M. Hanover - Graveyard Child

Some things stay the same.

The morning after I talked to my lawyer, the report was delivered by special courier. The carefully anonymous pages had become familiar over the years. I lay on the bed in my sweats and a T-shirt, scratching Ozzie with the heel of my right foot, and went over the pages. The Invisible College had fallen apart after their leader died, but in recent months about half a dozen much smaller, much less organized groups had started to re-form from the ruins of the old one, usually with some central figure taking the role that Randolph Coin had occupied. In Montreal, it was a woman named Idéa Smith who might or might not have been the blue-eyed woman with the shotgun. In Mexico City, Eduardo Martinez, who was apparently immune to having a decent picture taken. In Los Angeles . . .

“Bingo,” I said. Ozzie shifted her ears forward.

Jonathan Rhodes had turned twenty-eight in May, putting him about one presidential election ahead of me. He’d been inducted into the Invisible College ten years before. Before that, he’d been a musician. He’d studied economics and literature at Tulane for three semesters before he fell in with members of the College. The pictures of him were unmistakable. He had the kind of boyish face that would still look young when he was sixty. Even with a full head of brownish hair and none of the tattoos that covered him now, I recognized the man who’d broken my nose.

The report went on to detail what the three new leaders had been doing, more or less, in the years since their own superior died. I skimmed most of it. The important thing for me was what they were doing now, apart from kicking in my family’s doors and windows. The answer wasn’t particularly satisfying. Since the end of summer, they’d been absent. Vanished. Gone underground like they were hiding from something. There wasn’t a solid date when they’d vanished, but it looked to me like it had gone down right about the same time I’d been in Chicago. I wanted there to be a connection between the two, and maybe there was one. I just didn’t see it.

I got to the last page of the report. A list of outstanding questions that the investigator was looking into now—recent whereabouts, funding sources, activity on the Internet—with the promise that more information would be provided as soon as the questions had reliable answers. Given that I’d only asked for the report the night before, I was impressed they’d managed this much.

I tossed the report on my pillow and got up. My body suffered a kind of all-over soreness that I hadn’t felt before. Each individual muscle seemed to ache just a little bit, so there wasn’t anything I could do, any motion I could make, that didn’t bug me at least a little bit. My face still throbbed if I stood up or sat down too quickly, and the girl in the mirror looked pretty rough. Blood had pooled under both my eyes, and the bridge of my nose had a little shift that it hadn’t had before. I washed my face gently. Probably I should have gone to a doctor. If it was important to me later, I could have a plastic surgeon rebreak everything and put it back together. Probably it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. I told myself the new nose added character, took a quick shower, and got some clothes on. Ozzie was standing by her food bowl and wagging her tail at me when I got out. She was almost finished with her breakfast when Ex’s soft knock came at the door.

“I think it’s your boyfriend,” I whispered into her soft ears, then opened the door. Chogyi Jake was with him, and they’d brought pancakes. Ex also had a pair of massive 1960s sunglasses with lenses that stretched down past my cheekbones and covered my shiners. My friends were the best people ever. They took turns reading the report while I ate.

“We have their guns,” I said when they were both finished. “I was thinking maybe we could use that to make some kind of connection back to them. Figure out where they are?”

“Would be better if we had something with blood on it,” Ex said.

“And even then,” Chogyi Jake said, “the Invisible College can be difficult to track.”

“That’s why I was thinking magic. I know they can cast glamours and look different. I thought if we could use my rider, maybe—”

“They’re also hard to locate that way,” Ex said.

“Kind of the way I am?”

“Like that,” he agreed.

“Well, piss. Back to the first plan, then? At least Mom won’t be that hard to find.”

PLAINS IMMANUEL Fellowship was in an A-frame building with buff-colored brick on the first story and white clapboard above that where the chapel ceiling rose up. Looking at the five low stone steps that led to its doors was like hearing a familiar voice speaking my name. Everything about the building was clear in my mind—the fluorescent-backlit stained glass in the hall outside the pastor’s office, the blond wood of the pews, the damp smell of the children’s classroom in the basement. All of it was clear. The building itself seemed like a person. Like another member of my family. Part of me wanted to go in just to be there. To breathe that air again and see if it really was all just the way I remembered, or if by changing myself I’d changed it too.

There was a new sign out by the road, also done in brick and almost the same color as the building. It had a section of white with black movable letters. Today, they spelled out FEAR THE LORD, AND YOU’LL HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR. Every time I read the words, I was torn between amusement and anger.

Ex and I sat in the SUV across the road, watching. Chogyi Jake was out in the cold wind, huddled into a flight jacket with a stocking cap pulled down over his ears, making his tour of the building’s perimeter. Looking for the enemy. When he was done, he’d get back in the rental car we’d hired so that we could have more than one option in case of an attack. I’d popped for the full insurance on the rental. I’d gotten a coffee from a Scooter’s Coffee & Yogurt. Ex had too. My mother had gone in the church about an hour ago. I’d turned off the music when we got there because I had the idea that it wasn’t the sort of thing that went with shadowing someone. Between the heater, the engine, and the wind, there could have been a George Thorogood concert going on inside and I wouldn’t have known it, but I didn’t turn my Pink Martini back on.

The doors opened, and I leaned forward, my hands on the steering wheel. A man in a gray suit came out and trotted to the parking lot. I sat back while he revved his engine and pulled out into traffic. I didn’t know what exactly Mom was doing at church, but I didn’t think there were services at this time in the morning. Something to do with the wedding, I guessed. Or else something to do with me.

“Are you all right?” Ex asked.

He looked good. He’d put a glamour on himself. It was one of the cantrips Eric had taught him, back when they’d worked together. Back before any of us had known what Eric was. As a result, his own wounds and bruises were invisible, as if they’d healed overnight. He looked like a perfect version of himself unless I really focused on him, and then all the damage became clear. Not a bad metaphor for the rest of him either.

“I’m . . . I don’t know. I’m fine. You guys keep asking that. Do I look like I’m about to start sprouting tentacles or something?”

“You’re quiet,” he said.

“And I’m usually loud?”

His smile was sly, and it made him look better.

“You’re not usually quiet.”

The church door opened, and this time it was my mother walking out. She wore a simple blue dress that looked too slight for the weather, a thin coat, and a wool scarf that fluttered behind her like it had someplace else it wanted to be. I scooped up my phone and called Chogyi Jake.