Daniel Abraham - Unclean Spirits

“You? I didn’t think you got scared,” I said, trying to make it sound like a joke.

“Everyone gets frightened,” he said. “And tired. It’s been a hard week. I can’t…”

He shook his head.

“It’s good that this will be over soon. The wards are going to fail. Soon.”

I nodded. Maybe I’d known that.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you think I’m doing the right thing? Or am I just going to get us all killed?”

Chogyi Jake leaned forward, stretched, and rose to his feet. The stubble on his scalp was getting longer. In the dim light, it looked like a black halo close against his temples.

“Interesting phrasing,” he said. “Do you really think that what makes an action right or wrong is how it turns out?”

“I think that’s got a lot to do with what makes it stupid or not, yes,” I said.

“Ah. That’s a different question. I thought you meant whether we were doing a good thing instead of an evil one. You mean good tactics rather than poor?”

I sighed.

“I’m not sure what I mean. Except I’m afraid of what happens if we fail out there.”

“It would be more pleasant to win. But even if we don’t, that doesn’t mean that the effort was wrong.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you are really freaking terrible at pep talks? You could just pat me on the head and say it’ll all be fine and not to worry.”

“It’ll all be fine,” he said, patting me on the head. “Don’t worry.”

“Okay. That so didn’t work,” I said. “But thank you. For staying with me. For trying to do this.”

“It’s who I am,” he said.

“Thanks for being you,” I said.

“You’re welcome. And thank you for becoming who you needed to be,” he said.

He leaned over and took my hand in his. I was amazed by how warm he was. We stayed there in silence for a few seconds, then, as if by common decision, went back out to the main room.

Aaron arrived in the middle of the afternoon behind the wheel of a black Hummer S2. The car was like a Jeep on too many steroids-muscular, masculine, and vaguely unhealthy. I watched as he backed it in under the carport. A few seconds later, Candace pulled up to the curb, her car snuggling in behind Chogyi Jake’s van. Aaron hopped out of the stolen Hummer with a grin.

“I’ve got a sun cover in the back,” he said. “Help me get it over this thing, would you?”

“It went okay?” I asked, following him toward the back hatch.

“Perfect. Jerk’s probably still wandering around the parking lot wondering what just happened,” Aaron said, then paused and turned to me. His face was serious. “I know this isn’t protocol. There’s about a thousand reasons I shouldn’t be doing it, and that it’s illegal and I’m one of the good guys is pretty much at the top of that list. But I have to tell you there is nothing in the world better than taking one of these can’t-catch-me motherfuckers and screwing him into the ground.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I can see how that might satisfy.”

Aaron nodded to himself and opened the back of the car. Together, we unfolded the thick blue plasticized canvas and spread it over the car. It felt like we were making a bed together. I wondered if my life of crime was going to be full of those kinds of little insights. Kim and Candace helped out at their end. When the evidence was covered up, Candace went back to her car for the extra rifle.

Inside, the house felt small and tight, but also strangely festive. Midian laid out a table full of quiche and teriyaki chicken, rice pilaf and green beans with almonds, cream puffs with caramel sauce. Aaron and Candace, still clearly riding a wave of excitement that followed their theft, brought a wild energy to the place, and the nervous tension in the house crystallized around it. We were laughing and talking even before we dug into the food. I wondered whether soldiers had the same feeling the day before a battle. Merriment driven by fear. It was a lot like love.

It was Monday night. Aubrey had been in his coma for a week. Coin and his creatures were out in the rising darkness like sharks in a tank. Ex had abandoned me. Eric was dead. The friends and family who had been my life until now didn’t even know what had happened to me. And here I had a little constructed family, a group of people who I’d somehow gathered around me to eat and laugh and drink and fight against all the evils of the world. The big evils like Coin and the little ones too.

It was Monday night, and we were killing Randolph Coin tomorrow.

I couldn’t help recalling the drama and anger and pain that had preceded our last attempt to break the Invisible College. I hoped the difference now was a good omen.

I dropped out of Midian’s poker game just after nine o’clock and went back to my bedroom to take care of the part of the plan that needed attention. Extojayne was online and pleased to see me. We exchanged a few lines of vague pleasantries and then got down to business. He pumped me for information, and I lied.

We were going to head south on Wednesday morning, all of us, I said. We had a big van that we’d been covering with all kinds of wards and protections so that we’d be hard for the bad guys to find. I’d looked up flights out of Albuquerque and invented an itinerary that ended with us in Mexico City on Friday morning. Whoever it was seemed to buy it all, though I did have a few minutes of irrational paranoia that Coin had seen through my disguise and the Invisible College was playing me.

I was about to call it a night-I didn’t want my conversation with the fake Ex to go on long enough for me to screw it up-when a new window opened.

CARYONANDON: J? You there?

I blinked at the words a few times. Cary, my old boyfriend from ASU. The one whose jacket was hanging in my closet right now. Was it a trap? Had the Invisible College tracked him down to use as a way to get at me? I bent over the keyboard, my hair hanging down like blinders, blocking out everything but me and the screen.

CARYONANDON: J? I know ur not idle. C’mon. Don’t be a dick.

JAYNEHELLER: Hey.

CARYONADNON: I knew you were there. I’ve been thinking about you a lot.

JAYNEHELLER: Have you been drinking?

CARYONANDON: A little. You want to get together? Talk?

Extojayne asked something and I told him to stand by. Then I told him I had to go, and I’d talk to him tomorrow. The last thing I did before I shut down the laptop for the night was answer Cary.

JAYNEHELLER: Actually, no.

It was just past midnight when the knock came at my bedroom door. I was pretty well asleep, deep in a dream that involved a huge mountain and a sunrise that projected purification instead of light, and only half woke at the sound. I’d almost convinced myself that I’d imagined it when the bedroom door eased open. I sat partway up. I wondered where my rifle was, more with annoyance than fear.

Kim was dressed in a bathrobe that had been Eric’s. Her hair was down and messy from where it had lain against her pillow. She walked toward me, hands deep in the robe’s pockets. Her expression was blank. I thought she was sleepwalking until she started to speak.

“Don’t say anything,” she said. “Just…just let me say this. All right?”

“Okay,” I said. Sleep-soaked, my voice sounded almost as bad as Midian’s.

“I didn’t leave only because the riders made me uncomfortable. They did, but I wouldn’t have left Aubrey in the middle of all this just because I didn’t like it. If anything, my fear of them was a reason to stay.”

Her chin rose a centimeter. Her eyebrows rose too. The expression made me think of old pictures of English queens. I half expected her to say We are not amused.