Ex slipped the car into gear, the purring motor lowering its voice as we slid out onto the street. The highway was south of us, but we'd have to loop around to reach it. The gray-blue industrial warehouse vanished as we made the first corner. The dog track loomed up on our left, and I let out a breath.

Randolph Coin, evil mage who had killed my uncle and tried to kill me and Midian. Who trafficked with the things that lived in the Pleroma and took over bodies like Aaron the Boulder cop's. Who hadn't moved the induction ceremony from its rented warehouse by the greyhound racing track.

Randolph Coin, who wasn't afraid of us.

I watched Ex's face as he pulled the car onto I-270, merging with the traffic like a fish with water. His pale blond hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, his expression focused and serious, his grip on the steering wheel hard. He leaned forward as he drove, as if he was controlling the car by the direct force of his will as much as by the wheel in his hands.

"I screwed up," I said.

He glanced over at me, no more than a flicker, then his ice-blue eyes were back on the road.

"If you say so," he said.

"I shouldn't have let Aubrey leave the shotgun in the car," I said. "If we were going into something that we thought might require protection, it was stupid of me to leave the weapon outside. And I should have brought you and Chogyi Jake as backup. It was my fault."

The lines around his mouth softened a little bit. Not much.

"It was an easy mistake to make. Don't let it bother you. You'll do better next time," he said. And then a few moments later, "Eric should never have taught him that. It's like giving live ammunition to a ten-year-old. It doesn't matter how good his intentions were, it's too much power to have control over it."

"It worked," I said. "The thing would have killed us if Aubrey hadn't done what he did."

"Yeah," Ex said, and gunned the engine, pa.s.sing a semi and cutting back into traffic in front of it.

"We'll do better next time," I said.

"Yeah."

At the house, Midian was waiting on the couch, a soccer game playing on the television. His sleeves were rolled up to expose the blackened beef jerky of his forearms and he was smoking another cigarette. The house was starting to reek of them. He stood as we came in the room.

"Well?" he asked.

"Coin's still where he was. One bodyguard. No one watching from the roof, no wards on the perimeter past what Eric was expecting. He thinks we've gone to ground," Ex said.

"We're on, then?" Midian asked. Ex hesitated for a moment. I knew what he was thinking. We'll do better next time.

"Yeah," Ex said. "We're on."

Midian grinned, smoke curling between his ruined teeth.

Nine.

The plan was simple, and even easier because it was already laid out. Instead of Eric luring Coin free of his hive, Chogyi Jake would do the work. Instead of Eric's hired muscle attacking Coin, Ex and Aubrey and I would do the honors with sniper rifles and custom ammunition designed to disrupt riders. I pulled up satellite photos of the warehouse and everything around it from Google Earth and printed out copies for everyone. Ex diagrammed where each of us would be and worked out the timetable. I kept expecting him to tell us to synchronize our watches, but since all of our cell phones pulled the data from the same satellites, that part was really covered already. I'd just been watching too many old movies.

Aubrey joined in just before sundown, looking like a man only half recovered from the flu. He moved slowly, and I tried to tell myself it was mostly just the wounds. The physical ones.

When we'd done everything there was to do, Aubrey crawled back into bed. Chogyi Jake left, going off to run some normal human errand-feed his cats, check his mail, something mundane and rea.s.suring like that. Ex set himself on the couch like a guard, turned on the television, turned it off again, and pulled a book of essays by Bertrand Russell out of his things. He read it with a constant sneer. Midian sat in the kitchen, a cup of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

Back in the bedroom, my laptop open on the bed, it struck me that the hardest thing was going to be waiting the three days before our moment came. I got online and against my better judgment, I checked the blogs of everyone I'd known from before I'd come to Denver. My old boyfriend was still b.i.t.c.hing about the band he was in that never quite got it together to practice. My dorm mate from last year had apparently just noticed that feminism existed and couldn't decide whether she thought it was a good thing. The girl I'd once considered my best friend hadn't posted anything since she'd gone off to Portland with her boyfriend in June.

It was a depressing exercise. When I'd gone to college, all bridges to my parents and church reduced to cinders and ash behind me, I'd thought I was starting my real life at last. I'd thought that everything I did, every person I met or hated or fell in love with, mattered. And now that I'd left that behind too, I could see that I'd been wrong. The drama and the experiments and the pa.s.sionate lack of direction were all doing just fine without me. It was like pulling my finger out of water. My absence hadn't left a hole.

I thought about leaving a comment. Inherited more money than G.o.d, fighting forces of darkness. Think I'm in love with my dead uncle's not-boyfriend. L8R. I didn't. For one thing, they wouldn't have believed me, and for another, it turned out I didn't care if they did. Or if that wasn't true, at least I didn't want to care. I told myself that they'd left as little mark on me as I'd left on them, and I was even able to convince myself a little.

I spent the rest of the evening Googling the terms that Ex and Aubrey and Chogyi Jake kept tossing around. Riders, possession, daughter organism. By the time I fell asleep, I was reading long essays about the difference between a therian and a werewolf, and I'd learned the term otherkin. Things that a month ago would have seemed like schizophrenic ravings were making sense to me now, and I didn't know whether I found that rea.s.suring or scary.

When the sunlight streaming through the windows woke me, I felt like c.r.a.p. I made my way out to the main part of the house to find Ex and Aubrey had gone. Midian lay on the couch, hands folded corpselike on his chest. Only Chogyi Jake was there and awake, working on a crossword puzzle and drinking green tea.

"Hey," I said.

"Good morning," he said. His smile was one of the most genuine things I'd ever seen. "Ex is out getting the rifles. Aubrey said he had to see to his lab. He debated waking you before he went, but he wanted to let you rest."

"Probably a good call," I said, hiding a pang of disappointment. "So. What are you up to?"

"Nothing in particular. Why?" he asked. And then, with a conspiratorial lowered voice, "Getting stir-crazy?"

"I was thinking. We know that all the Invisible College guys are busy, right? It's not like they're going to send out any more hit squads to just wander the streets in case they b.u.mp into us."

"That's certainly the a.s.sumption, yes," he said, folding the half-finished puzzle.

"So. There's no real reason we couldn't go shopping?"

CHOGYI JAKE'S van smelled like a mechanic's shop: motor oil and WD-40 and the cold, subtle scent of steel tools. The windows all had a thin coating of old grease that made the world outside seem like a movie with the focus just barely off. The bucket seats were cracked, the foam stuffing peeking through. The back compartment was dark as a cave. Perfect for moving corpses. The dead woman's face-the blue of her eyes, the black marks inscribed on her skin, the surprise on her face-flickered in my mind for a moment. I shook myself, hoping movement could dislodge the image.

"There used to be a really good bookstore just across the street," Chogyi Jake said as he pulled into a parking s.p.a.ce. A California Pizza Kitchen cowered under the looming weight of Saks Fifth Avenue and I felt something in my belly starting to uncoil. "It's over on Colfax now. We can go there after this if you'd like."

"Pretty clothes first," I said. "Mind-improving literature later."

"As you wish," he said, with a smile. I had the feeling he was amused by me, and that he took some joy in my self-indulgence. I liked him for it.

I had another ten thousand dollars in my pocket, freshly drawn from the bank without a word or a whisper from anyone. We walked through the growing heat of the August morning and into the air-conditioned artificial cool of the mall, like walking into another world. I breathed in deeply and felt the smile come across my face.

Saks Fifth Avenue. Neiman Marcus. Abercrombie & Fitch. None of them was safe from me. Victoria's Secret gave up a half dozen of the great-looking bras I had never been able to afford. I got blue jeans, I got suits, I got the little black evening dress that my mother had said every girl needs, but said quietly so my father couldn't hear. I bought a black leather overcoat that I wouldn't be able to wear for months and steel-toed work boots I didn't need. I got a new swimsuit-a one-piece, because halfway through trying on the bikini, I got irrationally embarra.s.sed about the st.i.tches. I bought four hundred dollars' worth of makeup even though I never wore any.

It was an orgy. It was a binge. It was glorious excess, my lowest consumerist impulses turned up to eleven. Chogyi Jake made two trips to the van without me, carrying away the bags and boxes rather than letting them build up to an unmanageable bulk. I saw it in the eyes of the clerks: the crazy rich girl was on a roll.

When it dawned on me that I hadn't eaten breakfast and lunchtime was a couple hours past, I went from fine to ravenous in about twenty seconds. Chogyi Jake led me back toward the van and the pizza joint, a dozen more bags digging into our hands. My stomach growled, and in my low-blood-sugar condition, I was starting to feel a little light-headed and ill. I still had two thousand and change in my pocket, and I didn't think I'd go back to the mall after we ate. Maybe we'd hit the bookstore he'd talked about. I wondered if there was something I could buy for Aubrey.

"Well," I said after we'd taken our seats and placed our orders, "I think you've seen me at my worst."

"Really?" Chogyi Jake said, scratching idly at the stubble on his scalp. "That wasn't so terrible, then."

"You don't think so? I just spent over seven thousand dollars on a shopping spree. My father would lose his s.h.i.t, wasting money like that."

"We all have ways to distract ourselves from fear. You have this. Ex has his religion. Aubrey has his work," Chogyi Jake said. "I don't see that any of them is more or less a vice than another. Certainly, there are worse."

"I'm not really like this," I said. "I mean, I never do this kind of thing."

"Well, almost never," Chogyi Jake said, laughter in his eyes.

"Yeah," I said. And then, "Why do you think it's about fear, though? Why not just greed?"

"It would only be greed if you wanted more money. This would have been gluttony. But even if it is that, it is still about wrestling your anxiety. Addictions are the same. Drinking to excess. s.e.xual expression without love or joy. Abuse of cocaine or hash or heroin."

"Drugs do the same thing as religion? Don't let Ex hear you say that," I said. I'd meant it as a joke, but it didn't quite come out that way.

"He knows," Chogyi Jake said. "He knows what he does and why he does it."

"You knew Eric, right? You worked with him before. What did he do?"

Chogyi Jake smiled and leaned forward. The chrome and mirrors of the restaurant seemed too hard and bright for an expression as gentle and compa.s.sionate as that.

"Eric carried a heavy burden. Much of it he held to himself. I believe he sacrificed many things to the work he undertook, and I don't know all of the prices he paid. He cultivated a kind of solitude that kept people away from him."

"To protect them," I said.

"Or himself."

The waiter came by before I could follow up on that, two pizzas literally piping on his tray. The smell of hot cheese and tomatoes derailed any train of thought I'd had, and I descended into making yum-yum noises for the next fifteen minutes. When the calories started to cross into my blood, where I could use them, I began to turn what Chogyi Jake had said over in my mind. Something bothered me like a rock in my shoe. It was in the way he'd spoken, in the calm that seemed to come off him in waves. I was down to two slices and starting to feel a little bloated before I spoke again.

"What do you do?"

He raised his eyebrows in a question.

"For fear. The anxiety," I said. "What do you do?"

"These days, I meditate," he said. "Before that, it was heroin."

I didn't know that it was what I'd expected until he said it, and then it was perfectly clear. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. We didn't say anything more about it. I paid the bill, shouldered the burden of my purchases, and we went out to the van. The sun was blazing down on us now, the light like a physical pressure on my face. He opened the back door of the van. The compartment was almost full of shining bags, plastic wrap, boxes. Clothes hung from hooks in the roof like a little mobile dry cleaner's. I ran a hand through my hair, a little stunned to see it all at once this way. Chogyi Jake was silent.

"If this is all about fear, I must really be effing scared," I said, gesturing toward the back of the van. I was surprised to hear my voice break a little on the last word. He didn't move either toward me or away. I started weeping and pushed my tears away with the back of my hand. It was half a minute before I could speak again. "I'm really, really scared."

"I know," he said. His voice was comforting as warm flannel in winter. "You've changed a lot in a very short time. It will take time before you can really be still again. It's normal."

"I don't have any friends. I don't have a family. I'm afraid if I do this wrong, I won't have any of you guys anymore either. Isn't that stupid? I've got a bunch of evil wizards who want me dead, and that's what I'm afraid of?"

"No," Chogyi Jake said. "If it's true, it isn't stupid. It's just who you are right now."

I started crying harder, but somehow I wasn't ashamed. He didn't put his arm around me. He didn't touch me. He only stood witness. It was the kindest thing anyone had ever done.

"I don't want...I don't want them to see all this. I don't want them to think I'm like this," I said.

"I know a shelter," he said. "They'll be grateful for whatever you want to give."

"Okay," I said, nodding. "Okay, good."

"EIGHT HOURS for that?" Midian said as Chogyi Jake closed the door. "f.u.c.k me, sister. Did you have to try on the whole store before you picked something?"

"I got what I needed," I said lightly. Chogyi Jake smiled as I walked back toward my room. I was beginning to see how he could use the same expression to mean a lot of different things.

I'd kept seven outfits with a.s.sociated footwear, a small purse for occasions when the leather backpack was insufficiently formal, two lipsticks, some eyeliner, the swimsuit, three of the good-looking bras, a bag for my laptop, and, after some wavering back and forth, the steel-toed boots. Somewhere in south Denver, there were going to be some victims of domestic violence hiding from their boyfriends and husbands in very nice clothes. Put that way, it didn't seem like enough.

By the time I'd showered and changed, Ex and Aubrey were back. I walked into the living room to see three unfamiliar rifles on the coffee table. They weren't from the stash at the storage facility. Ex, squatting beside them, nodded to me. Aubrey was leaning against the wall. He looked better, I thought. Still tired and bruised, but there was color in his cheeks. The time at his lab seemed to have done him more good than sleeping had, and I remembered what Chogyi Jake had said about using his work to cope with fear. I went to stand beside him.

"Okay," Ex said. "These are all thirty aught six, and they're all bolt action. At four hundred yards, the round is going to drop about fifty inches, so these have scopes that I set to take that into account, okay? Don't try to make the adjustment yourself. It's already in the equipment."

Aubrey folded his arms and nodded seriously. I found myself mirroring him without meaning to. Midian breezed in from the backyard, ruined yellow eyes taking us all in with something equally amused and curious.

"Where did you get these?" I asked.

"Wal-Mart," Chogyi Jake said.

"They're usually used for elk hunting," Ex continued. "A couple of standard rounds from one of these can drop a thousand-pound animal. That won't make a d.a.m.n bit of difference with Coin. So that's where the custom ammunition comes in."

I hadn't noticed the box until he pulled it out from under the coffee table and put it in between the rifles. It was carved rosewood with a finish so rich and subtle it seemed to reflect the light of a nearby fire. Ex opened it and let the cartridges spill out. The bullets were all black and engraved with script that looked like Arabic. I stepped closer, putting out my hand, but hesitated before I touched them. They were beautiful, but the prospect of holding one made my flesh crawl. They smelled like fire, and I had the uncanny sense that they were aware of me.

"These are the big trick," Ex said. "They all have the Mark of Ya'la ibn Murah and the sigil of St. Francis of the Desert both. They're like the wards and alarms that protect this place and the alarms at the apartment. If things go well, they'll ground out the rider. Now, these are pretty heavy work for a human being to do. Eric put a lot of work into getting them, so it's not like we can whistle up some more if we run out. We have to make these count."

"Check," I said.

"For this to work, these have to break skin. Rubbing them up against him won't make him happy, but if the round doesn't penetrate, we might as well not have tried. That means keeping him outside his wards and distracted. Okay?"

We all nodded together, even Midian. Ex looked pleased.

"I've arranged some time at the practice range for you two," he said, nodding at me and Aubrey. "You don't want the first time you use this to be in the field. That's tomorrow morning. We'll leave from here at noon. It's going to take five or six hours, so don't plan anything for the afternoon."

Aubrey's eyes flickered, recalculating something, but he nodded his agreement.

"Good," Ex said. He put the engraved bullets back in their box, and I relaxed a little, just having them out of sight. "We're up to speed, folks. This was Wednesday. Tomorrow's practice. Friday, we're making another on-site visit to be sure we all know what the place looks like when you aren't looking down from orbit. Sat.u.r.day morning, we end this."

"Nice work," Midian said. "All this in place, I think we've got half a chance."

We sat around for a few more minutes. Ex and Midian started talking about occult issues like frat boys talking football. Under Chogyi Jake's prompting, the rest of us split off into a conversation about Aubrey's lab and the experiments he was conducting. As Aubrey got into it, I could see his shoulders loosen and the lines of pleasure and laughter start to come out around his eyes. I remembered what it had felt like, kissing him.

Chogyi Jake excused himself for the bathroom and left the two of us alone. Ex and Midian were talking about the wards on the Inca Street apartment and whether the protections on Eric's house were more effective. I tried not to listen, not wanting to remember any of that. Instead, I focused on Aubrey.

It's just fear, I told myself. This is only fear. You can deal with it.

"Hey," I said, heart in throat, "after the practice range tomorrow, can I take you out to dinner?"

"Sure. We should check with the guys and see what they want, but I know a great Indian place that-"

"You singular," I said. "Ixnay on the uralplay."