Graveyard Child

chapter five

I was at a coffee shop in Phoenix a few years back when I heard that my uncle was dead. The man on the other end of the line was very gentle, very solicitous. All I knew then was that Uncle Eric—the one relative who’d always been on my side, swooping in whenever I was in trouble—had been killed. After we hung up, I sat still for half an hour, trying to figure out how I felt. Stunned, horrified, sad. I had the impulse to call home and talk to my parents, but even then I knew it wouldn’t be welcome. Dad had forbidden us all to speak to Eric with more or less the same fervor he’d used to forbid me to go to ASU.

I didn’t call. Instead, I’d packed up the thin membrane of my own failed life and flown out to Denver, expecting to execute his will and hide out from my collegiate failures for a couple weeks.

Back then, I printed up all the directions to things off MapQuest. When Ex tracked me, he had to sneak a GPS tracker into my backpack. Now, planning out our next approach to my mother, it was all Google Maps and Street View, and I’d had the GPS trackers pulled out of my phone and car. Actually, so that Ex couldn’t find me when I didn’t want to get found. Some things time changes quickly.

Some things stay the same.

The morning after I talked to my lawyer, the report was delivered by special courier. The carefully anonymous pages had become familiar over the years. I lay on the bed in my sweats and a T-shirt, scratching Ozzie with the heel of my right foot, and went over the pages. The Invisible College had fallen apart after their leader died, but in recent months about half a dozen much smaller, much less organized groups had started to re-form from the ruins of the old one, usually with some central figure taking the role that Randolph Coin had occupied. In Montreal, it was a woman named Idéa Smith who might or might not have been the blue-eyed woman with the shotgun. In Mexico City, Eduardo Martinez, who was apparently immune to having a decent picture taken. In Los Angeles . . .

“Bingo,” I said. Ozzie shifted her ears forward.

Jonathan Rhodes had turned twenty-eight in May, putting him about one presidential election ahead of me. He’d been inducted into the Invisible College ten years before. Before that, he’d been a musician. He’d studied economics and literature at Tulane for three semesters before he fell in with members of the College. The pictures of him were unmistakable. He had the kind of boyish face that would still look young when he was sixty. Even with a full head of brownish hair and none of the tattoos that covered him now, I recognized the man who’d broken my nose.

The report went on to detail what the three new leaders had been doing, more or less, in the years since their own superior died. I skimmed most of it. The important thing for me was what they were doing now, apart from kicking in my family’s doors and windows. The answer wasn’t particularly satisfying. Since the end of summer, they’d been absent. Vanished. Gone underground like they were hiding from something. There wasn’t a solid date when they’d vanished, but it looked to me like it had gone down right about the same time I’d been in Chicago. I wanted there to be a connection between the two, and maybe there was one. I just didn’t see it.

I got to the last page of the report. A list of outstanding questions that the investigator was looking into now—recent whereabouts, funding sources, activity on the Internet—with the promise that more information would be provided as soon as the questions had reliable answers. Given that I’d only asked for the report the night before, I was impressed they’d managed this much.

I tossed the report on my pillow and got up. My body suffered a kind of all-over soreness that I hadn’t felt before. Each individual muscle seemed to ache just a little bit, so there wasn’t anything I could do, any motion I could make, that didn’t bug me at least a little bit. My face still throbbed if I stood up or sat down too quickly, and the girl in the mirror looked pretty rough. Blood had pooled under both my eyes, and the bridge of my nose had a little shift that it hadn’t had before. I washed my face gently. Probably I should have gone to a doctor. If it was important to me later, I could have a plastic surgeon rebreak everything and put it back together. Probably it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. I told myself the new nose added character, took a quick shower, and got some clothes on. Ozzie was standing by her food bowl and wagging her tail at me when I got out. She was almost finished with her breakfast when Ex’s soft knock came at the door.

“I think it’s your boyfriend,” I whispered into her soft ears, then opened the door. Chogyi Jake was with him, and they’d brought pancakes. Ex also had a pair of massive 1960s sunglasses with lenses that stretched down past my cheekbones and covered my shiners. My friends were the best people ever. They took turns reading the report while I ate.

“We have their guns,” I said when they were both finished. “I was thinking maybe we could use that to make some kind of connection back to them. Figure out where they are?”

“Would be better if we had something with blood on it,” Ex said.

“And even then,” Chogyi Jake said, “the Invisible College can be difficult to track.”

“That’s why I was thinking magic. I know they can cast glamours and look different. I thought if we could use my rider, maybe—”

“They’re also hard to locate that way,” Ex said.

“Kind of the way I am?”

“Like that,” he agreed.

“Well, piss. Back to the first plan, then? At least Mom won’t be that hard to find.”

PLAINS IMMANUEL Fellowship was in an A-frame building with buff-colored brick on the first story and white clapboard above that where the chapel ceiling rose up. Looking at the five low stone steps that led to its doors was like hearing a familiar voice speaking my name. Everything about the building was clear in my mind—the fluorescent-backlit stained glass in the hall outside the pastor’s office, the blond wood of the pews, the damp smell of the children’s classroom in the basement. All of it was clear. The building itself seemed like a person. Like another member of my family. Part of me wanted to go in just to be there. To breathe that air again and see if it really was all just the way I remembered, or if by changing myself I’d changed it too.

There was a new sign out by the road, also done in brick and almost the same color as the building. It had a section of white with black movable letters. Today, they spelled out FEAR THE LORD, AND YOU’LL HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR. Every time I read the words, I was torn between amusement and anger.

Ex and I sat in the SUV across the road, watching. Chogyi Jake was out in the cold wind, huddled into a flight jacket with a stocking cap pulled down over his ears, making his tour of the building’s perimeter. Looking for the enemy. When he was done, he’d get back in the rental car we’d hired so that we could have more than one option in case of an attack. I’d popped for the full insurance on the rental. I’d gotten a coffee from a Scooter’s Coffee & Yogurt. Ex had too. My mother had gone in the church about an hour ago. I’d turned off the music when we got there because I had the idea that it wasn’t the sort of thing that went with shadowing someone. Between the heater, the engine, and the wind, there could have been a George Thorogood concert going on inside and I wouldn’t have known it, but I didn’t turn my Pink Martini back on.

The doors opened, and I leaned forward, my hands on the steering wheel. A man in a gray suit came out and trotted to the parking lot. I sat back while he revved his engine and pulled out into traffic. I didn’t know what exactly Mom was doing at church, but I didn’t think there were services at this time in the morning. Something to do with the wedding, I guessed. Or else something to do with me.

“Are you all right?” Ex asked.

He looked good. He’d put a glamour on himself. It was one of the cantrips Eric had taught him, back when they’d worked together. Back before any of us had known what Eric was. As a result, his own wounds and bruises were invisible, as if they’d healed overnight. He looked like a perfect version of himself unless I really focused on him, and then all the damage became clear. Not a bad metaphor for the rest of him either.

“I’m . . . I don’t know. I’m fine. You guys keep asking that. Do I look like I’m about to start sprouting tentacles or something?”

“You’re quiet,” he said.

“And I’m usually loud?”

His smile was sly, and it made him look better.

“You’re not usually quiet.”

The church door opened, and this time it was my mother walking out. She wore a simple blue dress that looked too slight for the weather, a thin coat, and a wool scarf that fluttered behind her like it had someplace else it wanted to be. I scooped up my phone and called Chogyi Jake.

“I see her,” he said instead of hello. “Going back to the car.”

“All right,” I said. “Any sign of the bad guys?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay. I’ll follow her. You follow me.”

I had essentially no experience tailing someone. It was the kind of skill set I’d heard about on TV and movies, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. We had two cars, so I had a vague idea that I should stay behind Mom for a while, then turn off and let Chogyi Jake take my place, then switch off again a few blocks later. Either it was a good plan, or my mother had other things on her mind. Even though I was in a lumbering black apartment of a car, she didn’t seem to notice me, or it, or much of anything. She went to the dry cleaner’s and the bank. I drove with one eye on her, and one on the rearview. I expected to see a buzzing fleet of rider-infested wizards bearing down on me and howling for blood at any minute. That it kept not happening only made it seem more likely that it would.

When she turned into the parking lot of the Save-A-Lot, I got on the phone to Chogyi Jake.

“Okay, this is it,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“I have to get her before she gets the groceries. I don’t know if she’ll talk to me, but if she’s got something in the car that might spoil, I can promise she won’t. I could be offering her a million dollars, and she’d blow me off until she got the frozen dinners home.”

“If you say so,” Chogyi Jake said. “I’ll set up on the corner. If I call—”

“I’ll get out of there fast,” I said, and dropped the connection. The SUV jogged a little as I made the turn into the lot a couple degrees too wide.

“Will you be able to?” Ex said as he slid a fresh magazine into his pistol. I was impressed again how much hunting demons felt like committing crime.

“Able to do what?”

“Get out of there fast. She’s your mother. It’s kind of a primal relationship.”

“I’m the thing putting her in danger. If I leave, that makes her safer. Right?”

“That’s my assumption,” Ex said as I pulled up to the sidewalk in front of the store. My mother was just getting out of her car maybe thirty feet away. “Just wanted to make sure we were thinking the same thing.”

I popped open the driver’s door and slid down to the pavement. Ex slid across behind me, closed the door, and drove away. Chogyi Jake’s rental—a white Sebring—was in position at the edge of the lot. I had to fight the urge to wave at him.

I stood on the curb, my hands pushed deep in my pockets. I didn’t have a gun, mostly because experience had proven that I was considerably behind Zatoichi when it came to hitting my targets. And besides that, when the fights actually started, it wasn’t me running the body. A green truck cruised between us. The guy at the wheel looked like he was about twelve. When Mom saw me, she broke stride a little, the hesitation nothing more than an extra half step. So she hadn’t seen me following her. The wind bit at my cheeks and lips, and my heart was beating fast. I held myself still, looking out from behind the massive sunglasses. Her expression went from fear to anger to sorrow so quickly, it was hard to parse. She walked up to me, stopping maybe five feet away. Her body was turned, and it took me a second to realize why. She was protecting her purse like I was going to steal it. Like one kind of threat was all threats.

“I can’t talk to you,” she said.

“Meaning Dad won’t let you,” I said. It wasn’t what I’d meant to say. I could already feel this starting to fishtail out from under me. I took a breath and tried again. “It’s been a really hard few years. There are some things I need to know that only you can tell me.”

“I can’t,” she said, lifting her chin. Her gaze was set about five degrees off to my right, as if looking at me straight on would be dangerous. “I understand you don’t respect our family or our God, so I wouldn’t expect you to understand why I would choose to honor your father’s wishes, but—”

“Yeah, I really don’t.”

“But. Your father is a good man.”

“Is he?”

That seemed to strike home. Two bright spots of color appeared on her cheeks, red underneath the paleness of her makeup.

“You have no idea what sacrifices he has made for this family,” she said. “You have no idea the troubles that the Lord has put on his shoulders.”

I shrugged.

“Maybe someone could tell me,” I said. “Know anybody who’d be up for that?”

“I will not speak to you,” my mother said. Her scowl could have shamed stones. She set her shoulders and turned away, marching toward the grocery store.

“Please,” my body said without me. It was always strange when it did that. Before I knew I had a rider, I figured it was just my subconscious taking action without bothering to alert my frontal lobes. I figured everyone worked like this. How could I have known otherwise?

My mother stopped like I’d yanked on her leash. I stood still, and the rider in me didn’t do anything else. My mother turned back slowly, as if unwilling to but without the power to stop herself. She came back slowly. There were tears in her eyes, which was a first since I’d come back to town. And something else. Looking at her, it was like seeing a kid on Christmas day coming downstairs to find a pony standing by the tree. It wasn’t happiness. It wasn’t delight. It was what came before that. Wonder, maybe. Disbelief.

“What did you say?” she asked, and her voice sounded like someone shouting from a long way off. “What did you say to me?”

“Please,” the Black Sun said with my mouth. It reached out and took my mother’s hand. She stepped close, her eyes locked on mine now, staring into me like she was looking for something. Like she’d lost something important and thought she might find it written on the back of my skull.

“You?” she whispered. “It is you? Are you there?”

When I answered, it was really me.

“I don’t know. Help me find out.”

Her hand dropped back to her side. A thickset black man pushed a cart out from the doors behind her, nodded to us as he passed, and pressed out into the parking lot with a metallic crash. He might as well not have been there. My mother’s attention was locked on nothing, her lips moving in a conversation I had no part in. My nose had started running, and the cold hurt my earlobes. I ignored the discomfort. My heart was beating faster. I felt the gap between us growing thin. I could feel myself almost reaching her. Almost.

“I know you’re not supposed to,” I said. “Talk to me anyway.”

“Your father is a good man,” she said. “He’s a good man.”

“Except he’s not my father,” I said. Her gaze snapped to me. To me, not the rider, not the air beside my head. Not even the story she’d told herself about me ever since I left. For the first time in years, my mother was looking at me. Ever since a girl with the Sight had told me that my mother had had an affair, I’d had the suspicion take root, but I’d never said it. Not even to myself. “Dad. He’s not my father. Is he?”

“Your father is . . . your father is . . .” she said, and it had the same intonation that she’d used before, except it broke. The sentence stuck there in her throat like a bone. For a moment her attention swam. “Your father was the devil.”

It felt like a punch in the stomach. Or like victory. Or both.

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Tell me about that.”