stairway. Chogyi Jake was still sitting at the head of the stairs, his eyes closed, his head resting against the handrail’s pole. He looked pale and sick and still, but his rib cage worked in hard, sudden bursts. Some meditation I’d never been taught. Something for warriors, maybe. For someone preparing to die.
I couldn’t imagine what was going on in his head, so I tried not to think about it. It would only wind up with me going over, intruding, talking to him. If I thought I had anything that might comfort him, I’d have done it, but I only would have been trying to make him comfort me. David looked from him to me and then down.
“What else can I do?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “We’ll start soon. It’ll be over.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s almost six o’clock.”
“Long night.”
“They’re coming in. Up there, the first bunch of people are probably coming in,” he said. “Nurses and doctors. The guys who work the coffee bars.”
“Probably are.”
“This is going to . . . I mean, this is going to blow things open,” he said. “Spirits. Possession. Magic. The whole thing.”
“No, it won’t,” I said. “They’re going to show up. It’ll be weird. Then we’ll lock that bastard thing back down, and it’ll go away. At most, it’ll make the
David was quiet for a minute.
“What if it gets out?” he said.
I thought of Kim and Eric, the magic he’d used to wreck her life.
“They won’t know it then either,” I said. “It’s just one of those secrets that keeps itself. Right up until you’re in the middle of it.”
“He knew, though. Grandpa Del knew.”
“He did.”
“I screwed up his life’s work.”
“Well, it’s not like he told you to be careful. And really, even if he had, what would you have done?”
David squinted down toward the stairway. His wide face tensed and relaxed, and tensed again.
“Seriously,” I said. “If he’d taken you aside when you were a kid or left you a letter or something. Told you that there were spirits from outside the world, and that he’d used his talents and abilities to lock one of the biggest and nastiest up by getting buried alive under a hospital, do you think you’d have been better prepared? Or would it just have been more evidence for a genetic component for your breakdown?”
“Yeah, probably that last one,” he said. “A secret that keeps itself, eh?”
“I had to have proof too. When I found out? I got my clock cleaned by a
“Really?”
Despite everything, his voice had a sense of amazement. Wonder. Had I been like that? Awed by the truth behind the world. Overwhelmed by the sudden unveiling of a bright, dangerous version of everything that had been walking beside me the whole time. I probably had, but I couldn’t quite imagine it now. I wondered what he’d make of it if I told him all my stories: the Invisible College in Denver. Mait Carrefour in New Orleans. Midian Clark, vampire chef. The thing with that guy in London. I’d almost forgotten that one myself. I could imagine mistaking it for glamorous.
And, I realized, that was how I’d seen Eric. He’d known more. He’d done more. And so I’d made him into the hero of my own private comic book. Eric Heller, gentleman adventurer. Force for good. Decent human being. It hadn’t had anything to do with the real man.
“Jayné.”
I looked up. Aubrey was on the stairs, hidden from the waist down by the drop. His hair was tousled from his work. He looked exhausted. We’d all been up for too long.
“We ready?” I asked.
“Ex says it’s time,” he said.
“I’ll hold the fort up here,” David said, hefting his shotgun. In his wide hands, it looked almost small.
I walked to Chogyi Jake, kneeling by his side for what I knew might be the last time. His eyes were still closed, lost in meditation. His face was pale, and his breath quick and shallow.
“Hey, guy,” I said softly. “You ready to do this thing?”
He didn’t answer. I put a hand on his shoulder, surprised by how cool his skin felt.
“Hey. Chogyi. It’s time. Are you—”
His body shifted, slouched, and spilled back onto the ground. His head made a hollow sound when it hit the floor. He didn’t try to catch himself. I wasn’t aware of screaming, but Aubrey, Kim, Ex, and David all appeared at my side. Aubrey gently moved me, kneeling by Chogyi Jake’s body, pressing fingers to his neck.
“That’s not good,” he said.
“What’s the matter?” Ex asked. He sounded as much annoyed as concerned.
“Those guys back in the subbasement? They kicked him harder than I thought,” Aubrey said. “He’s in shock. I think that means internal bleeding. I don’t know how long he’s been unconscious.”
“Well, get his legs up,” Kim said.
“But the ceremony,” I said. “The spell. Can we still . . . ?”
“No,” Ex said. “No, we have a problem.”
TWENTY-THREE
We stood over the body, looking at one another. Chogyi Jake lay on the floor, bleeding to death without spilling a drop, and I didn’t know if I was relieved or frightened. Somewhere far above us, in a different world, the sky over Lake Michigan would be a robin’s egg blue. The sun minutes from pouring down over the city. We were trapped in the dark. Weariness dragged at all their faces. It probably dragged at mine too. I wanted nothing more than to sleep for a day and a half and wake up to find out it had all been a bad dream. I couldn’t go on. I went on.
“Can we revive him?” I asked. “Just to get through the binding.”
“I don’t know,” Aubrey said. “If we had . . . smelling salts? Or something to up his blood pressure?”
“Kim?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Not an MD,” she said. “All I know is we put his legs up, get a blanket over him, and get him to the ER.”
He might almost have been sleeping, except that his breath was so fast and so shallow. Now that he was lying flat, I thought there was a little more color in his face. I had almost talked myself into believing I could stand to watch him die if there was a reason. If something came out of it. This? I couldn’t do it.
“Okay,” I said. “We have to get him back upstairs.”
“No,” Ex said. “We have to go on without him. If we go back, it’s going to find us, and then it’s over. As long as we’re in here, there’s a chance.”
“What chance?” I said. “What chance do we have? Because the way it looks from here, we’re screwed.”
Kim murmured something too quietly for me to here. Aubrey, standing at her side, turned to look at her.
“I say we go up and let the thing out,” I went on. “Break the prison. I know it’s a risk, but someone tracked it down and bound it before. We can do that again, but after we get Chogyi Jake to a doctor. After we find a different binding. After—”
“I said I’ll do it,” Kim said. “I’ll go in. I’ll . . . I’ll take his place.”
“You can’t,” Aubrey said.
Kim met his gaze. The darkness under her eyes was almost purple. The bruise on her face had darkened, and the cut lip was scabbed black. Her hair was a collection of greasy strings. She gave him a faint, weary smile, and for a moment, she was beautiful.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I can do this.”
