anything that wasn’t meant for him. “Hey. He’s not here. Chogyi Jake. He went to grab some fresh eggs, and he left his phone.”
I felt a reflexive shock of guilt, as if by thinking about Ex I was somehow being unfaithful to Aubrey. Like by answering the phone, he’d caught me at something illicit.
“Oh, right,” I said, and nodded even though no one could see me. “Yeah, okay. He left a message for me, so I was just calling him back.”
“I know he was wanting to talk with you. Check in.”
“Well, everything’s fine,” I said.
It was one of those pauses. I picked up the pan of water, focusing on pouring the boiling water into the press. In the glass, black coffee and pale foam mixed and settled. I could feel the pressure building to say something. This was Aubrey. This was the guy I’d been sleeping with for months. He was the guy I’d called for help when things first got weird in Denver. I could tell him anything. I could
He was also the guy who I’d broken up with so he could be with his wife. Ex-wife.
“Everything’s fine,” I said again. “Everything copacetic over there?”
“Things are going all right,” he said. “We’re all a little worried about you, though.”
Drop it, Aubrey, I thought.
“Nothing to worry about,” I said. “Have Chogyi Jake gi me a call when he gets back in, okay? And tell Kim hey for me.”
“Okay,” Aubrey said. I could hear the cool come into his voice. The distance. My chest felt as if someone had hit me right on the sternum. Maybe with a hammer. I fit the top of the press into place and pushed down, the pressure against the palm of my hand slow and steady as the plunger fell.
“Talk to you soon?” I said, falsely cheerful.
“Sure. Anytime.”
I dropped the connection before he could. The stairs creaked as Ex walked down them, his steps painful and slow. The coffee smelled a little strong and I didn’t even have sugar to cut it.
“You didn’t tell him,” Ex said.
“It was Aubrey. He answered the phone.”
“Ah.”
His clothes from yesterday were ruined, but he’d had an extra set in his bag. I was going to have to figure out if this place had a laundry, or if the life of an international demon hunter was about to involve washing my underwear in the sink. I supposed I could call my lawyer, have her arrange a personal shopper to bring me everything I wanted wrapped up in gold lamé. That was supposed to be the charm of too much money, wasn’t it? Never having to worry about anything.
Ex touched my hand, and I looked up. I hadn’t noticed him coming across to me. I started to pull away, hesitated, and then went ahead and drew back my hand.
“No food in the place,” I said. “This was the best I could do for coffee.”
“It’s great.”
“It’s kind of crap.”
“It’s enough.”
He poured himself a cup and then one for me, and we stood for a minute in the chill of the cabin, drinking bitter, black coffee. A truck passed unseen on the highway, the rumble distant and softened by the snow and pine boughs.
“We can pick up some donuts on the way through Taos,” Ex said.
“Maybe some real coffee,” I said.
He smiled.
“Maybe that,” he said. “Go hit the showers. I’ll get the car defrosted.”
“About the others? Aubrey. Chogyi Jake. I just don’t want them to get hurt,” I said. And it was true, as far as it went.
He nodded, sighed, and drank off the rest of his cup in a swallow.
“I don’t either,” he said.
Twenty minutes later, my hair still damp, we were heading back down the mountain. Forty minutes after that, we were stocked on cake donuts dipped in powdered sugar. By noon, we were back in San Esteban, parking behind the adobe walls where demons had fought less than a day before.
The town was busier now. An ancient Volvo station wagon scraped down the street, a woman who could have been anywhere between sixty and eighty behind the wheehree teenage boys lounged on the street, talking among themselves, not making eye contact, and pretending to be immune to the cold. Ranchero music rolled out of one of the Quonset huts at the far side of town. The signs of actual life left the place seeming a little less eerie. The crows were there, eyeing me from the bare cottonwoods like they remembered me and weren’t entirely pleased I was back.
The little cutout where we’d parked before was full. In addition to the sedan and the Yukon, two cars with matching pro-life bumper stickers, and one with a heart-and-cross Marriage Encounter decal peeling in the window. The other had a vanity license plate that said GODSWRK. That was one way to keep from getting rear-ended. Ex parked across the street, and we got out. The air smelled of burning wood. I stopped and looked both ways before I crossed the street, only realizing how ridiculous it was after I’d already done it.
The front door swung open as we came close to it. Tamblen haunted in the doorway, nodding to each of us and stepping back into shadow. Voices speaking quickly in Spanish came softly from the back of the building.
“Is he here?” Ex asked as Tamblen closed the door behind us.
“An hour ago,” Tamblen said. “He’s with the girl’s family.”
“How’s Alexander doing?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“Stable,” Tamblen said. “Not released yet. They don’t know what they’re looking at, so they’re being cautious.”
“That’s probably wise,” Ex said.
“You?” Tamblen asked. It was clear from his posture that he wasn’t talking to me. “Doing all right?”
“Bloodied but unbowed,” Ex said, and Tamblen hitched up a smile.
“We brought donuts,” I said.
We walked through the rooms again. They seemed smaller than the day before, the windows narrower, the light that glowed off the pale stucco dimmer. The web of cracks was going to take a lot of work to cover over, and it hadn’t happened yet. In the kitchen, Carsey was sitting on the couch with a laptop computer, tapping quietly. The sound of Spanish flowed in from the chapel. Even without knowing the language, I could pick Chapin’s voice out of the group. A woman laughed as I set the box of donuts on the little kitchen table.
“Welcome back to Chapel Perilous,” Carsey said with a wave. “Are those
I noticed he was keeping his voice low too. I wasn’t sure what it was about the meeting in the next room that commanded a kind of respect. It was in the air, though. The closest thing I could compare it to was being quiet in our rooms while Dad had some of the more respected men from church in the living room. Everything that wasn’t the main event became peripheral. I edged down through the rooms until, pausing half in the doorway, I found them.
They were in the room just before the black-floored ritual space. Three women, all with black hair and deep- gold skin and the same squarish nose, sat at a table across from the priests. The oldest of the women was probably sixty, streaks of white at her temples. The youngest was hardly older than Dolores. And also Dolores, sitting at the foot of the table with her hands in her lap. Father Chapin’s back was to me, and Tomás and Miguel were at his sides. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, like the end of a particularly successful dinner party. The only one who seemed out of place in the gaiety was Dolores. I edged in a little more, trying to catch her eye. When I did, she waved at me, a small motion and with a weight of desolation in her eyes I didn’t understand.
“Don’t fuss,” the older girl said, slapping at Dolores’s arm. It was a big-sister move, and I recognized it because I’d done it. Dolores’s gaze went down again, and I sloped back toward the couch and Carsey and Ex. Tamblen was halfway through one of the donuts, sugar spilling down his black front like stars.
“The older sister too?” Ex was saying.
