Twenty-two

My covert Monday morning coffee run failed. I went out alone in Chogyi Jake's van, picked up a few bags of food, and headed toward the nearest Starbucks, my mind on a cup of coffee and a slice of pound cake, and I almost didn't see the trap. Two middle-aged women sitting at the entrance, smiling and talking to each other. When I pulled my will into my eyes, their glamour faded, the tattoos on their faces and hands appeared, and I turned the van back out of the parking lot, shaking almost too hard to drive.

They were closing in.

I didn't tell anyone about it when I got back to the house. Aaron and Candace were back up in Boulder, taking care of things on that end. Midian was cooking. Chogyi was meditating and chanting, adding more spiritual sandbags to the levee. Kim was strewing ash and salt around the house until we ran out. Then she started pacing, her mouth set in a permanent frown. I sat on the couch, staring at the map of Denver and the calamity of streets that met downtown and trying not to think about how stupid it would have been to die at the coffee shop.

I hadn't slept well, waking up at four in the morning with the unshakable certainty that I'd found a flaw in our plan. As I came more awake, the objections turned into fluff and dream logic-something about how safety cones were orange and all we had was yellow paint. By the time I'd shaken off the sense of panic, I'd also stopped being anything near sleepy. It had been Chogyi Jake's turn to sit watch, and I'd sent him off to bed, made a cup of green tea, and watched television with the sound off until dawn came creeping through the window.

I knew Coin was there, as close as my laptop or waiting in the street. I couldn't tell anymore whether I was feeling the pressure of his magic eating away the safety of the wards, or if it was just my own paranoia. With my spare nervous energy, I started writing a list of the crimes I was about to be party to. Murder. Theft. Discharging a weapon inside the city limits. Reckless driving. When I got to possession, I started laughing so hard I had to put the pen down.

I wanted to call the hospital, to find out if Aubrey was still okay. If he was still the cheese in their mousetrap. I wanted to go back to Ex's garage apartment and kick his ass or talk sense to him. I wanted to be with Aaron and Candace when they stole the car from the safe-house jerk. I wanted to know how to clean a rifle so I could take mine apart and put it back together a couple thousand times in the course of the day. I wanted my uncle back. I wanted to talk to my mother.

More than anything else, I wanted Kim to stop pacing.

"Hey," I said. "You got a minute?"

Kim looked at me like I'd asked if she was a biped. I gestured to the couch. She sat. Her eyes were bright blue and hard as marbles. I had a brief vision of the woman who'd attacked me that first day, wide blue eyes, the Slavic accent asking Who are you? I tapped Kim's knee with the flat of my hand.

"Are you going to be okay with this?" I asked.

"I'll be fine," Kim said. "It's you I'm worried about."

"It's okay," I said. "If I lose whatever protections Eric put on me in order to break the Invisible College, then-"

"No," Kim said. "I mean, how did he find you?"

I blinked. It took a couple of breaths before I understood the question.

"Ex, you mean?"

"If that's his name. You're supposed to be hard to locate with magic, right? So how did your priest friend evade the Invisible College, move to his own little bolt hole to keep a low profile, and still know where we were?"

"Maybe he's good at it?" I said. "He does know where the house is."

"Then he's been out there, sticking himself out like a flag?" Kim said, her voice fast and hard. "Because if they can see him, and he's close by, then it's just as good as them knowing where you and Jake and that whatever-it-is that does all the cooking are."

"Vârkolak," I said. "Midian's a vârkolak."

Kim shooed the word away. I started to marshal my thoughts. If the Invisible College could use Ex to find me, they would have done it already. The fact that there weren't ninja wizards breaking down the door was plenty of evidence that we were okay. Plus which, one more day wasn't going to matter. Either we'd have succeeded in breaking the College, or we'd be so deep in trouble nothing was going to help.

Except that Kim knew Ex wasn't a bad guy. Self-important, overbearing, and burdened by an unrealistic idea of his own responsibility, yes. Dangerous to us, no. This, I thought, was her version of waking up at four in the morning worrying about orange safety cones.

"Freaked about tomorrow?" I asked.

She shook her head, then a moment later she nodded.

"This is why I left in the first place," she said. "Eric and his covert world. The things he would do. That he would have us do. And now here I am, back in the middle of it. And he's not even here."

There was a deepness in the way she said the last phrase. He's not even here. Longing. Sorrow. Emptiness. She wasn't talking about Eric anymore. She meant Aubrey.

"What are you going to do if we win?" I asked. "What are you going to do afterward?"

"Go back to work," she said. "They think I'm still in Chicago. I've been calling the front office on my cell phone every morning, holding my nose and telling them I still don't feel well. They think I've got the cold from hell. But there's a budget meeting on Thursday, and I have to...I have to be there for it."

Kim seemed to deflate. She stared at the television. It was an advertisement for something, but I couldn't guess what the product was. Abstract happiness, maybe. I cleared my throat.

"I'm not in love with Aubrey," I said. "I have a crush on him. He's really cute, and really nice. And he can dance." I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "The thing is, I'm not really in the best place to be making that kind of decision right now. A couple weeks ago, I was a college dropout hoping I could land a job waiting tables at Applebee's. And now I'm-"

I gestured at the house, the walls. Kim looked at the place as if it was a real indication of who I had become. She nodded.

"That isn't the only question, though," she said. "You can't be sure what he feels for you."

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 assault, 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. Heller?"

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 class 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 motherfuckers and screwing 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 dick. JAYNEHELLER: Hey. CARYONADNON: I knew you were there. I've been thinking about you a lot. JAYNEHELLER: 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.

JAYNEHELLER: Actually, no.