Vicious Grace

He gestured apologetically.

“Buried alive,” I said.

“It’s not a popular technique,” Chogyi Jake said. “But why the activity increased in the last year turns out to be a very interesting question. Of course, there hasn’t actually been an increase in the thing’s reach. It’s pounding on the coffin just as loud. Only now people can hear it.”

“You’re saying things like that mob attack have been happening at Grace for the past fifty-odd years, and just no one noticed?” I said.

“Yes,” Chogyi Jake said. “Until last year, when the second layer of the binding was broken. After that, it became psychologically possible for people to be aware that something odd was going on.”

“Even people like Oonishi,” Ex said. He could really pack contempt in his voice when he tried.

“The increase in people leaving the hospital against medical advice,” Kim said. “They see things. They get scared.”

“That’s the assumption we’re working with,” Chogyi Jake said.

“All right. That’s better than something’s eating them, right?” I said. “And what broke that keep-it-quiet spell?”

“Us,” Aubrey said. “Or, specifically, you. Back in Denver.”

I didn’t get it. And then I did.

“The Invisible College?” I said. “They did this?”

“Thought you’d find that interesting,” Ex said.

NINE

For a split second, I wanted to punch Ex hard enough to break something. His nose, my hand. Whatever. I tried to take a deep breath and force myself to calm down, but the best I could manage was to slow my panting a little. My body felt like a high-voltage wire. I started pacing because I couldn’t be still and I didn’t want to start shrieking. Aubrey’s eyebrows had the little angle to them that meant he was worried. He was right to be.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. Then I repeated it under my breath twenty or thirty times, just for the sensation of speaking.

“This is what Eric was doing in Denver,” Kim said. She at least sounded rational. “He wanted to find this Rahabiel, whatever it is, and breaking the Invisible College was how he could do it.”

“Only they found out what he was up to,” Aubrey said, “and . . . well, stopped him.”

“Why?” I said, a little too loudly. “Why did he want to know? What was he going to do with it? This is crap. This is just crap. What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

“We’ve only been looking for half an hour,” Aubrey said. Ex looked up as if seeing me for the first time.

“Is there a problem?” he said.

I laughed, but there wasn’t any mirth in it.

“Yes, there’s a problem,” I said. “The people who killed Eric are behind whatever the hell is going on in Grace Memorial.”

“And?”

“And we don’t know what they did or why Eric was trying to find this buried rider thing or generally speaking what the hell we’re in the middle of.”

Ex’s gaze was steady and impatient and a little amused. The first trickle of embarrassment started to ooze past my panic and rage.

“That’s all true,” Ex said. “And?”

“And that’s a problem,” I said. “That’s a real first-class, industrial-grade problem.”

“And we’re investigating it,” Ex said. “Is there any action you’d like to take differently from what we’re already doing?”

I wasn’t sure what it said about Ex that he was enjoying the moment quite so much. Maybe his father had been the stern sarcastic type and he was getting off on the opportunity to revisit his childhood. Maybe six months of Aubrey and me in the same shower had bothered him more than any of us admitted. Whatever the impulse behind it, it pulled the plug on my outrage. I crossed my arms, scowling so hard my cheeks ached a little, but the monkey bouncing around in my brain got a little quieter. Ex nodded once, then turned back to the notebook.

“All right, then,” he said.

“Why is it still bound?” Kim said. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not?” Aubrey asked.

“When Jayné broke the Invisible College’s power, it lifted all the spells,” Kim said. “We know for certain it lifted this don’t-notice-me thing at Grace. But the interment is still holding.”

“So it follows that someone else must have done the actual interment ceremony,” Chogyi Jake said.

“Who?” I asked. “And why?”

“I don’t know,” Chogyi Jake said. “But it may be in here. Somewhere.”

Kim shrugged in my peripheral vision.

“Okay,” I said. “What should I start looking through?”

“Your pile’s there, right behind Kim’s,” Aubrey said.

In the year I’d spent doing weird occult work, I’d come to think of it as being a lot like crime. I spent time finding guns and getaway motorcycles. I bought a house in New Orleans in part because the storage shed out back could be turned into a prison strong enough to hold a kidnapped teenage girl. I’d gotten a policeman to steal a car in order to cover my tracks. I’d killed . . . not a man, but the thing living in his body.

As I sat at the dining room table and watched the high-rise shadows creep out across the water, everything seemed different. I had thought all this time—weeks, months—that Chogyi Jake and Ex and Aubrey and I had been investigating. Going from property to property, place to place, gathering information. As I read through articles my uncle had clipped from newspapers and magazines, I got a glimpse of how wrong I’d been. Jetting across the world to add new entries into the wiki, to list more obscure book titles, to inventory arcane objects and magic items hadn’t been investigating. It had been cataloging. We had put together a tremendous wealth of data, but I’d never had time to make any real knowledge from it.

It was the student nightmare. I’d spent all semester studying the wrong things, and now the test was here. I held a note in fading ink on brittle, yellowed paper. Eric’s handwriting. HH biter or bit? Ask Rosental next Wednesday. If bit, need to find ally groups before Red Rite. I stared at it, despair and panic growing in the back of my head like the thickening of air before a storm. I didn’t know if it was the clue that would crack every mystery open or a random bit of gibberish, Eric’s version of doodling. I spread the notes and pages out on the table, my gaze skipping from one to another, waiting for a pattern to emerge. Nothing came. An article about German artists immigrating to America in the thirties. A street map of the area around Grace Memorial. A detailed woodcut of a double-bladed axe. It was all supposed to mean something. It had all been important enough for Eric to keep. To hide. And it meant nothing to me.

When I’d planned things before, there had been an objective. Kill someone. Abduct someone. Steal something. This time there was only the weight of figuring out what I was supposed to do. What Eric had been doing. It was detective work, and behind it lurked the terrible thought that whatever the answer was, my uncle had died for it. And now it was mine to screw up.

All the others were going through papers and boxes and books too. I moved to the couch for a while until Ex and Aubrey started talking about a file of papers in Hebrew they’d found and the relationship between the Sephirot and fractal geometry. Every time one of them said something I didn’t quite follow, I felt stupider and more thoroughly out of my depth. The wind picked up just after sunset, muttering and thumping on the glass. Our reflections bounced and deformed as the air bent the windows. Aubrey and Kim ordered pizza. When it arrived, the smell of hot grease and garlic actually overpowered the dust. Chogyi Jake disappeared into the secret rooms, coming back half an hour later with all the books from the shelves arranged by language. I watched him place the stacks on the coffee table, one next to the other. I’d taken three semesters of French in high school. I could talk about my aunt’s pen and closing the window. I had no business being here.

When he was done, I looked back down at the notebook I’d been reading. I couldn’t remember anything from