Sure,” Gordon said.

That didn’t exactly fill Eric with confidence. “And?”

Gordon, veteran of maybe a hundred thousand Vegas shows, had stared at Eric for a moment in silent contempt. “It’s fine,” he said.

Now he pounds his fist against the latch, the water slowing his movements.

Fucking Gordon.

Eric thinks about what’s going on outside the tank. In his head, he’s been counting. Two minutes, forty-two seconds. He knows that despite themselves, they’re starting to wonder. Some of them will be holding their own breath, trying to see if they can last as long as Eric. They can’t. That’s how they know it’s all fake.

But what if it’s not?

Well. This will be a hell of a story for the audience to tell when they get back home.

Don’t panic, he tells himself. Don’t raise your heart rate, don’t increase the body’s need for oxygen.

His lungs are burning. Eric expels a stream of bubbles through his nose. It’s the CO2 build-up that gets you, makes you want to breathe. He can buy himself a little more time. He flips around, kicks against the latch and the glass as hard as he can. Still nothing.

He wonders if Kendall, the showgirl he’s been seeing, is worried about him. She’s very young. Really too young for him. She hasn’t figured out she can do much better than dating the magician.

And honestly, he should be past hitting on showgirls. He’s going to be forty in a couple of years. It never ends well. They’re either at the start of a bigger career or the end of a small one, either on their way up or on their way out.

While Eric stays in Vegas. Doing the same tricks, over and over again.

No. She’s not worried. Nobody will come to rescue him. They will think he’s running long. Possibly hungover. In fairness, it’s happened before.

Three minutes, thirty-four seconds.

Eric’s vision is going dim at the edges. He’s got nothing left in his lungs to exhale. His hands are cut and bleeding as he tugs and pulls at the latch. He might be panicking a bit now.

Once upon a time, he could walk through walls. He could burn through metal and call down lightning and even fly. He could shuffle through realities like a deck of cards and select the one he needed.

Once upon a time, he did real magic, just by snapping his fingers.

He lost that a long time ago.

Four minutes, five seconds. Six. Seven.

Everything narrows down to a small tunnel, and Eric sees something rushing toward him.

Colchester: a face like a skull, burned down to the bone on one side, the smile pulled into a leer by the melted flesh of its cheek.

Colchester opens his mouth and laughs at Eric. His breath smells like an open grave. “You thought you won.”

“You’re dead,” Eric says, and a part of his mind registers the water flowing into his mouth as he speaks.

“So are you,” Colchester says.

Eric feels heavy. Sleepy. Something important occurs to him. If Colchester is back — if he’s really back — that means something for him, too. If Colchester is back, then the magic might be back, too.

Eric snaps his fingers.

Something bright explodes in his vision. The glass wall of the tank shatters.

He flops out onto the stage like a dying fish, soaking wet, as the screams reach his ears. The showgirls cluster around him quickly. It’s Kendall who gets to him first. He remembers she worked as a lifeguard every summer in college. She helps him to his hands and knees and pounds his back.

Eric pukes out tank water amid the shards of broken glass on the floor.

He can see the audience beyond the stage lights. They are almost all on their feet, mouths open in genuine wonder and terror.

At least they got their money’s worth.

Eric looks offstage and spots Gordon, slowly backing away. They lock eyes for a moment.

Then Eric leaps to his feet and launches himself at the old man.

Two hours later, Eric limps up the stairs to his apartment. All things considered, it could have been worse.

He dragged Gordon out from backstage — he had already been running for the door, the coward — and pinned him in front of the knife-throwing target. By the time security arrived, four hundred tourists had watched him assault the stage manager.

He didn’t really blame the casino for firing him. Eric felt he was justifiably angry, but he couldn’t explain that when he looked at Gordon, for a moment he still saw Colchester’s face. He could barely explain that to himself. He is pretty sure that he must have been hallucinating. Lack of oxygen firing random neurons in his brain. There’s no way he saw Colchester, no way he broke open the tank with a magic ball of lightning. Those days are long gone.

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