Twenty-three

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.

"I was having an affair with your uncle," she said. "I didn't plan it. I didn't even particularly enjoy it. It was just something that happened between us. We were on one of his covert actions, and the two of us were trapped in a cabin together for a day and a half while the wendigo outside dissipated. And..."

She sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. She shook her head.

"Eric wasn't a man I liked," she said. "He wasn't someone I trusted or admired. But there was something powerful about him, and I responded to it. I broke it off with him half a dozen times, but then a few weeks later, I'd be driving home and find myself turning right instead of left. Aubrey only saw that I was trying to pull away from Eric and the riders and the Pleroma. That whole secret world. We had the most ridiculous fights about the whole thing. And of course they never came to anything because I could never tell him what I really felt or the real reasons behind anything I did."

"Did Aubrey ever find out?"

Kim shook her head.

"Eric never told him," she said, "and I separated from my husband and left the state in order to stop. That's what happened. I thought that someday, if Eric moved away or he and Aubrey grew apart, I could come back. And then Eric died. When you called, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It was finally safe for me to come back to Aubrey, and it was too late. And then I met you."

"I didn't know about you," I said. "I didn't know Aubrey was married."

"I know. But coming off that airplane...you're young, and you're beautiful, and you have Eric's sense of power about you. Charisma, I suppose you'd call it. I've been watching you put this all together. I think you've done all the things that he would have, but somehow you've done them gently. Kindly. You have a good heart. If you had been a shrieking bitch, it would have been simple. Well, simpler than it is, anyway."

I sat up and drew the sheets around me like a robe. The darkened house clicked to itself, cooling. The distant hum of traffic competed with the ticking of a clock. I could still smell the last fading scents of Midian's great feast, tainted by the smoke of his cigarette.

"I'm not getting between you," I said. "I didn't know he was married, or I would never have gone after him. When I found out he was married, I gave him raw hell over it. And now that I know you, there's no way, Kim. There's just no way."

"You see?" she said. "Kindly."

She pronounced the last word as if it tasted bad, then turned to look at me. Her pale eyes were colorless in the dim light.

"You care for Aubrey," she said. It wasn't a question.

"He stood by me when I needed someone to stand by me," I said. "He's a friend. Anything more than that, I'm not swearing to."

"I suppose that will have to do," she said. "I wasn't going to tell you, only I thought...I thought you should know."

"Thank you," I said as Kim stood. She raised a single hand as she went, waving my thanks away. She closed the door behind her with a click, leaving me alone and sleepless and disturbed. My fist reaction was sorrow for Kim and her loss, then a proxy anger on Aubrey's behalf, and then a deep loneliness that I couldn't quite explain, except that it had to do with Eric.

It was easy to think of him as being just Uncle Eric. I had my memory of him, my experience. Apart from seriously biffing it by assuming he was gay, I'd never considered his love life. His sex life. The other people in the world who he'd mattered to besides me. Of course he'd had lovers. Of course he'd had friends. I imagined his life being somehow neater and cleaner than my own had ever been. That was my mistake.

I looked up into the darkness and tried to remember when this bedroom had stopped feeling like his and started feeling like mine, when the house had stopped being Eric's house and started just being the house.

It was an illusion. The house was still Eric's. The fight against Coin and the Invisible College was something he'd begun and I'd inherited along with his money and property. His shirts. His cell phone.

I tried to imagine him watching me from heaven or something like it. I tried to imagine his approval, but it didn't really work. Instead, I managed to remind myself that he was gone. I wondered what it would be for Kim to be here, in the place where she and Eric had been lovers or cheaters or however they'd thought of themselves at the time.

I didn't notice falling asleep again until the sound of wind woke me. The bedroom was dim as dawn, but the clock said it was ten thirty in the morning. I pulled on a robe and drew back the curtains. The sky was gray and low enough to touch. The window was dotted with raindrops.

"Well, that's just great," I said to nobody.

In the living room, Midian had more or less the same take. He was lounging on the couch when I came in, yellowed eyes fixed on the television.

"For a plan that really rests on motorcycles and small airplanes, there's just no better 'fuck you' than a good low-pressure system," he said.

"I was thinking that myself," I said.

"Didn't check the weather report when you put this whole thing together, did you?"

"I'm new at this," I said.

"It will be fine," Chogyi Jake said as he and Kim walked in from the kitchen, drawn by the sounds of our voices. Kim was dressed in some of Chogyi's spare clothes, tan pants cinched up with a braided leather belt, a shirt the color of sand. She'd had to roll up all the cuffs, and she looked small. The only sign of our conversation the night before was a barely noticeable reluctance to meet my eyes.

"The motorcycles are going to be new," Chogyi Jake continued. "They'll have good tread on the tires."

"Besides which, it's not like we've got time for a plan B," Midian sighed.

"That too," Chogyi Jake said. Then, to me, "Really. It will be fine."

"I hope so," I said.

I had hardly finished with my shower and pulling on my clothes when the doorbell rang. The dealership was there to drop off my new toys. I signed all the paperwork and took the titles and proof of insurance forms for both bikes, along with copies of the service agreements and owner's manuals. I hadn't thought to arrange insurance for them. I made a mental note to send my lawyer flowers or a thank-you note or something, provided I was still alive tomorrow.

The cycles themselves were gorgeous. We couldn't put them in the carport since the stolen Hummer was taking up all the air, so we had them pulled up onto the front walk. Black and red and set low to the ground, these weren't machines meant for touring or taking in the countryside. They were built to be hunched over, body forward, head into the wind. They both had matching helmets and complimentary leather jackets and chaps. I wondered how much I'd paid for them that the dealership was giving me all these extras. The rain beaded on the fiberglass.

"Well, they're sexy," Midian said, looking over my shoulder. "I'll give 'em that."

"Think you can handle it?" I asked.

Midian made a rough sound that might have been a cough or laughter.

"Biggest problem I'll have is keeping the girls off me," the vampire said. "Or, if not the girls, the teenage zit-faced boys who think motorcycles impress girls. One or the other."

"I don't know. I'm fairly impressed," Kim said. I raised my hand. We ate lunch, breakfast for me, making jokes about crotch rockets and wheeled vibrators. Midian and Chogyi Jake both tried on the protective gear-black leather and helmets. It was a nervous kind of hilarity, but it helped cover the fear.

Zero hour was eight o'clock, and it was a little after noon now. My stomach was starting to get knotted. The distant throb of a headache was climbing up the back of my skull. Kim played solitaire on the kitchen table with the cards from Midian's poker game. Chogyi Jake was meditating, gathering his remaining strength for the night's pursuit. I paced, drummed my fingers on the door frames, went to the front door every few minutes to make sure the motorcycles were still there and that the Invisible College wasn't. I felt stretched tight as a drum.

Aaron and Candace arrived at noon in Candace's car. While Kim and Candace prepared the backseat for the ceremonial Calling Malkuth, I showed Aaron the ammunition. Two bullets I'd recovered from our last failure. I hated handling them, but Aaron didn't seem more than amused by the engraved figures. He knew exactly how to clean my rifle and showed me in detail. The living room smelled of mineral oil and rain by the time we were done and he took both weapons out to the stolen Hummer. We all went over the plan again. The clock seemed to go slower just to spite me.

There were still holes. There was still chance and contingency and a hundred ways it could go wrong. What if Chogyi Jake and Midian's flight didn't draw Coin out of his meeting? What if he was in a different car from the ones my lawyer's report had identified? What if there were more people with him than Aaron, Candace, Kim, and I could manage?

What if some poor bastard who didn't know anything about all this got in the way and got hurt or killed or taken over by riders? It would be my fault. I distracted myself as best I could, but every minute that passed was a weight on my shoulders. I told myself that everything would be all right. That this time it would be different. I almost believed it.

I told myself that Aaron knew the traffic patterns of Denver, where and when something could be done with as little attention as possible. And Kim and Chogyi Jake both thought that damping out Coin's powers could give us the edge we needed. I hoped that the confidence they felt came from the strength of the plan itself, and not because they had faith in me.

At about four o'clock the rain started coming down harder, with flashes of lightning and rolls of thunder. I stood in the open doorway, watching it and willing the clouds to separate. It was such a stupid, petty thing to have overlooked. Chogyi Jake's and Midian's escapes could be thrown off by something as stupid and simple as summer rain.

"Don't sweat," Midian said. "It'll be gone in time."

"Your special vampire senses tell you that?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "That and I've been watching the local news. Doppler radar, all that. Streets are going to be wet tonight. The driving'll be tricky, especially with the new tires. But it's not the biggest problem you're looking at."

"I know," I said.

We were silent for a few seconds, looking out into the gray. I could smell Midian's weird, cold nonscent. He shifted, crossing his ruined arms.

"You did a hell of a job, kid," Midian said. "I mean I wouldn't make a habit of this, but for improv, you're doing great. And...hell. I know I came down on you pretty hard after the whole thing went south last week. I didn't mean to kick your ass."

"We were all stretched a little thin," I said. "No harm, no foul."

"Good."

"You think Eric would have done it this way?" I asked.

"Hell if I know. He wasn't the kind of guy you could predict. Always something going on in his head. Why? You worried about it?"

"I'm worried about pretty much everything," I said. "It's just that you knew him. I think everyone here knew him better than I did. He was just this force for good that swooped into my life when things got bad and then swept back out again. And then I find out about the money. And then you and riders and magic. And...and it just seems like every time I turn around, there's more."

"No one knew Eric," Midian said. "You saw part of him. I saw part of him. The three musketeers saw part of him. No one was in on the whole show. It wasn't who he was."

"I guess," I said.

"You miss him?"

"I miss the part I knew," I said. "I just regret that I didn't meet the other parts."

"Deep," Midian said. "You should write a poem."

"Smart-ass."

"Glad you noticed. A lot of the time my sense of humor goes unappreciated," Midian said. "So look, I've got the fridge pretty much filled. There's dinners in the freezer. If you need to hole up for a few days after this comes down, you'll have something decent to eat. I wrote out instructions on how to reheat it all and what goes together on the tinfoil. Just look for things written in the same color pen. That way you know it'll all fit. I leave you poor fuckers to yourselves, you'll have all the starches in one meal together."

"Thank you," I said. And then, softly, "Ah, fuck."

"Yeah," Midian agreed. "This is pretty much good-bye."

"We don't know that," I said. "This whole thing with Coin may work. You get away, I break Coin. Maybe we'll meet up again sometime. Down the road."

"I don't think that'd be such a good idea."

I shifted to look at him. The desiccated flesh of his face and neck, dark as old meat. The white shirt and high-waisted pants. He hitched up his shoulders in a pained shrug.

"Don't fool yourself, kid. This has been great. We've been friends. But next time you see me, we aren't going to be on the same side. I'm one of the bad guys, remember? People like you and Ex and tofu boy? You hunt down things like me. Like Coin."

"Yeah," I said. I could feel tears coming into my eyes. The rain pattered hard against the pavement, thousands of tiny gray explosions like something from Fantasia. "You're right."

"Don't take it hard," he said. "It was good being friends. So it didn't last. So what? It's not like it ever really does, you know?"

"I know," I said.

A thin, wasted hand rested on my shoulder for a second, squeezed gently, and moved away.