Unclean Spirits Part 11

"I don't know. Maybe," I said, the details of the dream already out of reach. "I'm fine. I'm just still waking up. I'll be out."

Ex's silence seemed untrusting, but I ignored it and pulled myself into the bathroom. If he broke the door down to rescue me from a bad dream, I'd throw him out of my house. I was deeply weary of dealing with male bulls.h.i.t. I felt tired and sluggish. Happily, I had my old leather backpack in the bedroom with me. Going out to hunt for tampons wasn't something I particularly wanted to deal with at the moment.

The water helped. I washed my hair three times just for the pleasure of feeling the warmth running down my back. I prodded the wound in my side. It itched and felt odd when I tugged at the st.i.tches, but it didn't particularly hurt. The bruises on my knee and back were also starting to heal, going from storm-cloud blue to a deep green with yellow and brown at the margins. I got a glimpse of the tattoo, a remnant of my sixteenth birthday's drunken binge, on the small of my back. In the mirror, it looked like oriental script, though I'd been a.s.sured by several people back at ASU that it wasn't. I felt a sudden nostalgia for the days when keeping my parents from knowing I had a tattoo was the biggest risk I had to deal with.

I put on my own T-shirt, my old jeans, and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. I considered myself in the mirror, then without thinking, my hand reached out for the eyeliner. I didn't give a d.a.m.n what any of them thought, but looking decent made me feel better. When I came down the hall, the smell of steak, wine, and grilled onions greeted me like a friend. The windows were ruddy with the warm light of sunset. I had a momentary image, the memory of a dream I'd almost forgotten. A black disk like a sun that radiated like light, but different.

"Jayne."

Ex was sitting alone on the couch. His blond hair was unbound and flowing over his shoulders. His expression was grim.

"Ex," I said, folding my arms.

"I need you to make peace with Aubrey," he said softly.

"I really don't see how that's any of your business," I said.

He held up a hand, and his expression made it a request for silence instead of a command. I nodded my permission for him to go on. He stood up, his hands clasped in front of him in a way that made me think of prayer. He was taller than I was under normal circ.u.mstances, and I hadn't put on shoes. I felt like a kid at the princ.i.p.al's office.

"We're going into something tomorrow that is already profoundly difficult," he said. "We've gone over everything often enough that I know it starts to seem easy or certain. That's why I keep going over it. But the truth is we're taking a huge risk. We can't be divided or distracted."

"We can't?" I said. I had been through about as much condescension as I was in the mood for, and Ex saw that.

"I'm not asking you to do this for him or yourself. I'm asking for me," he said. "If something goes wrong, if someone gets hurt or killed, and it's because I didn't say the right thing or do what I needed to, then it's going to be my fault. Right now, I'm afraid that you and Aubrey are going to be distracted. And I don't want to see either of you hurt again."

"Not on your watch," I said. I'd meant to say it with contempt, but it didn't come out that way. I felt myself soften a little. "So you want me to just blow it off?"

"Not especially, no," Ex said. "But I want you two at peace with each other."

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. We looked at each other in the warm light of evening. He was a hard-faced man, and he didn't look away from me.

"Where is he?" I asked.

"They're all out back. The kitchen's too hot to eat in. And I wanted to talk to you first, so I sent them out."

"Okay," I said. "I'll do the olive branch thing. But I'm not looking to forgive and forget."

"And I'm d.a.m.ned glad of that too," Ex said with a rare smile. It crossed my mind briefly that I should ask what he meant by the comment. But he was already walking toward the backyard, and with everything that changed in the course of the evening, by the time we spoke again I'd forgotten what he'd said.

Twelve.

I waited until I'd eaten dinner. Midian had cooked steaks in red wine and black pepper. The onions were sweet and tart, and he'd done something with b.u.t.ter and garlic that made broccoli taste good. We sat on the back porch, drinking wine and watching the stars come out. Aubrey sat a little apart, his smile tight and restrained. Chogyi Jake and Midian were both taking up the slack in the conversation by trading jokes and stories, cajoling Aubrey out of his funk and me out of my rage. I was almost feeling human by the end. Ex kept looking over at me, prompting me to make a move. I'd promised to make peace, but I still resented it.

It wouldn't have killed Aubrey to open the discussion. He could start by apologizing again.

I knew I wasn't being fair or even particularly rational. I tried to suck it up.

"Aubrey," I said, and his head came up like he'd heard a gunshot. "You got a minute?"

"Sure," he said. I led the way back into the house. I was pretty sure the others weren't going to come anywhere near us until this was over. I sat on the couch, legs folded up beneath me, arms crossed. Aubrey took the hearth, watching me with his best poker face. We sat there in silence for a few seconds.

"Why don't you tell me about your wife," I said.

"Okay, fine," he said, then took a breath, gathering himself. "Kim and I met when I'd just been accepted into the doctoral program. We were looking into some of the same questions, so we had a lot to talk about. It worked. For a while."

Something changed in his expression, softening it. Nostalgia, I thought. He looked down at his hands as if the story was written on his skin.

"We'd been married for about two years when Eric showed up," Aubrey said. "She was still here back then. We were both at the university, and she was doing some work on a study at the medical center. The money wasn't great, but we were doing all right. Eric sent us both e-mail at first. He said he'd read our work and had some questions about the logical structures of parasitism. How parasite-host systems worked, what kinds of patterns you'd see in host behavior modification. He was really interested in reverse-engineering things."

"But Kim wasn't interested," I said.

"She was. At first. Eric took us both out to dinner to talk things over, and it was great. Kim and I had both been swimming in the problems for so long, it was like we talked in code. Just having Eric there to explain things to made us look at everything with fresh eyes. I think both of us were pretty excited afterward. It turned into a weekly thing. There were probably five or six months that everything was great. And then the riders came up."

He smiled, still not looking at me. He was seeing Eric and Kim, hearing conversations from years before. I might almost not have been there.

"I was amazed," he said, as if confessing something. "I was delighted. Riders and hosts and the idea of a universe next door that worked in a totally different way from ours, but with common strategies...it felt like revelation. Kim didn't believe it at first. I think it was just too weird for her. That it offended the scientist in her.

"Eric trained us both. It took a while to believe what we were seeing. I think I bought in before she did. And then Kim just sort of turned off. She didn't want anything to do with it. We started fighting. I said some things that I shouldn't have."

"Indulge me," I said. My voice was harsher than I'd meant it to be, but I was still p.i.s.sed off. He looked up at me and the calm and nostalgia vanished.

"I told her it was wrong to ignore evidence," he said. "I told her that she was being narrow-minded and parochial because she'd come across something that didn't fit in her worldview. Instead of rethinking how the world is, she was shutting her eyes and pretending it wasn't true."

"You told her she was being religious," I said.

He chuckled, but there wasn't any mirth in the sound.

"I guess so," he said. "She didn't see it that way. She said I was being stupid. Arrogant. Either riders were a fraud and Eric was a con man with his own agenda or they were real and Eric was dangerously irresponsible for having anything to do with them without more information. The last fight we had, she told me that the work with riders had made me either a dupe or an idiot, and she wasn't going to live with either one."

"You had to choose between Eric and her," I said.

"Sort of," he said. "Anyway. She moved out, got a job in Chicago. It was one of those situations where you had to still work together, because so many of our studies were interlinked. Things cooled off, and we stayed on decent terms. About a year and a half ago, she told me she was seeing someone else. I agreed that it was over, and we had a kind of agreement in principle to finalize the divorce. File the paperwork, all that. But she's insanely busy, and I was spending half my time working on my research and the other half helping Eric."

"And seeing other people?"

"In principle," Aubrey said. "It never actually happened, but I got used to thinking of myself as unattached. If I'd thought there was any chance of Kim and me patching things up, I would never have..."

Aubrey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He looked up at me. He was tired.

"Look, Jayne," he said. "The truth is that Kim and I have both moved on from who we were together. I didn't expect things to happen so quickly with you, and Kim honestly didn't enter my mind. It's something I've been resigned to for so long, it just felt like history."

"You could have told me all this over dinner," I said.

"Actually, I'm not sure I could have," he said. "I think talking about your ex on a first date is sort of a party foul."

"Finding out about the wife online isn't better," I said.

"How about finding out by snooping through my e-mail?" Aubrey said. "That's all fine and dandy?"

"What?"

"I said how about going through my e-mail? While I was asleep. My taxes. Or, if you'd like, how about cruising the Internet looking for sc.r.a.ps of my life to pa.s.s judgment on? Or, when you get upset, running off without even bothering to leave me-any of us-so much as a note to say you're okay? All of those are perfectly fine, adult behaviors?"

"That's not what I'm here to talk about," I said, feeling the moral high ground shifting under my feet.

"Well, I've brought it up," Aubrey said.

I opened my mouth, a thousand practiced zingers suddenly falling apart before I could deliver them. Aubrey shook his head, something between sorrow and disgust in his eyes.

"I don't deserve this, Jayne," he said. "Kim and I aren't together. We haven't been for a long time. And as far as I can tell, you're treating me like I've somehow betrayed you personally because I haven't filed all the paperwork in a timely fashion."

"I think being married is more than that," I said.

"Have you ever been married?"

"No," I said, "but..."

I knew the next words. I could feel the syllables against my tongue. Marriage is sacred. And I could hear the voice that was saying them. It was my mother's. It all fit together with a click that was nearly physical.

I had rejected my parents and their parochial, small, restrictive ideas. I had broken off with my family and allowed myself the kind of experiences they were always tacitly afraid I'd have-s.e.x, beer, R-rated movies-and I'd pretended that I had remade myself. But Aubrey's history took me by surprise, and I'd reacted like I was still sitting in the fourth pew. My liberal, broad-minded tolerance could still be scratched off with a fingernail.

"f.u.c.k," I said, anger and embarra.s.sment giving the word weight. Aubrey waited. The silence went on. I had to say something else.

"You're right. I shouldn't have dug through your computer," I said. "I shouldn't have freaked out and bolted. But here's the thing. I don't have a great track record with...trusting people. Especially when it comes to s.e.x. You're still married to this woman I've never met, and okay, maybe it's all just paperwork. But you are, and I found out right after we'd slept together. I'd love to pretend it was all okay with me, but it's not. I'm sorry it's not. I really, really want it to be. But it's just..."

Outside, Midian laughed. Ex said something I couldn't make out. Aubrey sucked in his breath. I felt like we were breaking up. There was a knot in my throat. I wanted to cry. Because that one last level of humiliation would have just put the cap on the whole conversation.

"I understand," he said.

"We need to be able to work together," I said, leaning forward on the couch. "Coin's a bada.s.s. He killed my uncle. He's kept Midian under a curse for two hundred some years. And I'm taking him on. We're taking him on. Knowing someone close to me, someone important, is holding back information is hard. I know I shouldn't pa.s.s that kind of judgment, but when I...um. Aubrey? What is it?"

His body had gone tense, the color drained from his face. When he spoke, his voice was very steady and controlled.

"How long has Midian been under a curse?"

"Two hundred something years," I said. "He said he was born at the end of the French Revolution. Why?"

"He's two hundred years old?"

"A little more than that, but yeah."

Aubrey stood up carefully and walked to the kitchen. I looked at the empty doorway, then unfolded myself from the couch and followed. The duffel bag of guns we'd found in the storage facility was still there on the floor. Aubrey knelt beside it.

"Aubrey?"

"Curses don't make people live indefinitely, Jayne. Outliving your life span is something people try for. Living two hundred years isn't a curse. It's something else."

He took out one of the shotguns, checked to be sure it was loaded, and handed it to me. I took the wood stock and cold steel barrel in my hands, my mind still back on Kim and s.e.x and Ray Charles singing over coffee. The gun seemed out of place.

"Midian?" I said. "This is about Midian?"

Aubrey took out another shotgun, chambered a round, and looked up at me.

"If he's lying about the curse, we need to know why," Aubrey said. "If he's not lying about the curse, he's not a human."

"Oh," I said. The air seemed to have gone out of the room. I was having a hard time catching my breath.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

I looked down at the shotgun in my hands. Salt, silver, and iron. Defense against a wide variety of riders. I felt like I'd woken up and found a rat crawling on my leg. I nodded.

"Follow me," Aubrey said.

We stepped onto the back porch with the guns already drawn. Chogyi Jake, the first to notice us, c.o.c.ked his head in something that seemed no more than mild curiosity. Ex leapt up, his chair tipping backward and onto the gra.s.s. Midian's ruined head was toward us, wisps of hair clinging to it like trails of fungus. When he turned to look over his shoulder at us, his yellowed eyes were expressionless. He picked up his cigarette, took a deep breath, and let the smoke seep out his nostrils.

"Aubrey. Jayne," Ex said. "Put down the guns."

Midian lifted a hand and waved Ex's words away. He shifted his chair to face us, two shotgun barrels pointing at his head. The ruined man sighed.

"It was the Bastille Day crack, wasn't it?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"I was kind of hoping you wouldn't remember that," he said, and wheezed out a laugh. "I always talk before I think. It's a vice."

"What the f.u.c.k is going on?" Ex demanded, his face flushing red. Midian gestured toward me and Aubrey with his cigarette, the smoke leaving a trail behind it.

"The kids here just figured out I'm a vampire," he said.

"BUT I'VE seen you in daylight," I said.

"That's nosferatu," Midian said. "I'm varkolak. Don't let it bug you. Taxonomy's always a b.i.t.c.h."

We'd moved into the living room, each of us keeping Midian covered as we'd left the backyard behind. Midian sat in the overstuffed chair, a cigarette still between his thin, fleshless fingers. Ex and Chogyi Jake had grabbed guns too, but Midian's casual air-legs crossed, black-toothed smile more amus.e.m.e.nt than chagrin-made me feel like we were being silly somehow. After all, he'd been with us for days. He'd been cooking our food, taking his turn at guard duty. If he'd wanted to kill us, we'd all be dead by now.

"I don't believe it," Ex said. His face was blank as a mask, but I could guess at the rage behind it. "Eric fought against riders, not next to them."

"Eric did whatever he needed to do," Midian said. "If he needed to get his hands dirty along the way, he wasn't the guy to hesitate."

"What else were you lying about?" I asked.

Midian looked at me with disappointment in his eyes. It was like seeing a teacher's reaction when a student asked a particularly stupid question. The ruined man sighed.