“I never told Jay where we were staying,” I said, “and he found us here anyway.”
chapter twenty
We drove to Jay’s house in the rising light of dawn. The streets were filled with the traffic of the city. The snowstorm was only getting worse, wind whipping the traffic signals until they swayed. Ozzie, in the backseat with Ex, whined softly under her breath, and I didn’t know if she was worried by the weather or if she was just picking up on my fear. I hadn’t told anyone where we were staying. And then the evil little bastard had used Chogyi Jake’s blood to find us. And then Jay had appeared. I’d been so focused on the Invisible College and Carla that I hadn’t questioned it.
“We aren’t certain yet,” Chogyi Jake said. “There may be another explanation.”
“He’s my older brother,” I said. “He was born before Eric broke off his whole angels-in-America thing with Mom. It had plenty of chances to put a rider in Jay and pull it out again. And it didn’t crawl through my family through the whole twentieth century with a few extra decades on either side by not having a backup plan. I should have seen this.”
“The opportunity was there,” Chogyi Jake agreed. “I’m only saying we should be certain before we do anything drastic.”
Drastic. He meant we shouldn’t kill Jay out of hand. Well, fair enough. We shouldn’t. I needed to get Rhodes and his pals together to bind the thing. The only comfort I had was that someone knew a way to beat this thing, even if that someone wasn’t me.
A particularly vicious blast of wind caught the SUV broadside and rocked us a little as I swung around in a wide left turn. Another two miles and we’d be there. I wished now that I hadn’t called Jay, that I hadn’t told him about meeting with Rhodes or that I knew about the Graveyard Child or any of it. But if I was right, it still wouldn’t know I’d figured out who it was. I had to hope that tiny advantage was something I could use.
“I’m a little surprised, though,” Ex said. “I made the mother for it.”
“She is certainly qliphotic,” Chogyi Jake agreed. “On the other hand, if it had been in her, she wouldn’t have seemed so desperate to take in Jayné’s rider.”
“Fair point,” Ex said.
“Guys,” I said.
The little house loomed up from the blowing snow like a ghost. A single light was on. His car wasn’t there. Ozzie’s whimpering grew louder, and she pawed Ex nervously. I got out of the car, my senses straining for anything. A smell, a movement, any sense that something was there. The malaise I’d felt the last time I was here seemed less like a reflection on Jay and his impending loveless marriage. It seemed more sinister, like the nature of the building itself had been changed by being too near something evil. I walked up the unshoveled walk. The ghosts of footprints still showed, slight indentations in the gray snow. Chogyi Jake trudged up behind me.
I rang the doorbell and waited. The cold felt like a slap. Chogyi leaned to look in past the closed blinds. The freezing wind whistled and shook, driving snowflakes sharp as powdered glass against us. I dug my phone out of my pocket and called Jay’s number again, listening for the ring coming from the house. I hung up without leaving a message.
“Not here,” Chogyi Jake said.
“Nope. So where?”
We stood, looking at the closed door for a few more seconds, then he turned and headed back to the car. I started to do the same, but then my body stopped. Without my willing it, my feet took two steps in toward the door. The Black Sun pressed my ear against the wood. I heard Chogyi Jake’s footsteps creaking in the snow behind me. I heard the shifting, restless wind. And then I heard what the Black Sun had wanted me to hear.
I heard a woman sobbing.
“Carla!” I shouted over the storm. “Are you in there? Please, Carla, open the door! I know what’s wrong. I can help!”
The sobbing grew more violent—louder but not closer. I looked at the dead bolt, the frame of the doorway. I put my hand against the freezing metal. There. It was small but unmistakable. The house was warded.
“Carla,” I shouted. “I can’t break the door in. You need to come open it.”
Nothing.
“Carla, it’s Jayné. I can help you, but you have to come talk to me. There’s going to be something in there. A line of ash or salt in front of the windows and doors. You have to help me get across that. I can help you.”
I pressed my ear to the door again. It was quiet. I imagined her on the other side, maybe inches from me.
“I can help Jay,” I said. Nothing. “I can save the baby, Carla. Open the door, and I swear in the name of Jesus Christ, Lord of Lords, that I will help you save your baby. I swear it in His name.”
The trick is to know your audience. The lock clicked. The knob turned and Carla pulled the door open. She looked like hell. She wore a dirty nightgown that showed how big her belly had grown. The dark, exhausted circles under her eyes were as dark as the blood pooled under mine, and the whites of her eyes were pink. Her skin looked gray and her wrists were red and angry. Ligature marks. Sometime recently she’d been tied against her will, and I was pretty sure it hadn’t been when she was with Rhodes.
“What did you do?” she asked. “What did you do to him?”
“Made him nervous, I think,” I said. And then, simply, “There’s a demon in him. It’s not Jay. It’s the thing inside him.”
Tears tracked down her cheeks. The cold was making gooseflesh on her arms and legs, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“I want to go home now,” she said.
“All right,” I said. “I can help you do that.”
She shook her head slowly and opened her arms. I walked across the threshold and embraced her. Her body felt hot as a fire, and she folded against me. “He’s the devil,” she murmured. “He’s the devil, he’s the devil, he’s the devil.”
I turned to look back. Chogyi Jake stood in the snow. He wasn’t smiling.
“I think we’ve got confirmation,” I said.
“I believe we do,” he said.
We didn’t pack her anything, just put a coat over her nightgown and took the car. When I looked for her purse, she told me it was gone. Her ID, her money, her cell phone. Everything was gone. After Jay got her from the Invisible College’s safe house, he’d taken everything away.
The Best Western, despite having the most forgiving cleaning staff in Christendom, wasn’t safe anymore. I didn’t know where to take her, so instead I drove, as if movement by itself was a kind of defense. As if the Graveyard Child couldn’t find us.
“He told me that he’d kill me if I left again,” she said. “He said that I was his. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I thought I had to go. The tattooed man said that . . . my baby . . . and that you were . . .”
“The tattooed man and I kind got our wires crossed,” I said. “We’re cool now, though. Nothing bad is going to happen to you now. We’re going to make sure you’re all right.”
She licked her lips and looked up at me.
“How?” she asked. I didn’t have an answer. I needed shelter. Safety. I needed a base of operations I could count on being secure.
I needed a home.
“Gentlemen?” I said. “I am open to suggestions.”
“Are we thinking short term or long?” Ex asked.
“Either. Both.”
“A sacred place,” Chogyi Jake said. “In the short term. After that, it will depend on the situation with Jay.”
“We can go to church,” I said, but Chogyi Jake grunted softly and shook his head.
“Someplace we thought the rider unlikely to have been already,” he said. “Better if it was someplace he wasn’t familiar with. A Buddhist temple would be best for what I have in mind.”
“We’re in Kansas,” Ex said. “Where are we going to find a Buddhist temple here?”