M.L.N. Hanover - Vicious Grace

“All right,” Ex said. “Thoughts and opinions?”

Aubrey was the first to speak.

“I don’t think he has much to tell. Apart from the data we’ve already gotten, he doesn’t know much. He’s resistant to actually working with us. I think he’s going to do as little as possible.”

“He did call us in,” I said. “That’s something.”

“It may have been a desperation move,” Chogyi Jake said. “And I think he’s regretting it.”

“Exactly,” Aubrey said. “That’s exactly the feeling I get.”

Kim cleared her throat, a small sound.

“I think you’re all being too harsh,” she said. “And what’s more, you’re missing the point.”

Aubrey stiffened like he’d been slapped.

“Well, you are ,” Kim said. “Oonishi’s a scientist, but he’s also human. He’s stumbled into something outside his frame of reference. It throws everything he’s ever done into question, so of course he’s frightened and trying to make it all go away. As I recall, your first experience with Eric wasn’t all that different.”

“ Mine? ” Aubrey said.

“You babbled for a week,” Kim said. “You did everything you could to convince yourself it was all some kind of elaborate joke. At least he’s not doing that. If you give him a year or two to get his head around the idea, he could be very useful. But, as I said, that isn’t the point. Even if he’s totally recalcitrant, something is happening at the hospital. And as of today, something with the potential for real violence. That makes it our responsibility.”

“Does it?” Aubrey said. “I mean, does it really ?”

“Yes,” Kim said.

Aubrey’s laugh was short and exasperated. A vague unease grew in my gut, like I was six again and listening to my father chiding Mom: an intimate disagreement between people who knew each other very, very well. For the first time, I wondered how Kim had felt about Oonishi’s joking suggestion of sexual impropriety. And whether Aubrey might be jealous.

“We do have some access to the dreamers,” Chogyi Jake said, and sipped his tea. “And the sooner we get our questions together, the sooner we’ll know what they said. It may be that nothing comes of it, or we might get lucky.”

“I’d like him to replay the dream for them,” Ex said. “Before any of the questions are asked, I want to see how they react physically when they see the thing.”

For a long moment, Aubrey seemed caught between two conversations: the argument with Kim and the planning session that Chogyi Jake and Ex were offering up to redirect it. Kim looked away, out the wide, dark windows. The angles of light and shadow made her look old. When Aubrey spoke, the effort in it showed.

“What kinds of questions do we want him to ask?”

For the next two hours, we built up a rough questionnaire and speculated on different kinds of riders, different flavors of magic. Kim and Aubrey relaxed slowly into the conversation, and my own unease faded even if it didn’t go completely away. Ex and Aubrey went on a long side track about the causes of shared dreams, including one particularly unpleasant one we’d all had once when something very powerful was looking for us. Kim suggested taking Oonishi’s dream data to someone who could do image enhancement, maybe put together the six versions of the dream to find more detail than we had in the raw feed. I had my laptop out and was typing up the instructions to my lawyer almost before Kim was done pitching the idea. It was nearly ten o’clock when, between one breath and the next, my BLT wore off. We hadn’t done anything sensible like grocery shop, but I found a late-night sushi bar that delivered.

By the time the five boxes of nigiri sushi and assorted hand rolls appeared, Kim and Ex were sitting on the floor together, going over the wording on our final list of questions, while Chogyi Jake and Aubrey and I watched the data files from Oonishi for what must have been the hundredth time.

It was like the air we were breathing had changed. Working together, all of us prodding at the same problem, exploring the same terra incognita, took all the history and baggage and awkwardness away, and left me with this small family I’d made for myself. We fought some; we pushed each other’s buttons sometimes. That was what family meant.

There was a moment just before Kim left at midnight when I stood back and let myself watch us all like we were on television. The way Ex sat, leaning forward, pushing back the lock of hair that had escaped his ponytail. Kim’s pinched, serious expression, and the dark circles under her eyes. The windows behind us all, night making them into mirrors so that the boat lights seemed to blink and shift through Chogyi Jake’s shoulder and past Aubrey’s head. It was a moment of real peace.

My high-water mark.

Morning shouldered its way past the thick curtains, pressing in around the edges. Aubrey, on the other side of my bed, muttered and pulled the pillow over his eyes. I tried to convince myself that the muzzy feeling in my head meant I could still fall back asleep. Ex coughed once in the kitchen. His feet shifted softly on the tile. Sunlight streaked the ceiling above me. I was awake.

My brothers aside, I’d seen only four men naked, and one of those had been a wholly awkward fifteen seconds with my dorm mate and her boyfriend. Aubrey, half under our shared sheet, was the oldest man I’d ever slept with. I’d always thought he was beautiful. Sure, he had a little belly, and his hair stood up like a metalhead’s from the eighties until he washed it down. I pulled on my robe quietly, watching him sleep. There were scars on his body, some of them the result of skirmishes against the possessed. There was damage I couldn’t see too. Spells that Uncle Eric had taught him that had taken a toll. And maybe other things.

I pulled my hair back with one hand so it wouldn’t brush against him, kissed the small of his back, and slipped out the door. The flood of sunlight didn’t wake him. I walked into the kitchen and the smell of fresh coffee.

“You’re looking thoughtful,” Ex said. “Anything wrong?”

“No,” I said with a yawn. “Just booting up. Where’s Chogyi Jake?”

“Meditating. As always.”

“I probably should do that too. I’m feeling . . . I don’t know. Restless,” I said, sitting at the small kitchen table. The view of Lake Michigan in daylight was astounding. It was the kind of thing you paid an extra million for. I wondered idly how much the condo had actually cost. The clock said it was almost nine o’clock, and I wasn’t sure if that felt too late or too early.

“You probably should,” Ex said. “Good news is he went shopping first. Bacon and eggs?”

“Oh, Jesus, please,” I said. “And tell me that’s not just coffee incense or something sadistic like that.”

Ex grinned and found a cup, rinsing the dust out of it before he poured. My laptop was still in the living room. I’d left it turned on, and the battery was empty. I strung the power cord to an outlet in the kitchen and waited for the operating system to finish bitching at me while I drank my coffee. After a year together, we all knew one another’s taste, and Ex made my coffee with just enough sugar and no milk.

“No word from Kim yet,” he said. I felt a wash of confused emotion: pleasure that Kim wasn’t there, shame at being pleased, and resentment for being made to feel shame. I knew I was being petty and stupid, but that didn’t stop it from happening. I covered by taking another drink of coffee before I answered.

“Were we expecting her?” I asked.

“Not particularly. I’m a little concerned about her going back into the hospital alone, though. After what happened.”