“My makeup’s fine.”
I snuck out to the hallway and took myself down to the drinking fountain even though I wasn’t thirsty. Outside, the sun filled the sky and set the snow glowing. Even with the ice and snow, it looked warm. Nothing that bright could be cold. I watched Chogyi Jake walk briskly across the parking lot with an ash-gray shoe box in his hand. He looked great in a tuxedo. I’d seen Ex earlier. In deference to Pastor Michael, he’d skipped the clerical collar, but he’d kept the black shirt with his suit. With his hair down, he was looking more angelic than usual. And he was smiling more.
Truth was, I was feeling a little lighter about the shoulders too. For years I’d been hurrying from place to place, trying to answer questions I barely knew how to ask. I’d been a believer and a doubter, a refugee from my own home, a college coed, a college dropout, a demon hunter, a businesswoman, a victim, a heroine, and probably about a hundred other things that I’d forgotten about. I’d had everything I knew about myself blown up at least twice. My heart had been broken by loss and it had been broken by guilt. I’d done things I will regret to the day I die, and things I’m proud of, sometimes in the same moment.
Chogyi Jake pushed the door open and, seeing me, lifted the shoe box.
“Thank you,” I said, stepping forward to take it from him.
“How is it going?”
“It’s a friendly, upbeat kind of travesty,” I said. “But there’s always divorce.”
He smiled.
“There are very few decisions we can make that will keep us from remaking ourselves again later,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s absolutely what I meant. I wasn’t being catty at all.”
He grinned and made a small bow to me.
“And anyway,” I said, “it might all work out. Maybe this will turn out to have been the best thing ever for both of them.”
“It’s possible,” he agreed, and we both left it there. Optimism and hope. Just another service we’d provide.
THE CEREMONY was long and earnest and more about Christ and faith and the importance of the church than Jay or Carla. They exchanged their vows and their rings, and they kissed for the first time as husband and wife. And for all my misgivings, it was still weirdly nice.
The reception was in the church’s meeting rooms, catered by Subway and with a DJ who gleefully mixed Casting Crowns with Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” I’d changed into jeans and a sweater the minute after I got out of the chapel, and I was sitting now with my sandwich and a bottle of water, watching people dance in the same room where I’d had it explained by a furiously blushing Sunday school teacher that Jesus didn’t like it when girls touched themselves down there. The cognitive dissonance had a warm, nostalgic feel.
Jay and Carla were at a table near the double doors that lead to the hallway, shaking hands and hugging people and generally being happy. And I was happy for them. They were making a place for themselves, and if I’d have chewed my own arm off rather than trade places, it didn’t matter. This was their screwed-up, shaky, uncertain life. I had one of my own.
When the music turned to “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” for the second time, I went to them.
“Are you going?” Carla said in mid-hug.
“I think so,” I said. “It’s late, and I’m pretty worn-out.”
Jay took me in his arms, and I folded myself against him. He felt thinner than I expected. Slighter. I wondered if it had anything to do with the Graveyard Child. Ex and I had talked to him a little in the days after the fire. We’d told him about the rider and qliphoth and the Pleroma. At a guess, a tenth of it had actually sunk in. It would have to be enough.
“Thank you,” he said. “I can’t tell you how glad I am you came back when you did.”
“Glad I could help,” I said.
And then it was over. I walked out along the halls I’d been down a million times a decade ago, past the church offices, and out the door. Curtis was already gone, and we’d be texting each other later anyway. My mother and father were sharing a table with Carla’s parents and didn’t want to see me. I tested myself to see if I felt bad about that, and I did, but only a little.
Ex and Chogyi Jake were sitting on the steps of the church with Ozzie when I walked out.
“Hey,” I said. “You guys ready to roll?”
“Anytime you are,” Ex said, standing up. “We were just talking about Eric. How would you feel about having a little memorial for him?”
“We can,” I said with a shrug. “Is there a reason why we should?”
“Because now we’ve put him to rest,” Chogyi Jake said.
“Let me think about that,” I said.
The night sky was beautiful. The moon was just about at its halfway mark, the darkness and the light almost equal, with maybe just a little more light. I let myself enjoy the cold for a few seconds and then walked toward the SUV, my other family ambling along behind me.
For all the darkness and pain in my life, I knew I was lucky. Part of that was inheriting a vast fortune built up over generations by an evil spirit that I’d help destroy. Part of it was that I had a network of friends who had become family. And part of it—maybe the largest part—was that I was getting the hell out of Wichita. Again.
I opened the driver’s door, slid up behind the wheel, and cued up some Pink Martini to get the taste of the DJ out of my metaphorical mouth. Joyful violins attacked the first notes of “Let’s Never Stop Falling in Love,” and I felt my spine relax. Behind me, Ozzie clambered up into her seat with a little help from Ex. Chogyi Jake belted himself into the front passenger’s seat. I started the engine.
“So,” Chogyi Jake said, “I think we have some options. We never did finish cataloging all of Eric’s properties. Or there are the archives in Denver to look through if you’d prefer.”
Wordless, I felt the rider within me paying attention, waiting. I remembered her in the desert where all masks failed, saying I will outgrow you and I’m frightened. I pulled out into traffic, heading south.
I wasn’t frightened.
“Jayné?” Ex said. “What do you think? What’s our next move?”
“Always the question, ain’t it?”
acknowledgments
I would like to thank all the people whose support and professionalism have made the Black Sun’s Daughter series possible: the New Mexico Critical Mass group, who were there from the beginning; my agents, Shawna McCarthy and Danny Baror; my editors, Jennifer Heddle and Adam Wilson; and the whole brilliant crew at Pocket Books. Special thanks are due to Carrie Vaughn for years of conversation, analysis, and first reads. Without her, none of this would have even begun.
All failures and infelicities are, of course, my own.
M. L. N. HANOVER is the author of The Black Sun’s Daughter series from Pocket Books—Unclean Spirits, Darker Angels, Vicious Grace, Killing Rites, and Graveyard Child—and the short story “Hurt Me” in the anthology Songs of Love & Death. The International Horror Guild Award–winning author lives in the American Southwest.
authors.simonandschuster.com/M-L-N-hanover
UNCLEAN SPIRITS
DARKER ANGELS
VICIOUS GRACE
KILLING RITES