I wanted to object, to tell Kim that Aubrey clearly didn't love me or want me or whatever it was she was afraid of, but we both knew I'd be making it up. This wasn't the time to close my eyes and pretend the world was what I wanted it to be.

"I don't know what he feels," I said. "We were on kind of iffy footing when it happened."

A tight smile flickered over Kim's lips.

"With any luck, we'll be able to worry about all this next week," she said.

My cell phone rang. Kim jumped a little as I dug it out of my pack. I thought of the fear in her face the first time my cell phone rang. When she heard Eric's voice. It was one of the functionaries at my lawyer's office returning my call. He'd gotten my message that morning and had a couple of questions about how I wanted him to proceed. I stuck my hand flat over the other ear and walked out back, talking it over with him.

The plan this time was a lot more complex than our last one had been. We had the cars we needed for the actual a.s.sault, or would after Aaron had completed his work stealing the one he'd be driving. I had one rifle, and the second was coming with the stolen car. I'd picked out a place near the convention center that had free wireless access. Midian and Chogyi Jake were ready to act as decoys, drawing off as many parasitized victims of the Invisible College as they could.

The trick was to not let my decoys get killed over it. And that meant making sure they were moving quickly and unpredictably. The good news was that that required only money, and I had that.

"Okay," I said as the lawyer's functionary finished talking. "Can you e-mail me the address of the airstrip?"

"It's on its way," he said. "And the motorcycles will be there between noon and two o'clock tomorrow."

"Great," I said.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, Ms. h.e.l.ler?"

A cadre of priests chanting exorcism rites. The number of a really good pizza joint. Some groceries.

"No," I said. "I think we're good."

I dropped the connection and went back into the kitchen. Midian was leaning over a wide metal bowl with a whisk in one hand and a bottle of brandy in the other.

"Everything's taken care of," I said. "You'll be out of here on a bike fast enough to outrun the cops, and there's a flight chartered to get you out of the city. All you need to do is get there alive. Or. You know. As alive as you get."

"You're a cla.s.s act, kid," Midian said. "You want to taste this sauce? I'm not sure it's working."

He held out a wooden spoon dripping with something brown and sweet smelling. I tried it.

"It's working," I said. "That's really good."

The vampire grinned crookedly and took a drink of the brandy. I went back to Chogyi Jake's room and knocked gently on the door before I opened it. He was sitting perfectly still in the middle of the floor. The drapes were lowered, casting the room in a soft twilight. It occurred to me that I'd almost never seen Chogyi Jake when he wasn't smiling or on the verge of it. His face was soft as sleep, expressionless and peaceful. As I watched, he drew in a deep breath and let it sigh out between his teeth. His dark eyes opened.

"Hey," I said.

"How are you?" he asked.

"Nervous," I said. "I mean, not ten-thousand-dollar-shopping-binge nervous. Just, you know, ready. I've got a way out for Midian, and I'm getting a second cycle for you."

"Just like Ex," he said. "The three bikers of the apocalypse."

"I'm not above stealing a good idea," I said. I stepped into the gloom and sat on the edge of the bed. "I had a close call this morning. I don't think I'm going out again. Until...you know. Until. How about you? You all right?"

"I'll be fine," Chogyi Jake said, looking up at me.

"But not fine yet," I said.

"Frightened," he said.

"You? I didn't think you got scared," I said, trying to make it sound like a joke.

"Everyone gets frightened," he said. "And tired. It's been a hard week. I can't..."

He shook his head.

"It's good that this will be over soon. The wards are going to fail. Soon."

I nodded. Maybe I'd known that.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Yes," he said.

"Do you think I'm doing the right thing? Or am I just going to get us all killed?"

Chogyi Jake leaned forward, stretched, and rose to his feet. The stubble on his scalp was getting longer. In the dim light, it looked like a black halo close against his temples.

"Interesting phrasing," he said. "Do you really think that what makes an action right or wrong is how it turns out?"

"I think that's got a lot to do with what makes it stupid or not, yes," I said.

"Ah. That's a different question. I thought you meant whether we were doing a good thing instead of an evil one. You mean good tactics rather than poor?"

I sighed.

"I'm not sure what I mean. Except I'm afraid of what happens if we fail out there."

"It would be more pleasant to win. But even if we don't, that doesn't mean that the effort was wrong."

"Has anyone ever told you that you are really freaking terrible at pep talks? You could just pat me on the head and say it'll all be fine and not to worry."

"It'll all be fine," he said, patting me on the head. "Don't worry."

"Okay. That so didn't work," I said. "But thank you. For staying with me. For trying to do this."

"It's who I am," he said.

"Thanks for being you," I said.

"You're welcome. And thank you for becoming who you needed to be," he said.

He leaned over and took my hand in his. I was amazed by how warm he was. We stayed there in silence for a few seconds, then, as if by common decision, went back out to the main room.

Aaron arrived in the middle of the afternoon behind the wheel of a black Hummer S2. The car was like a Jeep on too many steroids-muscular, masculine, and vaguely unhealthy. I watched as he backed it in under the carport. A few seconds later, Candace pulled up to the curb, her car snuggling in behind Chogyi Jake's van. Aaron hopped out of the stolen Hummer with a grin.

"I've got a sun cover in the back," he said. "Help me get it over this thing, would you?"

"It went okay?" I asked, following him toward the back hatch.

"Perfect. Jerk's probably still wandering around the parking lot wondering what just happened," Aaron said, then paused and turned to me. His face was serious. "I know this isn't protocol. There's about a thousand reasons I shouldn't be doing it, and that it's illegal and I'm one of the good guys is pretty much at the top of that list. But I have to tell you there is nothing in the world better than taking one of these can't-catch-me motherf.u.c.kers and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g him into the ground."

"Yeah," I said. "I can see how that might satisfy."

Aaron nodded to himself and opened the back of the car. Together, we unfolded the thick blue plasticized canvas and spread it over the car. It felt like we were making a bed together. I wondered if my life of crime was going to be full of those kinds of little insights. Kim and Candace helped out at their end. When the evidence was covered up, Candace went back to her car for the extra rifle.

Inside, the house felt small and tight, but also strangely festive. Midian laid out a table full of quiche and teriyaki chicken, rice pilaf and green beans with almonds, cream puffs with caramel sauce. Aaron and Candace, still clearly riding a wave of excitement that followed their theft, brought a wild energy to the place, and the nervous tension in the house crystallized around it. We were laughing and talking even before we dug into the food. I wondered whether soldiers had the same feeling the day before a battle. Merriment driven by fear. It was a lot like love.

It was Monday night. Aubrey had been in his coma for a week. Coin and his creatures were out in the rising darkness like sharks in a tank. Ex had abandoned me. Eric was dead. The friends and family who had been my life until now didn't even know what had happened to me. And here I had a little constructed family, a group of people who I'd somehow gathered around me to eat and laugh and drink and fight against all the evils of the world. The big evils like Coin and the little ones too.

It was Monday night, and we were killing Randolph Coin tomorrow.

I couldn't help recalling the drama and anger and pain that had preceded our last attempt to break the Invisible College. I hoped the difference now was a good omen.

I dropped out of Midian's poker game just after nine o'clock and went back to my bedroom to take care of the part of the plan that needed attention. Extojayne was online and pleased to see me. We exchanged a few lines of vague pleasantries and then got down to business. He pumped me for information, and I lied.

We were going to head south on Wednesday morning, all of us, I said. We had a big van that we'd been covering with all kinds of wards and protections so that we'd be hard for the bad guys to find. I'd looked up flights out of Albuquerque and invented an itinerary that ended with us in Mexico City on Friday morning. Whoever it was seemed to buy it all, though I did have a few minutes of irrational paranoia that Coin had seen through my disguise and the Invisible College was playing me.

I was about to call it a night-I didn't want my conversation with the fake Ex to go on long enough for me to screw it up-when a new window opened.

CARYONANDON: J? You there?

I blinked at the words a few times. Cary, my old boyfriend from ASU. The one whose jacket was hanging in my closet right now. Was it a trap? Had the Invisible College tracked him down to use as a way to get at me? I bent over the keyboard, my hair hanging down like blinders, blocking out everything but me and the screen.

CARYONANDON: J? I know ur not idle. C'mon. Don't be a d.i.c.k.

JAYNEh.e.l.lER: Hey.

CARYONADNON: I knew you were there. I've been thinking about you a lot.

JAYNEh.e.l.lER: Have you been drinking?

CARYONANDON: A little. You want to get together? Talk?

Extojayne asked something and I told him to stand by. Then I told him I had to go, and I'd talk to him tomorrow. The last thing I did before I shut down the laptop for the night was answer Cary.

JAYNEh.e.l.lER: Actually, no.

Twenty-three.

It was just past midnight when the knock came at my bedroom door. I was pretty well asleep, deep in a dream that involved a huge mountain and a sunrise that projected purification instead of light, and only half woke at the sound. I'd almost convinced myself that I'd imagined it when the bedroom door eased open. I sat partway up. I wondered where my rifle was, more with annoyance than fear.

Kim was dressed in a bathrobe that had been Eric's. Her hair was down and messy from where it had lain against her pillow. She walked toward me, hands deep in the robe's pockets. Her expression was blank. I thought she was sleepwalking until she started to speak.

"Don't say anything," she said. "Just...just let me say this. All right?"

"Okay," I said. Sleep-soaked, my voice sounded almost as bad as Midian's.

"I didn't leave only because the riders made me uncomfortable. They did, but I wouldn't have left Aubrey in the middle of all this just because I didn't like it. If anything, my fear of them was a reason to stay."

Her chin rose a centimeter. Her eyebrows rose too. The expression made me think of old pictures of English queens. I half expected her to say We are not amused.

"I was having an affair with your uncle," she said. "I didn't plan it. I didn't even particularly enjoy it. It was just something that happened between us. We were on one of his covert actions, and the two of us were trapped in a cabin together for a day and a half while the wendigo outside dissipated. And..."

She sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. She shook her head.

"Eric wasn't a man I liked," she said. "He wasn't someone I trusted or admired. But there was something powerful about him, and I responded to it. I broke it off with him half a dozen times, but then a few weeks later, I'd be driving home and find myself turning right instead of left. Aubrey only saw that I was trying to pull away from Eric and the riders and the Pleroma. That whole secret world. We had the most ridiculous fights about the whole thing. And of course they never came to anything because I could never tell him what I really felt or the real reasons behind anything I did."

"Did Aubrey ever find out?"

Kim shook her head.

"Eric never told him," she said, "and I separated from my husband and left the state in order to stop. That's what happened. I thought that someday, if Eric moved away or he and Aubrey grew apart, I could come back. And then Eric died. When you called, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It was finally safe for me to come back to Aubrey, and it was too late. And then I met you."

"I didn't know about you," I said. "I didn't know Aubrey was married."

"I know. But coming off that airplane...you're young, and you're beautiful, and you have Eric's sense of power about you. Charisma, I suppose you'd call it. I've been watching you put this all together. I think you've done all the things that he would have, but somehow you've done them gently. Kindly. You have a good heart. If you had been a shrieking b.i.t.c.h, it would have been simple. Well, simpler than it is, anyway."

I sat up and drew the sheets around me like a robe. The darkened house clicked to itself, cooling. The distant hum of traffic competed with the ticking of a clock. I could still smell the last fading scents of Midian's great feast, tainted by the smoke of his cigarette.

"I'm not getting between you," I said. "I didn't know he was married, or I would never have gone after him. When I found out he was married, I gave him raw h.e.l.l over it. And now that I know you, there's no way, Kim. There's just no way."

"You see?" she said. "Kindly."

She p.r.o.nounced the last word as if it tasted bad, then turned to look at me. Her pale eyes were colorless in the dim light.

"You care for Aubrey," she said. It wasn't a question.

"He stood by me when I needed someone to stand by me," I said. "He's a friend. Anything more than that, I'm not swearing to."

"I suppose that will have to do," she said. "I wasn't going to tell you, only I thought...I thought you should know."

"Thank you," I said as Kim stood. She raised a single hand as she went, waving my thanks away. She closed the door behind her with a click, leaving me alone and sleepless and disturbed. My fist reaction was sorrow for Kim and her loss, then a proxy anger on Aubrey's behalf, and then a deep loneliness that I couldn't quite explain, except that it had to do with Eric.

It was easy to think of him as being just Uncle Eric. I had my memory of him, my experience. Apart from seriously biffing it by a.s.suming he was gay, I'd never considered his love life. His s.e.x life. The other people in the world who he'd mattered to besides me. Of course he'd had lovers. Of course he'd had friends. I imagined his life being somehow neater and cleaner than my own had ever been. That was my mistake.

I looked up into the darkness and tried to remember when this bedroom had stopped feeling like his and started feeling like mine, when the house had stopped being Eric's house and started just being the house.

It was an illusion. The house was still Eric's. The fight against Coin and the Invisible College was something he'd begun and I'd inherited along with his money and property. His shirts. His cell phone.