rituals that reminded me I was human. Wrapped in the soft terry cloth of my bathrobe, I made my way down a flight of white-painted stairs and into the scent of bacon and coffee and the sound of ecstatic voices raised in song and filtered through a cheap radio.
The kitchen was all done in yellow tile and oiled hardwood. A slight haze of smoke hung in the air, a remnant of the pan-fried bacon still draining grease onto folded paper towels. The radio on the sideboard shone silver and sang gospel. My stomach woke with a physical lurch.
"Hello?" I said. "Anyone here?"
"Jayn茅!" Aubrey's voice called from the back hall. Two sets of footsteps came toward me; Aubrey and Chogyi Jake. Reflexively, I wondered where Ex was, then remembered. I plucked a strip of bacon off the pile just as they came in.
"She wakes," Aubrey said, moving in for a brief hug that was only made awkward by the bacon in my fingers and the brief but intense pain of my broken ribs. Chogyi Jake opened the refrigerator and took out a couple of eggs. In the moment before the door closed, I caught a glimpse of orange juice and bread.
"Someone's been shopping," I said. "What time is it?"
Aubrey shut off the radio and sat up on the counter.
"Seven thirty," he said.
"Wow," I said. "I didn't sleep much."
Chogyi Jake and Aubrey exchanged a look.
"What?" I said.
"It's Sunday," Chogyi Jake said. "You've been asleep for over thirty hours."
"Oh," I said, then, "Wow. I slept a lot. What did I miss?"
"Very little," Chogyi Jake said. "We did a rough inventory of the house. I bought some groceries. There's cable television and broadband access."
"We watched a couple movies last night," Aubrey said. "We needed to wind down a little."
"Good," I said. Chogyi Jake cracked the eggs onto a skillet where they sizzled and popped. "And you're both all right?"
"A few nightmares," Aubrey said. "More Marinette fallout. Nothing I can't handle."
"Fine," Chogyi Jake said. "Thank you for asking."
"No word from Ex, then?" I said, already knowing the answer. Aubrey shook his head, then looked down. I could see the banked anger in the way he held his shoulders and the set of his jaw. Chogyi Jake flipped the eggs.
"I'm going to go put the tools up," Aubrey said.
"Tools?" I said.
"There's a sealed closet we're trying to take a look at," he said. "May be nothing. Or it may be where Eric stored something. More data for the wiki."
"No rest for the wiki-ed," I agreed. "Or, y'know, maybe a little."
Aubrey moved toward me, hesitated, then kissed the crown of my head, and walked back along the hallway. I watched him go with a sense of regret I couldn't quite explain.
"How's he doing really?" I asked softly enough that my voice didn't carry over the eggs.
"He's wounded. We all are," Chogyi Jake said. "He tries to protect you from the worst of it. The rider shook his confidence in himself."
"My fault again," I said.
"If you say so."
"Ex would say it for me," I said.
"He might have," Chogyi Jake said, then killed the fire and lifted the eggs onto a plate for me. "I am going to betray a confidence. I don't like to, but it's the choice I've made."
"Um. All right," I said, reaching for a fork.
"Ex has certain feelings for you that he has tried to deny," he said.
My fork stopped on its way toward the eggs. I stared at Chogyi Jake.
"Certain feelings?" I said.
"He's a complicated man," Chogyi Jake said. "His previous experiences with women have been scarring."
"Wait a minute. Ex has a thing for me?"
"He does. And when he attacked you at the airport, it wasn't what it seemed."
"So what was it?"
"He needed your permission to leave," Chogyi Jake said. He paused for a moment, and I had the impression that he was gathering himself for some particularly unpleasant chore. "He and I spoke about Karen when we first went to New Orleans. We both knew the pressure that she would put on you, just by being who she is. He played on that. He needed you to push him away because it was the only way he could leave."
You don't have to apologize to anyone, Ex said from my memory. Meaning you're good enough, Jayn茅. You're fine just the way you are. Of course he'd been saying I love you. I closed my eyes.