noticed my momentary confusion. She kept talking, her voice taking on a distance.
"I sure as hell never meant to get here. I started out trying to stop bad guys. Drug smugglers, kidnappers, terrorists. And honest to God, I think I did some good. After Mfume, I figured out there was a whole class of bad guys I couldn't even touch. And because I wouldn't let it go, I lost the bureau. Except Davis. And then I lost him too.
"We do what we have to," she went on. "It's not about whether we like it or not. Whether we're particularly suited to it. We are what we are."
"What doesn't kill you, defines you," I said and sank another ball. Pool was easier than it looked if I didn't overthink it. Karen laughed.
"I hadn't heard that version."
"It's from my ex-boyfriend's favorite movie," I said. "But I never bought that whole makes you stronger thing. Doesn't leave room for cripples and maims you horribly."
"Fighting riders. Doing the things we do," Karen said. "I wonder sometimes if this is really all that we are."
"Well," I said, "I'm not doing anything else these days. And before this, I was a college dropout with no family left who'd speak to me. By comparison, this is a pretty good gig."
"It's lonely, though," Karen said. I looked up at her. Her pale blue eyes were locked on the distance. Her hair caught the neon of the signs and the flicker of the television. There were no lines on her face. She looked as young as me. Younger.
I thought of the last six months. Of being with Ex and Chogyi Jake and Aubrey. Of traveling the world with my best and only friends. Of the power I had now to pluck out a credit card and buy a car or a house or an airplane. And I thought about how my life had been before. I took another shot, then stood up with only a vague satisfaction. I'd almost run the table.
"It really is," I said.
The inner doors of the club swung open, and the sound of the televisions was suddenly competing with old-school Nine Inch Nails remixed- brilliantly, hilariously-with Pat Benatar's "Hell Is for Children." I started laughing. Karen's eyes lit, her mischievous smile returned, and she dropped her cue stick on the table.
"Come on," she said, taking my hand. "At least let's show the bastards we can go down dancing."
Chapter 10
TEN
The house had been transformed. Where once it had seemed empty and maybe a little sad, our best efforts had made it downright creepy. Chogyi and Ex had gone through the place, carving sigils and symbols around every doorway, every window. Even the electrical outlets bore arcane markings in black ink and knife scratch. We hadn't gotten beds, but futon mattresses lay on the floors of the bedrooms. A black leather couch squatted in the living room. We didn't have a television or DVD player yet, so it was facing a bare wall.
Out back, the shed had been converted into a prison cell. Security bars had been installed on the outside of the door, and an extra layer of two-by-fours encircled the structure, making it impossible to kick out a wall. On the inside, manacles were set in a deep hole of still-curing cement. Egg cartons and old rugs lined the walls and ceiling, swallowing sound.
"She's very difficult to see," Chogyi Jake said. "Part of Eric's protection of her."
Karen nodded. Perhaps alone among us, the morning found her looking rested and ready for action. God knew I still felt pounded. We'd been out until sometime after four AM. That alone didn't bother me; my circadian rhythms had resigned in disgust days before. But I'd had a little too much to drink, gotten a little dehydrated, and danced to Goth and industrial music more or less nonstop when I wasn't drinking. Three men and two women had hit on me that I noticed. I'd had to give one guy a fake phone number to make him go away.