Daniel Abraham - Unclean Spirits

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

Yes, I wanted to say. I fought four people with guns to a standstill yesterday. I walked through Midian’s magic alarms like they weren’t there. I have more money in my backpack right now than I’ve ever had in my bank account. And what if whatever’s in here changes things again? I didn’t particularly like who I was last week, but at least I knew who I was.

“No,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

“You’re cool?”

“Cucumberesque,” I said.

I tightened my grip on the handle and pulled. The garage door shrieked in metallic complaint and rose up. Daylight spilled into a concrete cube behind it, smaller than an actual garage. White cardboard boxes were stacked three deep against the walls, and an industrial-looking set of steel shelves at the back supported a collection of odd objects. A violin case, a duffel bag, two translucent bowling balls, a stuffed bear with a wide pink heart embroidered on its chest.

It looked like a secondhand store, but it felt like a puzzle. I picked up the stuffed bear. The nap of the fake fur was worn, the thread that made its mouth was loose and thin with use. A child had loved this bear once. I wondered who that had been, and what had brought the beloved object here.

“I’ve got something,” Aubrey said.

He was standing beside the stack of boxes, the top one open. Looking over his shoulder, I saw a stack of three-ring binders with words stenciled on the spines: INVISIBLE COLLEGE-1970-1976. INVISIBLE COLLEGE-1977-1981. There were easily a dozen of them. Aubrey lifted one out and opened it.

“What is it?”

“Newspaper clippings. Lists of names and places,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t know what it all means.”

“Let’s get it in the car,” I said. I suddenly wanted very badly to just leave. “Let’s get as much of this out of here as we can and we’ll make sense of it later.”

He grunted in agreement and hauled the box out toward his car. I grabbed the next box and followed him. It wasn’t until we picked the duffel bag up off the shelf that we found the guns.

This is nice,” Midian said, chambering a round with the rolling sound that only shotguns make. He looked down the barrel and nodded his appreciation. “Good workmanship.”

Chogyi Jake and Aubrey were squatting by the coffee table. Three empty shells lay on the table’s edge, two small piles of debris in the center. Ex stood by the kitchen table, copying the diagrams from the Inca Street whiteboard onto a legal pad.

“They’re all loaded the same way,” Aubrey said. “Silver shot, rock salt, and I’m not sure what this is.”

“Iron filings,” Ex said. “According to this, he loaded them with silver, salt, and iron.”

“If he wasn’t sure precisely what form the rider took, that would cover a very broad range,” Chogyi Jake said.

“Or if he was loading for more than one,” Midian said. “You gotta remember, he was hiring on a loupine for muscle. They’re tough bastards, but not the last word in reliable.”

I sat on the couch, my knees drawn up to my chest, watching and listening. Through the evening, the four men had decoded Eric’s plan, details unfolding like petals falling open.

According to the calendar Eric had left us, the Invisible College was scheduled to begin the rituals that would summon riders and inject them into the new crop of initiates within the next day or two. As the ceremonies continued, the gap between the real world and what Eric called the Pleroma and Aubrey referred to as Next Door would turn permeable. Randolph Coin would be at his most vulnerable just before the final ceremony, scheduled for just after dawn on August 11, one week from today.

So now we had a countdown. Seven days.

In seven days, we were going to kill someone. The thought made my skin crawl. Or we were going to get the rat bastard who’d killed Eric, which felt better. My head kept bouncing between anxiety and wrath, like I was two different people.

“This is all from the one storage unit, right?” Ex asked, walking into the main room. “You didn’t make it to the other one?”

“No room in the car,” Aubrey said.

“We need to get to that other one,” Ex said. “I think it has props for the invocation to draw Coin out. We’ll need to inventory those.”

“I’ve got to…” I said, standing and heading for the back door. “Excuse me.”

I heard the silence behind me as I walked out into the backyard. I could feel their eyes on my back even after I closed the door. The yard was immaculate: the grass green as emeralds and freshly cut, mums in the flower beds threatening to bloom, a cherry tree with a little overripe fruit still on the branches making the air heavy with sweetness and corruption. I sat in the darkness and stared up at the moon. I saw the inked face of the blue-eyed woman.

The door slid open behind me, and then just as quietly shut.

“Hey. Are you all right?”

Aubrey looked uncertain in the dim light. He was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt with the logo of an old science fiction show, long since off the air. His hair was mussed. It occurred to me that we’d forgotten to stop by his labs at the university.

“I can’t do this,” I said. “We’re talking about murdering someone.”

He came to my side and lowered himself to the ground, legs crossed.

“I thought you understood,” he said. “These aren’t people. Not anymore. They’re-”

“Riders,” I said. “Spiritual parasites that have magic powers and take over people’s bodies. I understand that. I just…”

I closed my eyes and saw Midian fire his Lugar into the back of the woman’s head.

“Jayne?”

“I just don’t believe it,” I said. “I want to. But I don’t.”

“You think we’re lying?” he asked. The idea seemed to surprise him. I didn’t laugh, partly because it wasn’t funny.

“It isn’t about trust. I believe that you think it’s true,” I said. “That’s not the same. I grew up with a father who knew how the world worked. Who knew how God worked, and what was right and what was wrong. And I believed everything he said because he was sure. And then when it turned out that I wasn’t sure…”

I spread my hands.

“Knowing that you all believe it isn’t the same as believing it myself,” I said. “And I can’t do this if it isn’t true. I can go to the police. I can hire a bodyguard. I can do a lot of different things, but I can’t kill someone.”

Aubrey was quiet. I wanted to brush the hair away from his eyes. I wanted to ask him to forgive me.

“If you knew that riders were real,” he said. “If you had evidence that the world really does work the way we all say it does, could you trust me about Coin and the Invisible College?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably.”

He was silent for a moment, then sighed and looked up at the moon with me. I could feel the subtle warmth of his body. Somewhere nearby, a police siren rose and faded away. My stomach felt like I swallowed a bowlful of lead shot.

“You’re angry?” I asked.

“What? No! No, I’m not mad. I’m just thinking.”

“Did you believe it? When Eric came to you and told you all about this…this stuff. Did you believe it?”

“No,” Aubrey said. “He had to prove it to me.”

A minute later, he rose and walked slowly back into the house. I heard voices raised in conversation. Midian, Ex. I didn’t think Chogyi Jake ever raised his voice, so if he was talking I might never know. He reminded me of my mother that way.

I had ten thousand dollars in my pocket, less forty that I’d spent on pizza and beer for the bunch of them. I could Google private investigators tonight, make a half-dozen calls in the morning, and set hounds on Randolph Coin’s heels. If he was really the person who’d killed Eric, I could get the evidence and have the bastard thrown in jail for the rest of his life. I didn’t know why that seemed to make less sense than magical vigilantes taking on a society of evil wizards.