Killing Rites

and pink and painful. Dolores was sleeping where I’d left her, above the bedspread and under the spare blanket, curled up like a comma. Ozzie looked up at me hopefully.

“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t think about dog food. I’m kind of new at the whole pet thing,” I said, and she sighed and put her head back down.

I put the shopping bags down by the door and went to the far side of the bed. I lay down with my clothes on, fitting onto eight inches of mattress that the other two had left me. For a moment, I wondered if this was what it felt like having a family. A man, a woman, a child, all curled up in a bed that was a little too small, all with their own thoughts and dreams and nightmares. I tried to imagine my own mother and father on a vacation someplace when I’d been a little kid, or with my big brother, who was about to have a kid of his own. I couldn’t picture it. It wasn’t that it seemed wrong onny or improbable. It was just that when I tried to put them here where I was, my mind went blank. Part of that was the trickling exhaustion that came from a sleepless, anxious night, but part of it was something else. Part of it was not knowing anymore exactly who I missed when I missed my family. My mind wandered to the other people who belonged with me: Aubrey, Chogyi Jake, Ex. Maybe them. I could almost imagine them.

I didn’t realize I’d closed my eyes until it had already happened. I left them that way, thinking I’d just rest for a couple of minutes and then go find some breakfast for us all, and woke up with the others a little bit after noon.

“YOU’RE SURE she came back wrong?” Alexander asked. “Is it possible that she was okay when we did the rite, but then the other demon was there waiting when it was over?”

Dolores took a bite of her hamburger. She’d gone for a weird Hawaiian thing with barbecue sauce and pineapple that smelled great. She chewed and shook her head. Her frown was entirely made of eyebrows.

“No,” she said. “And anyway, that isn’t what it did with me, remember?”

“I hate to do the dog-pile thing,” I said, sweeping a french fry through my ketchup. “But that’s my experience too. The Akaname attack was going on at the same time as the exorcism.”

The restaurant was a few blocks off the main drag. The decor was prepackaged plastic in reds and yellows, but the food was good. We’d taken a booth near the back so that we could talk with something like privacy. The decision to get out of the hotel room and track down food had been easier than I’d expected. When I’d brought up the possibility that the police might very well be looking for us, Alexander pointed out that kidnappers usually didn’t hang out in restaurants with their captives, and that by staying in the room and never coming out, we’d actually be acting more like criminals. And then Dolores had calmly threatened to throw a screaming fit if she didn’t get to go out.

The more she talked, the more she impressed me. It wasn’t just that she’d been through two demonic possessions in the last few days and was now hanging out with two grown-ups she barely knew. There was a calm about her, and a maturity, that only broke on our way out of the apartment when Ozzie was apparently startled by her own fart. Dolores collapsed with laughter. And in fairness, it was kind of funny.

“I just don’t see how that’s possible,” Alexander said. “You were on consecrated ground—”

“When Soledad came back, it was already in her,” Dolores said. “She sat right there with your boss and it was inside her.”

“But are we sure that it was there during the rite? If the timing—“

Dolores put down her burger and lifted her eyebrows. It was an expression of challenge and disbelief that came straight off daytime TV, and not the good shows. I wanted to laugh, but I also wanted the conversation to keep moving forward. I tried to imagine what Chogyi Jake would have said if he’d been there.

“So, Alexander,” I said. “I’m hearing you say that you have a hard time beliving that the Akaname attacked when Dolores and I say it did.”

“I am,” he said. “All of the protections it would have had to go through. And the Mark of St. Francis. You were wearing that, Jayné. And we know it was working because it stopped the Black Sun from taking control. It wasn’t ineffective.”

“But my report and Dolores’s don’t convince you,” I said. “Why is that?”

Alexander opened his mouth, closed it, looked down.

“This isn’t easy to say.”

“Do your best,” Dolores said gently. Without saying a word, she’d seen what I was doing and started taking her cues from me. Seriously smart kid.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but Dolores has been through a lot. Sometimes when a person has been through the kinds of things she has, their impressions and memories can be a little scrambled. Disoriented. And you’ve still got a rider on board, so your report has to be treated with an extra level of scrutiny too. Not that —“

“You have one in you right now?” Dolores said, her eyes going wide.

“Yeah,” I said. “But it’s not like the ones you had. The thing that’s in me has been there for a really long time, and we’ve got a truce going.”

“Is it an angel?” she asked.

“I don’t think so, honey,” I said. “It’s just what I’ve got to work with. Alexander, I understand we don’t have enough evidence here to totally convince you. But can you at least see that we need to investigate?”

“Yes,” he said. “I mean, of course there’s a problem. If these things have been targeting the people we’ve helped, it’s absolutely our responsibility to go back and check on people. It’s just that I don’t see how a rider could be in one of the priests.”

The front door of the restaurant opened and a middle-aged woman ushered in two boys. She looked tired. Outside, an old man with a cane was trying to negotiate a sidewalk of melting snow.

I understood Alexander’s problem. He was an expert. Chapin and Ex and Tomás and Tamblen. All of them were experts on exactly this kind of thing, and that was the one thing that brought them all together. To say that they’d been tricked, that a rider had slipped through their defenses without being seen, meant rethinking everything that group meant. And, just like all of them, Alexander had given up a lot in order to be who and what he was. Dolores crossed her arms, scowling. All she saw was a grown-up who thought she didn’t know what she was certain of. There was a rage building in her that would explode if Alexander didn’t flex a little. I understood that too.

“Okay, look,” he said. “We can get all the information, go to Chapin, and—”

“Unless it’s Chapin,” I said. “Then we really can’t.”

At the front, the two boys were shouting each other down over something. Their mother stood at the counter, ordering slowly and carefully so that she be heard over the pandemonium. I took another fry and a sip of my Coke. The salt and the sweet made a great combination.

“Who, then?” Alexander said. “That same logic goes for anyone. What if it’s Carsey? What if it’s Miguel?”

“What if it’s Carsey and Miguel?” Dolores asked.

“I came to you because I knew you hadn’t been there when the thing tried to get into me,” I said. “But I knew I was taking a risk. We can’t assume it’s just in one person. Everyone in your group is suspect. And that aside, I’m pretty sure if I waltz into the joint in San Esteban, Chapin’s first impulse would be to throw me in the cellar.”

“It probably would,” Alexander said, then spread his hands. “So what’s your plan? If you don’t want me to take this to Chapin, where do we go? Father Amorth in Rome? The Pope? You wanted me to come witness what had happened to Dolores and Soledad. Who am I supposed to bear witness to?”

“Ex,” I said.

THE PLAN wasn’t a masterpiece of elegance, but I figured it didn’t need to be. I was pretty sure if I called Chogyi Jake, he’d be willing to broker a meeting. But Ex would be tempted to use it to spring a trap, and Chapin would insist on it. If I warned them I was coming, they’d have the opportunity to do something stupid. So I’d just show up, and I’d show up where Chapin wasn’t, and that meant the little condo.

We got there in the early afternoon. The day was bright, but the sun was hidden behind mountains and pines. Traffic on the thin road to the ski valley was thick and slow, and when I finally turned off, aiming for the dirt hill that I’d run down a few days before, it felt a little like coming home. Someone had shoveled enough dirt and sand on top of the ice and snow to give the cars traction. The black sports car was parked at the hilltop. I pulled in behind it and killed the engine. At the condo just down from mine, a girl was struggling out to a minivan on a pair of crutches. Her