near the convention center, the other down near Coin’s house-that particularly excited Aaron’s interest.
Kim, sitting beside me, seemed to grow more and more withdrawn through the day. At about half past three, I called a break, and Candace drove us a couple of blocks to the Rock Bottom Brewery at the Sixteenth Street mall. We sat on the patio so that we could actually hear one another. In the shade, it wasn’t too bad. With a cold beer, it was better.
“Okay,” I said after we’d ordered some food. “What have we got so far?”
“I think we can take him out by the convention center without there being too much risk of it spilling over,” Aaron said. “It’ll mean taking him by surprise, but-”
“But he’s a rider,” I said. “He can do things that a human being can’t. We have to figure that in.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Kim said. “He’s going to outclass us when it comes to magic. There’s no way around it.”
“What options can you give me?” I asked.
Kim sipped her beer, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. It was the least cultured and controlled gesture I’d seen her make.
“My toolbox is smaller than you’re used to,” she said. “I quit working with Eric before Aubrey did, so I just don’t know as much. In a way, that makes it easier because there isn’t much to choose from. I can attack Coin. Try to break the bond between the rider and the body it’s in. It’s unlikely to work by itself, but if he’s also being assaulted physically at the time, there might be a chance. Or I can protect the group by making us difficult to focus on, which has the advantage of giving our side more time. But it doesn’t do anything about his protections, which I expect are going to be difficult to penetrate no matter how much time we buy ourselves. Or…or I can damp down all the unnatural activity in the immediate area.”
“Tell me about that last one,” I said.
“It’s a simple ceremony,” Kim said. “The name for it is Calling Malkuth. It doesn’t take a lot of finesse or preparation, which is an advantage because I’m not very good at this. It’s fairly easy, since it’s essentially calling forth normalcy, and bringing things back to their natural state is simpler than pulling them out of it. I don’t think it would be wise to count on me for anything fancy.”
“What’s it do?” Aaron asked.
“It invokes the material world,” Kim said. “It makes riders less powerful. Which means it will affect the bodyguard too. We can’t forget about him. It also restricts the kinds of things other people can do. Normal humans who’ve been trained would find it harder to cast spells or express their will in nonphysical ways.”
“What’s the downside?” I asked.
“It’s indiscriminate,” she said. “I can’t just affect their side. So you wouldn’t be able to do anything either.”
“Okay.”
“And I don’t know what it would do to the protections Eric put on you.” That she looked down when she said it was enough to show that this was her real objection.
“Tell me about
“Well. Chogyi and Midian both said that there have been things about you…that you’ve been surprisingly good with some kinds of fighting, that you’re harder than usual to locate using nonmaterial means. If Eric had protections on you, Calling Malkuth would diminish them. And then I don’t know that afterward they would come back.”
“What if she wasn’t there?” Candace asked. “If Jayne didn’t come, then she wouldn’t need to be there when you did the-” She waved her hands like a stage magician.
“I’ll be there,” I said. “If it’s a risk, that’s fine. I’ll take it.”
“No. Don’t just make a snap decision like that. Think about this,” Kim said. “We don’t know all of what Eric’s done. We don’t know what other work we might be interfering with. I don’t want…I don’t want to be responsible for breaking something I can’t fix.”
She shrugged, and I understood what she wasn’t saying. I was her husband’s lover. There was a whole side of her that wanted nothing more than to see me hurt. She didn’t trust herself.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll think about it. But right now, it’s the option that sounds the best to me.”
The food came. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until my first mouthful. Then I couldn’t stop. The sun pressed down on the world. A constant trickle of sweat ran down between my shoulder blades. It was Sunday. The last day in the worst week of a life that had a couple other real contenders.
Maybe Tuesday wasn’t the right time. Two days didn’t seem long enough to really plan out what I was going to do, all the possibilities and contingencies. All the things that could go wrong. I paid the bill with cash when it came. There was still a part of me that shuddered a little bit at a single meal that cost over fifty dollars. A month ago, it wouldn’t have been something I could afford. Now it was subliminal. Next month, it could be up to whoever was catering my funeral.
The street mall was permanently blocked to cars. We’d parked in the structure underneath the restaurant, so when we left, the direction was down. The garage was pretty full, but also offered the kind of cool that comes with being underground in the unkind heat of August. We angled for Candace’s sedan, and I fell into step beside Kim. She looked over at me, then away. A motorcycle whined.
I didn’t know what was happening until Aaron had already pushed me down between two cars. Candace and Kim were crouched low and following. A pistol had appeared in his hand as if from nowhere. The motorcycle’s engine dropped to a lower hum.
“What?” I whispered.
“The bike,” Aaron said. “It’s been following us. I wasn’t sure before. The thing is the guy on the bike keeps changing.”
“More than one person?”
“He changed in the middle of traffic,” Aaron said. “He was a big black guy, and then about half a block later, he was an Asian chick. I thought maybe it was just similar bikes, but…”
I moved forward. The motorcycle was at the end of the row, pointing vaguely toward the exit. The man sitting on it was craning his neck, looking for something. Looking for us. He pulled something small and plastic out of his pocket, looked at it, frowned, and put it back. He was maybe in his early fifties, with salt-and-pepper stubble and a long, greasy ponytail. I gathered my qi, drawing it slowly up to my eyes. The image shifted. The glamour washed away, ponytail and stubble and decades flowing away from the man. I said something vulgar.
“Stay here,” I told Aaron, then stepped out into the aisle, walking down the oil-stained concrete like I owned it. On the motorcycle, our shadow saw me. His expression went from surprise to chagrin to anger in less than a breath. By the time I reached him, he had braced the cycle with his legs and his arms were crossed.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted over the low roar of the engine.
“I was going to ask the same of you,” Ex said.
Twenty-one
He looked near exhaustion. His hair, tied back in a ponytail and held with a thick rubber band, was limp and greasy. His face was grayish around the eyes, like someone who’s been working around smoke and soot so long it’s been ground into the pores. Without the glamour, he was wearing a white shirt that looked as worn as he did, with old jeans and black boots.
I crossed my arms.
“I’m doing what we should have done from the start,” I shouted. “You want to kill the engine on that thing, or should we talk about this really loud and in public?”
His expression soured further and he nodded to the back of the cycle, ordering me on. I raised an eyebrow and didn’t move.
“I’m not having this conversation here,” he said.
I turned and spat on the ground, then walked back to Aaron, Candace, and Kim. They were still hunkered down behind parked cars, but the fact that I had talked to the mysterious stranger without the pair of us devolving into a street fight seemed to reassure them all.
