“Fairmount,” I said. “That’s where the Zen center is anyway. I think there’s one out on South Hydraulic by the exit from 35 too, but I’m not sure about that.”
The silence in the car was broken only by the wind, the engine, and Ozzie’s steady breath.
“That was my prejudices showing, wasn’t it?” Ex said.
“We love you anyway,” I said, making a careful U-turn.
At the temple, Chogyi Jake spoke quietly with a kind-faced woman who listened to him intensely. Ex and Carla and I sat in a waiting room, drinking tea from Dixie cups while the wind howled at the windows. Now that Carla was out of that oppressive, grim house, she seemed to be rallying a little. There was more color in her cheeks, and the fever-heat that had radiated from her before was lessening. Despite all that, she looked empty and lost and alone. I wondered if I’d looked like that once myself. Seemed likely.
“He woke up this morning and listened to his voice mail,” she said. “That was the last time I saw him. He just left. He didn’t tell me where he was going. He said that I had to stay in the house. He took my shoes. He took all my shoes away so I wouldn’t leave.”
“I’ll get you new shoes,” I said. “Did he say where he was going?”
“I asked. He said he didn’t answer to me,” she said.
“Has he been like this before?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “But then he’s so sorry. He’s so sweet. He’s my little Jay-bird.”
Ex stood up. I could see the anger in his expression, even if Carla couldn’t.
“I’m going to take the dog for a walk around the block,” he said.
“She’s not going to thank you for that,” I said.
“I know,” Ex said, limping manfully back toward the door.
I watched him go.
“Did I piss him off?” Carla asked. Her voice sounded tired.
“You didn’t,” I said. “He blames himself because he didn’t keep this from happening to you. He does it with everyone.”
“That’s dumb.”
“He’s dumb sometimes.”
Chogyi Jake came in and nodded to me. As I walked out into the hall, the kind-faced woman went in behind me.
“The good news is that they have had some experience with riders here, and have connections with a women’s shelter. I believe they will be able to keep her safe until we can arrange a way to get her safely back to Florida and her family.”
“The Graveyard Child can buy plane tickets too,” I said. “I’m not sure there will be any place safer than here. Hell, for that matter, I’m not sure where we can go. This thing is a bad one.”
Chogyi Jake paused, leaning against the yellow-brown wall. The inked calligraphy behind him reminded me of Jonathan Rhodes. The air had the faintest ghost of incense.
“It is,” he said. “I believe the time will come when we have to confront it. But now isn’t that time. It has the advantage of its own environment. It has places of physical and spiritual power to draw from. And by the nature of its host, it has certain protections we don’t.”
“You mean that, since it’s in Jay, I won’t kill it,” I said.
“And it won’t hesitate to kill us. Yes. I think the time is right for a strategic retreat. We go to Denver and research its habits, learn about its goals and its strengths and weaknesses. Consult with the Invisible College and Sabine Glapion. Aubrey and Kim. Tamblen and Carsey and the rest of Father Chapin’s exorcists. We have a network of support that we can bring to bear on this problem. If you and Ex and I can’t solve it, the others will find a way.”
I felt myself frowning. Everything he said made sense, and I hated it. I wanted to make Carla and her baby safe in some long-term, permanent way. The truth was that no one gets that, ever. The bad guys might come after her, or she might get cancer, or escape from Jay and the Graveyard Child and fall in love with some other, more mundane abusive asshole. The best I could do was the best I could do.
“I don’t have to like it, though, right?”
“No. You don’t,” he said.
“So wait for the storm to break, then gas up and get out of here?”
“And we will need to make a call to your lawyer,” Chogyi Jake said. “Roshi Annabel is an uncompromising negotiator, and I’m afraid we’ve promised her a great deal of money for taking care of Carla.”
“Well, there’s that, anyway. If we can’t beat the bastard, at least we can spend its money in ways it wouldn’t approve of.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket, ready to make the call. A tiny numeral 1 was next to my texting icon. Somewhere in the drive, I’d missed the alert chime. It was a response from Curtis:
Help me. Its here.
THE SUN was gone, the day as dark as the night had been. Every third thing on the radio was a severe weather warning or someone advising anyone that didn’t need to be on the roads to get off them. I drove home for the last time. The curbs were starting to vanish under the depth of snow, and only the bigger streets were clear enough to drive on. I’d gotten the SUV to drive through the snow and ice of northern New Mexico. If we’d been in one of the little sports cars Ex liked, we’d have been walking.
I felt calm but not peaceful. I wasn’t ready, and I knew I wasn’t ready, and I was going in anyway. To their credit, Ex and Chogyi Jake hadn’t asked me to reconsider or wait. We were rushing in where angels feared to tread because there was no option. When it came to possession and riders and evil things from outside the world, we were the pros from Dover. I knew where the panic was in me, and I could chose not to feel it. Later, if there was a later, I could break down. Not now, though. That wasn’t the person I’d become.
At the house, the windows were all bright. The Christmas lights blinked and glowed blue and red and yellow and green under the thickening snow. Icicles as long as butcher’s blades hung from the eaves. The family home at holiday time. It should have been beautiful, but it seemed obscene.
In the backseat, Ozzie growled. When I stopped the car, she looked from me to the house and back, her eyebrows raised. It was the perfect pantomime of you’re-not-going-in-there-are-you? I reached back and scratched behind her ears.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s the plan. I’m heading in. I’ll distract it. You guys go around the outside and come in the back. When you hear the signal, we’ll try to beat the sonofabitch down enough that Ex can run an exorcism.”
“And what will the signal be?” Chogyi Jake asked, hefting our one remaining shotgun.
“I was thinking something like ‘Get him,’ ” I said. “Simple, direct.”
“Works for me,” Ex said. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” I said. “If there’s a question . . . if it looks like we can’t stop this thing without hurting Jay . . .”
I couldn’t say the words. They were there at the top of my throat, too thick and hard to speak. For more than a century, this thing had been eating my family. The math on the sacrifice was obvious. Lose one person to stop the death and degradation of dozens more. But it was my big brother.
“It’s not going to come to that,” Ex said. Chogyi Jake didn’t say anything, but I knew what was in his mind. Whatever happens, happens. We may die. We may kill. Terrible things or wonderful or both together, inextricable as milk poured into tea.
“I just needed to say it,” I said. “You know.”
“All right,” Chogyi Jake said.
I got out of the car, and before I could stop her, Ozzie clambered out with me. She pressed her body close against my knee and looked up expectantly.
“Okay,” I said. “But you’re not going to like it in there.”
We went up the walk, me and my dog. I didn’t bother knocking or ringing the bell. The door wasn’t locked.