Nine

The plan was simple, and even easier because it was already laid out. Instead of Eric luring Coin free of his hive, Chogyi Jake would do the work. Instead of Eric's hired muscle attacking Coin, Ex and Aubrey and I would do the honors with sniper rifles and custom ammunition designed to disrupt riders. I pulled up satellite photos of the warehouse and everything around it from Google Earth and printed out copies for everyone. Ex diagrammed where each of us would be and worked out the timetable. I kept expecting him to tell us to synchronize our watches, but since all of our cell phones pulled the data from the same satellites, that part was really covered already. I'd just been watching too many old movies.

Aubrey joined in just before sundown, looking like a man only half recovered from the flu. He moved slowly, and I tried to tell myself it was mostly just the wounds. The physical ones.

When we'd done everything there was to do, Aubrey crawled back into bed. Chogyi Jake left, going off to run some normal human errand-feed his cats, check his mail, something mundane and reassuring like that. Ex set himself on the couch like a guard, turned on the television, turned it off again, and pulled a book of essays by Bertrand Russell out of his things. He read it with a constant sneer. Midian sat in the kitchen, a cup of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

Back in the bedroom, my laptop open on the bed, it struck me that the hardest thing was going to be waiting the three days before our moment came. I got online and against my better judgment, I checked the blogs of everyone I'd known from before I'd come to Denver. My old boyfriend was still bitching about the band he was in that never quite got it together to practice. My dorm mate from last year had apparently just noticed that feminism existed and couldn't decide whether she thought it was a good thing. The girl I'd once considered my best friend hadn't posted anything since she'd gone off to Portland with her boyfriend in June.

It was a depressing exercise. When I'd gone to college, all bridges to my parents and church reduced to cinders and ash behind me, I'd thought I was starting my real life at last. I'd thought that everything I did, every person I met or hated or fell in love with, mattered. And now that I'd left that behind too, I could see that I'd been wrong. The drama and the experiments and the passionate lack of direction were all doing just fine without me. It was like pulling my finger out of water. My absence hadn't left a hole.

I thought about leaving a comment. Inherited more money than God, fighting forces of darkness. Think I'm in love with my dead uncle's not-boyfriend. L8R. I didn't. For one thing, they wouldn't have believed me, and for another, it turned out I didn't care if they did. Or if that wasn't true, at least I didn't want to care. I told myself that they'd left as little mark on me as I'd left on them, and I was even able to convince myself a little.

I spent the rest of the evening Googling the terms that Ex and Aubrey and Chogyi Jake kept tossing around. Riders, possession, daughter organism. By the time I fell asleep, I was reading long essays about the difference between a therian and a werewolf, and I'd learned the term otherkin. Things that a month ago would have seemed like schizophrenic ravings were making sense to me now, and I didn't know whether I found that reassuring or scary.

When the sunlight streaming through the windows woke me, I felt like crap. I made my way out to the main part of the house to find Ex and Aubrey had gone. Midian lay on the couch, hands folded corpselike on his chest. Only Chogyi Jake was there and awake, working on a crossword puzzle and drinking green tea.

"Hey," I said.

"Good morning," he said. His smile was one of the most genuine things I'd ever seen. "Ex is out getting the rifles. Aubrey said he had to see to his lab. He debated waking you before he went, but he wanted to let you rest."

"Probably a good call," I said, hiding a pang of disappointment. "So. What are you up to?"

"Nothing in particular. Why?" he asked. And then, with a conspiratorial lowered voice, "Getting stir-crazy?"

"I was thinking. We know that all the Invisible College guys are busy, right? It's not like they're going to send out any more hit squads to just wander the streets in case they bump into us."

"That's certainly the assumption, yes," he said, folding the half-finished puzzle.

"So. There's no real reason we couldn't go shopping?"

CHOGYI JAKE'S van smelled like a mechanic's shop: motor oil and WD-40 and the cold, subtle scent of steel tools. The windows all had a thin coating of old grease that made the world outside seem like a movie with the focus just barely off. The bucket seats were cracked, the foam stuffing peeking through. The back compartment was dark as a cave. Perfect for moving corpses. The dead woman's face-the blue of her eyes, the black marks inscribed on her skin, the surprise on her face-flickered in my mind for a moment. I shook myself, hoping movement could dislodge the image.

"There used to be a really good bookstore just across the street," Chogyi Jake said as he pulled into a parking space. A California Pizza Kitchen cowered under the looming weight of Saks Fifth Avenue and I felt something in my belly starting to uncoil. "It's over on Colfax now. We can go there after this if you'd like."

"Pretty clothes first," I said. "Mind-improving literature later."

"As you wish," he said, with a smile. I had the feeling he was amused by me, and that he took some joy in my self-indulgence. I liked him for it.

I had another ten thousand dollars in my pocket, freshly drawn from the bank without a word or a whisper from anyone. We walked through the growing heat of the August morning and into the air-conditioned artificial cool of the mall, like walking into another world. I breathed in deeply and felt the smile come across my face.

Saks Fifth Avenue. Neiman Marcus. Abercrombie & Fitch. None of them was safe from me. Victoria's Secret gave up a half dozen of the great-looking bras I had never been able to afford. I got blue jeans, I got suits, I got the little black evening dress that my mother had said every girl needs, but said quietly so my father couldn't hear. I bought a black leather overcoat that I wouldn't be able to wear for months and steel-toed work boots I didn't need. I got a new swimsuit-a one-piece, because halfway through trying on the bikini, I got irrationally embarrassed about the stitches. I bought four hundred dollars' worth of makeup even though I never wore any.

It was an orgy. It was a binge. It was glorious excess, my lowest consumerist impulses turned up to eleven. Chogyi Jake made two trips to the van without me, carrying away the bags and boxes rather than letting them build up to an unmanageable bulk. I saw it in the eyes of the clerks: the crazy rich girl was on a roll.

When it dawned on me that I hadn't eaten breakfast and lunchtime was a couple hours past, I went from fine to ravenous in about twenty seconds. Chogyi Jake led me back toward the van and the pizza joint, a dozen more bags digging into our hands. My stomach growled, and in my low-blood-sugar condition, I was starting to feel a little light-headed and ill. I still had two thousand and change in my pocket, and I didn't think I'd go back to the mall after we ate. Maybe we'd hit the bookstore he'd talked about. I wondered if there was something I could buy for Aubrey.

"Well," I said after we'd taken our seats and placed our orders, "I think you've seen me at my worst."

"Really?" Chogyi Jake said, scratching idly at the stubble on his scalp. "That wasn't so terrible, then."

"You don't think so? I just spent over seven thousand dollars on a shopping spree. My father would lose his shit, wasting money like that."

"We all have ways to distract ourselves from fear. You have this. Ex has his religion. Aubrey has his work," Chogyi Jake said. "I don't see that any of them is more or less a vice than another. Certainly, there are worse."

"I'm not really like this," I said. "I mean, I never do this kind of thing."

"Well, almost never," Chogyi Jake said, laughter in his eyes.

"Yeah," I said. And then, "Why do you think it's about fear, though? Why not just greed?"

"It would only be greed if you wanted more money. This would have been gluttony. But even if it is that, it is still about wrestling your anxiety. Addictions are the same. Drinking to excess. Sexual expression without love or joy. Abuse of cocaine or hash or heroin."

"Drugs do the same thing as religion? Don't let Ex hear you say that," I said. I'd meant it as a joke, but it didn't quite come out that way.

"He knows," Chogyi Jake said. "He knows what he does and why he does it."

"You knew Eric, right? You worked with him before. What did he do?"

Chogyi Jake smiled and leaned forward. The chrome and mirrors of the restaurant seemed too hard and bright for an expression as gentle and compassionate as that.

"Eric carried a heavy burden. Much of it he held to himself. I believe he sacrificed many things to the work he undertook, and I don't know all of the prices he paid. He cultivated a kind of solitude that kept people away from him."

"To protect them," I said.

"Or himself."

The waiter came by before I could follow up on that, two pizzas literally piping on his tray. The smell of hot cheese and tomatoes derailed any train of thought I'd had, and I descended into making yum-yum noises for the next fifteen minutes. When the calories started to cross into my blood, where I could use them, I began to turn what Chogyi Jake had said over in my mind. Something bothered me like a rock in my shoe. It was in the way he'd spoken, in the calm that seemed to come off him in waves. I was down to two slices and starting to feel a little bloated before I spoke again.

"What do you do?"

He raised his eyebrows in a question.

"For fear. The anxiety," I said. "What do you do?"

"These days, I meditate," he said. "Before that, it was heroin."

I didn't know that it was what I'd expected until he said it, and then it was perfectly clear. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. We didn't say anything more about it. I paid the bill, shouldered the burden of my purchases, and we went out to the van. The sun was blazing down on us now, the light like a physical pressure on my face. He opened the back door of the van. The compartment was almost full of shining bags, plastic wrap, boxes. Clothes hung from hooks in the roof like a little mobile dry cleaner's. I ran a hand through my hair, a little stunned to see it all at once this way. Chogyi Jake was silent.

"If this is all about fear, I must really be effing scared," I said, gesturing toward the back of the van. I was surprised to hear my voice break a little on the last word. He didn't move either toward me or away. I started weeping and pushed my tears away with the back of my hand. It was half a minute before I could speak again. "I'm really, really scared."

"I know," he said. His voice was comforting as warm flannel in winter. "You've changed a lot in a very short time. It will take time before you can really be still again. It's normal."

"I don't have any friends. I don't have a family. I'm afraid if I do this wrong, I won't have any of you guys anymore either. Isn't that stupid? I've got a bunch of evil wizards who want me dead, and that's what I'm afraid of?"

"No," Chogyi Jake said. "If it's true, it isn't stupid. It's just who you are right now."

I started crying harder, but somehow I wasn't ashamed. He didn't put his arm around me. He didn't touch me. He only stood witness. It was the kindest thing anyone had ever done.

"I don't want...I don't want them to see all this. I don't want them to think I'm like this," I said.

"I know a shelter," he said. "They'll be grateful for whatever you want to give."

"Okay," I said, nodding. "Okay, good."

"EIGHT HOURS for that?" Midian said as Chogyi Jake closed the door. "Fuck me, sister. Did you have to try on the whole store before you picked something?"

"I got what I needed," I said lightly. Chogyi Jake smiled as I walked back toward my room. I was beginning to see how he could use the same expression to mean a lot of different things.

I'd kept seven outfits with associated footwear, a small purse for occasions when the leather backpack was insufficiently formal, two lipsticks, some eyeliner, the swimsuit, three of the good-looking bras, a bag for my laptop, and, after some wavering back and forth, the steel-toed boots. Somewhere in south Denver, there were going to be some victims of domestic violence hiding from their boyfriends and husbands in very nice clothes. Put that way, it didn't seem like enough.

By the time I'd showered and changed, Ex and Aubrey were back. I walked into the living room to see three unfamiliar rifles on the coffee table. They weren't from the stash at the storage facility. Ex, squatting beside them, nodded to me. Aubrey was leaning against the wall. He looked better, I thought. Still tired and bruised, but there was color in his cheeks. The time at his lab seemed to have done him more good than sleeping had, and I remembered what Chogyi Jake had said about using his work to cope with fear. I went to stand beside him.

"Okay," Ex said. "These are all thirty aught six, and they're all bolt action. At four hundred yards, the round is going to drop about fifty inches, so these have scopes that I set to take that into account, okay? Don't try to make the adjustment yourself. It's already in the equipment."

Aubrey folded his arms and nodded seriously. I found myself mirroring him without meaning to. Midian breezed in from the backyard, ruined yellow eyes taking us all in with something equally amused and curious.

"Where did you get these?" I asked.

"Wal-Mart," Chogyi Jake said.

"They're usually used for elk hunting," Ex continued. "A couple of standard rounds from one of these can drop a thousand-pound animal. That won't make a damn bit of difference with Coin. So that's where the custom ammunition comes in."

I hadn't noticed the box until he pulled it out from under the coffee table and put it in between the rifles. It was carved rosewood with a finish so rich and subtle it seemed to reflect the light of a nearby fire. Ex opened it and let the cartridges spill out. The bullets were all black and engraved with script that looked like Arabic. I stepped closer, putting out my hand, but hesitated before I touched them. They were beautiful, but the prospect of holding one made my flesh crawl. They smelled like fire, and I had the uncanny sense that they were aware of me.

"These are the big trick," Ex said. "They all have the Mark of Ya'la ibn Murah and the sigil of St. Francis of the Desert both. They're like the wards and alarms that protect this place and the alarms at the apartment. If things go well, they'll ground out the rider. Now, these are pretty heavy work for a human being to do. Eric put a lot of work into getting them, so it's not like we can whistle up some more if we run out. We have to make these count."

"Check," I said.

"For this to work, these have to break skin. Rubbing them up against him won't make him happy, but if the round doesn't penetrate, we might as well not have tried. That means keeping him outside his wards and distracted. Okay?"

We all nodded together, even Midian. Ex looked pleased.

"I've arranged some time at the practice range for you two," he said, nodding at me and Aubrey. "You don't want the first time you use this to be in the field. That's tomorrow morning. We'll leave from here at noon. It's going to take five or six hours, so don't plan anything for the afternoon."

Aubrey's eyes flickered, recalculating something, but he nodded his agreement.

"Good," Ex said. He put the engraved bullets back in their box, and I relaxed a little, just having them out of sight. "We're up to speed, folks. This was Wednesday. Tomorrow's practice. Friday, we're making another on-site visit to be sure we all know what the place looks like when you aren't looking down from orbit. Saturday morning, we end this."

"Nice work," Midian said. "All this in place, I think we've got half a chance."

We sat around for a few more minutes. Ex and Midian started talking about occult issues like frat boys talking football. Under Chogyi Jake's prompting, the rest of us split off into a conversation about Aubrey's lab and the experiments he was conducting. As Aubrey got into it, I could see his shoulders loosen and the lines of pleasure and laughter start to come out around his eyes. I remembered what it had felt like, kissing him.

Chogyi Jake excused himself for the bathroom and left the two of us alone. Ex and Midian were talking about the wards on the Inca Street apartment and whether the protections on Eric's house were more effective. I tried not to listen, not wanting to remember any of that. Instead, I focused on Aubrey.

It's just fear, I told myself. This is only fear. You can deal with it.

"Hey," I said, heart in throat, "after the practice range tomorrow, can I take you out to dinner?"

"Sure. We should check with the guys and see what they want, but I know a great Indian place that-"

"You singular," I said. "Ixnay on the uralplay."

Aubrey turned a little, looking at me square on. He hadn't shaved today, and the stubble on his cheeks made me think of Sunday mornings and tangled sheets. Aubrey was blushing and pretending that he wasn't.

"Um, well. I mean, sure."

"Just to clarify," I said. "This is a date. I'm asking you on a date. We're going to do this insanely dangerous thing in three days, and I'd like to carpe some diem before it goes down."

The blush was rising up from his neck, brightening his cheeks. Even his earlobes were getting in on the action. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Count me in," he said.

I was quietly thrilled for the rest of the evening. Midian roasted a chicken in lemon and salt that tasted like heaven, we all stayed up talking about things that weren't ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged parasites that suck your soul out the back of your head. Aubrey sat beside me. When he passed the rice pilaf to me, our fingers touched a fraction of a second longer than strictly necessary, and it felt like an electric jolt. But in a good way.

I went to bed feeling like I'd conquered the world, even though all I'd really managed was to ask Aubrey out. That was, in all fairness, pretty good, given my track record. I spent an hour on the Internet reading what I could find about the uncomforting sigils on Eric's ammunition, and then fell asleep to the soft sounds of Chogyi Jake and Aubrey talking in the guest room, and beneath that the drone and chuckle of the television in the living room, where Ex and Midian were, I assumed, doing something deep and mystical that only to the uninitiated looked like watching late-night talk shows.

The nightmare was like being assaulted.

I was in darkness. The world around me was a salad of familiar objects-couch, folding chair, desk lamp-and arcane brass sculpture. I was naked, and powerfully aware that there had been a sound just a moment before. Something in the darkness with me. Something that wasn't supposed to be there.

Something big.

In the logic of dreams, I knew that if I could just get the key to my old dorm room, I could get out before it found me. I started moving through constantly shifting rooms and courtyards, trying to find where I'd hidden it.

The sound came again. A deep rushing, like beating wings the size of mountains. When I looked up, the sky was a single eye, staring back down. The pupil was a terrible blue, and the blood vessels in the white spelled out words and phrases that made me want to scream. The massive eye darted this way and that, searching for me. I huddled under a filthy blanket, trying not to breathe. Slow footsteps, echoing like something from a hospital corridor, came slowly closer and closer. My hands were balled in fists so tightly I knew I was breaking bones, and if he heard them snap, he'd find me. But I couldn't unclasp them. My hands wouldn't respond to me.

I woke with a start, still trying not to scream. The clock said it was three in the morning. I was covered with a slick, cold sweat. I got up, opening and closing my hands just to prove to myself that I could. In the dim light of city nighttime, the bed looked gray. I pulled on my robe. I was totally awake, but the dream felt like it had been worked into my skin. I stood there for long minutes, trying to talk myself into going back to sleep, then I scooped up the pillow and threw it in the wastebasket. I thought that if I was quiet, I could make myself some tea without disturbing the others.

But they were already in the kitchen. All of them. Aubrey sat at the table, his hair still wild from the bed, and his expression was tight and angry. Chogyi Jake leaned against the table, his arms crossed. Ex was in a black T-shirt and sweats, his face pale and haunted.

"You too, eh?" Midian asked as I stood there, staring at them.

"I had a rough dream," I said.

"Caught in the dark, sound of huge wings?" Aubrey asked.

"God's eye looking down," Ex said. His voice was bleak.

"How did..." I began, then let the question die. They'd all had the same dream. At the same time. I could see the dread in their faces.

"Wasn't God," Midian said. "That, ladies and germs, was Randolph Coin. He's looking for us."