Love is when something's gotten into you, changed who you are, and made you into something not quite whole and entirely self-destructive. My mind kept turning the idea one way and another, like a jigsaw puzzle piece that wouldn't quite fit.
Jet lag, I told myself. Exhaustion and paranoia.
The sun was still up, though only barely, when we turned off the highway and into Pearl River. The streets were almost rural. The trees that lined the roads were thick, and had the haphazard feel of landscape more than landscaping. We twisted down a couple roads, Aubrey squinting against the reddening sunlight while I tried to pick house numbers off the roadside mailboxes.
The place from the Realtor's site was on three acres, and set well back from the road, almost into the woods. We pulled up the long drive. A wide grassy area too feral to be called a lawn. Towering trees, six or seven stories high with wide branches greening with the promise of spring but still bare of leaves. A three-bedroom home, two and a half baths, two-car garage, den, dining room, large shed in the rear yard staring out into the growing twilight, dark windows like unfriendly eyes. A small stone statue of the Virgin Mary lurked near the front door, ivy growing up the side. In context, it looked like a gravestone.
Aubrey stopped the minivan and killed the engine. The quiet wasn't perfect, but it was deeper than I'd expected in a place that was still officially a city. We got out of the minivan. A firefly ignited, floated up in the gloom, and vanished.
"No neighbors to speak of," Aubrey said. "At least not in line of sight."
"Yeah," I said. "Let's go look at that shed in the back."
The shed was bigger than my old dorm room. It was painted red as a rough echo of the barn it almost resembled. There were no windows, but a small, dark vent near the top was choked by a bird's nest. I walked up to it and put my hand on it. Metal siding, but with something more solid under it.
"Would make a decent little prison," Aubrey said.
"I'm always impressed by how much fighting evil feels like committing crime," I said. "But you're right. It's... well, if it's not perfect, it's as close as we're going to get on short notice."
"You can afford the place?" he asked. I didn't answer. He knew as well as I did that I could afford the whole subdivision.
On the way back across the river, I called my lawyer on the cell phone and left her a message with the address of the new house, the listed Realtor, and the instruction that I wanted to take possession as soon as possible. If I stumbled a little over the word possession, it was only my unsettled state of mind.
As we sped through the rising darkness, I wondered if this was how Eric would have done things. Everyone I met seemed surprised that he had the money and influence that he did. Apparently, he'd played that close to the vest. The same way he'd played everything. Until he died and left me the keys to the kingdom, I hadn't known that riders existed, much less that he was in the business of opposing them. I still didn't know how he'd amassed the wealth I was spending. All I could say for certain was that it hadn't come from my grandfather, or my own father wouldn't have struggled so hard to keep me, my mother, and my two brothers in good clothes on Sunday.
Would he have come when Karen called? Would he have agreed to her plan, or would he have had a better one? What would he have seen that I was missing? The jet lag paranoia was thick as paste. I told myself that long plane flights always did this to me, and that a night's rest would fix ninety percent of it. Or if not that, at least half.
New Orleans appeared across the water, a glow of light in the dark air. A city half ruined, but still bright.
We got back to the hotel a little bit late. Chogyi Jake, Ex, and Karen Black were already in the restaurant. The afternoon's bright Dixieland had given way to a live jazz band softly playing songs I felt like I knew. The air was thick with humidity, but instead of feeling damp, it seemed lush. Like the whole city had just stepped