Unclean Spirits

“Fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“What happened? What did he do?”

“Won,” Chogyi said.

Midian was on his belly, crawling toward the car. His legs were dead weight, and a slick of something too black to be blood stretched back to where he’d first fallen. I lifted and carried him the few steps to the car, sliding him into the passenger’s seat as Chogyi Jake half fell into the driver’s side. The sound of another engine roaring to life came from up the street, and I saw the windowless van swerving crazily toward us. It was Ex, his driving rough and erratic, coming in too late to save us. I stood up, waving him away. Get out. Get safe. Go.

The van slowed, stopped, turned, and then escaped. Aubrey’s minivan was still in sight. It hadn’t started up yet. There was no movement inside that I could see.

“Get in…with us,” Chogyi Jake said, but the sports car was too small. I would have had to sit on Midian’s lap. Chogyi Jake motioned to me, urging me to crawl into the car.

I didn’t answer. I just ran.

Aubrey sat in the second row of seats. The driver’s-side window was rolled down to let him fire through it toward the gate where Coin had been. The rifle lay between the front seats where he’d dropped it. I shouted his name, but he didn’t respond. I pulled open the door and climbed in. I was screaming now, but I didn’t know what I was saying.

Aubrey’s eyes were glassy and vacant, his hands limp as wilted leaves. He didn’t even know I was there. I crawled back, half convinced he was dead. He had a pulse, though. He was breathing.

I dug through his pockets for his keys. It felt like I was fumbling with the ignition for hours. When I finally got the engine started, I pulled the minivan out into the street, my hands shaking so bad I could barely steer. I sped through the first red light without knowing what I was doing. I had to get to the highway. I had to get out of here. I had to get Aubrey to someone who could help.

Something chimed, deep as a church bell but soundless. The writhing press of riders against my skin vanished. Whatever ceremonies and rituals the Invisible College had been doing to bring the other world close were over.

They were done.

Fourteen

I sat on a low plastic chair. Aubrey’s hand lay limp in mine. The sounds of the emergency room made a kind of white noise around us. Someone was coughing. A nurse was asking someone where a chart had gone. Somewhere not too far away, a child was screaming. It might as well have been silence.

Aubrey was on the bed in a cheap hospital gown, his clothes cut away. The monitor showed his heartbeat at a slow fifty beats per minute, solid and unvarying. He had enough oxygen in his blood. He wasn’t dying.

He just wasn’t here.

The curtain rattled and slid aside. A man in a white lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck stepped in. He was bald, wide, and he looked almost as tired as I felt.

“You’re Jayne?” he asked, pronouncing it Janey. I didn’t correct him.

“Yes,” I said.

“And you’re his fiancee?”

“Yes,” I said, repeating the lie.

“Okay,” the doctor said. “Could you tell me what happened?”

I went over the story. We’d been going out shooting. Aubrey had said he felt a little weak, so we’d pulled over. When he stopped talking to me, I’d brought him here. It was simple, easy to remember, and as close to the truth as I was going to get. The doctor asked me a few questions about Aubrey’s medical history, whether he was on any medications, if there was anything he was allergic to. I didn’t know anything. I started crying while the doctor went through all the same preliminary tests that the nurse had. He explained that they were going to take Aubrey away to do some imaging. Aubrey’s heart stayed at fifty beats per minute.

I’d given up hope that they’d find anything.

I let a nurse direct me to the hospital cafeteria, where I sat looking at a cup of coffee. My knee throbbed. My stitches complained where I’d pulled at the wound sometime during my flight from the warehouse. My shoulder hurt too.

“Hey. You’ve got a call.”

It was the fourth time my phone had rung since I’d pulled into the ambulance-only zone and screamed until a couple of paramedics helped me pull Aubrey out. As far as I knew, the minivan was still parked out there. Illegally. I tried to care.

“Hey,” Eric said. “You’ve got a call.”

I pulled the cell phone out and answered more to keep from hearing his voice again than because I wanted to talk to anyone.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?” Ex said.

“Hospital. Aubrey’s in a coma or something. I don’t know. He’s…I don’t know.”

“You have to get back to the house. You have to get someplace warded.”

“Okay,” I said. “They took him off to get a CAT scan or an MRI or something, and as soon as-”

“Jayne!” he shouted. “You have to come here right now. You’re in danger.”

“Yeah,” I said. “All right.”

I dropped the call and made my way back to the emergency room. It turned out someone had moved the minivan to a parking space not far away, left it unlocked, and put the keys in the visor. I didn’t know who’d done it, but I figured this wasn’t the first time someone had blocked up the entrance. I was vaguely grateful that they hadn’t just towed it away.

I pulled out, found my way onto Speer heading northeast, and tuned the radio to a country station before I realized that I had forgotten my coffee at the cafeteria and also that I didn’t know how to get home from here. I just tried to keep my mind on driving until I reached Colfax, turned left, and passed the University of Colorado on my right. Then I knew more or less where I was. I did a U-turn at Eighth Street and headed home.

It was a little past noon now, the temperature rising up into the nineties. The air smelled like gasoline and tar. The traffic was thick but not slow, and it seemed to take all my attention just to keep up with it. My body seemed to know better than I did what needed to be done. I let reflex take over, and I was a little surprised under half an hour later to find myself pulling up to the brick house. Eric’s house. My house. The windowless van was on the street, the black sports car in the carport. The lawn looked thirsty. I wondered when I was supposed to have watered it.

I walked in the front door and dropped my keys on the side table. Ex came out from the kitchen, a shotgun held at half ready, like he didn’t know whether to expect a friend or an assault team. Which was probably reasonable. We stared at each other for a long moment. He seemed tired. His white-blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail tied with a strip of leather. His black shirt was torn at the cuffs. He looked angry, but not with me.

He looked haunted.

It happened on his watch, I thought to myself. He did his best, and this is what came of it. Poor little tomato.

I took his hand without realizing I was going to. He looked surprised for a second, then squeezed my hand gently. He started to say something, stopped, and looked down.

It’s all right, I wanted to say. Except that it wasn’t.

“How is he?” Ex asked.

“Stable,” I said. “Just not in there.”

“It’s the fucking Voice of the Abyss,” Midian rasped from behind Ex. “If he hadn’t done that bullshit with the dog, he’d have held it together. You know. Maybe.”