Unclean Spirits (3 page)

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.

F

Fear shrilled through my veins. I should have been skittering away from them; I should have 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 madness, 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.”

T

“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.”

Aubrey nodded. I wanted to say that I was sorry, but I wasn’t sure who I wanted to say it to. My mind felt like it had been sandblasted. Aubrey pulled out his cell phone.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Midian said, standing up. “I wasn’t keen
on it when the kid invited you in. Who the fuck are you calling?”

“Friends,” Aubrey said. “We’ve all worked with Eric one time or another. They know the score.”

Midian frowned but didn’t stop him. I felt a rush of profound relief that Aubrey knew what to do next. I didn’t have a clue.

When I’d come out of the bathroom half an hour earlier and told Midian that Aubrey was on his way, the cursed man had almost lost his temper. He’d asked me everything I knew about Aubrey—who was he, who did he work for, how did he know Eric, why did I trust him—and it became clear that I didn’t actually know anything. Only that when I’d asked for help, he’d said yes.

After he’d arrived, there had been a brief dancing back and forth between them. Midian had given a
Reader’s Digest
condensation of the story he’d told me, and Aubrey had accepted it. Aubrey had explained that he and Eric had worked together before, and that he knew a little bit about Coin and the Invisible College, but that Eric had warned him off. Both men had seemed satisfied, at least provisionally. I watched it all like it was a television show.

Aubrey’s clean-up crew arrived twenty minutes later. There were two of them, both Aubrey’s age, both men, both unfazed by the corpses on the floor. The first looked vaguely Japanese, his head shaved to stubble, in a sand-colored shirt
and pale, worn jeans. He said his name was Chogyi, but to call him Jake. The second, with white-blond shoulder-length hair and black clothes, only nodded to me. Chogyi Jake said his name was Ex.

“Ex?” I said. “Like in ex–football player?”

“Ex-priest,” Chogyi Jake said.

“Ex for xylophone,” Ex said, stooping by the bodies. He had lifted the plastic trash bags. “The birth certificate says Xavier. What killed them?”

“I did,” Midian said. “The kid there kept them busy while I got the gun.”

“They were armed too,” Ex said. “You let a twenty-year-old girl fight four riders sent to kill her while you rummaged around for a pistol?”

“Twenty-two,” I said.

“She was doing a pretty good job,” Midian said.

“Adrenaline,” I said. “It was the adrenaline.”

“Must have been pretty good adrenaline to give you that much precision and control,” Ex said dryly.

“The kid’s got some kind of mojo on her,” Midian said. “She didn’t trip the alarms when she came in either. I’ve been trying to figure that out.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What?”

Midian shrugged. “You shouldn’t have been able to hold those bastards off,” he said. There was a little apology in his voice. “They’re pros. They should have cleaned your clock. But they didn’t.”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t like that. I was just scared. It was fight or flight. I don’t even know how…”

I waved my hands at the room, the corpses, the four men who I barely knew.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Ex said. “You think Eric put some kind of protection on her?”

Midian looked at the newcomer with distrust, then shrugged.

“He left her the whole joint,” Midian said. “Be all kinds of stupid not to watch out for her too.”

“I don’t have powers,” I said, louder than I’d meant to. My hands were on my knees, the knuckles bloodless and white.

“Can we get back to the issue at hand?” Aubrey said. “We’ve got a rider cult in town. They took out Eric, and now it looks like they’re after Jayné. We have four shells that we need to get rid of, and Jayné and Midian here to get to shelter. Whatever else is going on, that’s where we’re starting, okay?”

“Right,” Chogyi Jake said. “I’ve got the van downstairs. I’ll go get the dolly and the drop cloths, and we can get them out of here.”

Ex stood up. There was blood on his fingers. There was blood everywhere.

“The door isn’t as bad as it looks,” he said. “A couple long wood screws will hold it together well enough that no one will notice unless they’re looking for it. I can take care of that while Chogyi Jake loads them up.”

“Good thing you boys are on the side of the angels,” Midian said. “A serial killer would pay a lot for those kinds of services.”

“You can come with us,” Ex said. “Help dig.”

“What about getting me to shelter?” Midian asked.

“We can keep you covered,” Ex said.

Midian shrugged. Aubrey nodded his approval.

“I’ll get Jayné back to Eric’s place. When you’re done, you can bring Midian too.”

“You think that’s safe?” Chogyi Jake asked.

“Eric has more wards and protections on that house than anyplace else,” Aubrey said. “It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I can think of. And we’re a little short on time.”

They all took his point. I let him lead me out of the apartment and down to the street. Night had fallen while I’d been inside. It was a shock to see the cars and the low iron fence, to smell the exhaust, the distant suggestion of rain. I’d only been in the apartment for a few hours. It had been a lifetime.

He drove the same car he’d had at the airport the day before. I strapped on the seat belt and leaned against the window as he pulled into traffic. The moon looked more or less the way it had before I’d been attacked, before I’d been part of killing someone. The city lights obscured the stars. Aubrey didn’t speak, and neither did I, but I was sensitive to all the small movements and sounds he made. Shifting his
weight as he accelerated or touched the brakes, clearing his throat. My body felt heavy, like I’d had the flu and was still recovering. A police siren wailed but Aubrey didn’t seem worried by it, so I let myself ignore it too.

Back at Eric’s house—my house—Aubrey took my keys and opened the door so that I could shamble into the living room and sit on the couch. He sat beside me, his hand on the cushion above and behind me; close, but careful not to touch. I leaned toward him, my fingers reaching out like roots on a seedling. His physical presence was more comforting than I could have imagined.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m pretty fucked up. I’ve never…I’ve never been part of anything like that.”

“It’s hard,” he agreed.

“I don’t have powers. Whatever they said, I’m just a normal girl who—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Aubrey said. “We’ll make sense of the loose ends later.”

I didn’t know why I hated Midian’s suggestion that I was anything more than I seemed. Maybe because I was frightened that it might be true, and one more world-shifting change was set to pop my brain. One question kept pushing through the confusion, and even though I more than half didn’t want to hear the answer, it came out. I ran my hand through my hair, trying to pull myself together

“They really are the ones who killed Eric, aren’t they?”

Aubrey sighed. His arm behind me shifted. I wanted it to come down around my shoulders, but it didn’t.

“I think so. The Invisible College…Eric’s talked about them before. I didn’t know that he was going up against them now. They’re not good.”

“What are they, then. I mean, not good. No cookies. Check.”

Aubrey leaned in. I could smell the detergent on his shirt, the salt and musk under it like a perfume made from freshly washed boy. Something was making my throat a little dry, and I didn’t know if it was his body close to mine or another aftereffect of the shock. Or if there was a difference.

“There was a story Eric told me one time. He said Coin had been part of a scheme that took orphans from Eastern Europe and…hollowed them out. Put other things in them. Riders. And then the kids were adopted out. People would think they were adopting children, and instead, they’d get…monsters. Families would be broken apart. The riders would have a safe place to grow until they were ready to move on or spawn daughter organisms.”

“And Coin did it all for shits and giggles?”

“Coin did it in trade,” Aubrey said. “For the favors those riders could do him later. Eric stopped it. The Invisible College has hated him ever since. So yes, I think he’d be wise to try and break Coin. And I know they’d want Eric dead.”

“Okay,” I said.

He looked over at me. I couldn’t quite read his expression. I tilted my head, asking the question without asking.

“You’re like him,” he said. “You’re…impressive in the same way.”

I felt a flush in my skin, and I caught my breath like he’d asked me to freaking prom. I was acting like a sixteen-year-old on her first date. It embarrassed me. I tried to stop.

“What way’s that?” I asked.

“Well, you didn’t even know about Eric’s work until today, right? Now you’ve found out about him, and about riders and magic. You’ve been attacked. You’ve seen people die. Any one of those would have been enough to spin you. All of them together…I’m surprised you aren’t in a puddle on the floor.”

“I feel like I am,” I said with a great big adult, non–sexually charged sigh. “I feel like I’m floating off somewhere about three feet to the left of me.”

“Well, it doesn’t show. And food and sleep can’t hurt, right?”

He shifted, preparing to rise, and I reached out. I put my hand on his arm. From his eyes, I thought he felt the plea in the motion.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it will. You’ve been six different women in the last twenty-four hours. You’re just a little dizzy. But it’ll be all right.”

I was aware of how badly I wanted to kiss him. I could
feel his arms around me, my face against his shoulder as if it had already happened.

“Jane,” he said.

I corrected him. He looked embarrassed and tried out my name a couple of times, finally getting it right. Before he could get back to his thought, I leaned over toward him. I could feel the warmth of his body, hear the shushing of his shirt against his skin as he moved. I’d heard stories about people hooking up after something terrible. Emergency room doctors falling into bed together, soldiers after a firefight, strangers who’d survived some life-threatening disaster. I’d never understood it, but now it made sense.

I wanted. I wanted him to touch me. I wanted his body to reassure mine. I wanted something that would take away everything I’d seen and touched and done, something bright and good and true. Something that would hold off death. I wanted him to say my name again, and not in the tone he’d just used.

The voice, when it came, wasn’t his. It came from the back of the house, and it was Uncle Eric’s.

“Hey,” it said, “you’ve got a call.”

I yelped and jumped back, my heart thumping like a pair of sneakers in a dryer. Aubrey looked at me, and then back at the dark hallway.

“Hey,” the voice came again. It was tinny, like someone talking through a computer. “You’ve got a call.”

Aubrey walked back into the darkness. I followed. Eric’s
voice led us to the bedroom. A huge, elaborate cell phone glowed on the bedside table, its screen the size of my palm. The voice was Eric’s ringtone. I picked it up. The incoming call wasn’t a number I recognized. Aubrey shook his head; he didn’t know either.

“Let it drop to voice mail,” he said. I did, and when the icon appeared saying that there was a message waiting, I thumbed through the menu system until I found it. The cell dialed. I put it on speaker.

“Um,” the cell said. “Hi. I’m looking for Eric Heller? My name’s Candace Dorn? A friend of mine told me that you were in Denver right now and you could help people with…um…weird problems? I know this sounds really odd, but I think there’s something wrong with my dog. He wanted me to call you.”

The voice sighed, as if giving up something. When she spoke again, she sounded resigned.

“My dog wanted me to call you. If you don’t think I’m a complete nutcase, could you please call me back?”

She left her number, said thanks, and hung up. I looked over at Aubrey.

“Her dog?” I said.

“It’s possible,” Aubrey said. “Sometimes dogs can pick up on things. If there’s a rider trying to cross over from Next Door, or if someone is being ridden. I’ve heard weirder things. And that’s what Eric does. Well, did.”

“Helped people with their dogs?”

Aubrey chuckled, then smiled, then sobered.

“Eric did what needed doing,” he said. “It kept him busy. There are probably going to be a lot of people looking for him. For a while, at least.”

“I should call her back,” I said, “and tell her that we can’t help.”