Killing Rites

car.”

“I see. Thank you. Go on.”

I looked over at Ex. He was sitting at the breakfast bar, looking down at the couch and overstuffed chairs like a bird on a perch. His white-blond hair was tied back in a ponytail and he wore his usual basic black pseudo- priestwear. Looking at Father Chapin, I could see where his fashion sense came from.

I wished the others were there too—Chogyi Jake and my now ex-boyfriend Aubrey. Kim. The ones who’d been there from the beginning. I wasn’t sure what to say that I had eready told Father Chapin. I felt like I was at the doctor’s office trying to explain symptoms of something without knowing quite what information mattered.

“It isn’t fading,” Ex prompted.

“Yeah. That’s right. It’s not,” I said. “The guys always told me that magic fades, you know? That when someone does some sort of mojo, it takes upkeep, or it starts to lose power. We were looking through my uncle’s things for months, and we never found anything about putting protections on me. We never used any kind of magic to keep them up. But instead of getting weaker, it seems like I’m getting stronger.”

“Have you found yourself taking actions without intending to?”

“Like what?”

He took another sip of coffee, his thick white eyebrows knotting like pale caterpillars.

“Walking places without knowing that you meant to go there,” he said. “Picking up things or putting them down. Saying words you didn’t expect to say.”

“No,” I said. And then, “I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, everyone does things like that sometimes, right?”

“Have you been sexually active?”

“Excuse me?”

“Have you been sexually active?” he asked again with exactly the same inflection.

I shifted on the couch. The blush felt like someone had turned a sunlamp on me. When I glanced over at Ex, he wasn’t looking at me. I didn’t want to go into any of this, but I especially didn’t want to talk about my love life with Ex in the room. We’d both been pretty good about ignoring that he wanted to be part of it. Hauling out the fact that he wasn’t seemed rude.

Still, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“A couple of times in college. And since last year, I had a boyfriend for a while, yes,” I said. “Aubrey. But we’re not seeing each other anymore.”

“Why not?”

“It turned out that my uncle—the one I inherited everything from?—wasn’t exactly a good person. He used magic to break up Aubrey and his wife. To make her have an affair with my uncle. The phrase rape spell came up. When we figured that out, Aubrey kind of needed to go resolve that with her.” I paused. “It’s not really as Days of Our Lives as it sounds.”

“No other sexual activity?”

“None,” I said.

“Are you Catholic?”

“No.”

“What is your relationship with God?”

I shrugged. “Well, we used to be really close, but then I went away to college. The whole long-distance thing was really a drag, so we’re kind of seeing other deities.”

No one laughed. I felt my own smile go brittle. I shook my head and tried againheight='0em'>

“So, look, my parents are evangelical. We went to church all through my childhood, but the older I got … it just didn’t work for me. I decided to go to a secular college. Took a while to save up the money, but … Anyway, I haven’t been to church since then. Haven’t talked to my parents either.”

Father Chapin’s smile was a relief, if only because it meant he was skating over the “seeing other deities” comment. I was a little bit annoyed with myself for wanting him to like me as much as I did.

“What did you study?”

“I majored in prerequisites,” I said. When he looked quizzical, I said, “I dropped out after a couple semesters. Then Uncle Eric died. Since then, I’ve been kind of busy.”

The old priest sighed, wove his fingers together on one knee, and leaned forward. I had the feeling we’d just been making small talk and he was ready to get into the real business. I didn’t know what he was going to talk about if my messed-up family, my faith breakdown, Eric’s death, and my sexual history were just the warm-up.

“Xavier tells me that you have recently killed a man.”

“Who’s Xavier?” I asked. “You mean Ex?”

“He tells me the man was an innocent and willing sacrifice, and that you—”

“All this stuff started a long time before that,” I said. “It’s not related.”

“Still, to take such an action could have—”

“It’s not related,” I said again, and my voice shook a little. My heart was racing. I felt a pang of anger at my body for reacting so obviously. Wasn’t I supposed to be the cool-as-a-cucumber demon hunter?

“I’m not here to judge you, young miss,” he said. “I know something of the circumstances.”

“Then you know I’ve been seeing this freaky shit a long time before Chicago,” I said. “If I’ve got a rider, I’ve had it since at least last year. Maybe longer.”

“Yes,” Father Chapin said. “Yes, I understand. Thank you for your candor.”

The pine log popped again. The quiet got awkward.

“So, what do we do?” I said. “Is there someplace we should go and get our exorcism on? Some kind of rite to keep things together until we’re full power? What?”

Father Chapin looked pained. He scratched at an eyebrow with the nail of his right pinky, smiling down toward the coffee table as he spoke.

“There are many things we will need to do. Little steps. Little steps to be sure that our action is right, yes? Move forward with our eyes open.”

“Great,” I said, clapping my hands on my knees. “Where do we start?”

“I would consult with Xavier, please. For a moment.”

When I did reacting 217;t hop up immediately, Father Chapin looked embarrassed, and I had the sense it was more for me than himself. This is my problem hunched at the back of my throat. Anything you can say to Ex, you can say to me.

“Just for a minute, Jayné,” Ex said.

“Sure,” I said. “No problem.”

I walked out of the den, heading for the kitchen. But at the last minute, I turned right instead. Down the hall, and out into the December night. After the warmth of the ranch house, the air was like a sharp slap. To the southwest, the lights of Santa Fe were glowing against a sparse covering of cloud. The stars overhead were brilliant and crowded in the sky. A meteor passed over, a thin silver-white light, gone as soon as I saw it. I stepped out to a stretch of rough wooden fence that divided the scrub and stones near the house from the scrub and stones slightly farther away from it, sat on the top plank, crossed my arms, and waited.

It had been a little over two months since I’d killed an innocent man. I’d had a good reason—saving-the- world-from-madness-and-war-level good—and he’d known what we were going to do. He’d gone into darkness of his own free will. But I was the one who’d put him in the box, driven in the nails, and buried him and the thing living in his body while they screamed and begged. Me. Little old Jayné Heller. My palms were almost healed. There wouldn’t even be much of a scar. According to my lawyer, the police weren’t investigating. It was a missing persons case, and it probably would be forever. Once upon a time, there was a man named David, and then one day, for no particular reason, there wasn’t.

I hugged myself closer, the cold pressing into my skin. I’d bought an overcoat when we were in London—soft black wool that went down to my ankles—and I thought about going in to get it.

The days since then hadn’t been the best of my life. I wasn’t sleeping enough. I had weird spikes of anxiety and fear that felt like I’d accidentally gunned the gas with the car in neutral. I didn’t know if it was the aftermath of my very bad day in Chicago or more evidence for my new theory of why I kept winning fights I should have lost.

From the moment I’d told Ex my suspicion that I had a rider in me, I felt like I’d fallen into a wheel-chair that he was pushing. He’d arranged for the ritual tests in Hamburg that we’d tried with spectacularly inconclusive