a message waiting, I thumbed through the menu system until I found it. The cell dialed. I put it on speaker.
"Um," the cell said. "Hi. I'm looking for Eric Heller? My name's Candace Dorn? A friend of mine told me that you were in Denver right now and you could help people with...um...weird problems? I know this sounds really odd, but I think there's something wrong with my dog. He wanted me to call you."
The voice sighed, as if giving up something. When she spoke again, she sounded resigned.
"My dog wanted me to call you. If you don't think I'm a complete nutcase, could you please call me back?"
She left her number, said thanks, and hung up. I looked over at Aubrey.
"Her dog?" I said.
"It's possible," Aubrey said. "Sometimes dogs can pick up on things. If there's a rider trying to cross over from Next Door, or if someone is being ridden. I've heard weirder things. And that's what Eric does. Well, did."
"Helped people with their dogs?"
Aubrey chuckled, then smiled, then sobered.
"Eric did what needed doing," he said. "It kept him busy. There are probably going to be a lot of people looking for him. For a while, at least."
"I should call her back," I said, "and tell her that we can't help."
Before I could press the button, he reached out, putting his hand over mine.
"Let's hold off," he said. "Just in case she's really with the Invisible College."
"Right," I said. "I should have thought of that."
I looked into his eyes. The desire I'd felt was still there, and I thought maybe I could also see a little of it in him. But the moment had passed. He felt it too, because he sighed.
"I'm going to try to scare up some food," he said. "Then you should sleep, if you can."
"What about you?" I asked.
"I'll be here," he said. "Don't worry."
We ate grilled cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off and ginger ale from bottles he found in a dusty back cabinet. We didn't talk much, and when we did, it wasn't about anything. When I made my way back to the bedroom, he didn't follow me.
I expected to fall asleep quickly, but as tired as I was, I couldn't wind down. Instead, I punched the pillows into new shapes. I shifted to my back or my belly or my side. I got up and did sit-ups to tire myself out. I looked out the windows. I wondered what my parents would think.
The thought alone evoked my father's glowering disapproval and my mother's rabbitlike fear. Uncle Eric had been rich beyond any of our dreams. He'd spent his days fighting against spirits that invade the world and possess human bodies. No wonder Dad freaked out. Anything that didn't fit into his neatly packaged worldview was evil by definition. Mom would have just made some tea and ignored the idea that anything was happening anywhere. It wasn't really something I'd been thinking of majoring in either, for that matter. The question was, now that it had all fallen into my lap, what was I going to do about it?
Just after midnight, I gave up, put on my same blue jeans and liberated another one of Eric's white button-down shirts. The living room was silent, the flickering blue of the television the only light. Aubrey lay on the couch, his arm tucked under his head, his eyes closed. I stood there for a few seconds, watching him breathe, then went back and got a blanket to put over him. The television was on a news station and muted. I turned it off.
The sane thing would have been to get a boatload of money, sell all the properties just in case there were two-hundred-year-old curse victims hanging out in them, and begin again someplace new. Start from scratch and forget the last twelve hours, like they'd never happened.
I wondered if they would let me. The Invisible College. I remembered the blue-eyed woman. I saw her die again, and if my heart sped up and my throat closed down, it wasn't as bad as it had been before. She'd been dead before she walked in. She'd been possessed by something from outside the real world and sent to finish the job they'd started when they killed my uncle. She was a victim, not of me but of Randolph Coin. Or whatever evil spirit had taken over Coin's body.
I wanted to believe it, and I halfway did. But only halfway. Faith and I had always