M. Hanover - Unclean Spirits

“Yes,” I said. “Not very well, though. The only one who really got a look at us was the one I kicked.”

“You two should sit in the backseat all the same,” Candace said. I must have looked surprised at her tone of voice, because she shrugged and went on. “It makes you harder to see. Basic tactics.”

I began to wonder if I’d underestimated the woman.

“All right,” I said. “I don’t know that it’s a plan, but it’s at least moving toward one. Give me a couple minutes to get presentable.”

Aaron nodded, but he was looking at the MapQuest printouts. Candace leaned over his shoulder, her brow furrowing.

“You don’t think he’d take Speer?” Candace said.

“I’d take Colfax and I- 25,” Aaron said. “I don’t know why you’d want to keep to surface streets.”

“What about heading out Federal and going south?”

“Better than Speer,” Aaron agreed.

I snuck back to my room. I didn’t figure there was time for a shower, but I did my hair up in a bun and put on clothes that looked less like I was dressing myself out of Eric’s secondhand shop. Jeans, T-shirt, tennis shoes. I even dug up a mostly cleanish bra that wasn’t so dark it would show through the white of the tee. I hung my leather backpack on one shoulder and considered myself in the bathroom mirror. Halfway to respectable, me.

I couldn’t restrain myself and checked e-mail before I went back out. There was nothing. I turned the laptop back off.

The debate of routes from Coin’s place to the speaking engagement had turned into a full-on council of war while I was gone. Aaron was squatting on the floor in front of an unfolded map of the city, marking out a route in yellow highlighter. There were already other paths in green and blue. Kim was on the couch alone now, leaning forward and listening intently to Candace and Aaron debate. Chogyi Jake was still on the hearth. I touched his shoulder and nodded to the kitchen. We went past Midian without disturbing the planning session in progress.

Chogyi Jake’s expression was concerned, but there was still the hint of laughter at the corners of his bloodshot, exhausted eyes. I had the impulse to take his hand, but didn’t do it.

“I wanted to apologize,” I said. “I know there’s not a real reason to, but I wanted to do it anyway.”

“I accept,” he said without hesitation. “What was it you were apologizing for?”

“Going without you,” I said. “For putting this whole thing together and not having you be part of it.”

“I have my role,” he said. “With the Invisible College tracking me, I wouldn’t have been much use for this part.”

“I know that,” I said. “It’s just…I don’t want you to feel like I cut you out. I don’t want you to feel like I’m leaving you behind or something. I’m…”

I gestured ineffectively. Chogyi Jake gently pushed my hands back down toward my sides.

“You’ve had to put a lot of people behind you, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Your mother and father. The friends you had in college.”

I was more than a little embarrassed at the tears that sprang to my eyes.

“Okay,” I said. “Putting too fine a point on it now.”

“What you’ve done here? It’s exactly the sort of thing Eric would have chosen. This was the way he lived. When a situation arose, he gathered the people he needed to address it. When the work was complete, he moved on. If you’re taking up his work apart from this one last project of his, it’s going to be the kind of life you lead too.”

“But he had friends. He had people he could count on. People he could trust,” I said. And then, “Didn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” Chogyi Jake said. “He was a difficult man to know well. Perhaps he’d seen too much. I know you much better than I ever did him. And I care for you more.”

I grabbed a sheet of paper towel and wiped my eyes. Chogyi Jake stood silently, bearing witness without offering to hold me or turning away. I loved him a little bit for that.

“Okay,” I said. “So here’s the thing. I care about you too, and I’ve got to go do this thing. And I know you can’t do it with me. But it’s not because you aren’t really, really important to me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And you’re going to be here. In the house. When I get back?”

“I am.”

“You aren’t going to take off on me.”

“I’m not.”

“Fucking promise.”

He grinned.

“I fucking promise,” he said.

I took a deep breath, then another, then another, letting each one out slowly until I was back under control. Chogyi Jake was smiling gently. He looked tired. If I’d let myself think about it, I wouldn’t have done it. I leaned in and kissed his cheek the way my mother used to when I was a kid. He laughed.

“Okay,” I said, loud enough for it to carry into the living room. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

The heat was worse than it had been before. Candace drove a two-year-old Saturn sedan, and even with the air-conditioning turned up high enough that Kim and I had to lean forward to hear and be heard, the backseat still felt like a sauna. On the streets, the trees seemed to wilt under the press of sunlight. Pedestrians reclined at the bus stops like prizefighters between rounds.

“There’s supposed to be a cold front moving in,” Aaron said over his shoulder. “It always gets like this right before the heat breaks.”

I squinted into the sun.

What does the secret lair of an evil wizard look like? It was two stories high with a red tile roof and stucco I could only think of as Realtor beige. Across the street, there was a wide park where improbably green grass looked like a very short jungle. We circled the block once, Aaron watching the house as if it might move. Kim murmured under her breath, and I had the feeling she was doing something not entirely natural with her will.

“Okay,” Aaron said. “Here’s the thing. There are a lot of different ways he can go from here to there. I’m thinking that our best option is to take him out close to one of the ends. Either here when he’s heading to the speaking thing or downtown when he’s leaving afterward.”

“There are going to be more wards and protections here,” Kim said.

“On the other hand, there are going to be more innocent bystanders downtown,” I said. “If there’s going to be a fight, I’d rather have it someplace where no one’s likely to get hurt. By mistake, I mean.”

“If we find the right site, it won’t be an issue,” Candace said.

“You sound like you’ve done this before,” I said.

“Nah,” she said, with a nod toward Aaron. “I’ve just been hanging out with him too long.”

We spent two hours driving different routes back and forth between Coin’s neighborhood and the convention center. The convention center itself was a huge glass-fronted building like an aquarium built for people. The streets downtown were busy and almost all one-way, usually not the one we wanted. There were two places-one near the convention center, the other down near Coin’s house-that particularly excited Aaron’s interest.

Kim, sitting beside me, seemed to grow more and more withdrawn through the day. At about half past three, I called a break, and Candace drove us a couple of blocks to the Rock Bottom Brewery at the Sixteenth Street mall. We sat on the patio so that we could actually hear one another. In the shade, it wasn’t too bad. With a cold beer, it was better.

“Okay,” I said after we’d ordered some food. “What have we got so far?”

“I think we can take him out by the convention center without there being too much risk of it spilling over,” Aaron said. “It’ll mean taking him by surprise, but-”