Lukas Croswell could say more with a single look than most men could say with a diatribe. And the look he cast Clare made one point abundantly clear. He was not about to have her hanging around while his son gave his statement to the local prosecutor’s office. Or, to put it more accurately, while his son fidgeted mutely with his dyed black hair as Trey Carey assured him that they were going to get the SOBs that did this. And actually, Clare was just fine with that. She didn’t like prosecutors. Hadn’t since the day another prosecutor had promised Clare the same thing in another vestry, with her mother riding shotgun as ferociously as Lukas was now.
Not that the two vestries had anything in common. Clare’s mother would have had little tolerance for the sacristy of the Church of St. Lazarus. The vestry of her father’s church had been a paean to the firm hand with which her mother ran the Altar Guild, a triumph of careful organization and good hygiene.
Her mother would have long ago disposed of the boxes of forgotten records—finding an intern to catalogue and digitize them, maybe even making it a Youth Group Service project. No stained water glasses would have stood in the special sink that was only supposed to be used to wash the Eucharistic vessels.
But that prosecutor’s eyes had been just the same as Trey Carey’s—even if she had been a woman and called herself a Victim’s Advocate instead. Her gaze moved everywhere, scanning for the rope to hang someone, not even acknowledging anything that didn’t serve that purpose, even if it was Clare protesting, “It’s not Satanism. It’s Catharism.”
“You pray to someone named Lucifer,” the Advocate had stated.
“It’s not a prayer. It’s a myth. It’s the story of the True Believer ascending into perfection.”
“And you do that by worshipping Satan?”
“Not Satan. Lucifer. And you don’t even have to call him that. You can just call him the Awakener instead. Because he blows the breath of the divine back into humankind.” Clare shook her head. “Either way it’s a just a metaphor.”
And she had learned about metaphors two years earlier in eighth grade English. So why were the grown-ups all being so stupid? The Advocate looked like metaphors were sitting right next to Satanic possession on her checklist of criminal behaviors. Clare’s mother was inwardly fuming that this was what came of allowing children to roam freely through one’s bookshelves, just like she had told her husband all along. Clare’s father blinked, longing only to retreat to his study and his compendium of British saints.
Abruptly, the Advocate changed tacks, leaning closer, her voice all honeyed reason. “Okay, let’s say that this is just a metaphor. You want to tell me what it really means? How did he want to awaken you?”
“He didn’t! Not like that! I told you. Nothing happened.”
“Then why the rituals? Why the blasphemy?”
“Heresy,” Clare sighed. “It’s heresy, not blasphemy.”
“There’s no difference.”
“Yes there is! Blasphemy’s about defiling sacred things. Heresy’s about history getting written by the winners.”
“Listen to her,” Clare’s mother cut in. “Listen to what he’s done to her. She never would have said a thing like that before she met him. I want this predator.”
“And we’re going to get him for you,” the Advocate said. “No matter what it takes.”
“Can I help you?” The voice cut through Clare’s side trip to the past, and for once, Clare actually welcomed the sight of Sister St. John glaring at her—even if she didn’t know what she was supposed to have done wrong this time. Whatever it was, it beat the memories.
“Father Gregory wanted to know if there was anything you needed.” The nun cast a baleful gaze at the prosecutor who was helping Jonas reconstruct the shooting, while Lukas watched like an angry cat.
“How about a lawyer for Rafael?”
“Who?”
The nun’s lips twisted. “You know, the other boy,” she said. “The one that got away.”
“Oh, you mean the one who was here when Jonas Croswell ...” Did what exactly? Got shot? Died? Was resurrected?
“Yes. Rafael. That’s his name. If anyone bothered to ask.”
But of course someone should bother to ask. He had been there, too. Had seen what happened. Why wouldn’t you care to ask?
“Hasn’t anyone talked to him? Asked him what happened?”
“No. Pace St. Martin de Porres, seems like white skin is an essential qualification for miraculous intervention.”
“Does that mean you do think it was a miracle?” Clare asked. She felt stupid even asking the question. She couldn’t see the nun falling to her knees in ecstatic witness if Jesus himself had appeared and begun to multiply loaves and fishes on her soup line.
The nun’s fierce face slackened. “To judge from the bloodbath that no one seems able to explain, I have to think that if Jonas wasn’t injured, Rafael must have been—quite severely from the looks of it. But it is the great consolation of faith that I am at least permitted to hope that somehow he, too, miraculously survived.”
“Well, why not check? Call the ER?”
“People around here don’t go to the hospitals,” the nun said. “Especially not with gunshot wounds.”
“Why not?”
“The law mandates that all gunshot wounds be reported. Even Lukas would be legally obligated to comply if Rafael asked him for help.”
“But he could die!”
“You seem to be the only person here who’s noticed that fact.” The nun thought for a moment. “If you really do want to help, maybe you could check with the botanica across the street. Rafael’s abuela runs it. She’s hardly a trauma surgeon, but perhaps her prayers were more efficacious than mine seem to be.”
“I really shouldn’t—” The words were on Clare’s lips before she even thought about it. After the Great Cathar Scandal, she had sullenly conformed to the Zen of Anglican life: the spring fete, the harvest dinner, the Blessing of the Animals, the Service of Lessons and Carols, and renouncing, along with the Devil and all his works and all his ways, such baneful influences as mesmerists, Transcendentalists, spiritualists, Shakers, anarchists, Rosicru-cians, hermetic orders, Theosophists, and Bulwer-Lytton. One guess which category a botanica fell into.
But that was when Clare had been a fifteen-year-old Cathar. She was thirty now. And able to hold her own in a discussion of thaumaturges with a Jesuit. “I’d be happy to,” she amended herself.
“Rafael and his friends usually hang out in the side alley,” the nun told her, then hesitated. “If you find him there—or even if you don’t—I would very much appreciate you finding out what did happen to him.”
The side alley was a gauntlet of dumpsters between the church and the storefronts on the adjacent avenue. If Clare had ever wondered whether anything could smell worse than a homeless shelter, she now had an answer. In fact, the stench was so bad that it took her a moment to recognize the other smell.
Pot. A lot of it. And not being smoked in the tidy little joints that Clare had once rolled with her friends. This weed was being smoked in a big, fat cigar that belonged in a boardroom, being handed around in a humidor to celebrate some fat cat’s deal. And the kid who was lounging on an upturned milk crate, puffing away as he studied a fistful of numbers slips like a hedge fund manager looking at his stock ticker, was twelve going on thirty, with a baseball cap perched at an angle that must have cost him hours in front of the mirror to adjust. It went without saying that his pants were slung somewhere down around his knees, and he wore an enormous gold St. Lazarus medallion around his neck, the saint’s eyes picked out in ruby chips.
“I’m looking for a guy named Rafael,” Clare said. “You know where I can find him?”
He stubbed the blunt out and tucked it away—not so much to hide it from her, but as a signal that this wasn’t a social occasion.
“Why?” he asked. “You want to see my scars?”
Relief washed over Clare, startling her. She hadn’t realized how badly she wanted to bring Sister St. John good news. “Are you Rafael, then? Are you ... okay?”
“See for yourself. I’ll let you look. But it’s going to cost you.”
Of course it was, Clare thought, so giddy it was all she could do not to laugh. That was a fine church tradition that went all the way back to Joseph of Arimathea’s foresighted decision to catch the blood of Christ in the Holy Grail. No sooner do you have a miracle, than the miracle industry pops up around it. Pilgrim’s badges along El Camino de Santiago, plastic bottles of water at Lourdes. She was surprised Sister St. John hadn’t pounced on the idea as a fundraiser for the Outreach Center.
Fighting down the impulse to ask him whether he took credit cards, she studied him. “I’d be a lot more interested in hearing what happened to you. Were you shot? Did you see the priest?”
“Show me the money first.”
As if Clare was ever going to pull out her wallet in front of a kid like this. But when she looked closer, she saw the kid was almost as skinny as the dogs on the medal around his neck, and his baggy pants were clearly hand-me-downs, his sweat-stained wife-beater, too. The gaudy St. Lazarus medal was the only thing of value he owned—and Clare was willing to bet it was only gold plate.
And probably stolen to boot. But, Christ, he was just a child. And clearly in need of some money. The only thing that held her back was that he’d probably put a knife to her throat and make off with her wallet and cell phone, too. And then accuse her of touching him improperly.
“How much?” she asked.
“A hundred bucks. Firsthand account, man. Eyewitness. I swear it.” The kid emphasized that fact by kissing it up to God.
“Twenty-five,” she countered. “And another twenty-five if I believe you.”
Touching the saint’s medal, he held out a hand. Braced against him pulling a knife or a gun, she opened her bag and counted out the bills—hesitating when she saw she didn’t have a five. Christ, what was she going to do? Ask him to make change, like a pizza deliveryman you didn’t want to overtip?
“So what happened?” she asked, handing over the extra ten. “You see the priest?”
He glanced around, as if worried about being overheard. And then he leaned close, close enough to make her recoil instinctively. “Wasn’t no priest.”
Her eyes moved to the medal. “St. Lazarus, then?”
“St. Lazarus is for old ladies,” the kid snorted. “This is the real thing. Takwin. You know what Takwin is?”
Well, yes. Yes, Clare did. But at the risk of sounding like an elitist, she was ... somewhat surprised this kid did. “Are you referring to the secret of Geber? Or more properly Jabir ibn Hayyan? The great Arab alchemist, who claimed to have discovered how to create life, birthing scorpions and snakes in his experiments?”
It was absurd, of course. Impossible. But exactly what words would you use to describe debating the esoteric secrets of the Crusades with a teenage drug dealer in a back alley?
“You call him whatever you want. Point is, we got it. And if you want it—”
She never heard the stealthy footfall behind her, until something slammed into her hard, and an arm snaked around her neck. “She don’t want nothing,” someone hissed in her ear. “Christ, man. You don’t talk to people about our business. Don’t you learn anything?”
Because the first rule of Fight Club was, nobody talks about Fight Club, right? Or something like that. Clare’s head was suddenly spinning, and it had nothing to do with the fact that someone was choking her, cutting off all her air. What the hell was happening? Was she about to be martyred in the Cause of Father Enoch? And if she was, would that constitute step one in her own Cause? More to the point, if she didn’t die, how would this affect her career path? Because if there was one thing she was certain of, it was that Father Gregory was going to like a martyrdom on his turf even less than he liked a thaumaturge.
But above all, what she was really thinking was how stupid she had been to insist on swordfighting lessons when she was fourteen, instead of the women’s self-defense course her mother had recommended. Because the fact of the matter was, Clare could knock just about anyone flat on their butt with everything from a two-handed broadsword to a rapier. Unfortunately, another fact of the matter—which was of paramount importance right now—was that all that was pretty much irrelevant if you weren’t on a fencing strip and you didn’t have said broadsword or rapier to hand.
“Let go of her. Now.”
The voice was calm. Distant, even.
“Stay the fuck out of this.”
“Just as soon as you let go of her.”
“Miguel. C.J. Show the man he don’t want to be here.”
Now the alley seemed full of kids, all of them with gold chains and low-slung jeans and elaborately laced sneakers. None of them seemed much older than Rafael, but there was nothing childish about the knives that seemed to sprout out of nowhere. Clare tried to suck in enough air to shout a warning, but the figure in the shabby topcoat who confronted them from the mouth of the alley didn’t seem to care.
“You’re right. I don’t really want to be here,” the busker said. “What I really do want is for you to let go of her. Right now.”
“And why should I do that?”
“Because I’ve got the answers you need,” the fiddler said. “And I’m not going to give them to you until you do.”
“Answers to what?”
“The crap that’s going on inside your head,” the fiddler said. “I can explain it. Maybe even tell you what to do about it.”
“What crap, man? What you know about our business?”
“Made you feel like Superman at first, didn’t it?” the fiddler asked. “And why not? Damned near impossible to hurt you. You’re faster, stronger, meaner than anyone out there.”
“Then maybe you don’t want to be taking us on.”
The fiddler smiled. It was not a nice smile. “Most people tell me I’ve got a pretty impressive mean streak myself.”
“Then bring it on, bro.”
“Supposing instead I just give you some advice for free. Consider it a good faith gesture.”
The chokehold tightened. “Keep your advice for those who care about it.” The fiddler shrugged. “Have it your way. I guess sooner or later, you’ll figure out how to deal with the whispers. You might even do it before they get to you for good.”
“What the fuck you talking about man?”
“Like I said, I can tell you about the crap that’s going on inside your head. The stuff you’re telling yourself you’re not seeing, mostly because you’re scared that if you tell anyone—even each other—they’ll call you crazy and lock you up. Usually it starts with voices—whispers no one can hear but you. You’ve been trying to ignore them, but I’m guessing that’s getting pretty hard by now. You got all you can to worry about whether you really are seeing shadows out of the corner of your eyes. Well, don’t worry about that. The monsters really are right behind you. What you ought to be worrying about is when they won’t stay shadows anymore.” The fiddler shook his head thoughtfully. “That was really the point of all of this, you know. The voices. The mean streak—that was just a side effect. Or maybe it was just to keep you from killing yourself before you learned to deal with them. I’m still working on figuring that one out.”
“You done working now,” a kid snarled, lunging.
She should scream, Clare thought. At the very least, she should find enough air to scream. Or step on her captor’s instep, then kick back against his other knee, as she had been taught in health class. But as she tried to summon the energy to do something—anything other than just standing here ...
“Maybe,” the fiddler said, “you’re even seeing the monsters right now.”
Abruptly, the chokehold was released, just as the kid that had lunged for the fiddler froze with an agonized shriek. His arms spasmed wide; his hands clenched, then splayed, sending the knife spinning. His back arced with such violence he was drawn to his tiptoes, almost seeming to be floating in midair.
And all around him, the other kids were twisting and screaming—some falling to their knees with their eyes raised toward the heaven, other scrabbling backward, trying to escape from invisible demons.
“What the hell?” Clare breathed.
A hand closed on her arm. “Now would be a very good time to get out of here,” the fiddler told her.
She shook her head, trying to stop the world from spinning. Trying to stop the kids from writhing. “Did you do that?”
An odd look crossed the fiddler’s face. “Depends on how you look at it, I suppose.”
“But ... what just happened to them? What’s going on? Are they going to be okay?”
His face set. “All things considered, I think you should be a little more concerned about your safety now.”
“What about you?”
“No worries about me,” the busker said. “I wasn’t lying when I said I’ve got one hell of a mean streak. I can take care of myself.”
And urging her out of the alley, he took off down the street, disappearing almost as quickly as he had the first time.