All the colors in her outfit were saturated and bright and confident. Her body was closer to magazine-cover perfect than mine had ever been. She looked like a 1950s pinup girl come to life, but what made her beautiful were the scars: the white line at her collarbone, the barely visible pucker on her right arm, the ancient star-shape that made me think of bullet wounds on her ribs just at the hem of her top. Karen's flesh bore witness to a lifetime of risk and violence, and her acceptance of them-her lack of shame or apology-drew my eye more than admiration or envy.
I had one set of finger-marks where a rider had stabbed me with its claws, and that alone was enough to keep me in a one-piece bathing suit.
"So how did you get into the business?" Karen asked me as she racked up a game of eight-ball. "All Eric's doing? You break."
I chose the stick that seemed least warped and took my place at the table. Karen leaned on the side, a bottle of Dos Equis in her hand. I knew the rules, but I'd never played pool before. I wasn't about to admit it.
"More or less," I said. "He left me everything when he died, and I kind of pieced it all together from there. The boys all know more about it than I do, really. Aubrey got into it because he's really a parasitologist, and Eric thought maybe there was something there."
"And Ex?"
I chalked the end of the stick, lined up the cue ball, and did my best. The report was loud and satisfying, and through blind luck two balls dropped into pockets, one solid and one striped. I figured that meant I could pick which one I wanted.
"Ex and Chogyi Jake had both worked with Eric, one time or another. I got in over my head, and I called Aubrey. Aubrey got the others," I said, lining up what looked like a plausible shot on the nine. "The rest is history."
Karen shook her head.
"I never pictured Eric as the kind of guy with a family," she said.
"Everyone comes from someplace. He and my dad... didn't get along. I was really glad to have Eric as an uncle, though," I said. The nine went in its pocket too. I thought maybe the fifteen next. It would mean bouncing it off one of the sides, but it looked possible. "What about you? What does your family think about the whole combating abstract evil thing?"
"Nothing," Karen said. "I was an only child, and my parents are both dead. There was a fire a couple years ago."
"Jesus. I'm sorry," I said.
Karen smiled gently and shook her head; she didn't say anything. I took my shot as a way to avoid the increasingly awkward silence.
"Nice," Karen said.
"Thanks," I said. "So I don't want to pry or anything..."
"Pry away."
"How do you do it?" I asked, leaning on my stick. "I've been running around for the last six or seven months doing nothing but cataloging and studying and practicing little cantrips, and I don't feel like I've got a clue what I'm doing. You know?"
"I do," Karen said. "That never stops. You get better, you know more, but that feeling that you're a fraud? You never get over it. At least I haven't."
A thick-wristed man with fading tattoos came up to the table, nodded politely, and put two quarters down on the rail. I realized how rude it was of me to hold up the game talking, lined up the twelve, and sank it.
"You have friends," she said. "That counts for a lot. I miss having someone I could work with. Davis was a good man."
It took me a second to remember that Michael Davis was the partner that Legba had killed, but Karen hadn't