Killing Rites

“You want to tell me aut it, or would that be too weird.”



“She came to us for help, and I betrayed her trust. I broke my vow to God.”



The fireplace hissed.



“You slept with her,” I said.



“I did. And because I lost perspective, we lost her.”



“I’m sorry,” I said, and he shook his head, refusing even that weak comfort.



“It’s different this time,” he said. “This time, we’ll win.”



Chapter 7



When a little before midnight I got to bed, I was asleep almost before my eyes closed. My consciousness fell away like shrugging off a jacket, and I slept through to morning without a single nightmare. I woke up with sunlight struggling in past wooden shutters and only a vague sense of where I was. With all the travel I’d done in the past year and a half, I’d built up a strategy of sorts for waking up in unfamiliar beds. First thing was not to get uptight, this happened all the time. Memory always wandered back eventually. The second was to find coffee.



The upstairs floor was scarred hardwood, and cold against my feet. I dug my bathrobe out of my suitcase, huddled into it, and went down the stairs. Arriving in the dark, I hadn’t understood the way the snow amplified light. The sun was hardly visible over the steep, pine-crowded mountains, but it was already bright as noon. I cranked up the thermostat, looked unsuccessfully through the cupboards and refrigerator for anything resembling food, and went back upstairs to raid the emergency supply of coffee from my leather backpack.



The door to the second bedroom stood open a few inches. Ex’s snores stumbled out on the air, as disoriented and tentative as I was. I paused in the hallway. His bed sat across the room, against the outside wall. Ex was curled around a pillow, his back to me. I watched for a few seconds as his rib cage rose and fell. The wound on his shoulder had bled a little more in the night, a smudge like a shadow across his skin. Somewhere in the crappy filing cabinet of my memory, a woman said something about falling into bed with a man just because they were alone in a cabin together, that it was the sort of thing men and women do. I wondered if that was true.



I’d lived with my family until I’d left home, and then on campus, and then on the road with Ex and Chogyi Jake. And Aubrey. I wasn’t a virgin, and even before I’d passed that supremely anticlimactic milestone, I’d had a pretty graphic understanding of how tab A fit into slot B.



It didn’t mean I knew what men and women do together. Not really.



Anyone who’d grown up with any actual experience—even just someone to talk to about it—would have known better than I did. Maybe after you spend a few weeks alone with a man, after you’ve washed the blood off his back, after he’s sat up until dawn with you waiting for the nightmares to fade, something just happens. No one’s responsible, and no one’s surprised. Was that how it was supposed to be? If I went to him now, slid into bed beside him, would he roll over and smile at me? It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered what his lips would taste like. Or what it would be like toslake the longing I’d already felt burning in his mind.



Was I falling for him? Maybe. Or maybe I just wanted to be held, and he was there. I was pretty sure if I pushed open the door and went to him, he wouldn’t turn me away. Just knowing that made it more tempting.



Ex shifted, and the movement sent a shock of panic through me. I walked down the rest of the hall as fast as I could on cat toes, my heart racing. I dug the little foil bag of ground coffee out of my bag and went back downstairs. I didn’t glance at Ex’s door as I passed, but I felt a little twinge of shame at wanting to.



An old plastic drip coffeemaker lurked in one of the lower cupboards, but without a filter. I banged around for a couple of minutes before I uncovered a French press still in the washing machine and a saucepan to heat up some water. When I pushed my hair back from my face, it occurred to me that I hadn’t made it all the way into the shower in a couple of days. I’d need to before we went back down the mountain.



On the countertop, my cell phone chirped its little you-missed-something notice. The number was Chogyi’s, of course. I’d forgotten to call him back or even listen to his messages. The water started to bubble, rocking the pan on its burner. I picked up the phone, thumbed the call return, and started pouring dry coffee into the French press. It was ground too fine. The coffee was going to be muddy, but it was better than none at all. The phone connection clicked.



“Hey,” I said, apology in my voice, “sorry that I—”



“Jayné,” Aubrey said. He leaned into the syllables, rushing to say my name so that he wouldn’t hear anything that wasn’t meant for him. “Hey. He’s not here. Chogyi Jake. He went to grab some fresh eggs, and he left his phone.”



I felt a reflexive shock of guilt, as if by thinking about Ex I was somehow being unfaithful to Aubrey. Like by answering the phone, he’d caught me at something illicit.



“Oh, right,” I said, and nodded even though no one could see me. “Yeah, okay. He left a message for me, so I was just calling him back.”



“I know he was wanting to talk with you. Check in.”



“Well, everything’s fine,” I said.



It was one of those pauses. I picked up the pan of water, focusing on pouring the boiling water into the press. In the glass, black coffee and pale foam mixed and settled. I could feel the pressure building to say something. This was Aubrey. This was the guy I’d been sleeping with for months. He was the guy I’d called for help when things first got weird in Denver. I could tell him anything. I could trust him with anything.



He was also the guy who I’d broken up with so he could be with his wife. Ex-wife.



“Everything’s fine,” I said again. “Everything copacetic over there?”



“Things are going all right,” he said. “We’re all a little worried about you, though.”



Drop it, Aubrey, I thought.



“Nothing to worry about,” I said. “Have Chogyi Jake gi me a call when he gets back in, okay? And tell Kim hey for me.”



“Okay,” Aubrey said. I could hear the cool come into his voice. The distance. My chest felt as if someone had hit me right on the sternum. Maybe with a hammer. I fit the top of the press into place and pushed down, the pressure against the palm of my hand slow and steady as the plunger fell.



“Talk to you soon?” I said, falsely cheerful.



“Sure. Anytime.”



I dropped the connection before he could. The stairs creaked as Ex walked down them, his steps painful and slow. The coffee smelled a little strong and I didn’t even have sugar to cut it.



“You didn’t tell him,” Ex said.



“It was Aubrey. He answered the phone.”



“Ah.”



His clothes from yesterday were ruined, but he’d had an extra set in his bag. I was going to have to figure out if this place had a laundry, or if the life of an international demon hunter was about to involve washing my underwear in the sink. I supposed I could call my lawyer, have her arrange a personal shopper to bring me everything I wanted wrapped up in gold lamé. That was supposed to be the charm of too much money, wasn’t it? Never having to worry about anything.



Ex touched my hand, and I looked up. I hadn’t noticed him coming across to me. I started to pull away, hesitated, and then went ahead and drew back my hand.



“No food in the place,” I said. “This was the best I could do for coffee.”



“It’s great.”



“It’s kind of crap.”



“It’s enough.”



He poured himself a cup and then one for me, and we stood for a minute in the chill of the cabin, drinking bitter, black coffee. A truck passed unseen on the highway, the rumble distant and softened by the snow and pine boughs.



“We can pick up some donuts on the way through Taos,” Ex said.



“Maybe some real coffee,” I said.



He smiled.



“Maybe that,” he said. “Go hit the showers. I’ll get the car defrosted.”



“About the others? Aubrey. Chogyi Jake. I just don’t want them to get hurt,” I said. And it was true, as far as it went.



He nodded, sighed, and drank off the rest of his cup in a swallow.



“I don’t either,” he said.



Twenty minutes later, my hair still damp, we were heading back down the mountain. Forty minutes after that, we were stocked on cake donuts dipped in powdered sugar. By noon, we were back in San Esteban, parking behind the adobe walls where demons had fought less than a day before.



The town was busier now. An ancient Volvo station wagon scraped down the street, a woman who could have been anywhere between sixty and eighty behind the wheehree teenage boys lounged on the street, talking among themselves, not making eye contact, and pretending to be immune to the cold. Ranchero music rolled out of one of the Quonset huts at the far side of town. The signs of actual life left the place seeming a little less eerie. The crows were there, eyeing me from the bare cottonwoods like they remembered me and weren’t entirely pleased I was back.



The little cutout where we’d parked before was full. In addition to the sedan and the Yukon, two cars with matching pro-life bumper stickers, and one with a heart-and-cross Marriage Encounter decal peeling in the window. The other had a vanity license plate that said GODSWRK. That was one way to keep from getting rear-ended. Ex parked across the street, and we got out. The air smelled of burning wood. I stopped and looked both ways before I crossed the street, only realizing how ridiculous it was after I’d already done it.



The front door swung open as we came close to it. Tamblen haunted in the doorway, nodding to each of us and stepping back into shadow. Voices speaking quickly in Spanish came softly from the back of the building.



“Is he here?” Ex asked as Tamblen closed the door behind us.



“An hour ago,” Tamblen said. “He’s with the girl’s family.”



“How’s Alexander doing?” I asked, keeping my voice low.