thirteen-year period and only coincide with the predator every sixty-five years.”
“Okay,” I said. I was getting a little lost, but I didn’t want Aubrey to think I was stupid. “So what’s the five- year predator?”
“There isn’t one,” he said. “At least not now. But that the prime numbers show up suggests that there was one, even if it’s already gone extinct. So when primes show up in riders, maybe it’s because there’s something out there that they’re avoiding. The Invisible College is actually a good example of that. They have this ceremony every seven years. Why seven?”
“Because it’s a prime, and they’re avoiding something?” I said.
“Maybe, yeah. Or then again, maybe because there are seven wandering stars,” Aubrey said. “Or because God made the world in seven days. Or there are supposed to be seven categories of the soul. It’s hard to know what kinds of rules actually apply. Eric wasn’t about to let any good hypothesis go untested, though. Here, this is Seventeenth Street. I’m going to grab that space and we can walk from here.”
“Sounds good,” I said, noticing for no good reason that seventeen was a prime. I got out of the minivan, stepping into the beating sun. I felt a little light-headed, but whether it was the conversation or the altitude or just the spiritual jet lag that my utterly transformed life brought on, I couldn’t say. Aubrey came up at my side, his fingertips brushing my arm. I let him lead me across the street.
“Eric thought if we could figure out how riders changed people, we could make a better guess at what they wanted. What their agenda was.”
“Midian said they’re an infection,” I said.
“Midian has some simplistic ideas about infection,” Aubrey said.
The bank was down a very short block. As if we’d agreed on it, Aubrey and I dropped the subjects of parasites and spirits when we entered the dry, cool desert of the financial world. The lawyer had given me the name of the woman to ask for when I got to the desk. I expected to be put in one of the little wood-grain cubicle offices that competed for space with the line of tellers, but instead Aubrey and I were escorted to an elevator, and then up to a plush private office where I presented my paperwork, signed theirs, and was given access to the first of Eric’s cash accounts. They promised me an ATM card in about a week. Just to see if I could, I withdrew ten thousand dollars in cash. The woman didn’t blink.
“Dinner’s on me,” I said as we walked back out onto the street. Aubrey looked stunned.
“It really is,” he said.
There were other banks and more paperwork, but I put them aside. My hands kept finding their way to the keys for the storage units, fidgeting with them. Whatever I was getting into, I now had enough money in my name to do whatever needed doing. Aubrey was oddly quiet as we walked, and I took the chance to pull out the MapQuest printouts and see which of my next stops looked closest. I didn’t realize how much the August heat had been pressing on me until Aubrey started up the car and the first blast of the air conditioner hit my skin.
“Okay,” I said. “This one’s on Eighteenth Street. That should be pretty close, right?”
“What? Oh. Yeah, that’s over by the Children’s Hospital. We could almost walk to that.”
“Let’s drive anyway,” I said. And then, “Hey, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Aubrey said. “I just…Eric and I never talked about money. I didn’t know that he was in that kind of tax bracket.”
“Me either,” I said as we pulled out into traffic. “Turns out there was a whole lot I didn’t know.”
Aubrey smiled, but his brows didn’t quite lose their furrow. It was only a few minutes before we pulled into the storage facility. The gate code was written on the key chain. I read it to Aubrey, and he leaned out and punched the buttons. The bar rose, and we headed into the asphalt rat maze that was the storage joint.
I didn’t know quite what I’d expected, but this place wasn’t it. It was too prosaic. White stucco buildings with green garage doors lined a dozen tight alleyways. A family was loading boxes into the back of a big orange U-Haul truck, a girl maybe eight years old waving to us as we passed.
Aubrey cruised down two alleys, struggling to make the turns before I saw the numbers for Eric’s unit. We came to a halt just outside it. I fit the key into the padlock. The click as it came free was soft and deep. The lock was heavier in my hand than I’d expected. I took hold of the rolling door, prepared to lift it up, but I hesitated. Despite the heat, I shivered.
“The people who have the thing,” I said. “They don’t know it, do they?”
“The people who have what?”
“The T. whatever. The parasite,” I said.
“No. I mean, you could test for antibodies and find out, but generally there aren’t many symptoms.”
“Except that it changes who they are,” I said.
Aubrey wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of one hand. A few alleys over, the U-Haul truck started up with a loud rattle. I kept my fingertips on the shaped metal handle of the garage door, hesitating.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
Yes, I wanted to say. I fought four people with guns to a standstill yesterday. I walked through Midian’s magic alarms like they weren’t there. I have more money in my backpack right now than I’ve ever had in my bank account. And what if whatever’s in here changes things again? I didn’t particularly like who I was last week, but at least I knew who I was.
“No,” I said. “It’s nothing.”
“You’re cool?”
“Cucumberesque,” I said.
I tightened my grip on the handle and pulled. The garage door shrieked in metallic complaint and rose up. Daylight spilled into a concrete cube behind it, smaller than an actual garage. White cardboard boxes were stacked three deep against the walls, and an industrial-looking set of steel shelves at the back supported a collection of odd objects. A violin case, a duffel bag, two translucent bowling balls, a stuffed bear with a wide pink heart embroidered on its chest.
It looked like a secondhand store, but it felt like a puzzle. I picked up the stuffed bear. The nap of the fake fur was worn, the thread that made its mouth was loose and thin with use. A child had loved this bear once. I wondered who that had been, and what had brought the beloved object here.
“I’ve got something,” Aubrey said.
He was standing beside the stack of boxes, the top one open. Looking over his shoulder, I saw a stack of three-ring binders with words stenciled on the spines: INVISIBLE COLLEGE-1970-1976. INVISIBLE COLLEGE-1977- 1981. There were easily a dozen of them. Aubrey lifted one out and opened it.
“What is it?”
“Newspaper clippings. Lists of names and places,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t know what it all means.”
“Let’s get it in the car,” I said. I suddenly wanted very badly to just leave. “Let’s get as much of this out of here as we can and we’ll make sense of it later.”
He grunted in agreement and hauled the box out toward his car. I grabbed the next box and followed him. It wasn’t until we picked the duffel bag up off the shelf that we found the guns.
Six
This is nice,” Midian said, chambering a round with the rolling sound that only shotguns make. He looked down the barrel and nodded his appreciation. “Good workmanship.”
Chogyi Jake and Aubrey were squatting by the coffee table. Three empty shells lay on the table’s edge, two small piles of debris in the center. Ex stood by the kitchen table, copying the diagrams from the Inca Street whiteboard onto a legal pad.
“They’re all loaded the same way,” Aubrey said. “Silver shot, rock salt, and I’m not sure what this is.”
“Iron filings,” Ex said. “According to this, he loaded them with silver, salt, and iron.”
“If he wasn’t sure precisely what form the rider took, that would cover a very broad range,” Chogyi Jake said.
“Or if he was loading for more than one,” Midian said. “You gotta remember, he was hiring on a loupine for muscle. They’re tough bastards, but not the last word in reliable.”
