“Did Aubrey ever find out?”

Kim shook her head.

“Eric never told him,” she said, “and I separated from my husband and left the state in order to stop. That’s what happened. I thought that someday, if Eric moved away or he and Aubrey grew apart, I could come back. And then Eric died. When you called, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was finally safe for me to come back to Aubrey, and it was too late. And then I met you.”

“I didn’t know about you,” I said. “I didn’t know Aubrey was married.”

“I know. But coming off that airplane…you’re young, and you’re beautiful, and you have Eric’s sense of power about you. Charisma, I suppose you’d call it. I’ve been watching you put this all together. I think you’ve done all the things that he would have, but somehow you’ve done them gently. Kindly. You have a good heart. If you had been a shrieking bitch, it would have been simple. Well, simpler than it is, anyway.”

I sat up and drew the sheets around me like a robe. The darkened house clicked to itself, cooling. The distant hum of traffic competed with the ticking of a clock. I could still smell the last fading scents of Midian’s great feast, tainted by the smoke of his cigarette.

“I’m not getting between you,” I said. “I didn’t know he was married, or I would never have gone after him. When I found out he was married, I gave him raw hell over it. And now that I know you, there’s no way, Kim. There’s just no way.”

“You see?” she said. “Kindly.”

She pronounced the last word as if it tasted bad, then turned to look at me. Her pale eyes were colorless in the dim light.

“You care for Aubrey,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“He stood by me when I needed someone to stand by me,” I said. “He’s a friend. Anything more than that, I’m not swearing to.”

“I suppose that will have to do,” she said. “I wasn’t going to tell you, only I thought…I thought you should know.”

“Thank you,” I said as Kim stood. She raised a single hand as she went, waving my thanks away. She closed the door behind her with a click, leaving me alone and sleepless and disturbed. My fist reaction was sorrow for Kim and her loss, then a proxy anger on Aubrey’s behalf, and then a deep loneliness that I couldn’t quite explain, except that it had to do with Eric.

It was easy to think of him as being just Uncle Eric. I had my memory of him, my experience. Apart from seriously biffing it by assuming he was gay, I’d never considered his love life. His sex life. The other people in the world who he’d mattered to besides me. Of course he’d had lovers. Of course he’d had friends. I imagined his life being somehow neater and cleaner than my own had ever been. That was my mistake.

I looked up into the darkness and tried to remember when this bedroom had stopped feeling like his and started feeling like mine, when the house had stopped being Eric’s house and started just being the house.

It was an illusion. The house was still Eric’s. The fight against Coin and the Invisible College was something he’d begun and I’d inherited along with his money and property. His shirts. His cell phone.

I tried to imagine him watching me from heaven or something like it. I tried to imagine his approval, but it didn’t really work. Instead, I managed to remind myself that he was gone. I wondered what it would be for Kim to be here, in the place where she and Eric had been lovers or cheaters or however they’d thought of themselves at the time.

I didn’t notice falling asleep again until the sound of wind woke me. The bedroom was dim as dawn, but the clock said it was ten thirty in the morning. I pulled on a robe and drew back the curtains. The sky was gray and low enough to touch. The window was dotted with raindrops.

“Well, that’s just great,” I said to nobody.

In the living room, Midian had more or less the same take. He was lounging on the couch when I came in, yellowed eyes fixed on the television.

“For a plan that really rests on motorcycles and small airplanes, there’s just no better ‘fuck you’ than a good low-pressure system,” he said.

“I was thinking that myself,” I said.

“Didn’t check the weather report when you put this whole thing together, did you?”

“I’m new at this,” I said.

“It will be fine,” Chogyi Jake said as he and Kim walked in from the kitchen, drawn by the sounds of our voices. Kim was dressed in some of Chogyi’s spare clothes, tan pants cinched up with a braided leather belt, a shirt the color of sand. She’d had to roll up all the cuffs, and she looked small. The only sign of our conversation the night before was a barely noticeable reluctance to meet my eyes.

“The motorcycles are going to be new,” Chogyi Jake continued. “They’ll have good tread on the tires.”

“Besides which, it’s not like we’ve got time for a plan B,” Midian sighed.

“That too,” Chogyi Jake said. Then, to me, “Really. It will be fine.”

“I hope so,” I said.

I had hardly finished with my shower and pulling on my clothes when the doorbell rang. The dealership was there to drop off my new toys. I signed all the paperwork and took the titles and proof of insurance forms for both bikes, along with copies of the service agreements and owner’s manuals. I hadn’t thought to arrange insurance for them. I made a mental note to send my lawyer flowers or a thank-you note or something, provided I was still alive tomorrow.

The cycles themselves were gorgeous. We couldn’t put them in the carport since the stolen Hummer was taking up all the air, so we had them pulled up onto the front walk. Black and red and set low to the ground, these weren’t machines meant for touring or taking in the countryside. They were built to be hunched over, body forward, head into the wind. They both had matching helmets and complimentary leather jackets and chaps. I wondered how much I’d paid for them that the dealership was giving me all these extras. The rain beaded on the fiberglass.

“Well, they’re sexy,” Midian said, looking over my shoulder. “I’ll give ’em that.”

“Think you can handle it?” I asked.

Midian made a rough sound that might have been a cough or laughter.

“Biggest problem I’ll have is keeping the girls off me,” the vampire said. “Or, if not the girls, the teenage zit-faced boys who think motorcycles impress girls. One or the other.”

“I don’t know. I’m fairly impressed,” Kim said. I raised my hand. We ate lunch, breakfast for me, making jokes about crotch rockets and wheeled vibrators. Midian and Chogyi Jake both tried on the protective gear-black leather and helmets. It was a nervous kind of hilarity, but it helped cover the fear.

Zero hour was eight o’clock, and it was a little after noon now. My stomach was starting to get knotted. The distant throb of a headache was climbing up the back of my skull. Kim played solitaire on the kitchen table with the cards from Midian’s poker game. Chogyi Jake was meditating, gathering his remaining strength for the night’s pursuit. I paced, drummed my fingers on the door frames, went to the front door every few minutes to make sure the motorcycles were still there and that the Invisible College wasn’t. I felt stretched tight as a drum.

Aaron and Candace arrived at noon in Candace’s car. While Kim and Candace prepared the backseat for the ceremonial Calling Malkuth, I showed Aaron the ammunition. Two bullets I’d recovered from our last failure. I hated handling them, but Aaron didn’t seem more than amused by the engraved figures. He knew exactly how to clean my rifle and showed me in detail. The living room smelled of mineral oil and rain by the time we were done and he took both weapons out to the stolen Hummer. We all went over the plan again. The clock seemed to go slower just to spite me.

There were still holes. There was still chance and contingency and a hundred ways it could go wrong. What if Chogyi Jake and Midian’s flight didn’t draw Coin out of his meeting? What if he was in a different car from the ones my lawyer’s report had identified? What if there were more people with him than Aaron, Candace, Kim, and I could manage?