Daniel Abraham - Unclean Spirits

“We didn’t know it was going to blow up on us,” I said, accepting one of the cups. The coffee smelled rich and tasted just bitter enough to forgive the donut. “Aubrey knew I wouldn’t be able to kill Coin unless I was sure that all this talk about riders and magic was true. He didn’t think this thing with the dog was going to be dangerous.”

“Well, he’s paying the price of that little fuckup,” Midian said.

Something in the way the dead man spoke made my gut clench, suspicion suddenly burning through me like a cold fire. I put down the coffee cup and wiped the sugar off my lips with the back of one hand. Midian raised his ruined eyebrows.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “What price?”

The pair were silent for a moment, some unspoken calculation passing between them. Chogyi spoke first.

“Riders are very powerful. Magic-violating the rules of the world-it comes easily to them. For humans, using your will or qi or whichever name you put to it…is more difficult,” Chogyi Jake said slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. “Even of the people who learn about magic, few ever do more than small cantrips. Changing how you perceive things, for example. Making yourself charismatic or more difficult to remember. They’re things that are very much like what we all do anyway, every day. We focus our will to it, and it becomes more effective. When you start to do things that affect objects or violate the customs of nature-the sorts of things that riders manage by nature-those are more difficult.”

“The alarms at the apartment, for instance,” Midian said. “Those were a sweet sonofabitch to set up. If it wasn’t me and Eric doing it together, wouldn’t have been possible.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Eric knew more than any man I’ve ever met, and he taught things to some of us that are…advanced. Possibly optimistic. Aubrey bound the haugtrold with a very powerful magic. It is called the Voice of the Abyss. Or Calling Da’ath. There are other names for it. It…it isn’t something that is invoked lightly.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Jesus wept,” Midian said. “He used a tool that was stronger than he was, and it smacked him one. It’s no worse than smoking a few thousand cigarettes. That’s as much as you need to worry about, okay?”

“How badly did it hurt him?” I asked, my eyes on Chogyi. He didn’t look away.

“Every time he makes that invocation, it becomes easier for his soul to come free of his flesh,” he said. “Easier for him to die. Illness will be harder to recover from. Wounds slower to heal. There is no simple way to measure it, but at a guess, stunning the haugtrold cost him a year of his life.”

I closed my eyes and pressed my hand to my mouth. I felt like I was going to be ill. The coffee I’d drunk haunted the back of my tongue.

“I’ve got to…I’m going to be right…” I said as I walked away. Neither of them tried to follow me. I found my way back to my bedroom-Eric’s bedroom-and then the little bathroom. I turned up the shower until the steam was billowing out, then took off the robe and stood under the near-scalding water.

I had thought the adventure was only that: a scrape with danger that had netted us a few cuts and bruises and restored an innocent victim of these parasites to his own body again. We’d saved Candace Dorn from whatever violence and misery the rider had intended. Go us.

Go me.

Now it turned out Aubrey had done himself permanent damage saving me, and I was furious with myself because of it. Furious and guilty and a little frightened. I’d brought him into the situation. My need to understand, my need for proof that had seemed so important before seemed petty now. If I’d just had faith, he wouldn’t have been hurt…

I soaped up as best I could with a still-swollen knee and a shoulder that didn’t bend as well as I was used to. The hot water made my stitches ache, and when I finally got out, the towel came away slightly red when I patted the wound dry. It hurt, but I figured I deserved a little pain.

I dressed slowly, in my own clothes this time. Somehow putting on another of Eric’s shirts seemed wrong at the moment. Old blue jeans. Pink Martini T-shirt. Just me. Just Jayne. No demon hunting, no magic, nothing that would put anyone in danger on my account.

The bedroom door was still ajar. The sound of conversation had moved from the kitchen to the couch, but I didn’t go out to join them. Instead, I slipped into the guest room and closed the door behind me.

Aubrey was still asleep. Now that I knew to look for it, I noticed his skin had a gray tinge I didn’t remember. His breathing was deep and slow. I sat on the edge of the mattress, my weight pulling Aubrey toward me. He looked younger when he was asleep. None of the small lines that time was starting to etch in the corners of his eyes or mouth showed. I could see what he’d looked like when he was a child. I drew a lock of hair back from his face with my finger. The swelling around his left eye had gone down, but there was still the darkness of a deep bruise like a shadow inside his skin. A scab ran from his collarbone to hide under the sheet.

His eyes opened a fraction, hazel eyes looking up at me through sand-colored lashes. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see me.

“Hey,” I said softly.

“Hey,” he said. He drew an arm free of the sheet and I took his hand in mine. I could feel my heartbeat ramping up, the adrenaline flushing into my blood as I leaned forward and kissed him. His lips were rougher than I expected, stronger. I sat back up and his smile had a soft humor in it, like he was amused by something that was also a little sad.

“I’m still dreaming, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You totally are.”

“Thought so,” he said, and closed his eyes again. I held his hand for a moment, then stood up and made my way back out to the living room.

“All I’m saying is that we can sound out how worried Coin is by his actions,” Ex, returned, said from a perch on the couch’s armrest. “If he’s moved the ceremony someplace else, then we can say for sure that he’s still on high alert.”

“And if he hasn’t?” Midian asked, gesturing with a lit cigarette, an arc of blue smoke trailing the movement.

“Then we know he’s not worried enough to move it,” Chogyi Jake said. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“A little reconnaissance,” Ex said. “Once we have more information, we can make a better judgment on how to go forward.”

“Could someone get me up to speed here?” I asked, sitting down carefully.

“Eric’s notes,” Midian said. “He knew where Coin’s little party was supposed to be. A warehouse up north. The bare bones of the plan were pretty simple, but timing’s an issue.”

“After a certain point in the ceremony itself, riders under Coin’s dominion are committed,” Chogyi Jake said. “They can’t break off until their invocation is complete. Even if Coin suddenly walks out, they won’t be able to disengage quickly enough to follow him.”

“They’d lose the whole crop,” Midian said. “Thing is, I can pull Coin out. Well, I can’t, but someone else can, using me as a focus.”

“I’m lost,” I said.

“There’s a kind of connection that’s made when you curse someone,” Ex said, “so by cursing Midian, Coin also made a connection between them. Eric was planning to exploit that connection to pull Coin out beyond his protections, so that someone could kill him.”

“I don’t want to do something that’s going to hurt anyone. I mean any of us,” I said.

“I’ll be badly tired,” Chogyi Jake said, “but I’ll recover. It doesn’t require violating any laws of physics.”

“I think that sounds good,” I said. “But first I think I’d like to know a little more about how this spirit magic stuff works. You guys mind running me through the tutorial?”