“So not just demons, but magic too,” I said. He dropped the onion into the spreading pool of butter, where it sizzled angrily. The pepper was next for the block.
“Thing is, kid, the folks that believe that shit? They’re absolutely right. That’s exactly how the world is. Let me give you a fer instance. I know you’re wondering what the fuck happened to me, right? Well, how old do you think I am?”
“I…I don’t…”
“I was born the year they stormed the Bastille. The year of our Lord seventeen hundred and eighty motherfucking nine.” His voice had taken on an angry buzz. The blade in his hand flickered over the cutting board. “I crossed the Invisible College, and they cursed me. I’ve been wandering around ever since. Coin is direct apostolic line from the pig fucker who did this to me. He’s the only one who can take it back.”
He put the peppers in with the browning onions. Wisps of smoke and steam rose from the black metal.
“I came to Eric because he’s the kind of guy who knows things. Helps people. I needed help.”
“You’re telling me that a bunch of evil wizards killed my uncle?” I could hear the raw disbelief in my own voice.
His yellowed eyes locked on me. He took an egg from the carton and cracked it deliberately on the countertop.
“I’m telling you the world’s more complicated than you thought,” he said. “And I’m not wrong about that.”
While he whipped eggs in a tiny steel mixing bowl, I sat hunched over the breakfast bar, brandy in my hands. I felt like I’d been on an amusement park ride one too many times. Confused and dizzy and a little sick. We both knew he was giving me time to think. Time, specifically, to decide he was a nut or a liar. My first guess was both. But he was the only thread I had that might lead to Uncle Eric and whoever had killed him.
“Okay,” I said as he poured the yellow-white froth over the peppers and onions, “let’s say I buy it. What were you two going to do? Track this Coin guy down and give him a good talking to?”
“The Invisible College is here for a reason. Every few years, they have to come together to induct new people into the club. They have to call up a rider, open the poor sucker who’s signing up for the horror show, and infect them with it. Things start moving just outside the world like sharks coming up for chum. When you get too many riders bumping around, the barrier between the physical world and the abstract gets…well, not thin exactly, but weird. That started in April. While that’s happening, the Invisible College has its hands full. Eric and I were planning to disrupt things before they could eat the new crop of people. And while we were at it, kill Coin.”
“You were going to murder someone?”
He put his hand on the handle of the skillet, flinched back from the heat, and reached for a dishcloth to protect himself.
“Coin’s dead, kid,” he said. “Coin’s been dead since the day they made him Invisible. We were looking to kill the thing that’s living in his body.”
He lifted the skillet, and a flick of his wrist spun the omelet in the air, folded it, and caught it. The ragged lips twisted into a satisfied smile. He waited a few seconds, then flipped it to the other side.
“That’s how it works with them,” he said. “You take the unclean spirit inside, and it devours you. It’s not always like that. Other kinds of rider, you maybe don’t need a ceremony. You get bitten, you pick up the wrong guy at the bar. You get assaulted. Maybe it kicks you out of your body, puts you someplace else. Or it just hangs out in the back of your mind, making suggestions or taking over in little ways so you won’t even notice.”
“That’s…” I didn’t know whether I was going to say horrible or gross or implausible. Midian shrugged.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “Thing is, the Invisible College bastards? They’re strong, and they’re smart, and they’re organized. Every one of them that penetrates into the world makes Coin stronger, and the stronger he gets, the more he can protect his own. Think Amway, but for demonic possession.”
“And killing the thing inside Coin would fix you?”
“Killing that fucker would undo everything it’s done in the physical world. Me and a whole lot of other things besides. He’s the center of the whole damn infection. Here, lemme get you a fork. Blow on it a little, it’s still hot.”
The taste was more than a few eggs, onions, and peppers seemed to justify. It was lush and hot and rich. He smiled at my reaction and slid the rest onto a plate for me.
“That’s really good,” I said through my mouthful.
“There’s a secret to it. Always drink some brandy first. There. Enjoy. So, yeah, we were looking to break the Invisible College ’s back. Get rid of Coin, disrupt the induction. It’d be just like penicillin taking out a case of the clap. We both knew it was dangerous. I don’t know how they got to Eric, but I’m dead sure they did. Your average mugger would have been out of his depth with him. Guys like Eric don’t die at random. He got hit.”
I took another bite of the omelet, chewing slowly to give myself time to think. On the one hand, everything Midian said was clearly insane. A two-hundred-year-old man cursed by demons. A cabal of evil wizards planning to engineer the demonic possession of a new batch of cultists. And my uncle in the middle of it all, dead because someone caught wind of his plan.
On the other hand, if anyone had asked me a week before what my uncle did, I would have guessed wrong. And even if every word coming out of Midian’s mouth was crap, it seemed to be crap he believed. And so maybe this Coin guy believed it too. I’d had enough experience with the kind of atrocities that blind faith can lead to that I couldn’t discount anything just because it was crazy. If Coin and the Invisible College believed that they were demon-possessed wizards and that Eric was out to stop them, that could have been reason enough to kill him. Things don’t have to exist to have consequences.
I was lost in bitter memories for a moment. The flare of a match brought me back. The deathly face was considering me as he lit a cigarette.
“I’d think it was bullshit too if I was you,” he said. “You doubt. I respect that. Doubt’s important stuff.”
He took a long drag, the coal of his cigarette going bright and then dark. Long, blue smoke slid out of his mouth and nostrils as he spoke. It didn’t smell like tobacco. It was sweeter and more acrid.
“Thing is, kid, you gotta doubt the stuff that isn’t true. You go around doubting whether pickup trucks exist, you’ll wind up on the curb with a lot of broken bits.”
I put my fork against the side of the plate and looked up at him.
“I’m taking this to the police, you know,” I said.
“Won’t do you any good. They’re just going to think you’re nuts. They have an explanation that suits them just fine.”
“All the same—”
A hard tap came from the front room. Both of us turned to look. The little glass ball that hung over the door had fallen. It rolled uneasily along the unseen slope of the floorboards. While we watched, the ones over the windows fell too, one-two-three. Midian grunted.
“When you came in,” he said, “you didn’t drop something behind you? Ashes or salt, something like that?”
“No,” I said. “Nothing.”
Midian nodded and took another drag of his cigarette.
“That’s too bad,” he said.
With a bang like a car wreck, the front door burst in.
Three
Four figures poured into the front room. They wore pale shirts and loose pants, almost like a karate gi. Their skins were all pale, but covered with black markings. The swirls and designs looked like script. Two tall men stood on either side, a shorter man and a woman in the center. The shorter man shouted something I couldn’t make out. Midian yelped and bolted for the back of the apartment. Four pairs of eyes turned on me. Behind the elaborate tattoos, they looked surprised. Both of the tall men were holding pistols.
Fear shrilled through my veins. I should have been skittering away from them; I should ha
ve been mewling. Instead, I slipped off the wrought iron stool and spun my plate like a Frisbee. It shattered against the short man’s temple, but by then the stool was already flying through the air toward them. They dodged it as I jumped, rolling over the counter on my back and landing, on my fingertips and the balls of my feet, on the kitchen floor.
The woman shrieked, and the crack of a pistol came at the same moment the countertop I’d been on burst apart. A bullet made a sound as it passed over me, a little exhalation of death.
The woman came around the corner, and as if I’d been expecting her, I launched forward, my shoulder slamming against the side of her knee. I felt something in her joint give, but her hands came down on me like thrown bricks. We struggled on the floor. I couldn’t tell if she was screaming or I was, but seconds later, we were both on our feet. She had Midian’s cutting knife in her hand. I could still see where the onion juice had dried on the blade.
“Who are you?” she said. She had a Slavic accent. Her eyes were the blue of gas flame. Her face was written like a Chinese scroll, columns of esoteric characters from her hairline to her neck.
I didn’t know I intended to move until the skillet was in my hand. She leapt forward, the knifepoint moving for my body. I caught the blade with the skillet and spun, more gracefully than I had ever moved before, throwing the woman to one side, and then coming around to land the skillet hard on the back of her head. I heard the report of a pistol again and the refrigerator door over my shoulder puckered. I dropped and rolled, pressing my back against the cabinet, where I could neither see the front room nor be seen from it.
The woman groaned. Blood pooled beneath her head.
“Drop your guns,” I shouted. “Do it now.”
It was an idiotic thing to say, but I felt them hesitate. I jumped forward, grabbing a drawer at random, and, twisting from my belly, pulled. It broke free, silverware arcing through the air toward my attackers. They fired, but the shots weren’t aimed. I dove out toward them.
The fear vanished. I moved as if my body simply knew what to do. I just had to stand back and let things follow their course. I rose to my feet, pushing the coffee table hard into one man’s shins as I did. As he stumbled, I stepped onto the table. His descending head met my rising knee, and he spun back.
“Stop!”
The last man stood across the room from me, his legs braced, both hands on his gun, steadying it. His eyes were wide. There was no way I could get to him before he pulled the trigger. No way I could get to cover before the bullet hit me. To my surprise, I smiled.
The pistol shot startled me, and I waited for the pain. Nothing came. Shock, I thought. It’s the shock. I’ll die in a minute here. But then a second bullet slammed into the man, and he slumped. Blood flushed the thick pale cloth of his gi, making it look like skinned meat. Midian stood in the hallway leading to the bedroom, what looked like a World War I Lugar in his hand.
He looked at me. His expression was cool and appraising.
“You’re pretty good at that,” he said. “Close the door, kid.”
For the space of a long breath, I didn’t understand what he meant. When the trembling came, I felt like I was perfectly steady and the building was rattling. I crossed the four steps to the apartment’s door and pushed it closed. The wood was splintered and white where they’d kicked it in. The earthquake in my body got worse. I felt it in the soles of my feet, like the floor was tapping on my shoes. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to remain standing.
When I turned back to the room, the woman had risen to her hands and knees. Midian, behind her, leveled his Lugar at the back of her head.
“No!” I screamed.
He looked up as he pulled the trigger. The woman pitched forward, her skull split open. I dropped to my knees.
“You don’t need to look at me like that,” Midian said as he stepped over her body and toward the small man crumpled in the middle of the floor. The attacker had shards of the plate in his hair, his legs bent under him. His eyes were closed. I could see him breathing. “These aren’t people. They’re qliphoth. Shells. They’re what’s left after a rider’s taken over.”
“Please stop,” I said.
Midian fired twice into the small man’s head. I closed my eyes. The euphoria of the fight was gone, as if it had never been there. Tears ran down my cheeks, but I felt too sick to move. I heard Midian walk to the last man, the tall one I’d kicked.
“Don’t,” I breathed. “Please. Please don’t.”
The gun barked. My body spasmed. I doubled over, vomiting up the eggs and onions and brandy. I was crying with the same sense of illness, the same violence. Soft footsteps came toward me, and I was suddenly sure that he was going to kill me too. I put up a hand, thinking somehow I could push away the gun.
Midian knelt beside me. Skeletal hands slid under my arms, and he lifted me. Together, we stumbled toward the bathroom. I puked again as we passed the kitchen, but he kept pushing me on. Soon, I was on my knees in front of the toilet curled in fetal position. There was blood and sick on my sleeve. Midian sat on the edge of the bathtub, watching me collapse.
“Please,” I said. “Please.” I didn’t even know what I meant by it.
“The first time’s the worst, kid,” he said in his industrial ruin of a voice. “Killing someone isn’t like an action movie. You don’t just go bang real loud and they fall down. It does something to you. I understand that.”
My eyes were shut tight. I could feel my mouth open wide enough to ache at the jaw, like I was screaming. Only a whine came out. My heart felt as if something precious had died. Some tiny part of my mind, cool and observant, was surprised to see all the rest of me coming unhinged.
“They came in here, kid. They came after you. You did what you had to do. They weren’t even human, no matter what they looked like. Remember that. They’re just shells. All those folks were already dead.”
For the first time, I wanted to believe him. All the bullshit about Eric and the Invisible College and unclean spirits. I wanted it all to be true. I wanted to believe it.
I remembered the woman’s blue eyes. Whoever she was, she’d been a baby once. Her mother had held her in her arms. She’d had a first kiss. Someone had looked into those eyes with love. I saw her skull open under Midian’s bullets.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
“Take your time,” Midian said. “It’s gonna be okay. Just take your time.”
It wasn’t okay for a very long time. It felt like food poisoning, or worse. But eventually my strength gave out a little, and the violence of my reactions calmed. Midian had left me alone, so I locked myself in the bathroom and took a long, cold shower. The water seemed to ground me and pull me back to myself. When I stepped out and picked up a towel, I felt fragile, but I could function.
In the apartment, I could hear Midian grunting and talking to himself. The sweet, harsh smell of his cigarettes covered anything else. I was grateful for that. I sat on the floor and dug through the puddle of my clothes until I found my cell. I looked at it for a long time before I could bring myself to make the call.
Aubrey picked up on the second ring.
“Jayné?” he said, pronouncing it wrong.
“Hey,” I said. “I need to ask you something.”
“Sure,” he said. “Anything. What’s up?”
I could hear something in the background. Voices. Traffic. The real world. I took a deep breath.
“What do you know about the Invisible College?”
There was a pause that lasted years.
“Oh, thank God,” he said. “I was afraid Eric hadn’t told you about any of it. I was going to bring it up when I got you from the airport, but I thought if he hadn’t, I’d sound like a schizophrenic. Eric’s murder. It was about Randolph Coin, wasn’t it? Was he actually trying to take Coin on?”
I leaned forward, hunched over the cell. Mostly what I felt was relief. Even if it wasn’t true, if it was all stories and deceptions and ma
dness, at least there was someone I could talk to. I almost started crying again.
“Jayné? Are you there? Are you all right?”
“You remember how you said I should call if I needed any help?” I asked.
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“I need help.”
Four
The bodies were lined up on the wooden floor of the front room. Midian had erected a levee of towels around them and draped black plastic trash bags over their heads. I was grateful for that. The curtains were closed, cutting us off from the street and the city. With the windows covered, I realized how small the apartment was. Aubrey was leaning against the interior brick wall. Midian sat on the couch beside a rough pile of history books and loose papers, his cigarette filling the air with a dim haze. His clothes were streaked with blood. I perched on the remaining kitchen stool. The one I’d thrown in the fight had bent enough that it wobbled now. I knew how it felt.
“O-kay,” Aubrey said. Then, “Wow.”
“The upside is no cops,” Midian said. “I figure they set up some kind of sound-dampening cantrip before they broke in, or else…”
“Or else?” Aubrey asked.
“Brick walls,” Midian replied with a shrug.
Aubrey nodded. His expression was grave, but there was a businesslike quality to how he took the whole thing in. I scratched my arm. I’d found a sweatshirt in the back. It smelled like Midian’s cigarettes, but the white shirt I’d worn here was ruined. I tried not to look at the bodies.
“Well, we’ve got two issues,” Aubrey said. “We need to get rid of these guys, and we need to make sure you and Jayné are someplace safe.”
Midian smirked at the mispronunciation of my name, but didn’t correct him.
“My guess is we’ve got a little time,” Midian said. “Coin throws his ninja strike team at us and they don’t come home, he’s going to get careful for a while. But I wouldn’t want to wait until morning.”
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