Sacrifices (36 page)

Karyn sat and
contemplated the couch in the new apartment. It was a hell of a thing, that couch. Not fancy by any stretch but clean and new and a calming shade of blue. From her chair in the alcove where she and Anna had put the card table, it looked nice against the soft gray carpet. A couch. They had, very occasionally, owned couches in the past. Never new ones, though, and on two occasions just furniture hauled up from where somebody'd left it on the curb.

“That is a damn fine couch,” Anna said. She'd just come from her room and picked her jacket up off a barstool.

“I was just admiring it.” They didn't have to say more. For years, there had been the agreement that furniture would be kept to a minimum—less stuff to pack or throw away when they inevitably had to move. It was no less inevitable this time, Karyn thought, but
different
. Anna had spent money like water during the time Karyn was out of it, but together the two of them were still sitting on over three hundred grand. Not enough to retire on, but enough that, if they did end up abandoning the place in a year or two, Karyn wouldn't mind having blown eight hundred bucks on the couch.

“Elliot called,” Karyn said. “Sobell's in custody. He claims he will be ‘mounting a vigorous defense.'”

“About what I'd expect. She still want us to testify?”

“Yeah, but she thinks she can nail him without it.”

Anna shrugged on the jacket and started putting on her boots. “She'd better. We've been through too much shit to risk having some contract guy whack us in the parking lot.”

Karyn nodded.

“How's your head?” Anna asked. “All the . . . you know.”

“It's okay. Getting a handle on it.” Karyn sipped water, swallowed, put the cup down. “Hey, uh, it's not a problem we need to worry about today, but I don't want to rely on this demon forever. I don't like it, and I don't trust it.”

The room image in her mind vanished, replaced by a gigantic close-up of a pouting clown face. Karyn shuddered, and it vanished.

Anna smoothed her jeans down over her boots. “We'll get on it. It'll be a lot easier without running odd jobs for Sobell and trying to avoid mobs of demons and shit like that.” She walked closer, pausing at the place where the carpet gave way to linoleum. “I was thinking I'd head over to Genevieve's. Spend the night, probably. You gonna be all right?”

Karyn smiled. “Yeah. Nail's coming over. We'll play cards and talk about you and Gen behind your backs. Apparently, that guy Clarence wants nothing more to do with him or his brother, so he's got a roll of cash burning a hole in his pocket. He's going to leave here penniless.”

“No cheating,” Anna said. She stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “I think things are gonna get better now. I really do.”

Karyn studied Anna's face. Anna still wasn't sleeping much, and Karyn sometimes heard her cry out in the night, but the purple blotches under her eyes had diminished, and the sharp edge of her jumpy, birdlike anxiety had been blunted. Maybe things
were
actually getting better. “Yeah. I think so, too.”

“Don't wait up,” Anna said, and she left.

Karyn tapped her fingers on the table, and she thought about what that word meant—
better
. There were still ridiculous quantities of things to worry about. Sobell was the least of them. Karyn still had a demon in her head.
Still had visions. Belial had vanished. Nobody knew how or to where, but odds were that he hadn't retired to the country to plant flowers. Somehow, though, she still felt that Anna had been right, that they'd pulled out of the terrible spiral they'd been in. Things would get
better
.

For the first time in over a decade, Karyn thought of the future, and she was not afraid.

Jamie Schultz
is the author of the Arcane Underworld novels, including
Splintered
and
Premonitions
. He has worked as a rocket engine test engineer, an environmental consultant, a technical writer, and a construction worker, among other things. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

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