“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
