Candace’s voice came over Kim’s, talking loud.
“They’re pulling out. We’re going after them.”
“Tell Kim that’s great,” I said. “Just let me know where you guys are, and we’ll fall in behind you in a couple minutes. Just don’t follow too close. I’m going to put you on speaker here. Let me know if the background noise gets too bad.”
“Okay,” Kim said.
Aaron gunned the engine, cursing under his breath. The downtown traffic was thick. We passed the Sixteenth Street mall, turned right on Fifteenth and then left again on Champa. I tapped my foot anxiously. We’d been right not to try taking him out down here. Too many people. Too much traffic. Someplace else would be better. I hoped that the right place existed. Kim reported in breathlessly. Coin was on Fourteenth, going the opposite direction. I cursed.
“It’s okay,” Aaron said. “He’s heading to Colfax. We’ll get there ahead of him. We’re going to be fine.”
We passed over the two separate streets of Speer and the creek running between them, water high from the day’s rain, and curved to the left. At the intersection of Colfax, two cars kept us from turning right. Aaron murmured something under his breath and reached toward the dashboard. Looking annoyed, he pulled his hand back.
“Miss having a siren?” I said.
“Hell yes,” he said, and Coin drove through the intersection ahead of us. I didn’t recognize his car so much as feel its presence in my gut. My eyes tracked it as it flowed away to my right. Candace’s car flashed through the light just as it shifted yellow, speeding after Coin. Aaron leaned forward as if he could push the cars before us out of the way by force of will. We got onto Colfax, Aaron gunning the engine as we turned.
The voice that came from my cell phone was Candace’s.
“We’re past Eighth,” she said. “I think he’s getting on I-25.”
“He’ll be going south,” Aaron said. “We’ll do this on the loop. Get in behind him and get ready to put on your hazards when we come past you.”
“Kim?” I said. “Are you ready?”
“She’s ready,” Candace said. “I’m getting in behind him. We’re about to hit the on-ramp. Where are you two?”
We were coming to the intersection at Seventh Avenue. The last one before the highway. The light was red. We weren’t going to make it.
“Hang on,” Aaron said, then leaned on the horn and the gas pedal at the same time. The Hummer leapt forward like someone had goosed it as we cut across the intersection. Brakes screamed and I closed my eyes, waiting for an impact that never came. The engine roared, acceleration pressing me back into my seat. My heart was pounding like it wanted to get out. Aaron wove the great black box through traffic like he was playing a video game, cutting off a semi as we slid onto the on-ramp doing sixty.
“We’re going to flip the car,” I said.
“We aren’t,” he said through gritted teeth. “This is perfect. Candy! You with me? I’m coming up right on your ass. Pull to your right.”
“Slow down,” Candace said.
“Not happening,” Aaron said. “As soon as I get by, get in the middle of the road with your blinkers going. Don’t let anyone past.”
“Okay,” Candace said.
“Put your mask on,” he told me.
We buzzed past Candace’s car like it was standing still just as we passed under the great concrete bridge of a surface street. Coin’s car was six car lengths ahead of us, passing under the highway itself. We barreled toward it. My hands were on my knees, gripping so hard the knuckles ached. I couldn’t unclench my fingers.
There was no sound that announced Kim’s cantrip. She didn’t say anything or call out physically, and yet there was no question when it happened. It was like the world clicking into focus when I hadn’t realized it was out before. The car in front of us, the asphalt speeding by, the Hummer with its mingled scents of new car and old marijuana. Literally in the blink of an eye, all of it went from the rich, complicated, uncertain world I knew to a gorgeously complex mechanism. All emotion was gone, all sense of morality, of uncertainty, of fear or hope or dread. I could almost see the microscopic gears that made up the universe, the laws of physics triumphant. This was what the world looked like utterly without magic or emotion or soul.
Aaron drove up on Coin’s left, sliding the Hummer’s nose even with Coin’s back tires, as if we were going to pass him on the inside of the curve. Then, violently, he cut the wheel right. The impact jarred us, and then Coin’s car was fishtailing out in front of us, the driver’s side of the car at a right angle to our oncoming grill. Gray smoke came off their tires like clouds. Aaron stamped the brake as Coin’s car slammed into the concrete barrier. We were stopped in the middle of the long, slow curve that would lead to the highway. Aaron undid his seat belt and pulled on his ski mask. Of course he did. It was just physics. I undid my own, snatched my rifle up from the backseat, and slid out of the car.
I walked out to kill the thing in Randolph Coin’s body, and my mind was perfectly calm. I didn’t remember picking up my backpack, but there it was on my shoulders. I’d need to go back for the laptop. I didn’t want to leave that behind. Candace’s car was coming around the curve and beginning to slow. There were other cars behind her. I lifted the rifle to my shoulder.
The driver’s door burst open. The big man rushed out. There was blood on his face. Blood and ink. His pale skin was covered in markings and tattoos. He raised his hand to us, palm out, and I saw the markings on his arm writhe like living things under his skin. He shouted and something moved past me, something unreal and angry and rich with malice. I felt something like teeth touching my mind.
In my peripheral vision, I saw Aaron raise his rifle with fluid grace. The report was a single barked command. The big man staggered back. There was blood on the car behind him. The thing with teeth-invisible, abstract, magical-shuddered against me and fell away. Blood darkened the big man’s shirt. His illustrated face went slack, and he slipped to his knees and then to his side, lying on the dirty street in a pose that could never be mistaken for sleep.
Aaron dropped his rifle and motioned me forward. One of the bullets was gone. Used. One of the Invisible College’s riders was dead or cast out of the world. The only bullet left was in my rifle, and I walked toward the back of Coin’s car. Candace and Kim stopped by the Hummer. Kim was out of the car. I ignored them.
He was there, sitting at the far side of the seat. His glamour was gone, his face inhuman with glyphs and sigils. His eyes were wide and stunned. He looked old. I lifted the rifle again and he threw open the door and fell out on the car’s far side. I sidestepped to my right, moving around the car’s back. Its nose was crumpled against the concrete barrier. There was no place Coin could go.
“Move it!” Aaron shouted, pointing me forward. “Get him! We’ve got to get out.”
I nodded and stepped forward, around the car. The traffic on the highway above us filled the air with the buzz of tires against pavement, the thump as they crossed the expansion joints. The smell of burned rubber was thick in the air, and there was something else. Blood. Death. Something.
Coin was on his knees, one hand to his chest just over his heart, the other pressed to his forehead. His lips, red striped with the black of his markings, were moving fast. His eyes were closed. I thought at first he was praying.
His eyes opened. There was writing on the sclera, tiny words worked on the whites of his eyes. He spoke a single word, but it resonated like we were standing in a tunnel, just the two of us.
“Heller?” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Hurry!” Aaron shouted. I heard horns blaring and the crunch of tires on gravel. Candace’s car rolling toward me. I leveled the rifle at Coin’s chest. I couldn’t miss at this range. Even I couldn’t miss. Coin shrieked, his mouth hinging open wider than I’d imagined possible. There was writing on his tongue. His teeth were like scrimshaw. I squeezed the trigger.
I didn’t have the rifle snug enough to my shoulder. The kick was like a blow. I stumbled back as Coin’s body folded forward. I stepped closer, the rifle still at the ready even though there wasn’t a round left in it. A curl of smoke rose from the barrel.
He looked up at me.
He smiled.
