There was something lonely about the hotel. It wasn’t just that there was so little city built up around it, or the sparse scattering of cars in the lot. It seemed more basic. This was a building especially designed for people who weren’t home, a place for being passed through. I’d lived a lot of places in the last few years—my dorm, a house I’d tried unsuccessfully to share with my college friends, and then easily a dozen condominiums and apartments and houses that I’d inherited from Eric. Probably as many hotels. Maybe more.
I hadn’t had a real home since I’d left here. And now I found myself wondering if I’d had one then.
“You there?” I said to the rider. The Black Sun. My other self. “You have any idea what to make of all this?”
If it did, it didn’t speak. Ozzie sighed, her breath a plume of white.
“You know,” I said to her, “I was staying in much fancier places before I had a dog with me. There’s a perspective why all this is your fault.”
She wagged once and I put a hand on her back, scratching slowly.
I felt more than tired. I felt stretched thin, and I wanted it to be because of my father and my mother and the Invisible College. But the truth was I could hardly remember not feeling like this. I’d dropped into the middle of Eric’s world after he died, spending months trying to inventory all of his belongings, find all of his places. I’d managed to build up a massive pile of information that I still hadn’t really had time to digest. And then Grace Memorial, and the things I’d done there that I still didn’t want to think about. And then the rider and New Mexico and now . . . now here. Being worn-out wasn’t a response to the problems of the moment. It was a lifestyle choice that I’d made somewhere along the way, and that I didn’t know how to change.
My telephone buzzed. I pulled it out of my pocket. It was the same number I’d had since I first learned what a phone number was. Home calling. I almost let it drop to voice mail; then, just before it did, I thumbed the green button and held the phone to my ear.
“Hello?” I said.
“Fucking Christ, sis,” Curtis whispered. “What did you do?”
“Oh, a lot of shit, one time and another,” I said. “Which one do you mean this time?”
“This place has been a zoo all day long. Dad’s massively over the top. There was a bunch of money that showed up this morning? He burned it on the stove. Set off the fire alarm in the kitchen. And now he dug Grandma’s Bible out and he’s been yelling about how there’s a curse on his family. And Mom looks like she’s drunk or something. Jay came by with Carla to do some wedding stuff, and seriously, he came in, looked around, and just walked back out. Didn’t even say anything.”
I felt a stab of guilt. I’d almost forgotten about Jay’s wedding and the effect my return was having on it.
“Yeah, kind of crap timing, I guess,” I said.
“What’s going on?” Curtis said, and I could hear the need in his voice. The confusion. Or maybe I was hearing myself in him. I didn’t know what to say. There was no peace he was going to get from hearing about this, about me and Mom and Eric and the supernatural ecosystem of things that crept in from Next Door. But he was living in the middle of it. I couldn’t shut him off, and I couldn’t bring myself to lie.
“I tracked Mom down and asked her some questions about Uncle Eric,” I said. “And it turns out there was a bunch of stuff that was connected to, and it all kind of got out of hand.”
“And the guys with guns?”
“They’re sort of connected to it too.”
“Wow,” he said. “I mean, just wow.”
“I know, right? Look, all this time I’ve been sort of under the radar? Uncle Eric died a few years back, and he left me everything, and it got pretty complicated pretty fast.”
“Holy shit. Uncle Eric’s dead? What happened?”
I squeezed my eyes closed. This was going to be worse than I’d thought.
“Yeah, the guys with the tattoos and the shotguns? They killed him. And the more I look at it, the more it seems like he probably had it coming, only I didn’t know that at the time, and I may have sort of gotten them pissed off at me too.”
The silence on the line was profound. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten into this, but it was too late to pour the cream back out of that coffee.
“Was he selling drugs?” Curt whispered. I had to fight not to laugh. Drugs would have been so much easier. If it had all just been organized crime and corrupt DEA agents and a few million dollars’ worth of heroin, my life would actually have been more comprehensible.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I mean, I wouldn’t put it past him. It turns out Eric was kind of a bastard, but the more I try to get the details of how it all was back then, the worse things seem to get.”
“Are they going to come back? The gang guys?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I don’t think they’re after you.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“I’m sure enough going to try,” I said.
“Look, if you need some money, I’ve got a couple thousand in my account. I’ve been working at—” An angry sound came from behind him. I couldn’t make out the words, but I didn’t need to. My childhood had grown up around sounds like it the way a vine climbs a trellis. “Nothing, Dad,” Curt said. “I was just—”
The connection dropped. I hefted my phone for a couple seconds, then stuffed it back in my pocket. My mug of tea, abandoned on the pavement at my side, was already cold. I poured it out on the winter-killed weeds at the roadside and stood up. Ozzie creaked up too.
On one hand, I could hardly imagine how weird and awful things were for Curtis. On the other, I knew because I’d been there too. I wondered if I could swoop in and get him out of there. Maybe send him to school in Europe someplace on my dime. I had enough money to do it. The only thing standing in the way was that I was his sister, not his mom. And if Dad had burned the check I’d sent to cover new windows, I couldn’t see him letting Curt have anything to do with me. From where my dad stood, I was as bad as Eric. And the truth was I’d committed some atrocities of my own along the way. So maybe he had a point.
I let myself back into my hotel room, the electronic lock cycling and the LED glowing green when I passed my card through. Chogyi Jake was by the window, looking out, and Ex was nowhere to be seen. Ozzie levered herself onto the bed, tucked her nose under her tail, and sighed.
“Where’s Ex?” I asked, dropping into the desk chair.
“The other room. I think he was going to take a shower. He doesn’t mean ill, you know.”
“By taking a shower?”
Chogyi Jake sat on the edge of the bed. “He’s been blunt with you. Sometimes cruel. But it’s coming from a place of concern. And from his own anger with himself.”
“Honest to God? I didn’t notice. I mean, I guess when you say it out loud, the lab hamster line was maybe a little rough. But I don’t think I have the spare cycles to care about it, you know? I know Ex cares about me. I trust him, even if that only means trusting him to be himself, right?”
“Right,” Chogyi Jake said. “I wondered when you left if you were trying to make some space between the two of you.”
“I wasn’t. I was just trying to make some space. Coming home’s weirder than I thought. I mean, check. You can’t go home again. Message received. But the ways I can’t go home again aren’t the ones I was expecting.”
“How so?”
“I thought there wouldn’t be any room for me. That I’d have changed so much, and they’d have changed so much, that there just wasn’t a Jayné-shaped hole anymore. We’d all have to hug and grow and learn. Instead, it’s like all the things that happened when I was growing up didn’t happen. Or they did, but wow did I not understand what they really were.”