“So Eric was set against the Invisible College and felt he could use you because you hated Coin too,” Chogyi Jake said. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

I shifted my shotgun to rest on my leg. My arms were getting tired.

“Coin fucked me,” Midian said philosophically. “That part was always true. I was in Rome back then, and Coin and his buddies were just getting a foothold in the south. They’d been bopping around Finland eating lutefisk and making candles or something. Anyway, I took over this body. It used to belong to a fella named Porfirio de la Vega. Well, it turns out the Invisible College had been going after the poor bastard too, but I got him first. Coin got a hair crosswise over it and broke me. I can’t feed. For two hundred years, I can’t feed and I can’t get out of the body. I just sit in here. But the curse connects us, me, and Coin. So when Eric decided it was time to take the bastard out, he came looking for me.”

“I don’t believe you,” Aubrey said. “Eric would never make an alliance with something like you.”

Midian dug in his pocket and extracted a fresh cigarette, lighting it off the butt of the old one. The cherry glowed red, the smoke came off gray. His yellowed eyes were fixed on Aubrey.

“You never heard of the lesser evil?” he asked. “Well, that’s me. Didn’t you ever wonder why he didn’t pull any of you boys into this? It’s a dirty operation. Messy. Morally impure. But he thought it needed doing, so he was going to do it. He left you poor fuckers out to protect you from it.”

We were silent for a moment. I could see the other three—Aubrey, Ex, Chogyi Jake—weighing the idea. They all seemed to think it was plausible.

“He didn’t need to do that,” Ex said, but his voice sounded less sure now.

“Yeah, well,” Midian said with a shrug. “Take it up with him.”

“This changes things,” Aubrey said.

“Does it?” Midian asked. “You can’t pull Coin out without me as the focus. I mean, maybe if you find someone else he’s cursed between now and sunup, but even if you do, so what? It’s not going to make any difference.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Look. You get some random Suzie Sunshine who Coin put some ugly mojo on, haul her ass out there, and use her to break him, it’s still going to lift my curse. What we’re doing isn’t just for me. Everyone Coin’s acted against gets helped out, whether you like us or not.”

“It’s just that on balance, that’s more good than bad,” Ex said.

“Don’t trust me on it,” Midian said. “Trust Eric.”

“I have to think about this,” Ex said. “We need to set guard on him.”

Midian made an impatient sound, but Aubrey was already shifting position. Chogyi Jake walked into the kitchen and came back with a length of rope. I pressed back against the wall to let him pass. Midian rolled his eyes but held out his wrists like a man waiting for the police to cuff him. As Chogyi Jake bound the thin, frail-looking wrists, Aubrey looked over to me. This time last night, I’d been dancing with my hands around him. It seemed like longer ago.

He nodded to me and then toward the kitchen, where Ex had gone. I hesitated for a moment, then pointed my own shotgun toward the ground and walked away.

The remains of the meal preparation hadn’t been cleared away yet. The cutting board was still bloody from the steak, and knives lay in the sink, their edges catching the light. The air was rich with wine and garlic. Ex was sitting at the table, his head in his hands. I leaned the gun against the side of the refrigerator and pulled out the chair across from him. The clock on the wall above him showed we were coming in on midnight.

“So,” I said softly. “What do you think?”

“I should have seen it,” Ex said angrily.

“Well, you didn’t,” I said. “What else do you think?”

Ex looked up at me through his eyebrows. For a few seconds, he looked on the verge of doing something violent, but he shook his head and the impression went away. He pulled back his hair, tying it with a rubber band, then squared his shoulders.

“It makes sense,” he said. “The curse, the divisions between forms of riders, Eric’s willingness to use that to his advantage. Everything it said makes sense, but…”

“But,” I prompted.

“I don’t trust him. He’s a rider, and he has his own agenda.”

“Do you still think Coin killed Eric?” I asked.

Ex weighed the question for a moment, resting his chin against one knuckle. He nodded.

“Those people he sent to kill me and Midian? Those were part of the Invisible College?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “Nothing’s changed. Coin’s still going to be at his weakest in a few hours. We still have everything we need to go up against him.”

“I know,” Ex said. “I don’t think you can be safe when the Invisible College is hunting you, and killing Coin will break their power. I can’t think of a reason not to go forward. It’s just…”

“You trusted someone. And then you found out they didn’t actually deserve it,” I said. “Now you have to suck it up and work with them no matter how you feel, just to get the job done. Kind of like what you were saying to me earlier tonight.”

“Aubrey,” he said.

“I’m not saying he’s a body-stealing vampire or anything,” I said, feeling a twinge of distress left over from my interrupted talk with Aubrey. Had we broken up? Had we ever really been together? I wasn’t totally sure. I pulled myself back to Ex. “I’m just saying there’s kind of a parallel. But we can’t be divided or distracted. That was you talking.”

“And after?”

I tilted my head.

“After we kill Coin. What do we do about Midian,” Ex said, his voice almost a whisper. “If we’re allies now, that’s going to be over by this time tomorrow. As soon as Coin goes down, the thing inside that body will be free to do whatever it wants. He will go out into the world, and he’ll hurt people. Maybe kill them. He’s a rider, it’s what he does.”

I gazed out the window, or tried to. With the darkness outside and the light in the kitchen, the glass was more like a black mirror. I looked tired. The kitchen behind me, reversed left for right, seemed alien. My body felt heavy and weak, my mind a little dizzy from too many changes too close together. Ex waited, his silence pushing me to answer, and I thought it was deeply unfair of him. I hadn’t planned any of this. Picking up Eric’s plan had all been Midian and Ex, Aubrey and Chogyi Jake. Even the encounter with Candace Dorn’s haugtrold had been Aubrey’s insistence more than mine. Making me decide what to do now, just when things got hard, seemed vaguely monstrous.

“We give him a head start,” I said. “A day, maybe.”

“He’ll vanish,” Ex said. “We might never find him again.”

“It’s a risk,” I agreed. “But the alternative is we kill him tomorrow morning. Use him for what we need, and then stab him in the back when we’re through with him.”

“It could be the best thing,” Ex said.

“Maybe. But we can’t do it.”

Ex didn’t speak, but his expression was clear enough. Why not?

“We’re the good guys,” I said.