She left, and Demon turned to Muse. The first thing Muse asked was, "You take care of it?"

"Yeah. Went clean, too." Before Demon had gone to take Faith upstairs, before his life had burned down, the club had met. They'd been building goodwill in the community-in the whole county, especially with people like Sheriff Montoya-for all the years they'd had stakes down in Madrone, even when they'd been legit. Building it with deed and cash both. It was as though Hoosier had always known they'd go outlaw again. Montoya was a true friend. He was going with the story Hoosier had given him, and n.o.body was looking at the club for the shooting at the Rats' clubhouse. Demon was dirty again, but he was clear. They all were.

At least as far as law was concerned. What had happened the night before was an escalation, and it wouldn't die just because the Horde had fought back quickly and decisively. They'd need La Zorra to lean in if they wanted to end a full-out war with the Rats before it started.

"Muse, I'm-I have to-I..."

"Deme?"

"I'm leaving. I have to leave." He was surprised to have said it. He was more surprised that it was true. It felt true, and it felt like lead in his chest.

Muse frowned. "Leave what?"

"Town. The club."

"What the f.u.c.k? What happened?"

Demon shrugged. He couldn't say. He didn't fully understand.

"Don't f.u.c.kin' shrug at me, Deme. If you're running, have a reason."

"I'm not running. I'm leaving. I have to leave."

Muse simply lifted an eyebrow, waiting.

So Demon told him. He started at the beginning and told his friend the story of him and Faith. He'd never said it to anyone before, and putting it to words brought feeling back into his limbs. About halfway through, Sid opened the door. Muse shook his head, and she backed out and closed the door again.

Demon told him about the past, and the present, and what had happened barely hours before. "I just beat the f.u.c.k out of Hooj. He's the only father I ever had. I trusted him. I trusted them both. I can't...I have to go."

"s.h.i.t, Deme." Muse looked out the window. Some machine started beeping, and within a minute, a nurse came in and changed out an IV bag. She asked if he needed anything, and when he said he didn't, she left.

"You blame her? Faith?"

At first, hearing her tell him, he had. But not now. "No. She was just a kid. Blue told her he'd kill me if she didn't do it. I blame them-all of them. Blue and her mom most of all. But Blue's dead. And her mom-she's a woman, and losing her mind. There's nothing I can do. But I can't be around Hooj. I can't say what I'll do. I would've beaten him to death today. That's what it wanted."

"It?"

"The thing inside me."

Muse shook his head. "I love you, brother. But that's a crock of s.h.i.t, and it always has been. There's nothing inside you but you. You want to find control? You get right with what's wrong."

"You say that like I can just decide."

"Can't you?"

He'd thought Muse understood. "Don't you think I already would've if I could?"

"I think it's easier to believe you live with something else inside you than to face that it's all you. I think you're afraid."

His face grew hot. "f.u.c.k you. I'm no p.u.s.s.y." He turned and went to the door.

"You're running. Again. p.u.s.s.ies run."

Demon stopped, with his hand on the door handle.

"What do you want, Deme? Know that, and then do what you need to do to make it happen."

He opened the door and went out, walking past Sid without stopping, going down to the main floor and out the automatic doors without stopping. He was astride his bike before he realized that he had no idea where to go.

It was dark when he pulled back into Bart and Riley's crowded driveway. He'd ridden into the desert and sat alone on his rock until dusk. Hours. The windows of the big house were bright with light, and he could see his brothers, their women, the children-his son-moving about in the uncovered windows. Dinner was happening in there. Family dinner.

It was what he wanted. Family. Love. Home. All he'd ever wanted. He couldn't leave it behind.

Muse was right. He had to get right with what was wrong. He had to give trust, and let that trust ride. If he trusted Hoosier and Bibi, then he had to believe that they'd done the best they could. They'd kept it from him to help him. After spending a few hours on his rock, he could see how they would think that was true. They were wrong, but he could see how they thought they were right.

Maybe that was what real trust was. To see love even when it wore the face of betrayal.

The side door opened, and Faith stepped out. She was wearing different clothes-jeans without holes and a black sweater with a wide neck that showed the straps of her pink bra. He didn't recognize them, and the jeans were maybe an inch too short. Riley's clothes.

She stayed just outside the door, standing barefoot on the topmost step. Her arms were crossed under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She looked tiny and delicate. Vulnerable.

Demon dismounted and set his helmet on his bike, and she didn't move. He walked toward her, and she stayed put, except to cross her arms differently, moving them over her chest, hooking her hands over her shoulders. Like a fragile shield for her heart.

He walked to the foot of the steps and could think of only one thing to say. "I love you."

She collapsed into weeping and, nodding, wrapped herself around him. He lifted her up and carried her inside.

He would make it all right. All of it.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

The couple of weeks after St. Pat's was a strange whirl of comfort and chaos. Michael had come back that night, and he'd been calm. Faith would have almost called him serene, except it was Michael, and serenity was impossible for him. He had apologized to her, and to Hoosier and Bibi, and to Bart and Riley and the rest of the family, and, after hugs and handshakes, the matter had simply been dropped.

Ten years of pent-up turmoil and unhappiness had simply been bled off, as if an infected wound had been lanced. After his fury earlier, Faith didn't completely believe that it could be so easy, that Michael had simply gone for a ride and then come home and forgiven everyone-including himself-everything, and had likewise been forgiven, but it appeared to be true. He seemed at peace, and that made Faith feel a little hopeful.

That night, Michael, Faith, and Tucker had all slept together in the bed she and Michael had been on earlier.

Riley had gone into labor the next morning, and less than an hour after Bart got her to the hospital, their third child and second son had been born. Declan Bartholomew Elstad. Faith thought the poor kid would likely be in fourth grade before he could spell his own whole name. He was adorable, fair like his parents and siblings, and born completely bald.

Whatever was going on with the club seemed to have died down right after St. Pat's-at least as far as Faith could tell. No further violence happened, and the lockdown ended. The Sheriff had released the clubhouse on the morning of the second day, and the Horde had had everything back to rights within two more days-windows and furniture replaced, walls repaired, new booze purchased, the whole place cleaned.

Muse and Double A, the most badly injured of the survivors, had both been both released from the hospital within a week. Neither was riding yet, but they were healing well.

Just in time for the funerals.

Peaches' parents hadn't been thrilled with his choice to prospect. They weren't hostile to the club, but they didn't want a club funeral. Since he hadn't earned his patch yet, there was no scandal in his family making the arrangements. Three club girls had also been killed that night. Peaches and all three girls were all buried over two days, and the Horde family attended every service.

P.B. had been a patch for fifteen years. He was buried with full honors, and representatives from friendly clubs across the country came to see him put to rest. Nolan and Double A were still in SoCal from the Missouri charter, but two more members, Tommy and Dom, rode west to join them for the funeral.

Faith had been to many club funerals growing up, but she had never grown jaded. The love and solidarity among men, and women, who lived a club life was never more obvious than when they came together to mourn a brother.

And then, when it was over, life resumed. Within a day, their visitors were back on the road, Virtuoso Cycles had reopened, and everyone had returned to whatever pa.s.sed for normal in a life like this.

Tommy and Dom headed back to Missouri without Nolan and Double A, neither of whom, for reasons of his own, was ready to return to the Midwest.

Faith was officially moved out of her Venice Beach apartment, and most of her stuff was in storage. She'd moved her art gear, including the pieces in progress, into her mother's garage, and she was trying to get back to work. She'd been in Madrone a little more than a month, and she felt like she was two months behind on her work. This playground piece had to be finished and ready for install by Memorial Day. It was the beginning of April.

Though it wasn't fitted out to be a real studio yet, the garage was the only place available to her. Hoosier had offered an open station in the shop, but there was no way she could work among the distractions there-the noise, the guys, Michael. So she was doing the best she could. She stood in the garage, her welding helmet pushed up on her head, scowling at the piece before her. It had been too long since she'd been able to work on it. Not in all the years she'd been away from home had she ever gone so long without working on at least one project. More than a couple of days away from her work made her twitchy, made her fear that whatever it was that made her talent would abandon her.

And maybe she'd been right. Because the snake wasn't happening.

She couldn't see it anymore.

That was bulls.h.i.t. She was getting too much in her head. She didn't need to see the whole snake; she needed only to see the next piece of the snake. Making a disgusted sound in the back of her throat, she sat down on the concrete floor and dug through a bin of loose parts. She found one she liked and sat fondling it for a few minutes, getting to know its edges, feeling what it wanted to join with. Then she stood and found its place.

She put her gloves on, knocked her helmet back over her face and started her torch. Sometimes, you only had to see what was right in front of you and let the future worry about itself.

Maybe an hour or so later, she looked up from the nearly-complete third segment of her playground sculpture and jumped back a little when she saw Michael in the viewing panel of her welding helmet. He was leaning against the side of the open garage door, smiling at her. She hadn't heard him ride up. She killed the blowtorch, and he walked over before she could push up her helmet.

He knocked on the side. "This thing freaks me out."

She pushed it up. "Why?"

"Because it's a red demon's face."

She'd had a friend do a custom airbrush job on her helmet. Lots of welders-artists and commercial welders alike-customized their helmets, like the goalie masks in hockey. They spent a lot of time behind those things, and it was a way not to be obscured by them. Faith had told Jens that she wanted something 'bada.s.s,' but hadn't been more specific. What she'd gotten was crimson and macabre, something like a skull covered only by muscle. She'd never thought of it as a demon, but now she set her tools aside, shed her gloves, and took off the helmet to try to see it with Michael's eyes.

d.a.m.n. It really was a demon. "You want me to have it redone?"

"Nah. It's something, though, to see you look at me when you have it on." He bent down and kissed her, and the helmet was forgotten.

When he pulled back and smiled down at her, Faith grabbed his kutte and gave him a shake. "Not that I'm not happy to see you every single time, but what are you doing here? I thought we agreed that you and Margot should stay far away from each other." He knew everything Margot could hurt him with, so that wasn't a concern any longer. But Faith wanted him away from her toxicity, and away from the chance that Michael's ma.s.sively increased hatred of Margot might explode into something that he couldn't recover from.

"I'm not going in. But I had some time, and I want to talk. How is she today? Your mom?"

Faith shrugged. "She's been all over the place, erratic as h.e.l.l. She and Leo have been going at it all day. She's recognized me twice in the past few days, but the last time, this morning at breakfast, she was totally lucid and threw me out. I've been out here since." Faith led Michael to the cheap bench she'd found in her mother's mountain of c.r.a.p and had kept back from storage. "What's up?"

"My court date is coming up for Tucker in a couple weeks."

"I know. I'll be there."

He smiled. "It's got me thinking-Finn thinks I'll win. I don't want to hope too much, but if he's right-I need to find a house. We can't live with Hoosier and Bibi forever, and I don't want Tucker in that tin can where my mail goes."

"You want me to help you look?"

"No. Well, yeah. I do. But I want us to look. For our place. I can't afford much, but I want a place, and I want my whole family with me." As she sat there, the thought of what he was about to ask filling her with equal parts of happiness and disappointment, he picked up her hand and made circles on her palm with his thumb. "I know you want to take care of your mom. I know it, but I don't understand it. You know Tuck and I can't live where she lives. We just can't. And all the s.h.i.t she did to you and me? You said your sister would pay for her to go to a home, or have full-time help here. I guess I'm asking you to take her up on it and live with me. We can't keep doing this thing where we're together for a couple of hours and all we do is f.u.c.k because we don't have much time. I want a life with you. Don't let your mother keep us apart anymore."

"Michael, it's more complicated than that."

"It's not, babe. It's that simple. We can't really be together if you're taking care of her. Your sister will pay to have people around the clock to deal with Margot. Your mother doesn't deserve you. We deserve a real chance. It's that simple. And it's your call."

Faith knew he was right, and it sucked. She wanted to live with him. She wanted to start a life with him. But it would feel like she was leaving her mother to the wolves or something. "She's so young. She's her normal self sometimes still, and she'll be locked away with old people. Strangers. She'll know she's lost everything."

Michael looked away, out through the open garage into what pa.s.sed for a yard at this c.r.a.ppy house. "I can't say that upsets me much. If she was a man, even in the state she's in, I'd have killed her already. If she's lonely and unhappy until she dies, that'd be okay by me." Turning back to her, he asked, "Why do you want to help her?"

Faith looked down at her knees. "I don't know. I think about it a lot. Everything you've said is right. I don't love her. Mostly, I hate her. But it makes me feel terrible to think of putting her away."

He sighed and squeezed her hand. "Okay. I love you. I'll take you however I can get you. But think about it, okay? It would help if I knew why you're picking her over us."

"I'm not!"

"You are, Faith."

Michael left shortly after that, and Faith stared at her sculpture for a while. Then she stared out the garage door into s.p.a.ce for a while. Then she stared at Dante for a while. She'd only just begun to create the magnificence that was her ancient El Camino when she and Michael met. It had been complete for several years now, and she'd done some touching up and refiguring since. The car basically told the story of her life from the time she was sixteen. She and Michael were in there. Her life on her own was there. Margot and Blue and Sera were there. All of it. But nothing from this new life she was trying to start. And no room. She'd have to work over old areas to bring anything new in.

That was what Michael was asking her to do, too. Make room for something new.

She went into the house from the garage and found Leo cleaning up after lunch.

"Hey, sweets. I saw you out there with your man, so I didn't call you in. But there's tuna salad in the fridge."

"Thanks, Leo. How's-" Faith stopped and looked hard at Leo's face. "What happened?"

Leo laughed it off. "Your mother and I had a disagreement over her meal. She threw her gla.s.s at me. She's napping now, though, so all's quiet on the western front." She touched the large Band-Aid on her forehead. The pad had soaked red.

"I'm so sorry, Leo!"

"It's nothing much. Even little head wounds bleed like crazy. I think we need to switch to plastic dishes and gla.s.ses, though. And talk to her doctor about her meds, will you? She's been losing a lot of ground the past few days. She knows just enough, just often enough, to be pretty scared. Seems to me, scared with your mom comes out looking like mean."

"Yeah. She's always been her nastiest when she's afraid of something." She narrowed her eyes and took a good look at Leo's forehead. There was a lump under the bandage. "Are you sure you're okay? It looks like she really clocked you."

Leo rapped her knuckles lightly on the other side of her head. "Made of steel. It's not the first time a patient has taken their frustrations out on me. It's part of the gig with dementia care."

Faith went to the refrigerator and pulled out the plastic container of fresh tuna salad. She grabbed a loaf of sourdough from the breadbox and sat at the table to make herself a sandwich. Michael's request dovetailed with Leo's head in her thoughts. After a minute of trying and failing to make order in her brain, she asked, "If you weren't working with Margot, where would you be?"

Leo dried her hands and poured herself a cup of coffee. Then she sat at the table across from Faith. "Jose and I work for a service. We'd get rea.s.signed, and we'd go into other patient's homes." She sipped her coffee. "Can I ask what you're thinking?"