Daniel Abraham - Unclean Spirits

“Coin is spelled like nickels and dimes?” the lawyer asked.

“Yes. Just like it sounds.”

“Do we know anything else about him?”

“He was at a warehouse in Commerce City this weekend,” I said. “He has a lot of tattoos on his face, but…”

But he can hide them using magical spells, and he has a bunch of wizard-ninjas who do his bidding, and he’s not really human at all, because this evil spirit has actually taken over his body. I wondered if the lawyer could have me declared insane and take away all the money.

“…but he’s really good at covering them up,” I finished lamely.

The lawyer made a noncommittal sound in the back of her throat before she spoke.

“All right. I’ll see what we can do. In the meantime, how’s everything else working out?”

“I was thinking that we could find out who rented the warehouse,” I said. “Even if it’s not him, it’s got to be someone connected to him. And I don’t know if it’s legal to track down what kind of plane tickets he’s bought, or if he’s even…”

She was looking at me with the kind of amused indulgence I was used to seeing on grandmothers watching puppies gambol on the lawn. I took a sip of my coffee. It was really good.

She tapped the top of her desk gently with her fingertips and mispronounced my name. I corrected her, and she didn’t miss a beat.

“Jayne,” she said correctly. “I don’t know how much you remember about Ronald Reagan’s tenure in the presidency?”

“I was four,” I said. “When he left office, I was four.”

Her brows rose about a millimeter.

“You make me feel old, dear. The phrase you need to know is plausible deniability. You’ve told me what you need. I’ll find it for you. The less you concern yourself with precisely how the information was gathered, the simpler it will be.”

“Um,” I said.

“I know some very talented people,” she said. “And really, I’m sure you’re much too busy to micromanage every step of something as menial as this?”

I suppressed a grin.

“Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just got enthusiastic.”

“Enthusiasm is a wonderful thing,” she said as if she was agreeing. “As soon as I have anything that might be useful, I’ll have a report drawn up. I assume sooner is better than later.”

“Yes, please.”

“Excellent. And, since I have you here, could I put upon you to sign a few little things for us? Once we have these out of the way, I can move ahead on the property transfers with much less bother for you.”

If she’d pulled out a scroll of human skin covered with Latin and asked me to sign in blood, I probably would have done it. Everything was paper and ink, though, and there was only a little Latin.

I got back to the house feeling a bit high. With the front door closed behind me, I took a silent bow and Chogyi Jake and Midian applauded. Afterward, I sat on the couch and gave them the blow-by-blow of the meeting. Chogyi Jake looked pleased, but the circles under his eyes were getting darker. He didn’t make a point of it, but I knew he was pouring himself into keeping the wards around the house strong. I wondered how many times he had saved us already without my even knowing about it.

While the pair of them cooked, I went to the back bedroom and turned on the laptop. I had a list of things I wanted to look up-what exactly a varkolak was being near the top of the list. I waited while a metric assload of spam downloaded to my inbox. Nothing for me. Nothing personal. I checked my brother’s blog, but he hadn’t posted anything in months. I thought about checking back with my former friends again, but the more I turned the idea over, the more pathetic it seemed. The world had moved on. Several times. There wasn’t any point.

A varkolak turned out to be something about halfway between a vampire and a werewolf, or a vampire without any sign of its bestial nature, or a werewolf that doesn’t change shapes. There was a whole lot of information, and no way to know whether any of it was more reliable than going out to Midian and asking him. And that was the same problem I had with the bigger issue of Coin too.

I needed an angle. Coin had all the power right now. That had to change. I had gone through five or six promising-looking boards without finding anything solid about the Invisible College in general or Randolph Coin in particular when my old chat program popped a window open. That hadn’t happened in weeks, and the screen name wasn’t one that I recognized. Once I parsed it, though, it made sense.

EXTOJAYNE: Ping

I felt the blood go out of my face, and my heart ramped up. The first thing I felt was shock at Ex’s sudden virtual arrival. The second thing I felt was pissed off. I leaned forward, fingers hovering over the keys. I tried to decide what I wanted to say. If I wanted to.

EXTOJAYNE: Are you there?

JAYNEHELLER: I’m here. How did you find this account?

EXTOJAYNE: It’s your name. It wasn’t hard. Are you OK?

I could hear Ex’s voice, could see the concern in his face as he asked. It only made me angrier. No, I wanted to say, I’m getting a little sick of being betrayed by the people who I thought were my friends. No, you fucking thief. I cracked my knuckles and summoned up my best sarcasm before answering.

JAYNEHELLER: I’m great. Thanks.

EXTOJAYNE: Good. Is Midian with you?

JAYNEHELLER: He’s not in the room, if that’s what you mean. He’s off cooking. As always. Mind telling me where you are?

EXTOJAYNE: I’m all right. I’m worried about you.

JAYNEHELLER: You really show it. But it wasn’t the question I asked.

EXTOJAYNE: I can’t stay on long. I’m worried. The assassination attempt. I think the College’s blowback may have gone past Midian into the other one.

JAYNEHELLER: The other one? You mean Chogyi Jake?

EXTOJAYNE: Chogyi Jake. Has he been acting normal? Is he there too?

JAYNEHELLER: Yeah, we’re all here. What do you mean blowback? Where are you?

EXTOJAYNE: Don’t worry about me. Nothing’s changed. Give me a status report. I need to know where things stand.

I’d gotten as far as typing Who are you to demand anything of me when my fingers stopped. I felt the jaw-clenching anger shift in me like a car starting to fishtail on ice. I stared at the screen.

EXTOJAYNE: Jayne? Are you there?

My hand reached out and tapped the backspace key, cutting back my message word by word.

Who are you

I erased the whole thing and started over, my chest tight with fear.

JAYNEHELLER: Well, we’ve gotten the go-ahead from the guy with the rabbits. And your buddy from Texas should be here tomorrow about noon.

I hit send and waited. The icon showed that whoever was on the other end of the chat was typing. If it was Ex, he’d ask me what I was talking about.

Come on, I thought, ask me what I’m talking about.

EXTOJAYNE: Good. What else?

I stared at the screen for what seemed like hours but was only a few seconds. My hands shook so hard I could barely type.

JAYNEHELLER: Someone’s calling. Gotta go.

I turned off the computer and sat on the bed for a while with my hands trembling. It was them. I’d been talking to one of them. They knew that Ex had been working with me and that he wasn’t here, or else they wouldn’t have tried to pass themselves off under his name. I didn’t know how they’d figured that out.

They didn’t know he’d taken everything in an attempt to stop me from moving against Coin again; otherwise they wouldn’t have asked how things were going. I didn’t know why they hadn’t figured that out.

And they knew Chogyi Jake’s name and that he and Midian and I were all together because I’d just told them.