help?”
Ex laughed softly. When he sighed, his breath was a plume of white.
“No,” he said. “I came to make demands, actually. But I’ll help if I can. If he’ll let me.”
“Come in,” Miguel said, gesturing toward the still-open doors. “Both of you, please.”
As if he’d said the magic word, about half of my anxiety faded. The sense that the town was malefic and aware of me didn’t vanish, but it faded. The crows—gone now, anyway—
seemed less like they’d been talking about me. I followed Ex through the doorway and into the warm darkness. The interior was all brick floors with thick Navajo rugs. The white stucco walls were wavy and uneven in a way that spoke of handcraft, and the dark wooden doorways were set so low that even I had to duck a little when I went from room to room. Religious paintings and sculptures hung in every room. Christ hung from His cross of wood or ceramic or worked iron. Mary wept or looked on serenely while her son died. A few of the paintings were bleak images of hell, heavy with threat and misery. I wondered who had painted them. Men’s voices rumbled in the distance, talking low among themselves. The air smelled of wood smoke and old incense.
There were no corridors or hallways, just one room following on another like a maze. They were all lit, but the wiring was stuck on the exterior of the walls and painted white; the building was older than electricity. We passed a window that looked out into bare courtyard, and I could feel the cold pressing in from the glass. Miguel led us through four or five doorways, Ex sometimes going ahead of me, sometimes behind. At one door, we passed through almost together.
“Xavier, I get. Ex, I get. But
He actually blushed a little.
“Long story,” he said. “Tell you later.”
“Promises, promises.”
The kitchen was as small as any of the rooms we’d been through. An enameled gas stove sat in the corner like a refugee from the 1920s. A mini-fridge out of a dorm room hummed to itself on the opposite wall. A fireplace had a high, roaring fire in it, and iron fixtures somebody could hang a pot of gruel from. The worn gray couch on the far wall didn’t go with the decor, and a small dinner table with a motley variety of straight-backed chairs had been shoved a little to the side to accommodate it.
An older man—fat, but also tall and solid—lay on the couch with his arm over his eyes. Two others were sitting at the little table, an interrupted game of dominos spread out between them. Between the roundness of the table and the weirdly organic shape the tiles had taken, I thought of mold growing in a petri dish. Which made me think of Aubrey and the research biology labs he’d worked in. And then about breaking up with him in the darkened hospital in Chicago. For a moment—less than a breath—I was under Grace Memorial again, my hands bloody and an innocent man begging that I not bury him alive. And then I was back in the real world. Nauseated, my heart racing. But back. No one noticed.
One of the men at the table—thin and Anglo with close-cut sandy hair—yawped with delight and came toward Ex with open arms. The other one—young-faced, with a weak chin his goatee couldn’t quite apologize for— looked on in benign confusion. The big one on the couch grunted and tried to turn away from the noise, sleep more important than anything except maybe a fire. Thin Man took Ex in his arms, thumping him soundly on the back. Unfortunate Goatee smiled at me, and I nodded back.
“Chewy was Father Chapin’s star student when I first joined up,” Miguel was saying to Unfortunate Goatee. I felt like the new kid at school, left out and alone and vaguely threatened by how happy everyone else seemed to be. I balled my fists in my pocket and willed myself to be calm. There was nothing to be afraid of. I was being stupid.
“The prodigal returns, returns,
“Dinner at O’Keefe’s?” Unfortunate Goatee said.
“Yes, that!” Thin Man said through his grin. “You’ll love the place. Utter hole. Looks like food poisoning on a stick, but they̵re wonderful. What are you
The sleeping man gave up, rolled to his side, and squinted up at Ex through red-rimmed eyelids.
“Xavier,” he rumbled.
“Tamblen,” Ex said. It seemed to exhaust the conversation between the two of them, and Ex turned back to Thin Man. “I’ve been … I’ve been traveling. I was renting a garage in Denver for a few years, using that for my home base.”
“Keeping out of trouble, I hope,” Thin Man said.
“Wouldn’t go that far,” Ex said. “This is Jayné Heller.”
The men’s collective attention turned to me. The silence was fraught, and I didn’t understand the weight it carried. I wasn’t the only one to notice either. Unfortunate Goatee was looking at the other priests in confusion. Thin Man let go of Ex and smiled at me.
“Well,” he said, “I suppose abandoning one’s vows does carry certain benefits.”
“Carsey,” the big one—Tamblen—said, and the Thin Man held up a palm to stop him.
“Joking, Tamblen, my dear. Only joking,” he said, and then held his hand out to me. I expected a false, bitchy smile, and so the naked sorrow in his expression was off-putting. “You’re Chewy’s girlfriend?”
I shook his hand. He was strong despite his build, and his skin was warm.
“Employer,” I said. Thin Man—Carsey—blinked at me as if he hadn’t understood. I clarified. “I’m his employer.”
“Jayné hired me and a couple of others,” Ex said. “We’ve been helping her put some things together. It’s a long story. I talked to Father Chapin about it yesterday, and we came up here to … follow up.”
Tamblen sat up, chuckling. Carsey’s smile warmed and he made a little bow.
“He’s with the girl,” Unfortunate Goatee said. “Him and Father Tomás.”
“Out soon,” Tamblen rumbled.
“I didn’t know that the exorcism had already started,” Ex said. “Or that it was going to be so long.”
“This one’s rough,” Miguel said. “But we’ll beat it. She’ll be free by Sunday. We’ve been tracking this demon for months. Its spawn are sent back to Hell. There is only this one left, but it was the source of all the others.”
I had to check my phone to be sure, but it was Wednesday. Miguel and the others had been working, and it looked like around the clock, for three days. They were thinking it would be finished sometime in the next four.
Ex stared at the floor, struggling with something. I’d been with him long enough to understand. He’d brought me here to have a confrontation with his old master, and now it looked like said old mastead a solid reason for putting us off. He didn’t want me to feel like he didn’t have my back, but the second thoughts were building up fast. On the timing if nothing else. I let him off the hook.
“Look, why don’t we head back down for Taos,” I said. “You guys can find us there when—”
Somewhere in the maze of rooms, something banged. A door opening. The sound resonated more than it should have, echoing through the space like we were in a cathedral and not crowded into a tiny kitchen. A girl’s voice screamed, fury and violence. The raw power of it washed over me like heat from a furnace. There was nothing human in the roar. Nothing benign or rational. It was the voice of a rider, deep and thundering and soaked in hatred. A man’s voice rose, opposing it.
“—by whose
Unfortunate Goatee blew out a breath. His face had gone pale. Carsey turned to him, nodding, and then back to me.
“Stay a few minutes. Father Chapin’s just coming,” he said. And then to Unfortunate Goatee: “Rise up, my boy. Break’s over.”
From the moment he staggered in, I could tell Father Chapin wasn’t pleased to see us. He went from surprise to disappointment in a flicker. I could see Ex hunch in a little at the old man’s disapproval, like a schoolboy bravely facing his father’s punishment.
Chapin looked like crap. Sweat wet his skin, the veins in his temples and neck were discolored and proud as welts. He looked at Ex and then at me. Carsey and Unfortunate Goatee—I really needed to find out his real name —walked out, heading toward the commotion. The unearthly howling kept roaring for a few seconds. Then a deep,
