Ex killed the engine, dropped the kickstand, and got off the bike. I got off too, pulling the helmet off as I did. My legs were trembling.
The smaller details of the space began to register with me. The books in Latin and French stacked under the cot. The crucifix reverently hung by a small, dirty window. The mixed smells of dust, motor oil, and old laundry. Ex leaned against his car, his arms folded, his expression stern. In context, it was all I could do not to laugh.
“Okay, I need to know two things,” I said. “First, tell me that’s not your parents’ house up front. Second, tell me you didn’t spend all your money on the cool car just to impress girls.”
Ex looked puzzled for a second, then glanced around at the ad hoc apartment as if seeing it for the first time. He seemed chagrined, but he covered it quickly.
“The house belongs to a friend. He lets me rent this when I need a place to stay.”
“When you need a place to stay?”
“It’s not like I’m carrying a mortgage,” Ex said.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Big, strong, authoritarian Ex, with his black clothes and shining sports car, lived in a garage. Ex’s expression darkened.
“Let it go, Jayne,” he said. “You are risking your own life and the lives of everyone who was at that restaurant with you today. The first thing you need to do is tell me what you’re planning, and the next thing you need to do is call it off.”
“How is it,” I said, ignoring him, “that Eric has enough money to buy a small island, and the rest of you are living like college students?”
“That’s what I’m telling you! Will you listen to me? Eric was the real deal. He’d been doing this for years. He was connected. Chogyi Jake, Aubrey, me. We were his gophers. We were the day labor he took on when he needed an extra pair of hands.”
There was real pain in his voice. It sobered me. I looked at the cot, the books, the crucifix. I tried to see beauty in it.
“Why are you following me?” I asked.
“Because someone has to keep you safe.”
“They know you’ve left me,” I said. “The Invisible College? They know you left.”
“They caught sight of me a couple times,” he said. “And now that I’m out of the house, I’m not under Eric’s wards and protections. Even if they don’t know exactly where I am, they can tell that much.”
“And yet you’re still alive,” I said.
“I am.”
“Luck?”
“Partly,” he said. “I’ve got a talent for not being found.”
“You’re going to stop following me,” I said. “You’re in or you’re out, but not this halfway crap. It’s creepy. You scared me today. I thought you were them.”
“I could have been. Coin has his people all over the city looking for you. He knows you’re up to something.”
“He doesn’t know what,” I said.
I walked to the window. A simple weeping Christ on a rough wooden cross. The floor before it was cleaner than the rest of the place. Like someone had knelt there often.
“We were idiots to think we could win where Eric failed,” Ex said. “We were blind and proud, and we’ve paid the price for it. You have to stop this before it gets worse.”
“Pride?” I said. “You think that’s what went wrong? We were too full of ourselves, and so God saw to it that we didn’t win?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But it’s what you meant.”
I gave him a few seconds to object. He didn’t. Instead, he walked toward me, his hands out to his side, unconsciously echoing the figure on the cross. I’d spent a fair part of my childhood watching my father work himself into rages, and the feel of this was different. This was desperation.
“Eric overestimated, and he got killed for it,” Ex said. “We overestimated, and Aubrey paid the price. I’m not going to see you be the third.”
“I might win,” I said.
“You won’t. You’ll plan the best that you can, and be as clever as you can be, and call on all the help you can find, and Coin will still beat you. You know it, and you’re ignoring it because you’re in love with the man in that hospital bed, and you think that maybe, maybe, you can pull off a miracle and get him back.”
He paused. I waited.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” he said. “Not to anyone.”
Ex was close to me now. The smell of his body wasn’t unpleasant. He seemed to shake with the force of his emotion, a controlled violence that was pounding through him like a deep internal storm. I didn’t feel threatened by him at all. I was oddly touched.
“I’m not taking Coin out because of some kind of sick, desperate love for Aubrey. I’m doing it because I think he’d have done it for me. And because Eric was the only one in my whole life who ever really looked out for me. And I’m doing it for myself. Because I can.”
“Don’t,” Ex said. “Don’t try. Be safe.”
I stepped into his open arms and hugged him. His body went stiff with shock, and then softened. He wrapped his arms around me. I felt him sigh deeply, his ribs expanding and falling back. I rested my head on his broad shoulder. Through the dirty window, I saw a sparrow take wing, a brown-gray blur rising into the sky.
“Thank you,” I said.
He nodded, his cheek against my forehead. I squeezed him tight, then stepped back and let him go.
“You should take me home,” I said.
“You’re dropping this,” he said. “You’re walking away.”
“Nope,” I said. “If I go down, I’m going down with my teeth around that fucker Coin’s throat.”
His eyes widened, his face went a shade paler. He looked past me to the crucifix like an actor who needs someone to feed him his next line.
“I know you’re trying to take care of me,” I said. “In your stupid, patriarchal, Neanderthal way, you think this is how you treat your friends. But I’ve already got a daddy, and I walked away from his bullshit too. Now take me home.”
“You don’t understand,” he said as I stepped past him toward the bike.
“I do,” I said. “I just disagree.”
Back at the house, I stood on the porch, sweat cooling on the back of my neck, and watched Ex drive away. I thought maybe he turned and looked over his shoulder at the last moment, but I might have been making that up. I went inside.
Voices came from the living room, Midian and Kim talking over each other. For a second, it sounded like a fight. Then it only sounded like excitement.
When I stepped in the room, all eyes turned to me. Kim and Chogyi Jake were sitting on the floor off to one side, a notebook open between them with designs and symbols that seemed to shift and move when I wasn’t looking straight at them. Midian was sitting on the coffee table, Candace and Aaron on the couch.
“Hey, kid,” Midian croaked. “We were wondering if you were coming back.”
“I live here,” I said.
“How’s the padre?” Midian asked.
I shook my head.
“Yeah, well,” Midian said. “Probably for the best. He got on my nerves.”
“What have we got?” I asked.
Aaron cleared his throat, leaned forward, and started talking. The initial plan to take Coin out close to the convention center had hit some snags. We’d been working under the assumption that Coin would be heading back to his place, but Midian had pointed out that that wasn’t necessarily true. So they’d been working out other strategies.
All the plans made some assumptions. First, that we could draw off the vast majority of Coin’s minions, both
