How many times had my parents given me a lecture like this? How could I have failed my test? Where had I been, and who had I been with? Why had I lied about whatever tiny thing it was? It all came back to the same thing, however they phrased it: how could I have been so stupid?

I could see my old room, my books, the cross over the bed, my CDs with all the Christian bands on top, and all the secular ones tucked at the bottom of the pile. I could smell the fake floral stink of my mother’s favorite laundry detergent. The knot of guilt and shame and anger and outrage in my stomach brought all the details back with it.

I was twenty-three and on my own. I’d thought I’d grown up. I’d thought I was through with this. Stupid me.

“I saved Sabine Glapion’s life last night,” I said, my voice shaking. “That thing was going to kill her.”

“You didn’t save her,” Karen said, “because it is still going to kill her. Only now, we don’t have any way to stop it.”

“How would things have been better had Sabine died in the street last night?” Chogyi Jake asked softly. Karen turned to him like a fighting dog that just noticed a new opponent, like my father shifting attention to my little brother.

“Don’t, Chogyi,” I said. “I’m okay. I understand you’re upset, Karen, and I’m sorry that I tipped your hand. But I found Amelie Glapion once, and I can do it again.”

“Your lawyer can, you mean,” Karen said. “All you’ve done so far is fail and have someone save your ass at the last second. I’m not sure that’s the kind of help I need.”

The lump in my throat was an enemy. I couldn’t speak around the humiliation. Karen gathered herself, shook her head, and forced out a slow, hissing sigh.

“Look,” she said, “this isn’t your fault, okay? It’s mine. This is a big deal. It’s hard, and I didn’t understand how inexperienced you are. I was thinking about Eric and all of the things that he could do, all of the tricks that he knew, and I put you in his place. That was unfair of me, all right? I expected too much.”

“I think we can regroup,” I said. “There are still a lot of things that I can-”

“No,” Karen said. “Jayné, just… just no.”

“I can fix this,” I said.

But the silence in the room told me I was wrong. I couldn’t. Aubrey’s arms were crossed, his face set in stone. I could see the pain in the way he held himself. Ex’s raised eyebrows told me that he agreed with Karen. Only Chogyi Jake was unreadable.

“I appreciate everything you’ve tried to do,” Karen said. The softness in her voice was worse than the anger had been. “But I think I’d better run this operation solo from here on in.”

I looked for words, didn’t find any, nodded, and walked out. My knee didn’t bend the way I was used to, and the staples in my arm itched. A gentle breeze stirred the branches. I felt like the trees were talking about me. I stood by the small statue of the Virgin, looking away from the house with her. The door opened and closed behind me. Aubrey’s footsteps came close.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, and he put a hand on my shoulder. I leaned into him, then flinched as my ribs reminded me that I’d been injured. He had been too. Probably worse than I had.

Somewhere there had to have been a place where I could have done it right. A decision that would have kept Aubrey out of Charity Hospital when Amelie Glapion’s cult opened the way for Marinette, a question I could have asked Karen that would have put everything in context. I felt like my head was filled with cotton ticking; my throat was thick and heavy with the aftermath of shame.

Karen was right. I was flailing in the dark, and if I did anything right, it was only happy coincidence. I had let them all down, not just Karen. I’d put Aubrey in harm’s way. Chogyi Jake had put his faith in me, and when I’d gone out to investigate for myself, I’d blown it. Ex… well, he’d been spending his nights with Karen, so maybe he at least was having some fun.

“I think they’re on the same side now,” he said.

I pulled myself back to the present. “What?”

“I was thinking about it back there. Mfume and Karen must be on the same side, since they’re both trying to protect Sabine. I just wonder why he would be.”

“Well, maybe they can hook up and work it out,” I said. And then a moment later, “It doesn’t matter.”

Aubrey stepped in behind me, his arm draped gently around my collar to keep from pissing off my ribs. When I leaned back into him this time it hurt less. The door opened behind us, then closed again, but no one came to disturb us.

“Whatever you want to have happen,” he said. “You know I’m going to back your play, right?”

“It’s what I love about you,” I said. I felt him react to the word love. A bird called, shrill and trilling, from the trees behind the house. Near our little prison. Its voice was high, complex, and beautiful as jazz. Months of nosebleed-busy work, days of trauma and danger and injury and failure, and years of the day-to-day struggle of just being me all folded together. I let a couple of exhausted tears escape the corners of my eyes.

“I just want to go home,” I said.

FIFTEEN

We left New Orleans that night, packing everything into the rental minivan and driving to the airport even before I’d bothered to make a reservation. Chogyi Jake checked our database and found a four-bedroom house I owned in Savannah. I called the lawyer, arranged for someone to drop keys off at the house, got four first-class tickets online, and walked up to the Delta counter to let them divest us of our luggage.

Going through the ritual humiliation of security, I felt like a piece of candy someone had put in a tin can and shaken. I was all chips and rattle. We got to the gate just in time for boarding. The flight crew were all professionally thoughtful, getting us bedded down in our flying Barcaloungers before letting the hoi polloi in coach shuffle past.

Once we were in the air, Aubrey curled up against the window and slept. When Ex headed up to the bathroom, Chogyi Jake leaned forward.

“You seem tired,” he said. “You should sleep.”

“I should,” I said. “I will. It’s just… I really screwed that one up, didn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” he said, but he wasn’t smiling. It was odd to see him looking somber, and it did exactly nothing to improve my mood. “If you consider that we came here less than a week ago, and in that time you’ve been assaulted by riders three times, Aubrey has been possessed and exorcised, we’ve bought a house and a car and fitted both with wards, added to which-”

“Hey, could we talk about this a little later?” I said. “I’m just… I’m not up to it right now.”

Now he smiled. I could see my own exhaustion mirrored in him. Added to which Aubrey and I had fallen back into bed together, I thought. And my childhood had been reframed by my mother’s sexual indiscretions. And, added to that, I’d screwed everything up. I didn’t know how much of that he saw in my eyes, but some, I thought. Enough.

“Later, then,” he said, and sat back. I didn’t know how he managed to so clearly retreat into himself without actually moving more than an inch. I sat back in my soft plastic chair and waited for the unpredictable gods of the airline industry to get me the hell out of Louisiana.

This wasn’t the first time I’d failed. In fact, it seemed just then like everything I touched was a failure. I’d have expected to be more used to it. And I knew what Chogyi Jake was going to tell me: we had all gone into the job exhausted; we’d been running since we touched ground; it was a complex situation, we didn’t know all the facts, and our ally was perhaps not the least fucked-up person I’d ever known.

I could give myself all the excuses. The truth was, I was disappointed because I’d wanted Karen to like me. Or if not that, respect me. I’d wanted her to see that I was capable of handling myself, of taking over the job Eric had left me, of being the person I was pretending to be. If she had looked at me-preferably over the steaming corpse of the rider-and said that I reminded her of herself when she’d just been starting out, I would have done just about anything for her.