you could want, including some old canned goods and a couple of firearms—in case of rampaging bears, I supposed. The shutters kept any movement inside from being visible and it would be cozy enough so long as we didn’t make a lot of noise or wave flashlights around like disco lights. We debated, but in the end Quinton started a small fire in the Franklin stove on the bottom floor and we took the risk that anyone would notice the trickle of smoke it put out the chimney.
We huddled in the dark together before the stove with blankets around our shoulders and sock-clad feet propped on a stool just out of scorching range. A couple of fat little candles provided enough light to see, but we hoped not enough to attract attention if a vagrant flicker fell through the storm shutters and onto the water outside. It was still too tense and soggy to be romantic, but the scene had potential.
“So,” I started, teasing, “where’s the ferret?”
“I left her with Brian Danziger. Oh, that reminds me: Ben gave me something for you.” He scrabbled around in his backpack and handed me a small package swaddled in plastic wrap—not quite what I’d had in mind.... “I guess he was expecting you to come by on Monday, so when I showed up this morning, he gave it to me. Did he tell you about the book?”
I’d forgotten completely to go visit the Danzigers. I winced in shame. “Book?” I looked at the package—it wasn’t big enough for a paperback.... “No.”
“That’s not the book. He’s writing a book. Ben is.”
“Yes, I know—a paranormal field guide. He’s been working on it for a while.”
“He got a publication deal. Some small press, but they’re excited. Mara’s taking a sabbatical at the end of the quarter and they’re going to Europe and Asia for a year to finish up some research for it. She’s going to write something about sacred rocks while they’re out—petroglyphs and dolmens . . . I think.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling odd. I’d never thought about the book seriously or how it might change their lives—and mine. The Danzigers had been my lifeline through the Grey so many times that I couldn’t imagine my life without them nearby. That was silly and selfish of me, and I didn’t realize how much I’d taken them for granted—I’d taken most of my small number of friends for granted, really. . . . I rubbed the plastic-covered packet in my hand and began to unwrap it. “So . . . what’s this?”
Quinton sat back down and snuggled into the blanket beside me, but his body was tense. Even in the dim light from a handful of candles, I didn’t have to look at his aura to know he was nervous about something. “Ben said it’s a spell to banish demons. Or
It wasn’t demons that worried Quinton, though. I suspected he didn’t want to talk about why he was really here and why he’d cut his hair, at least not yet. I gave him some time while I removed the plastic and an inner wrapper of brown paper to reveal an intricately folded piece of yellow silk a little larger than my palm. A Chinese character had been inked on one side in red. I remembered what Ben had said about banishing demons, and I guessed this soft little fabric flower was a spell to do just that. It was small enough to shove into a yaoguai’s mouth—if you didn’t mind the risk of losing a hand.
“Ben doesn’t write Chinese,” I said, putting the bundle back into its wrappers and tucking it into my shirt for the time being. “I wonder where he got it.”
“He said some colleague of his made it.”
I wondered what sort of colleague he meant, since I couldn’t imagine the college professors he knew suddenly changing their minds about how weird and silly Ben’s interest in the paranormal was. “Ah,” was all I said.
Quinton tucked me against his side, putting his arm around my waist and pulling the blankets close. I leaned my head against his shoulder. Silence fell between us, deep enough to hear the muffled hiss of the damp sticks burning in the stove.
“Why—” I started, choking off as I realized the question hurt as I tried to say it; it hurt worse than tearing apart a ghost or a god.
Quinton pulled me tighter against him, up into his lap so he could wrap his arms all the way around me. And he suddenly wasn’t so wary, as if I’d broken the tension by finally asking the stupid damned question that had been hanging there like Damocles’ sword.
“Is that, ‘Why have I been avoiding you’ or ‘Why have I been preoccupied’ or ‘Why am I suddenly here’?”
“All of those.”
“Because I screwed up and I had to fix it and I didn’t want you sucked into my mess. That’s why I cut my hair off and shaved and why I look like a total dork from IT. And now it’s over—mostly over—and I—I just need to be here.”
I felt the edge of tears under my eyelids and I hiccuped over them in my throat. “You—you don’t look like a dork.”
“Then I failed,” he said with a sigh, “because I’m supposed to look like the jerk no one notices around the office until he comes in one day with a clanking duffel bag and a long memory.”
“Why?”
“Because I owed the FBI a favor.”
I sat up so fast and far that I almost burned my back on the stove. “What?”
Quinton shook his head. “I knew you wouldn’t like it.”
“Like is not a factor. I just . . . Just tell me what you did and why you had to do it for the feds.”
He looked up sideways with an anticipatory wince. “You’re going to hate me.”
I gaped at him for a moment. Then I leaned forward and kissed him. “I will never hate you. I love you. So talk.”
He sighed as I settled back on the seat next to him and stole part of the blanket back for myself.
“I love you, too, you know. And that’s why I gave myself up.”
TWENTY-SIX
I wanted to question him, shake him until he told me what the hell he was talking about, but I knew Quinton wasn’t having an easy time telling me his story, so I sat still and held my peace.
“Back . . . back when you were trying to find Edward, you remember I unearthed the video files and I took them to the police.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t look at me but stared at the stove. “Well . . . you didn’t want me to go because of the trouble I’d had with the NSA and the cops, and I argued that I was the only person who could convince them the videos were legit and important. But that wasn’t entirely why I went. I thought . . . that I could save you. That I could convince them to pick up Goodall and the whole plan would fall apart without him. Then you’d be safe and we could find another way to deal with Wygan that didn’t require you to walk into a trap and”—he swallowed hard—“and die.”
I wanted to reach out and hold on to him, but his posture told me not to. I bit my lip and waited for him to continue.
“I knew I couldn’t just walk in and not have to take the consequences. The paperwork said I was dead, but . . . you know there are only half as many dead spies in the world as there are papers to prove it. The only thing I wanted was to make sure you were safe, and the Feebs just wanted to argue with me about who I was and how I’d slipped off their chain. It was taking too long and I was running out of time. So I called my father.”
“The spy? The jerk who ‘loaned’ you to the NSA in the first place?”
He nodded, but he still didn’t look at me. “Yeah. James the First. The big spook himself. I made
“Dad, was . . . well, he was a prick about it, but he came through and put the word in for them to take me seriously and start moving.” He began babbling a little, talking very fast. “I had to agree to do some work for the
