Unclean Spirits

have started at ASU. The dorms and apartments would be filled with men and women sleeping off Saturday night, just the way I had done this time last year.

Closer by, Randolph Coin-or the thing inside him-had already started leading its seven-year swarm into a dance that would take more bodies away from people like Aaron the German shepherd and Candace Dorn and give them over to these unclean spirits. At Eric’s house, Midian was probably frying up steak and eggs, with Aubrey and Ex either at his side drinking coffee or sleeping off the night’s exhaustion. Chogyi Jake murmured something and shifted his weight without spilling his coffee. I smiled at the man’s sleep-peaceful face and let myself sink back down into my amazingly expensive, thin, uncomfortable pillow. I had expected to greet this particular morning with a sense of despair and isolation, and instead I felt at home in my life for the first time I could remember.

It was Sunday, the fifth of August, and it was my birthday. I was twenty-three.

Eight

The doctors in Boulder released me that afternoon with precautions about not doing anything to pop my stitches or aggravate my knee. Chogyi Jake took me home in his van, but I was already fading. I fell asleep almost as soon as I got back home, and when I woke up Monday morning, the house was silent.

I slipped out of bed, careful of my various wounds, pulled on a thick wool robe that was a little too large for me, and padded out into the hallway. The door of the guest bedroom was ajar, and Aubrey was in the bed, his eyes closed and his mouth hanging open. I watched him sleep, watched his chest rise and fall and rise again. Part of me wanted to step in, slip into the bed, and curl up beside him. Before I could act on the impulse, I heard the front door open and familiar voices fill the space. Ex and Chogyi Jake. And then Midian, welcoming them.

“The one thing we know for absolute certain is that it didn’t work,” Ex said.

Midian coughed once and shrugged his shoulders. He nodded to me as I walked through the doorway.

“Hey. The resident skeptic rises,” he said, and I shuddered at the sound of his voice. Every morning, it seemed a little worse than I’d remembered it. “I figured you for sleeping in through noon.”

“Got hungry,” I said.

“Can we stay on point here?” Ex snapped. “We can’t hold to Eric’s plan. It already failed.”

“It was discovered,” Chogyi Jake said. “But the core of it was never tried, so we can’t really say it wouldn’t have worked.”

“Coin’s a smug little cocksucker,” Midian said. “Even after we took out his little ninja squad, I don’t know that he’d be on high alert. He knows we got away, but he has to assume that he broke the plan’s back. Plus which, little old herself here does have some superpowers. You want a donut? The guys brought back a dozen, and the coffee’ll be ready in a minute.”

“I’d take a jelly. And I don’t have any superpowers,” I said, but it didn’t have the force of conviction anymore.

“Your priest buddy, Ex, has been doing some research,” Midian said, ignoring my protest. “Looks like there’s protective mojo on you that makes you hard to see, magically speaking, which might be why you got in past the alarms. Could also have something to do with how you kicked all the ass back at the apartment and then with that nasty up in Boulder. Did Eric ever give you anything that had writing on it you couldn’t actually read? Like a ring or something? Or take you to a hot spring? Natural hot springs are good too.”

Before I could say no, he hadn’t, Ex broke in.

“But we don’t know the details yet, and the point still stands that Eric got killed.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t a risk,” Midian replied calmly as he handed me a jelly donut. The powdered sugar was white as snow, a splash of red at the side. “I’m just saying it’s a calculated one.”

Ex’s face went pale, his jaw hard. For an instant, I was sure he was going to hit Midian. Instead, he muttered something obscene, turned, and stormed out the front door, slamming it behind him. Chogyi Jake sighed and picked a cake donut out of the box on the counter.

“No offense, Jake,” Midian said, sitting at the table. “Your friend there? He’s a prick.”

“He’s angry with himself,” Chogyi Jake said. “He deals with it poorly. Give him time to work it through. He’ll be back.”

“What’s he pissed off about?” I asked around a mouthful of sugar.

“He failed to protect Aubrey and you from the haugtrold,” Chogyi Jake said. “You could have been killed. Both of you. He didn’t insulate you from that danger.”

“It wasn’t his job,” I said.

“He feels otherwise,” Chogyi Jake said.

“Since we’re talking about stupid, though,” Midian croaked as he poured three cups of coffee, “walking in on an unknown situation like that haugtrold when this whole thing with Coin is still hanging fire? That was dumb.”

“We didn’t know it was going to blow up on us,” I said, accepting one of the cups. The coffee smelled rich and tasted just bitter enough to forgive the donut. “Aubrey knew I wouldn’t be able to kill Coin unless I was sure that all this talk about riders and magic was true. He didn’t think this thing with the dog was going to be dangerous.”

“Well, he’s paying the price of that little fuckup,” Midian said.

Something in the way the dead man spoke made my gut clench, suspicion suddenly burning through me like a cold fire. I put down the coffee cup and wiped the sugar off my lips with the back of one hand. Midian raised his ruined eyebrows.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “What price?”

The pair were silent for a moment, some unspoken calculation passing between them. Chogyi spoke first.

“Riders are very powerful. Magic-violating the rules of the world-it comes easily to them. For humans, using your will or qi or whichever name you put to it…is more difficult,” Chogyi Jake said slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. “Even of the people who learn about magic, few ever do more than small cantrips. Changing how you perceive things, for example. Making yourself charismatic or more difficult to remember. They’re things that are very much like what we all do anyway, every day. We focus our will to it, and it becomes more effective. When you start to do things that affect objects or violate the customs of nature-the sorts of things that riders manage by nature-those are more difficult.”

“The alarms at the apartment, for instance,” Midian said. “Those were a sweet sonofabitch to set up. If it wasn’t me and Eric doing it together, wouldn’t have been possible.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Eric knew more than any man I’ve ever met, and he taught things to some of us that are…advanced. Possibly optimistic. Aubrey bound the haugtrold with a very powerful magic. It is called the Voice of the Abyss. Or Calling Da’ath. There are other names for it. It…it isn’t something that is invoked lightly.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Jesus wept,” Midian said. “He used a tool that was stronger than he was, and it smacked him one. It’s no worse than smoking a few thousand cigarettes. That’s as much as you need to worry about, okay?”

“How badly did it hurt him?” I asked, my eyes on Chogyi. He didn’t look away.

“Every time he makes that invocation, it becomes easier for his soul to come free of his flesh,” he said. “Easier for him to die. Illness will be harder to recover from. Wounds slower to heal. There is no simple way to measure it, but at a guess, stunning the haugtrold cost him a year of his life.”

I closed my eyes and pressed my hand to my mouth. I felt like I was going to be ill. The coffee I’d drunk haunted the back of my tongue.

“I’ve got to…I’m going to be right…” I said as I walked away. Neither of them tried to follow me. I found my way back to my bedroom-Eric’s bedroom-and then the little bathroom. I turned up the shower until the steam was billowing out, then took off the robe and stood under the near-scalding water.

I had thought the adventure was only that: a scrape with danger that had netted us a few cuts and bruises and restored an innocent victim of these parasites to his own body again. We’d saved Candace Dorn from whatever violence and misery the rider had intended. Go us.