Killing Rites

rider took over. And then hang out there for an hour.

Two hours sitting on an old cushion while six men stood around me muttering in Latin. I figured it would be a little surreal and uncomfortable, a little boring and a lot goofy. And it was, for about the first ten minutes.

After that, it was some of the hardest work I’d ever done.

My eyes were closed, and in the darkness behind them, I tried to hold myself together. Intangible things brushed against the tiny, compacted version of me. I felt Ex among them, his furnace of a mind comforting only because it was familiar. Each little contact was an echo of a foreign mind like someone in the hallway coughing.

And then, with no trigger I could fathom, I was afraid. Deeply afraid. I was trapped in a haunted house with no way out, and there was something there with me. Something that hissed like an old propane lantern and smelled like burnt cheese. My friends were going to die, and I was going to kill them, and more than anything—more than breath—I wanted not to. I just wanted not to hurt anyone. I felt something happening miles overhead and was disturbed to realize it was me, crying. The sensation I felt so far above me was the thickness of sorrow in my throat. I had the powerful sense that my hands were bleeding. Not my real hands, out there impossibly far away from me, but these small, invisible ones. They were bleeding because I’d used the palms like hammers, driving in the nails. I was killing him. I was killing him again.

Something in my belly moved.

Something that wasn’t me.

I came up gasping. Around me, the six priests stood in pairs: Carsey and Tamblen, Tomás and Miguel, Chapin and Ex.

“Bathroom,” I said. “I need the bathroom.”

“You have to hold on a little longer,” Ex said. “You can—”

“Let her go,” Chapin said. “We’ve seen enough for now.”

The bathroom was tiny. I could put my hands out, pressing palms against both walls at once. The light came from a tiny window, no more than four inches square, outlined in deep-blue tile. The toilet was undersized, and it ran a little. I stood until I was sure I wouldn’t pass out, then slid down, my back against the wall, and cried for a while. I was shaking badly, and I felt light-headed. I briefly reconsidered vomiting, but decided against it. When I rose to my feet again, I didn’t know how long I’d been in there. Five minutes or five hours both seemed equally plausible. I washed my face in the tiny, mineral-streaked sink and looked up into the mirror. In the dim, I looked older. Worn-out. My eyes were puffy and red. My hair was frizzed out like a black cloud. My skin was pallid. There were raw, rashy-looking spots at the corners of my nose.

My right hand rose up without my knowing it was going to. My fingertips touched the mirror gently, caressing the girl in the glass. I shook my head and stepped back. When I went out, the priests were sitting around the big table where Dolores and her family had been before. Their conversation went quiet as I stepped in, and Tomás stood up. Someone had old-school ideas about etiquette. Outside, the light was slanting down from the west with the red-gold glow of evening. It was probably half past four. The dark came so early.

“Hey,” I said. “Sorry about that. Hit a rough spot.”

“It is fine,” Father Chapin said.

“Do we—” I started, but the question stuck in my throat. I actually had to swallow twice before I could talk again. “Do we dive back in?”

“I think that we do not,” Chapin said. I felt a tension between my shoulder blades ease, and at the same time a flush of shame. I hadn’t made it halfway through the first step without freaking out. I wondered how Dolores had done. My guess was better.

“Sorry,” I said.

“You did fine,” Ex said, and I saw Carsey and Miguel exchange a glance I couldn’t parse.

“We know considerably more than we did this morning,” Chapin said. “I do not believe that we have anything more to learn from de Tonquedec. Tell me, Miss Jayné, do you know the word larva?”

Tomás nodded toward his chair, and I sat down gratefully.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s like maggot, right?”

“Linnaeus took the word for this meaning, but it is an older term than the biological sciences. The word is Latin, and before it became another word for grub, it meant a specter. A spirit. And also—this is telling—a mask. The taxonomist wished to describe the fashion in which the form of the young insect masks its adult body, you see? And so he took a metaphor. He took the word that sorcerers and diabolists had used for centuries before. Do you see?”

“So because it’s young, it’s hard to tell what it’s going to be when it grows up?” I said.

“Yes,” Chapin said. “But more than this, it is subtle. It has hidden itself in you as it grows in power. From what we have observed, we know it to be very potent. But from its actions and nature, we can deduce that it is also still vulnerable. And in this we must take hope.”

“It seems unlikely that it is less than the second hierarchy,” Miguel said. “A prince of Dominions, perhaps.”

“I’d have said a Throne,” Carsey said. “The way it crawled up Chewy like a tree? And the wind demon may have been weakened, but our new visitor still swatted it down like it was a schoolgirl. I’d say it’s a gressil. Possibly sonnenelion, but my first thought’s gressil.”

“No,” Ex said, “Not gressil. I’ve been in her company for over a year, and she hasn’t shown anything like that kind of impurity.”

“Maybe not to you,” Carsey said.

“There is no room to speculate,” Chapin said, a sharpness in his voice that made Ex and Carsey both go silent. “We will know its name when the time comes. To pretend knowledge we do not have leads us astray.”

“Are we sure it’s bad?” I asked.

Chapin looked at me. I hadn’t realized until just then that he hadn’t been. His eyes were unreadable as stones. In my peripheral vision, Ex looked embarrassed.

“I mean, there are riders and there are riders, right?” I said, willing myself not to talk so fast. “Some of them are stone-cold killers. Some are … not so bad. This one’s never tried to hurt anybody. It stepped in with the wind demon. I mean, it’s probably saved my life six or seven times. Are we sure it’s one of the bad ones?”

“She may have a point,” Miguel said. “When the spirit has taken control from her, it hasn’t acted against her.”

“That we know,” Tamblen said, shrugging his wide shoulders.

“A subtle beast is more dangerous than one with mere brute power,” Tomás said. He sounded smug.

Chapin hadn’t looked away from me. If his gaze was supposed to make me uncomfortable, it was working like gangbusters.

“That it has appeared to help you means only that you remain useful to it,” he said in slow, measured syllables. “If it were a holy thing, it would have no need to hide from us. Do not hope to befriend it. Whatever it seems, in truth it is your enemy.”

“Right,” I said. The tears and trembling I’d thought I’d left in the bathroom threatened to come back. “Point taken.”

Chapin’s smile was warm, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Perhaps it would be best if you permitted us to consult,” he said. “The terminology we employ can be confusing. Alarming, even. And, through no fault of your own, it is not possible to include you fully without also including the enemy.”

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, but my voice was steady. I got up.

“All right. That’s cool. I’ll go get some dinner or something. You guys do your thing and let me know what’s next.”

“I’ll come with you,” Ex said. His chair scraped against the brick floor when he stood.

“I will need you here, Xavier,” Chapin said. “With Alexander in the hospital, we will need you actively involved.”