floor, on the deep, plush couch. History books, it looked like. Some of them were in languages I recognized, some weren’t. A whiteboard hung on one wall, covered with timetables and scribbled notes. A huge glass ashtray held the remains of at least a pack of dark brown cigarettes, the scent of old smoke tainting the air. And the art …
At each of the huge windows, a glass ball seemed to float in the air. It was only when I got close enough to breathe on them that I saw the tiny cradles, three hair-thin wire strands for each, hanging from the high ceiling. When I turned around, I saw there was one above the doorway too. Candles in thick brass candlesticks covered the dining table in three ascending rows, and a picture framed in burnished metal hung at the mouth of a hallway. It was a picture of a young woman in nineteenth-century clothes, and I wasn’t sure from looking whether it was a photograph or a drawing. It seemed as real as a photo, but the eyes and the way she held her hands looked subtly off.
Silently, I went down the hallway. A fair-size kitchen with white tiles and a brushed steel sink and refrigerator and stove. A breakfast bar with ironwork stools to match the fence outside. A bathroom with the lights out. A bedroom, and on the bed, laid out as if in state, a corpse.
I could feel the blood leaving my face. I didn’t scream, but I put my hand on the door frame to keep steady. My stomach tightened and flipped. I stepped forward. Whoever he’d been, he’d been dead for a long time. The skin was desiccated, tight, and waxy; the nose was sunken; the hands folded on his chest were fleshless as chicken wings. Blackened teeth lurked behind ruined lips. Wisps of colorless hair still clung to the scalp. He was wearing a white shirt with suspenders and pants that came up to his rib cage, like someone from a forties movie.
I crouched at the side of the bed, disgusted, fascinated, and frightened. My mind was jumping and screeching like a monkey behind my eyes, but there was something wrong. I had touched my nose before I figured it out, like my body already knew and had to give me the hint. He didn’t smell like a corpse. He didn’t smell like anything. He smelled cold.
I had started to wonder if maybe it wasn’t a body at all but some kind of desperately Goth wax sculpture when the eyes opened with a wet click.
This time, I screamed.
‘You aren’t Eric,’ it said in a voice like a rusted cattle gate opening.
‘I’m his niece,’ I said. I didn’t remember running across the room, but my back was pressed against the wall now. I tried to squeak less when I spoke again. ‘I’m Jayne.’
He repeated my name like he was tasting it. Zha-nay.
‘French?’ he asked.
‘My mother’s side,’ I said. ‘People usually say it like Jane or Janey.’
‘Monolingual fuckwits,’ he said, and sat up. I thought I could hear his joints creaking like leather, but I might have only imagined it. ‘You’re here, that means something happened to Eric?’
‘He’s dead.’
The man sighed.
‘I was afraid of that,’ he said. ‘Explains a lot. The little rat fuckers must have sussed him out.’
The skeletal, awkward hand rubbed his chin like it was checking for stubble. When he looked at me, his eyes were the yellow of old ivory. In motion, he didn’t look like a corpse, only a badly damaged man.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘where are my manners, eh? You want a drink?’
‘Um,’ I said. And then, ‘Yes.’
He led the way back to the kitchen. I perched on one of the stools while he poured two generous fingers of brandy into a water glass. I’d seen pictures of people who survived horrific burns, and while he didn’t bear those scars, the effect was much the same. I could see it when his joints—shoulder, hip, elbow—didn’t quite bend the way they were meant to. He walked carefully. I wanted to ask what had happened to him, but I couldn’t think of a way to phrase it that didn’t seem excruciatingly rude. I tried not to stare, the way you try not to look at people with harelips or missing hands, but my eyes just kept going back.
Guilt started pulling at me. Even if it was officially my place, coming in the way I had was rude. Clearly Uncle Eric had been letting the guy crash here. He poured a glass for himself, then took a wood cutting board from the cabinet beside the refrigerator and a knife from its holder.
‘So,’ he said. ‘He didn’t tell you a goddamn thing about all this, did he?’
‘Not really,’ I said, and sipped the brandy. I never drank much, but I could tell that the liquor was better than I’d ever had.
‘Yeah. Like him,’ the man said, and put a cast-iron skillet on the burner. ‘Well. Shit, I don’t know where to start. My name’s Midian. Midian Clark. Your uncle and I were working together.’
If I pretended I was listening to Tom Waits, his voice wasn’t so bad.
‘What on?’
A scoop of butter thick enough to make a dietitian weep dropped onto the skillet and started to quietly melt.
‘That’s a long story,’ Midian said.
‘Was it why he got killed?’
‘Yeah, it was.’
‘So you know who killed him.’
Midian shifted his head to the side, his ragged lips pressed thin. He sighed.
‘Yes. If he got killed, I know who killed him.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Spill it.’
He frowned quietly as he took a yellow onion, half a red bell pepper, and an egg carton out of the refrigerator. I drank more brandy, the warm feeling in my throat spreading to my cheeks. I cleared my throat.
‘I’m not blowing you off. I just think better when I’m cooking,’ he said. ‘Okay. So. There’s a guy calls himself Randolph Coin. He came to Denver about a year ago. He heads up a bunch of fellas call themselves the Invisible College, okay? They think that all the ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties you’ve ever heard of really exist. Vampires, werewolves, zombies. People doing magic. You name it. You like onions?’
‘Not really.’
‘Not even grilled? Tell you what, just try this. If you don’t like it, I’ll make another one. So the Invisible College, they also think they know why all these things exist. It’s about possession. Something coming out of this abstract spiritual world that’s right next to ours and worming its way inside people and animals. Hell, sometimes even things. Knives.’ He held up the cutting blade. ‘Whatever.’
‘Demons taking people over,’ I said. He looked up, smiling at the skepticism in my voice, as he sliced the onion in neat halves, peeled away the skin, and started dicing the pale flesh.
‘Well, yeah, a lot of it is about demons. Or spirits or loa or whatever you want to call them. Seelie Court, Unseelie Court, Radha, Petro, Ghede. Ifrit. Hungry ghosts. All kinds of them. The generic term’s riders. They get inside a person, and they change them. Make them do things, make them want to do things. Give them freaky powers. Normal people who’ve got a feel for it and the right training—call ’em wizards or witches or cunning men or whatever—they can do some pretty weird shit, but nothing compared to what riders are capable of.’
‘So not just demons, but magic too,’ I said. He dropped the onion into the spreading pool of butter, where it sizzled angrily. The pepper was next for the block.
‘Thing is, kid, the folks that believe that shit? They’re absolutely right. That’s exactly how the world is. Let me give you a fer instance. I know you’re wondering what the fuck happened to me, right? Well, how old do you think I am?’
‘I … I don’t …’
‘I was born the year they stormed the Bastille. The year of our Lord seventeen hundred and eighty motherfucking nine.’ His voice had taken on an angry buzz. The blade in his hand flickered over the cutting board. ‘I crossed the Invisible College, and they cursed me. I’ve been wandering around ever since. Coin is direct apostolic line from the pig fucker who did this to me. He’s the only one who can take it back.’
He put the peppers in with the browning onions. Wisps of smoke and steam rose from the black metal.
‘I came to Eric because he’s the kind of guy who knows things. Helps people. I needed help.’
‘You’re telling me that a bunch of evil wizards killed my uncle?’ I could hear the raw disbelief in my own
