M.L.N. HANOVER - Unclean Spirits

I had one set of finger-marks where a rider had stabbed me with its claws, and that alone was enough to keep me in a one-piece bathing suit.

“So how did you get into the business?” Karen asked me as she racked up a game of eight-ball. “All Eric’s doing? You break.”

I chose the stick that seemed least warped and took my place at the table. Karen leaned on the side, a bottle of Dos Equis in her hand. I knew the rules, but I’d never played pool before. I wasn’t about to admit it.

“More or less,” I said. “He left me everything when he died, and I kind of pieced it all together from there. The boys all know more about it than I do, really. Aubrey got into it because he’s really a parasitologist, and Eric thought maybe there was something there.”

“And Ex?”

I chalked the end of the stick, lined up the cue ball, and did my best. The report was loud and satisfying, and through blind luck two balls dropped into pockets, one solid and one striped. I figured that meant I could pick which one I wanted.

“Ex and Chogyi Jake had both worked with Eric, one time or another. I got in over my head, and I called Aubrey. Aubrey got the others,” I said, lining up what looked like a plausible shot on the nine. “The rest is history.”

Karen shook her head.

“I never pictured Eric as the kind of guy with a family,” she said.

“Everyone comes from someplace. He and my dad . . . didn’t get along. I was really glad to have Eric as an uncle, though,” I said. The nine went in its pocket too. I thought maybe the fifteen next. It would mean bouncing it off one of the sides, but it looked possible. “What about you? What does your family think about the whole combating abstract evil thing?”

“Nothing,” Karen said. “I was an only child, and my parents are both dead. There was a fire a couple years ago.”

“Jesus. I’m sorry,” I said.

Karen smiled gently and shook her head; she didn’t say anything. I took my shot as a way to avoid the increasingly awkward silence.

“Nice,” Karen said.

“Thanks,” I said. “So I don’t want to pry or anything . . .”

“Pry away.”

“How do you do it?” I asked, leaning on my stick. “I’ve been running around for the last six or seven months doing nothing but cataloging and studying and practicing little cantrips, and I don’t feel like I’ve got a clue what I’m doing. You know?”

“I do,” Karen said. “That never stops. You get better, you know more, but that feeling that you’re a fraud? You never get over it. At least I haven’t.”

A thick-wristed man with fading tattoos came up to the table, nodded politely, and put two quarters down on the rail. I realized how rude it was of me to hold up the game talking, lined up the twelve, and sank it.

“You have friends,” she said. “That counts for a lot. I miss having someone I could work with. Davis was a good man.”

It took me a second to remember that Michael Davis was the partner that Legba had killed, but Karen hadn’t noticed my momentary confusion. She kept talking, her voice taking on a distance.

“I sure as hell never meant to get here. I started out trying to stop bad guys. Drug smugglers, kidnappers, terrorists. And honest to God, I think I did some good. After Mfume, I figured out there was a whole class of bad guys I couldn’t even touch. And

because I wouldn’t let it go, I lost the bureau. Except Davis. And then I lost him too.

“We do what we have to,” she went on. “It’s not about whether we like it or not. Whether we’re particularly suited to it. We are what we are.”

“What doesn’t kill you, defines you,” I said and sank another ball. Pool was easier than it looked if I didn’t overthink it. Karen laughed.

“I hadn’t heard that version.”

“It’s from my ex-boyfriend’s favorite movie,” I said. “But I never bought that whole makes you stronger thing. Doesn’t leave room for cripples and maims you horribly.”

“Does it define you, Jayné?” Karen asked.

“What?”

“Fighting riders. Doing the things we do,” Karen said. “I wonder sometimes if this is really all that we are.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m not doing anything else these days. And before this, I was a college dropout with no family left who’d speak to me. By comparison, this is a pretty good gig.”

“It’s lonely, though,” Karen said. I looked up at her. Her pale blue eyes were locked on the distance. Her hair caught the neon of the signs and the flicker of the television. There were no lines on her face. She looked as young as me. Younger.

I thought of the last six months. Of being with Ex and Chogyi Jake and Aubrey. Of traveling the world

with my best and only friends. Of the power I had now to pluck out a credit card and buy a car or a house or an airplane. And I thought about how my life had been before. I took another shot, then stood up with only a vague satisfaction. I’d almost run the table.

“It really is,” I said.

The inner doors of the club swung open, and the sound of the televisions was suddenly competing with old-school Nine Inch Nails remixed— brilliantly, hilariously—with Pat Benatar’s “Hell Is for Children.” I started laughing. Karen’s eyes lit, her mischievous smile returned, and she dropped her cue stick on the table.

“Come on,” she said, taking my hand. “At least let’s show the bastards we can go down dancing.”

TEN

The house had been transformed. Where once it had seemed empty and maybe a little sad, our best efforts had made it downright creepy. Chogyi and Ex had gone through the place, carving sigils and symbols around every doorway, every window. Even the electrical outlets bore arcane markings in black ink and knife scratch. We hadn’t gotten beds, but futon mattresses lay on the floors of the bedrooms. A black leather couch squatted in the living room. We didn’t have a television or DVD player yet, so it was facing a bare wall.

Out back, the shed had been converted into a

prison cell. Security bars had been installed on the outside of the door, and an extra layer of two-by-fours encircled the structure, making it impossible to kick out a wall. On the inside, manacles were set in a deep hole of still-curing cement. Egg cartons and old rugs lined the walls and ceiling, swallowing sound.

On the upside, we had a refrigerator.

“Once we have Sabine here, it will be important not to go between the shed and the main house too often,” Ex said. His voice was thick and phlegmy. He sat on the couch with his hands between his knees and nodded to the back door. “The pathway itself isn’t warded. But, as long as Jayné is the one going to her, the risk is minimal.”

“Why’s that?” Karen said.

“She’s very difficult to see,” Chogyi Jake said. “Part of Eric’s protection of her.”

Karen nodded. Perhaps alone among us, the morning found her looking rested and ready for action. God knew I still felt pounded. We’d been out until sometime after four

AM. That alone didn’t bother me; my circadian rhythms had resigned in disgust days before. But I’d had a little too much to drink, gotten a little dehydrated, and danced to Goth and industrial music more or less nonstop when I wasn’t drinking. Three men and two women had hit on me that I noticed. I’d had to give one guy a fake phone number to make him go away. The whole thing left me feeling wrung out.

Everyone looked pretty wasted, except Karen who could apparently live on alcohol and loud music. Ex and Chogyi Jake had spent almost the whole night in occult work, preparing the house and shed. Aubrey had done the lion’s share of the carpentry and appliance installation. He sat on the floor now, early afternoon light slanting in the window and catching the beginning of stubble on his cheek. I wondered what he’d look like with a beard. Tired, I thought, but not because of the facial hair.