Graveyard Child

chapter four

The police came in the form of two very nice men who looked over the house with calm, practiced eyes. The way they held themselves and the tone of their voices as they interviewed us implied that they’d seen worse. My guess was they were just relieved it wasn’t a domestic violence case. There wasn’t much blood, and no one was demanding that anybody be arrested. I thought it was funny how little it took to make it count as a good day for them. They spent most of the time talking to my dad and Chogyi Jake. Dad because it was his house, and he was the head of the family. Chogyi Jake—I guessed—because he was a man, he was older. If they seemed a little suspicious of him; it was probably more the epicanthic folds than anything else.

All the time they were there, I was prepared to lawyer up. Too many questions or just a few of the wrong ones and we could stop talking, call my lawyer, and get a legal defense team in place that could drown the locals in paperwork until they left us alone. It never came to that, and I was more than a little relieved. Flying under the radar was the way I liked it. Just less hassle.

The story was straightforward: Three tattooed people broke in, held the family at gunpoint, broke things, and ran off when my father started shooting at them. Technically, it was all true. By the time they got to me, I had to give them my name and address. I have about seventy houses, condominiums, and apartments scattered around the world, so I gave them the place in Santa Fe we’d just come from because I remembered the address. When they left, I did too.

It should have been more dramatic. This was it. My failed homecoming in its depths. I left like I’d be back for dinner. No hugs, no farewells. Just me and Ex and Chogyi Jake heading out to the car and turning out into midafternoon traffic. The sun was already sinking toward the horizon. They were quiet. Ex’s black eye was getting lovely. I still couldn’t really breathe through my nose. Chogyi Jake’s swollen lip was starting to go down a little.

I drove with my mind scattered. Part of me was scanning the streets for the Invisible College, and I kept drawing my will up through my spine and into my eyes, ready to peer through the magical disguises that they could use. Part of me was being buffeted by memories that came from driving down streets I hadn’t been on in years. And below them both, there I was, shifting in the solitary part of my mind. I had gone home, where I’d dreaded going. I’d gone there for answers, and I’d gotten nothing. I didn’t know one new thing about Eric or about my mother or how my family fit in with riders and vampires and body thieves. My own father had come inches from shooting me.

What I felt, there in that private corner of my mind, was a deep relief. I didn’t know what it was or what it meant, but I’d gone home, everything had gone pear-shaped, and the sick pressure that had been on me since I’d made that first phone call home was gone. Maybe it was because things couldn’t get much worse. Maybe it was because I felt like magical attacks and gun-toting wizards put the conflict back on my home turf. Or maybe it was just that I’d gone to that house, been with those people, and it hadn’t turned me back into the girl I’d been before I left.

I pulled into the parking space beside the hotel, turned off the engine, and sat for a moment with my hands on the faux leather steering wheel.

“You know,” Ex said, “we should really put together some kind of contingency plan where someone feeds the dog if we all get killed.”

“Would be kind of rude to just leave her locked in the hotel room,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Ozzie met us at the door to my room, jumping a little on her front legs. Her tail wagged so hard it pulled her a little off balance. I scratched her ears while Chogyi Jake got a towel from my bathroom and a bucket of ice. Ex grabbed the leash, and Ozzie danced in anticipation as he fixed it to her collar.

“Be careful out there,” I said.

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” Ex said, and then, before I could go on, “I’m not only doing this for the dog. If I see anything off, I’ll let you know.”

The door closed behind them and I let myself fall back on the bed. It wasn’t the best place we’d been. Not even the best place recently. The truth was that with the money Eric had left me, I could have bought a house and had it furnished and not particularly noticed the expense.

“I think those two hit it off pretty well,” Chogyi Jake said.

“Yeah, it’s funny,” I said. “I would have picked Ex more as a cat guy.”

“He has a soft spot for loyalty,” Chogyi Jake said. “Do you want to reset your nose here or go to a hospital?”

I looked up at him with an expression that was supposed to say Really? You have to ask? My history with hospitals hadn’t been good. His either. He smiled and handed me a towel.

“Blow out as much as you can.”

Sighing, I sat up and did my best. He’d been right to go with the towel. Kleenex wouldn’t have been up to the task. I plopped back down on the bed and he sat next to me, his thumbs on either side of my nose. It sounded like some ripping cardboard, and the pain was intense but brief. He handed me a washcloth filled with ice and three Advil. I sat back. It was easier to breathe, so I took that as a good sign. I took my cell phone out of my backpack. Twenty seconds and three rings later, my lawyer was on the other end.

“Jayné, dear,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, I need a couple things,” I said. “Do you remember that report I had you put together on Randolph Coin?”

“Of course, dear.”

“I think a few of his friends and associates are in Wichita, and I need to find out what we can about them.”

“I’ll have something put together. Anything else?”

“Is there a way to set up a trust so that if something happens to me, my dog still gets taken care of?”

“Nothing easier. Would you want to put my phone number on her tags?”

There were times I loved my lawyer. There were a lot of times, in fact. As far as I could tell, nothing fazed her. If I’d asked her to ship me quicklime and a shovel, she’d have asked if I wanted a defense lawyer along with them. On one hand, it meant never having to explain anything. On the other, I had to wonder whether she’d have been the same for Eric.

My guess was yes.

“That would be great. I’ll do that. And also I need to send some money to my family. Just a couple thousand to cover some repairs.”

“What address should I send it to?” she asked.

I told her, and we spent about a minute exchanging pleasantries: The new car and phone were great, the research grant had gone through, they’d had word from the property manager in New Orleans that the house there needed a new roof. It struck me as we were speaking just how innocuous the conversation sounded and how much it left out. The new car and phone were there because I’d been on the run from a band of compromised exorcists. The research grant was going to my old boyfriend’s girlfriend to help clear my conscience for the years her career had suffered because of Eric’s professional and personal destruction of her. The property manager in New Orleans was an ex–FBI agent who’d been possessed by a rider and killed at least a dozen people including her own parents, and the man taking care of her was a wanted serial killer who had been victimized by the same rider. If anyone had been listening to the conversation, it would have sounded like nothing. It was nothing, until you scratched it, and then all the deep weirdness shone through.

I dropped the call as Ex and Ozzie came back in. He had a duffel bag over his shoulder that had been empty when it was in the car. It was loaded down now, probably with shotguns. The dog’s tail was still wagging, and I had the impression that it hadn’t stopped at any point in between. She scrambled up onto the bed and curled up with a look that said What? I’m small.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Nothing I could see,” Ex said. “Nothing out there’s under a glamour. No surveillance that I can see either. It would have been difficult if the city were denser, but there’s hardly anything out here to hide behind.”

“There’s a small blessing.”

Ex smiled.

“More like faint praise,” he said, sitting on the cheap black desk chair that seemed to come in all hotel rooms and propping his feet on the other bed. “So what’s plan B?”

“Don’t know. Things didn’t go too well with my dad.”

“I know,” Ex said.

“I mean before that. We were in the garage, and—”

“Yeah, the sound carried pretty well,” Ex said. “We didn’t hear all the words, but the tone of voice was clear.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s embarrassing.”

“The big question is what the Invisible College was doing there,” Ex said, unzipping the duffel bag and taking out one of the guns. “If they came because they knew we were coming. If they’ve been staking out your home turf since Denver.”

He racked the gun, ejecting a brass-and-blue-plastic shell. Chogyi Jake picked it up, frowning, and pulled a tiny Leatherman out of his pocket.

“Yeah,” I said. “I was under the impression that we’d broken them back in Denver. Didn’t killing their grand pooh-bah break all their spells?”

“All the ones that were tied to the rider that had taken Coin’s body,” Ex said. “And we kicked the anthill. But enough time may have passed that they got their boy band back together.”

“A new Randolph Coin,” I said. Then I shook my head. “That wasn’t what this guy seemed like to me. He was young.”

“The body was young,” Chogyi Jake said, stepping into the bathroom. “The thing inside it may have been quite old. And possibly quite powerful.”

“That’s what I mean, though,” I said. “He didn’t seem . . . powerful. Or maybe powerful but not sophisticated. I mean, he used the frigging Oath of the Abyss.”

“Maybe he’s got a thing for shotguns,” Ex said, racking and ejecting another round and another until the gun was empty and half a dozen blue shells rolled on the spare bed. “All power, no subtlety.”

My phone buzzed. A text message from Curtis: ru OK? What the f was that?

“I suspect he was one of the younger leaders within the College,” Chogyi Jake said. “Someone with ties and experience, but still subordinate to Coin.”

I thumbed a message back to Curt: I’m fine. Don’t worry. I’ll be in touch.

It was weak, but I didn’t know what else to tell him. This didn’t seem like the moment to go into the whole issue of spiritual parasites and secret societies. Partly because he might think the whole thing was exciting, and the last thing I wanted was my little brother poking his hands into the hornet’s nest. The less involved he was—the less involved all of them were—the better it would be for everybody.

“We knew that Coin was involved in holding the haugsvarmr under Grace Memorial,” Ex said, “because killing Coin was what let that damned thing call for help.”

“Which is why Eric was in Denver in the first place,” I said. “To get rid of Coin and find the thing under Grace and . . .”

“Yeah,” Ex said, switching to the second weapon. “That’s the question, isn’t it? And what? Make some kind of deal with it. It got its freedom and Eric got fill-in-the-blank.”

“We’ve already figured that Eric wasn’t exactly one of the good guys,” I said. “The Invisible College was working against him. They might be on the side of the angels, right?”

“I think there’s room in all this for more than two sides,” Ex said. “Eric was a sociopath and a rapist, but that doesn’t mean Coin wasn’t at least as bad or worse. The Pleroma is full of these things, and that they all fight among each other doesn’t mean that half of them are angels and half are demons. They’re—”

He broke off, looked away, and started ejecting shells from the second gun. I knew what he was going to say and why he’d stopped. They’re all demons. The words were as clear as if he’d spoken them. To Ex, all riders were demonic, and all of them needed to be stopped. Even the one in me. That it had saved my life and his a dozen times over didn’t matter to him. In his world, I was still someone to be saved, and she—it—was what I needed saving from. I folded my hands across my knees and looked away. I’d made my deal with the Black Sun, and it hadn’t done anything yet that made me think it wasn’t my ally. And still, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure Ex was wrong.

“Well, we can’t leave,” I said. “Not the way things stand now. And we can’t go to my folks and start asking questions.”

“So what does that leave us?” Ex asked as he started to break down the shotguns.

Ozzie yawned, stretched, and started to snore wetly. I poked her with my toe, but she ignored me. Outside the window, the traffic from the highway made a low, constant hum. Tires against asphalt. The moon was just shy of full, spilling cold, blue light across the parking lot.

“I think we should try to make contact with my mother outside of the house. No one’s going to go against Dad in his own home. Not if he’s laying down the law like this. But if we can get her when she’s out shopping or coming home from church or something, maybe I can talk to her.”

“What about your brothers?” Chogyi called. “They seemed quite approachable.”

“Probably are, but they’re also the least likely to know anything. Jay’s not that much older than me, and he’s got his fiancée and her family and the wedding thing to worry about. Curt’s younger and probably knows even less than I did.”

“Does your mother attend church by herself?” Chogyi Jake asked.

“Sometimes,” I said. “But even if her schedule’s the same as it was when I was living there, this wedding thing’s going to throw it off. Plus which, my dad’s going to be on high alert. Plus which, Carla and all her family are going to be around.”

“So follow her around,” Ex said, “and hope for a chance.”

“And hope no one else is following her around in order to take a crack at us when we start doing it.”

“Sounds like our usual kind of plan,” Ex said, smiling grimly.

My phone buzzed again. Curtis. Who were those guys? Were they in a gang or something?

“Hmm,” Ex said, frowning down at the disassembled steel.

“Anything interesting?”

“Nope. The serial numbers are still on them, though.”

“Can we trace them? See who they were sold to or something?”

Ex smiled like I’d made a joke.

“This is America,” he said. “There’s no Carfax for guns. About the best we can hope for is that they were stolen. And then all we’ll really know is who they were stolen from.”

“Is there any juju on them?”

“Not that I can see,” Ex said. “Maybe on the shells, though.”

“No,” Chogyi Jake said, stepping back into the room. His hand was out flat, carrying something gently. “No magic. But look at this.”

It wasn’t quite a powder. More like tiny pale stones flecked with bits of red and black color. I frowned and put my fingers out to touch it. It didn’t burn or feel cold. I didn’t get the weird flesh-crawling feel I sometimes did around magically charged items. It just felt like it looked. Innocuous.

“Rock salt?” Ex said.

“I think so,” Chogyi Jake said. “It dissolves the way I’d expect it to. I haven’t quite brought myself to taste it, but—”

“We should check the other shells,” Ex said. It took us about half an hour to slit the plastic open on all of them. Before we were done, Ozzie had woken enough to become interested in what we were doing and then get bored by it again. All of the shells were the same. Black powder and mundane salt. Ex went back to the disassembled guns, lifting each piece to his eyes and shifting it so that the light played across the surfaces.

“There’s no rust,” he said. “I can’t believe they’ve used salt rounds in these guns. At least, not on a regular basis.”

“Why use them at all?” I asked.

“Because you didn’t want to hurt anybody,” Chogyi Jake said.

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “So if they weren’t looking to hurt anybody, what were they doing?”

For what seemed like forever, none of us spoke. When Ex broke the silence, his voice was soft.

“Curiouser and curiouser.”