“Is this serious, Jayne? Should I be nervous?”
“Maybe a little,” I said.
There was a fumbling sound on the far end. Someone new came on the line.
“Jayne? This is Aaron.”
His voice was deep and masculine and made me think of recruitment ads for the Marines. I couldn’t help smiling.
“Hi, Aaron,” I said. “I’m glad to hear from you. You’re doing okay?”
“I am. Had a long day today, but if there’s something going down, I can get a cup of coffee and be anywhere you need me in about fifteen minutes.”
“Thanks. There’s nothing going on right now, but I might need a favor pretty soon here.”
“Are you safe where you are now?”
“Yes,” I said. “Safe as I would be anywhere. There’s something going on, though. Something big. If you’re around, I’d really like to talk to you about it.”
“Is it another one of those fuckers that got to me?”
“Similar idea,” I said. “Bigger scale.”
There was a pause on the line. I heard Candace’s voice in the background. Aaron grunted in a way that sounded like assent.
“Hey,” he said. “If you really don’t need me right this minute, I’m going to get some rest. I’m dead on my feet. But I’m going to give you another number. It’s my emergency line, and if anything happens, you call it.”
He rattled off the number and I wrote it on the back of some junk mail. He made me repeat it back to him to ensure I got it right.
“Now you listen to me,” Aaron said. “You saved me. You saved Candy. You ever need anything-
“Um,” I said, oddly touched by the ferocity in his voice. I’d only ever known the guy as a German shepherd. “Thanks. You bet. Why don’t you call me when you wake up. Maybe you guys can come over?”
“I’m already there,” he said, and we ended the call. I programmed Aaron’s emergency number into the phone and put it back in my backpack. When I got back to the couch and my cooled and thus somewhat rubbery omelet, Kim had regained her composure.
“That the other resource?” Midian asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “We did a favor for a cop. It might be useful.”
Kim nodded. Small white dots had appeared at the corners of her mouth where her lips pressed tight. I glanced at Chogyi Jake, and he gave me the smallest possible shake of the head.
“Okay,” I said. “So anyway, we’ve got a couple things going for us. Aaron’s one. We have Kim now. We know where Coin’s going to be more or less, and we can get more digging done on him if we want it.”
“It’s not enough,” Midian said with a sigh. “We had Aubrey and Ex before, and me, and tofu boy here. And you. And all the juju Eric put on you. And we got dicked over.”
“Yes, but that was the point I was making before,” Kim said. “The one thing you thought you had and didn’t was surprise. They were working under the assumption that you would all be coming at him under something similar to the original plan. You did. They won. This time will be different.”
“You think so?”
“This time you actually
I CRAWLED into bed just before two in the morning, my body humming between the two poles of fatigue and residual adrenaline. The pillows were cool. The soft babble of a news channel in the front room meant Midian was taking the first watch. The ceiling above me seemed to glow a little, like an old television turned on but without a signal.
I willed myself to sleep, but with no effect. I was bone-tired and twitchy. I was scared and bored and uncertain. I was ready to pop. I had Kim now, and after our time at the hospital, I was even pretty sure I could count on her. Not bad, considering I’d slept with her husband. Her husband who she still loved.
I wondered where Ex was, if he was safe. If he was alive. I wanted him back with us, his angry blue eyes and his assured, in-control way of holding himself. Even when he was wrong, he was never uncertain. Having Aaron, Candace, and Kim helped. Understanding better how my inheritance from Eric gave me options helped. But I was getting tired of the people I needed going away. Ex. Aubrey. Cary. My father. My family.
Eric.
Somewhere in the city, the thing that looked out Randolph Coin’s eyes was waiting for me. Watching. I wondered if the rider ever got bored, got distracted, looked away. I tried to put myself in Coin’s place. Eric Heller had been gunning for me and died for the offense. Eric’s team had taken up his cause and failed. The enemy wasn’t gone-one of the fallen was in the hospital as cheese in the mousetrap, and another had already run. Would Coin know how many had been in the conspiracy by the warehouse? Would he know what resources I had?
I shifted, pulling the pillow over my head. The murmur of the television grew quieter so that I wasn’t sure anymore whether I was hearing or imagining it.
If I were in his position, what would I expect of my enemy? Well, I’d expect us to run like hell. Just the way Ex had. Maybe we’d try to save our fallen, but the trap around Aubrey had failed once. In Coin’s place, I’d think that gambit had failed. Would I still keep watch on Aubrey?
A scene from an old movie came to me. One of the Vietnam films my older brother had liked to watch when our parents left him in control of the house. Someone in the band of brothers had been shot by the enemy and left in the open, his screams the bait to lure the others out where they could be killed. Yes, I’d leave a guard on Aubrey. And I’d cover the roof next time.
The problem was…well, there were a lot of problems. I wanted to know exactly what Coin and his people were capable of, but my brief lessons in riders and qi and magic pretty much confirmed that was going to take a lot more time than I had. I could rely on Kim and Chogyi Jake to give me their best guess. I didn’t know how good that would be, but I didn’t have anything better. I wanted to know what Coin’s plans and intentions were so that I could navigate my way around them, but it wasn’t like I could ask him.
I wanted to misdirect him, to point over the Invisible College’s collective shoulder and sucker-punch them when they turned to look. But I couldn’t even do that.
My eyes flew open as the thought came to me.
Or maybe I could.
I got up, dug my laptop out from under a pile of old clothes, and stared at it without opening the case. My fingers twitched toward it. They hadn’t tracked me the last time I’d talked to the fake Ex. I hadn’t admitted that I knew he was a fake. Maybe there was a way. Maybe I did have a way to lie to Coin and the Invisible College. I opened the screen, my finger hovering over the power button. Was this stupid? Was this something I needed to talk to the others about?
I put on my robe, tied it in a square knot at my waist, and stalked out to the main room. Midian was on the couch with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other.
“I thought I said not to smoke in the house,” I said.
“You did,” the vampire said. “I’ve only been doing it when I was pretty sure you wouldn’t see me.”
“I let you guys make the calls last time, and we failed.”
“Old news, kid.”
“I’m not doing that anymore. Eric left everything to me. Not you, not Aubrey or Chogyi Jake or Ex. Me. This is my show now.”
Midian took a long, slow drink from the can, then held the cigarette to his mouth. The ember went bright as he inhaled, then back to its dull orange glow. The yellowed ivory eyes narrowed.
“What’s bugging you?”
“I’m making a decision,” I said. “I think it’s the right thing to do.”
“But?”
“But if I’m wrong, I might tip our location to Coin and get us all killed.”
“You want to talk about it? Roust tofu boy and what’s-her-name out of bed, chew it over.”
“No,” I said. “I’d only convince myself not to do it.”
