Vicious Grace

I had imagined a thousand scenarios in coming to Kim’s apartment. Aubrey absent, Kim apologetic, and rum and Coke hadn’t figured into them.

“I threw a fit,” she said. “I was embarrassed and . . . No. I was humiliated. I am humiliated. I don’t like my private business being thrown around in front of everyone. When I saw that file, and how he had played me, and that all of you were going to have to know too . . .” She paused. Her chuckle dripped with self-loathing.

She took a sip from her glass, and I mirrored her, then looked down at the drink. She mixed them strong. I wondered how many she’d already had. How many it would take to wipe away what had been in that file. She shook her head.

“Anyway,” she said. “I could have done that better. Sorry. For what it’s worth, I’ve been looking at it, and I think we can put something like the Invisible College’s spells back in place.”

She must have seen the confusion in my expression. She put up a hand, palm out, in a gesture that asked for my silence.

“I’m not saying it’s easy,” she said. She walked out from the kitchen to lean against the dining room table. “They’re riders. What they did was one big thing. Poof. Done. Using dinky little human spells and cantrips, it’ll take maybe six months. A year. And the haugsvarmr will probably be pushing back pretty hard that whole time.”

“Okay,” I said. “Hold on. You’ve been figuring out how to put the lid back on Grace Memorial?”

Now it was her turn to look surprised.

“Well, yes,” she said. “You aren’t still thinking about letting it loose, are you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hadn’t exactly been thinking about it at all.”

“What have you been thinking about?”

“Whether Eric’s having”—I stumbled a little, and then recovered—“done what he did to you and Aubrey meant that all my friends would ditch me. If Aubrey is going to break up with me and go back to you. If Chogyi Jake and Ex would decide that anything Eric touched is too tainted to be around. Whether doing one deeply shitty thing really means Eric was a bad person, or just that he did one really shitty thing. Like that. Oh, and talking David Souder out of going to Grace Memorial.”

“He was going to the hospital?” she asked sharply. “Why?”

“It’s calling him,” I said. “He thinks his grandfather’s still alive in that coffin and wants out.”

“We have to keep him away from there,” Kim said sharply. “Between being inside the labyrinth and the connection to his grandfather, he probably wouldn’t be able to resist it. Even if he didn’t want to, it could force him to break the interment. What did you tell him?”

I recounted David’s call, our meeting, the outlines of our conversation. But even while I looked for the right words, I was amazed by how totally she’d ignored everything else I’d said. Aubrey, Chogyi Jake, Ex. Even Eric. It was eerie, and then it was perfectly clear. Eric’s file on her had pulled the rug out from under both of us. I was obsessing over my fears and grabbing for anything consistent and solid in my life. Kim was focusing on the things she could control and ignoring anything that she couldn’t. She was pretending that everything she’d lost didn’t matter. Seen from that perspective, it wasn’t so weird.

But it wasn’t what I needed.

“That’s got to be why Eric had the secret rooms fitted out with the cell,” Kim said. “If he was going to have Souder as a negotiating point, he’d need to control him.”

“Kim. Stop it. Okay?”

The light from the kitchen put half her face in dim shadow. Annoyance tightened the corners of her eyes. She crossed her arms.

“Stop what?”

“Can we just put the riders and magic and all that away for a minute? We need to talk. About Aubrey.”

“No we don’t,” Kim said. “What would we say about him?”

I blinked. He was my lover and her husband. Their marriage had been torpedoed by my guardian angel. Of course Aubrey was the axis that everything turned on. At least, I’d thought he was. And yet standing there under Kim’s gaze, I couldn’t think what exactly I’d intended to say. I took a stab at it.

“You love him,” I said.

“So what?” Kim said, a rattle in her voice like a car engine going bad. “You think Aubrey’s the worst thing Eric did to me? Do you know what it would have meant to get the position at LSU? Or, God, the England job? I would have been working with the best people in my field. I would have had the money and resources to do real work. Something basic. Something the field could really build on.”

“You aren’t doing real work here?”

Her cheeks flushed red and her nostrils flared. A line of bloodless white appeared around her lips.

“I am third researcher behind two people I helped train,” Kim said, her voice getting louder. “I am teaching undergraduate cell biology. I’m a PhD in a medical center. All these MDs look at me like I’m some kind of trained chimp. Eric Heller didn’t just take away my marriage. He sabotaged my career. He ate my life.”

“I’m sorry,” I said softly.

“Why?” Kim demanded. “Did you tell him to do it?”

“No, but—”

“You were off getting drunk at senior prom or something. You were taking your SATs. Do you know how old I am?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“Thirty-seven,” Kim said, pointing at me accusingly. “And I’ve published in goddamn Nature. So yeah, you’re sleeping with the man I love. So what? What do you want me to do about it?”

“Forgive me,” I said.

“I want you to forgive me.”

The rage drained out of her. She seemed to shrink into herself. She coughed out a last, empty laugh and drank the rest of her rum and Coke.

“You’re not Eric,” she said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“My life got better because yours got ruined,” I said, “and I like you.”

She looked at her glass, the brown-stained ice rattling in it like stones. A gust of wind pressed at the windows, making the cheap curtains shudder and shift. Kim shook her head.

“You want another one?” she asked. Her voice was smaller.

“Probably not. I’m kind of a lightweight.”

“You don’t mind if I do,” she said, taking the three steps back to the kitchen. “I’m somewhat experienced. Does Aubrey make you laugh?”

I didn’t answer. Maybe she didn’t expect me to.

“He used to be the only one who could really get me going,” she said. “He’d do that Bill Clinton imitation, and I’d just start losing it. You know the one?”

“Yeah,” I said, even though I didn’t. “He’s great.”

“He is.”

Kim poured herself another rum and Coke. I watched how much rum she was putting in this time. I was amazed she had any left in the bottle. She drank it fast, and then looked at me solemnly.

“I’m drunk,” she said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“I didn’t mean to be.”

“Oh, I think you had it coming,” I said. “I’ll go. Let you rest up.”

“Okay.” And then, as I reached her door, “You don’t need my forgiveness.”

Outside, a soft rain glowed in the streetlights and darkened the sidewalks. I wondered where Aubrey had gone if not to Kim. On one hand, the relief that he hadn’t been there was like someone taking a stone off my belly. On the other hand, the clarity I’d been looking for was just as far away. Worse. Before, I’d had to figure out why Eric wanted the thing under Grace set free and what he wanted from it in exchange. Now I also had the option of