and for good reason. But I liked him. I wondered if my willingness to give him a free pass might not be another step down the path toward not being one of the good guys. I put the letter back in its envelope. Ozzie looked up at me with black, watery eyes, her tail thumping heavily against the floor. I sighed and headed for the back.
Midian hadn’t cleared everything out when he went. The tiny closet had a pair of paint-splattered men’s jeans that I could just about squeeze past my hips, and I found a gray sweater with a stain across the front that might have been blood, but smelled like barbecue sauce and cigarettes. The shower was almost too small to turn around in, but it was there. No shampoo, but I used the bar of soap. Lousy for shine and body, but plenty good enough for getting the worst junk in my hair out of it. The water was hot enough to scald, and ran out after about two minutes. Still, pulling on Midian’s hand-me-downs, I felt better than I had in days. I still didn’t have shoes. Or money. Or anything of my own.
So, that was what I needed to fix next.
O’Keefe’s was open for breakfast. I didn’t go around to the front. I’d done terrible things to my feet in the last two days, and sleeping through the night seemed to have gotten the blood back to every single nerve ending I had. The snow felt burningly cold. I hopped quickly to the kitchen door. The man who opened it was maybe eighteen with hair cut close to his scalp and an ornate cross hanging at his collarbone. He was wearing an ironic Santa hat complete with white pom-pom at the floppy tip, and he was smoking a cigarette.
“Hey, I’m a friend of”—I gestured back toward the RV—“of his. Could I use your phone?”
The guy looked from me to the RV and back, then stood back and let me inside. The kitchen was hot, and the smell of cooking chorizo sausage and freshly brewed coffee was like a postcard from a better world. The man gestured me toward a thin green door. I nodded my thanks and ducked through. The office was tiny. The phone was a cheap cordless with a huge chrome-and-red logo on the mouthpiece for a company I’d never heard of. It took me a couple of tries to remember how to call information, and then how to call information in Denver. All the numbers I needed were in my cell phone, and I didn’t know the actual numbers. Eventually, I got the listing I needed.
The first call was disheartening. I’d forgotten it was Saturday, and all the businesses were closed. But the message left an emergency contact number, so I wrote that down, called back, and waited, biting my lips while it rang. Once I got someone to pick up on the other end, it was a question of minutes while the call was transferred. The clicks and hums made it sound like I was going through about a dozen exchanges.
“Hello, dear,” my lawyer said. “How are you?”
“Little rough,” I said. “Trending up, though.”
“What can I do for you?”
I paused. I’d gotten this far without knowing exactly what my plan was, except that I had resources there and I wanted them here. A crowd of things all came at once: shoes, shampoo, proof that the Black Sun’s daughter hadn’t tricked me into running. My backpack. My friends. Lunch.
The truth was, the answer depended on what I meant my next move to be. I’d gotten out, I’d made it to safety. Ex and Chapin and the others were certain to be out looking for me, but if I wanted to, I could head out of the country on my own. Or go to ground behind the best-paid security that money could buy. Flee or hole up. Or something else.
I took a deep breath and blew it out.
“I need a car. Something big with four-wheel drive. No GPS on it, though. And a cell phone with the GPS taken out or broken. And a couple of outfits. I’m wearing borrowed clothes right now. With good shoes. And really thick socks. And maybe a few thousand dollars in cash. Oh, and … Hey, is there a way for me to get a replacement driver’s license without actually being there? Because I can’t really get to mine right now, and I don’t want to explain that to the highway patrol or the TSA or anyone.”
“I’m sure we can arrange something,” my lawyer said. “Is there anything else?”
“I need Chogyi Jake’s cell phone number. I’ve got it in my old phone, and I don’t remember it.”
She gave it to me, and I dug around in the thin gray metal desk drawers until I found a pen that worked and a piece of paper. Behind me, the kitchen rattled with cutlery and the sounds of frying meat and eggs, loud Spanish and quieter, more distant English. I shifted the phone to my other ear.
“That’s enough for now,” I said.
“Where would you like to take possession?” she asked, and I smiled but didn’t laugh.
“I’m staying in an RV behind a roadside restaurant called O’Keefe’s outside Taos, New Mexico. They should bring everything there.”
“O’Keefe spelled like the painter?”
“I didn’t know there was a painter.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find it. How soon do you need all this?”
“As soon as you can,” I said. “Today would be good.”
There was a pause. I heard keystrokes as she typed something on her computer.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to do that. Weekends make these things difficult,” she said. “I can manage tomorrow early afternoon for the license and the car. I could have the rest of it to you earlier if you’d like.”
“No, I don’t want a lot of different deliveries. It’d call attention to me.” I tried to remember how much food had been in Midian’s RV. Could I really even stay there? It had to really belong to someone, and that almost certainly wasn’t him. Well, I could cross that bridge when I found it. “Bring it all at once, but don’t spare money making it happen fast. If throwing cash at it will help, go wild.”
“Understood,” she said cheerfully.
“You may be hearing from Ex. Whatever he tells you, ignore it. If he asks for anything, don’t do it.”
“Yes, dear. And should I take him off the payroll, then?”
“No,” I said. “He thinks he’s doing the right thing. He’s just wrong and he’s not listening to me right now.”
I could almost hear her eyebrow go up, but her voice didn’t give her away.
“Whatever you think is best,” she said.
“All right, then,” I said. “I think that’s got me covered.”
“If anything else comes up, don’t hesitate to call, dear.”
“Won’t,” I said. “Thanks.”
I hung up, turned, and leaned against the desk. Something was bothering me, and it took me a few seconds to figure out what. Eric was saving me again. When he’d died, he had left everything he had to me, and his personal empire was huge. If I’d come running to Midian’s RV with only what I’d actually earned myself, I wouldn’t have been able to afford my own lunch, much less new clothes, a new car, and a semilegal driver’s license. I didn’t know what I would have done. But I didn’t have to know, because I did have Eric’s money.
I hadn’t stopped to ask myself what Eric had meant by bringing me into this secret world. Riders, magic, spirits, wealth. All of it. When it had first happened, I’d thought it was because he’d been my own personal support team. He’d always been there. Not at center stage since he and my Dad fell out, but waiting in the wings. There to catch me when I stumbled. After the drunken lost weekend of my sixteenth birthday, he’d nursed me through my hangover and helped me hide the new tattoo from my parents. Now it seemed like he had to have known. All that time he had to have known there was something growing inside me. That I was infected.
And still, he’d put everything he’d built up into my hands. From beyond death, he was saving me again right now. And he was doing it because somehow, it made things the way he wanted them.
“I don’t suppose you have anything you’d like to tell me about why Eric would have wanted me rich after he died,” I said, but if my rider heard me, she didn’t respond.
I was going to take the money anyway. Even with this suspicion that it might all be poisoned, I would take it and spend it to get myself out of a tight spot, because I didn’t see any other option. For the first timee me uncomfortable.
In the kitchen, a woman’s voice rose in fast, annoyed tones. The cook who’d let me in the office answered. I couldn’t understand any of the words, but the tone was dismissive. The woman signed percussively, and a door opened and closed. I picked up the telephone handset, smoothed down the scrap of paper, and punched the code to block caller ID—just in case—and then the rest of the numbers.
The phone on the far end rang three times. Chogyi Jake picked up.
