Daniel Abraham - Unclean Spirits

“I’m not cleaning the main bathroom. I’ve been using my own,” I said over the section of “Dosvedanya Mio Bambino” that they lifted from “The Happy Wanderer.” “All that mess in there is you guys.”

Chogyi Jake tilted his head in obeisance, just on the friction point between mocking and sincere. I went back to the walls and saw him a few minutes later, heading from the kitchen to the back bathroom with a bucket and a sponge. If Midian’s return to freedom was an issue, he didn’t bring it up.

The music went from the Cuban-dance-band-meets-chamber-orchestra of Pink Martini to a mix CD I burned from my first-semester dorm mate’s music. The old familiar Goth-punk songs didn’t depress me the way they usually did. A scent equal parts butter, beef, and wine wafted out of the kitchen. When I finished with the walls, I went back and stripped the sheets off all the beds and gathered up my own old laundry. On my way through the kitchen toward the laundry room, I stopped to admire Midian’s upcoming feast.

“It’s all tapas,” Midian said. “For one thing, we’re down to not enough groceries for anything big. And for another, you need new plates.”

“Check. New plates,” I said with a nod. “I’m on it.”

He shook his head in apparent disgust.

“I think mood swings run in your family, kid,” Midian said, but he smiled when he said it.

We ate dinner early, the sun still high in the late summer sky. I’d found a bottle of red wine that went pretty well with Midian’s spread. Cheese and tomatoes, strips of fried beef, toasted French bread with a spread of garlic and olives. The three of us sat around the kitchen table. Outside, the day was blisteringly hot.

“So,” Midian said, looking at me through the red swirl of wine in his glass, “you want to tell me what happened to change totally fucked girl into Little Mary Sunshine? Because right now, I’m thinking bipolar.”

“Working meditation is always useful,” Chogyi Jake said around a mouthful of garlic and olive.

“I think we call that petty control over your immediate physical environment,” I said.

“That’s as good a name as any,” Chogyi Jake said. “The thought is the same. It’s a way to bring yourself together. Cope with anxiety and fear.”

“It’s not just about making the place smell less like a cheap bar? Which reminds me. No more smoking in the house.”

“Hey!” Midian said, putting down his glass.

“You want to go outside and see if the magic anticultist wards cover the backyard, that’s up to you,” I said. “But not in the house.”

Midian frowned, considered for a moment, then nodded.

“I’m not hog-tied and sleeping with a shotgun pointing at my skull,” he said. “I can deal with the trade-off. But back to the issue at hand.”

“Well, I was feeling pretty screwed over,” I said. “And now I’m not.”

“Yeah,” Midian said. “That’s the part that’s confusing me. Because from here it’s still looking pretty bleak.”

I wiped my mouth with a paper napkin and leaned back in my chair. My backpack was on the counter by the phone book, and I reached for it while I spoke.

“When that fucking asshole Ex took off,” I said in my best calm, reasonable voice, “I felt like he’d taken my only shot at dealing with Coin. I didn’t have anything anymore. You know? But today I realized that’s not true. I’ve got the two of you.”

“Yeah,” Midian said. “And a powerful-as-fuck wizard trying to kill you. Is this a very special Blossom? Did I miss the part where we all learned and hugged and grew?”

“I can still tie you back up,” I said. Midian raised his hands in mock surrender.

“You were saying,” Chogyi Jake said.

“Right. Well, the two of you,” I said. “And I have these.”

I placed the rifle cartridges on the table with a soft tap. Midian moved back an inch or two, but Chogyi Jake scooped one up, rolling it in his fingers as he examined the graven symbols. When he looked over at me, his brows were raised, inviting me to go on.

“And,” I said, “I have a lot of money…”

I left the house in the best outfit to survive the shopping fiasco: a deep blue blouse with black slacks and a jacket. With my hair up and a little tasteful eyeliner and lipstick, I thought I looked the consummate professional. Right up until I reached my destination.

I drove carefully, one eye on the road, one on the rearview. Every time I stepped out of the house I felt like a field mouse watching for hawks. Every driver on the road might be one of Coin’s people. Every kid on the street could be watching for me. I hated it, but I didn’t let it stop me. I didn’t feel even vaguely safe until I got to my lawyer’s office.

It was as intimidating as anyplace I’d ever been. Stained walnut walls had the sense of solid wood. The receptionist dressed like she was running for president. The waiting area was discreetly away from the front door so that I wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of breathing the same air as the UPS guy. The couch was upholstered in raw silk and the coffee was served in a French press with almond cookies. The time-killing magazines on the table were no older than two weeks, and I counted six different languages and three alphabets. None of them had a “Best and Worst Dressed” feature on the front. I wondered whether the Economist ever had a fashion issue.

I felt like an impostor.

I’d been waiting twenty minutes, each one more nerve-racking than the one before, when my lawyer came in. She wore a gray suit with a shell-pink blouse and a smile that could have been genuine.

“Jayne!” she said, pronouncing it Jane. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I was in a meeting.”

“It’s my fault,” I said, standing up. “I should have gotten an appointment. It was just-”

“Nonsense. You’re always welcome. Come back to my office and tell me what I can do for you.”

Her office straddled the line between reassuring softness and a level of intimidation that bordered on class warfare. Her desk was carved wood, her carpeting was soft and lush in a way that made me think of tapestries, the north wall was an apparently seamless sheet of glass that looked out over Denver only because there wasn’t anyplace grander nearby. There was no computer on her desk. She was apparently too important for things like that. The receptionist, or someone so like her I couldn’t tell the difference, put my coffee and cookies on the corner of the desk for me and vanished.

“I’ve been meaning to call you,” the lawyer said, sitting at her desk. “There are a few things I’ll need your signature for. Nothing pressing, you understand. We just want to have everything in place before the quarterly statements are due.”

“Anything I can do to help,” I said.

If my fairy godmother had been a shark, she’d have smiled like the lawyer did then.

“Is everything going well, then?”

“Actually,” I said, “there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

She leaned forward, her expression calm and interested. I had the impression that if I’d read off the phone book, she could have quoted it back to me. My mouth felt dry.

“What we talk about,” I said. “What I say to you? It’s protected, right? Confidentiality and all that?”

“Yes,” she said. “So long as you weren’t actually planning to commit a crime. In the good old days, that was absolutely confidential as well, but rights erode, dear. It’s their nature.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “I think I know who killed my uncle. It was a guy named Randolph Coin. And I need to find out everything I can about him. The thing is…the thing is he runs some kind of cult called the Invisible College. I don’t want to take anything to the police, and I don’t want anyone to know that I’m looking into his stuff. Does that make sense?”