M. Hanover - Graveyard Child

“True,” I said. And then a moment later: “I’ve had worse.”

Ex sighed and Ozzie sighed with him. “You have, haven’t you? You know, I think back to the girl I met in Denver.”

“You mean when you were helping hide the corpses of the Invisible College people I’d helped Midian kill?”

“That was the night.”

“And what do you think about when you think about that girl?”

Ex’s expression went sober. “That she was fragile. And she was lost. When you found out reality wasn’t what you thought it was, it shook your world. All of it. Now it’s happened three or four times in as many days, and you’re wondering what your long-term plan should be. You’re not the same person you used to be.”

“I am, though.”

“All right,” Ex said. “Then maybe I’m just seeing how much better you are at being her. Now, lay down and close your eyes. You don’t have to sleep, but you do have to rest.”

The pillow felt better than it had any right to. I kept looking outside for the first light of dawn, but it would be hours yet. There was traffic, though. Men and women going to their work, the city pulling itself awake after another long night’s rest. I felt my mind beginning to wander. I wondered what Jonathan Rhodes had done about his broken door and whether Jay would ever find a way to be happy married to Carla. If Curtis would have the courage to go to a secular university, and whether it would be easier for him because he was a guy and the youngest.

My closed eyes felt perfectly comfortable and my body still and calm. Somewhere inside me, the young Black Sun might be resting or thinking or waiting for some event or opportunity. The more I’d learned about her, the more I trusted her. Not a perfectly rational response, I thought, but at least it’s mine.

Ex was right. I had changed. I thought of the things that had uneased and unsettled me, not just when I got to Denver. When, in Arizona, my boyfriend’s circle decided to eject me from their clique, it had been devastating. I’d dropped out of college because I’d been distracted by something that didn’t matter to me now at all. When I’d found out, after falling into bed with Aubrey, that he was technically still married, I’d thrown a fit. When I’d met Karen Black, just standing next to her had left me feeling inadequate.

I could remember all those events, all those feelings. But I couldn’t imagine having them now. Even coming home, seeing my parents again, seeing Jay. It hadn’t been easy, but four years ago it wouldn’t have been possible. The thought was comforting. I liked the younger Jayné who’d made her decision and stuck by it. I liked the one who’d decided to let herself be seduced by a man she basically didn’t care about as a rite of passage into the new life she’d chosen. I’d made some stupid decisions, but they were mine, and there was as much to love about where they had brought me. Except for the hiding behind wards in a hotel room. That part wasn’t an emblem of success.

I heard Ozzie jump off the other bed and pad stolidly across to the bathroom. She drank out of the toilet. Voices came in the corridor and went. I drifted by degrees down toward sleep.

And then I sat up, my heart pounding and my blood electric. Ex turned to me, alarmed.

“What’s the matter, Jayné?” Chogyi Jake asked from the other bed.

“I never told Jay where we were staying,” I said, “and he found us here anyway.”

We drove to Jay’s house in the rising light of dawn. The streets were filled with the traffic of the city. The snowstorm was only getting worse, wind whipping the traffic signals until they swayed. Ozzie, in the backseat with Ex, whined softly under her breath, and I didn’t know if she was worried by the weather or if she was just picking up on my fear. I hadn’t told anyone where we were staying. And then the evil little bastard had used Chogyi Jake’s blood to find us. And then Jay had appeared. I’d been so focused on the Invisible College and Carla that I hadn’t questioned it.

“We aren’t certain yet,” Chogyi Jake said. “There may be another explanation.”

“He’s my older brother,” I said. “He was born before Eric broke off his whole angels-in-America thing with Mom. It had plenty of chances to put a rider in Jay and pull it out again. And it didn’t crawl through my family through the whole twentieth century with a few extra decades on either side by not having a backup plan. I should have seen this.”

“The opportunity was there,” Chogyi Jake agreed. “I’m only saying we should be certain before we do anything drastic.”

Drastic. He meant we shouldn’t kill Jay out of hand. Well, fair enough. We shouldn’t. I needed to get Rhodes and his pals together to bind the thing. The only comfort I had was that someone knew a way to beat this thing, even if that someone wasn’t me.

A particularly vicious blast of wind caught the SUV broadside and rocked us a little as I swung around in a wide left turn. Another two miles and we’d be there. I wished now that I hadn’t called Jay, that I hadn’t told him about meeting with Rhodes or that I knew about the Graveyard Child or any of it. But if I was right, it still wouldn’t know I’d figured out who it was. I had to hope that tiny advantage was something I could use.

“I’m a little surprised, though,” Ex said. “I made the mother for it.”

“She is certainly qliphotic,” Chogyi Jake agreed. “On the other hand, if it had been in her, she wouldn’t have seemed so desperate to take in Jayné’s rider.”

“Fair point,” Ex said.

“Guys,” I said.

The little house loomed up from the blowing snow like a ghost. A single light was on. His car wasn’t there. Ozzie’s whimpering grew louder, and she pawed Ex nervously. I got out of the car, my senses straining for anything. A smell, a movement, any sense that something was there. The malaise I’d felt the last time I was here seemed less like a reflection on Jay and his impending loveless marriage. It seemed more sinister, like the nature of the building itself had been changed by being too near something evil. I walked up the unshoveled walk. The ghosts of footprints still showed, slight indentations in the gray snow. Chogyi Jake trudged up behind me.

I rang the doorbell and waited. The cold felt like a slap. Chogyi leaned to look in past the closed blinds. The freezing wind whistled and shook, driving snowflakes sharp as powdered glass against us. I dug my phone out of my pocket and called Jay’s number again, listening for the ring coming from the house. I hung up without leaving a message.

“Not here,” Chogyi Jake said.

“Nope. So where?”

We stood, looking at the closed door for a few more seconds, then he turned and headed back to the car. I started to do the same, but then my body stopped. Without my willing it, my feet took two steps in toward the door. The Black Sun pressed my ear against the wood. I heard Chogyi Jake’s footsteps creaking in the snow behind me. I heard the shifting, restless wind. And then I heard what the Black Sun had wanted me to hear.

I heard a woman sobbing.

“Carla!” I shouted over the storm. “Are you in there? Please, Carla, open the door! I know what’s wrong. I can help!”

The sobbing grew more violent—louder but not closer. I looked at the dead bolt, the frame of the doorway. I put my hand against the freezing metal. There. It was small but unmistakable. The house was warded.

“Carla,” I shouted. “I can’t break the door in. You need to come open it.”

Nothing.

“Carla, it’s Jayné. I can help you, but you have to come talk to me. There’s going to be something in there. A line of ash or salt in front of the windows and doors. You have to help me get across that. I can help you.”