For the next few weeks, the Envoys’ lives went on almost like they were normal people. By the end of June, both Jared and Aiden had been released from their respective hospitals. Of course, for Jared, it was because he was healing well and obeying his doctor’s orders. He wasn’t up to working full time yet, but he was able to be at the office for half-days, and he was catching up on what he could from home, taking adequate time to recuperate. This also gave him the time he needed to grieve for Kat’s death and to begin to learn to live alone again. Aiden, on the other hand, was out because everyone at Receiving was “tired of him being a whiny bitch.” They officially released him a week after his return from Fr. Andrew’s funeral. To say that Aiden was not a very good patient would be an understatement. And his brief reprieve for the funeral only made his return to the life of a patient worse. Not that it was entirely his fault. He knew full well that he was completely healed and healthy, and he weighed that against the amount of work he had to do (and how much he missed Angie, who was still banned from his room--even more so since Aiden did appear healthy and the staff KNEW what would happen if they let her in.) Since they’d run out of tests to do, and they could still find no explanation for his miraculous recovery, they finally decided to give themselves a break (and, yes, they did view it as for their own benefit, not Aiden’s) and let Aiden go. He promptly buried himself in his textbooks, trying to make up for lost time and “Incompletes.” He studied furiously until he could take the required test. Then he went back to studying for the next one.

Which was good, since by now Angie didn’t have as much time for Aiden as either one of them would have liked. She and Frank had been busy in the past few weeks, getting ready for the annual Freedom Festival and the All-Star game coming up on July 12. Angie had become the darling of the Detroit Police Department, a little white girl who gave as good as she got and was a LOT tougher than she looked. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she really knew her stuff, too, and soon she was appreciated even more for that. While she was teaching the DPD as much as she could about IEDs, Frank was taking care of the paperwork involved with inter-agency activities, keeping an eye on existing cases, catching up on his own studies to complete his degree and get his psychiatry license, and meeting Lt. Worth for meals. 2 dinners and 8 lunches so far. And they still referred to each other as Agent Muelder and Lt. Worth. Angie wasn’t able to tell if the two were trying to fool other people about their attraction to one another or trying to fool themselves.

Tony was still ‘pursuing’ Anne, in between jetting off to blow things up. She had completely forgiven him for ditching her at the wedding, and Tony responded by creating a new personal category of woman between “saint” and “whore” just for her. He even flew her out to Hong Kong for a few days of mixing business and pleasure, when he had to help the Chinese make way for new development. Not that either of them were ready to jump into marriage like Justin and Karen had; but it was kind of nice for a change, ‘going steady’ with someone like that. Reg was also trying to make time for both business and pleasure in his life. He got together with Audra a couple times during those weeks, when both could fit the dates into their busy calendars. When he’d taken Justin up to see Karen at the dig, he’d spent a little time visiting with Leigh. And he managed to squeeze in a couple of side trips to Mt. Pleasant to see Susan, too. Of course, he also continued with his research into ghostly phenomena when he wasn’t seeing women or taking care of his company.

Justin filled most of his time with work and working out. He had to burn off the frustration of having his new wife several hundred miles away in the middle of nowhere somehow. He wasn’t happy about having Karen way up there where he couldn’t protect her; but he knew how important the dig was to her, and Leigh was up there with her, so she wasn’t completely on her own. Karen had warned him, anyway. And it certainly made the couple times they’d been able to be together that much sweeter. For Karen, too. This was the first time she’d ever had this dilemma, and she pondered how her marriage might affect future digs. She hadn’t thought about it before. Summer digs had always been a part of her adult life. Being an archaeologist wasn’t just a job, it was who she was, how she had defined herself for so many years. Better than defining herself as ‘the crazy girl.’ She hadn’t anticipated how falling in love and getting married--which had all happened so quickly, by her own choice of course--might change things. As she knelt there, slowly working a small animal bone out into the light that hadn’t touched it in hundreds of years, or bent over a table, comparing the bone to anatomical charts to correctly identify it for their records, she thought again and again about how much she missed feeling Justin’s arms around her, his body warm beside her at night. After so many years of not even knowing the feeling, she’d gotten so accustomed to it so quickly. She’d never thought anything would change how much she loved being out on a dig, the sense of wonder at touching something that connected her to another person from a very different time, the sense of accomplishment in finding items long hidden that might tell them so much about how that person of long ago lived. Now it was all tinged with a wash of blue, of missing Justin.

Then, a student would come up with a question or to show her what he or she had just freed from it’s shroud of dirt, and Karen would smile, knowing that archaeologist and wife, and maybe someday mother, didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. All in all, the dig was going well so far. They weren’t finding anything ‘must publish NOW’ or earth-shattering. But they were finding a lot of good stuff that would fill in details about how Native Americans had once lived in this wilderness, details the stories didn’t reveal. And she had a pretty good team this season. Leigh seemed to be enjoying the opportunity for some field work, and Karen enjoyed having her there for company of a sort the kids couldn’t share with her. She and Leigh didn’t just have their membership in SAVE, and the ‘knowledge’ that prompted it, in common; they shared an interest in the history of the human race, and in learning, that had led both into lives as academics. Of course there were a few of the kids who did nothing but whine about the conditions, the lack of electricity or bathrooms or real beds and the abundance of bugs, as if Karen hadn’t warned them all. But these were countered by a couple of really good first-timers, kids who took to the slow, detail-oriented work and who appreciated that the sacrifice of working out in the middle of nowhere could be a fair trade for the excitement of finally being able to hold and study that shard of pottery that had been formed by ancient hands or that bone that still showed the mark left by an ancient knife.

And Karen would get to see Justin soon enough. She’d made arrangements for the Envoys to join the dig team on a ‘field trip’ to Pictured Rocks. She thought it might be good for both groups to experience the art left behind by the earliest inhabitants of Michigan--perhaps the ancestors of the people who had lived at this campsite that the dig team was excavating, or maybe the people who had first dealt with the Hell Mouth that the Envoys now had to reckon with. In the meantime, the dig team had become like a family. They spent their evenings entertaining one another with songs and stories. A couple of the kids had brought musical instruments, and Chris and Jaime entertained them with tales from previous digs--the more embarrassing for Karen, the better, of course. And Karen and Leigh shared more-ancient stories with them. Karen told them the tribal myths as she had learned them from the storytellers, stories that, she hoped, gave the kids a connection to the people who had lived there before. Leigh matched those stories with similar ones from the Scandinavian peoples, helping the kids to see how many myths could be the same yet different the world around. Because certainly not all the kids that continued on with studies in the field of history and archaeology would stay there in Michigan, or even on the North American continent.

Karen had let the Envoys know about the field trip as soon as she made the arrangements. She wanted to make sure that the kids who were leaving at the end of the Spring term and the ones just coming up for the Summer term would all be able to make it, so she had a narrow window in which to set the date. All she could do was hope that the weather was nice enough to be out on the Lake. She arranged with the rangers to have a ‘private’ tour, and a storyteller from the Bay Mills Tribe had been kind enough to agree to accompany them. It was one thing for Karen to tell them stories, though she had been practicing and learning how to do it properly, and another to hear them told by someone who’d grown up living with the stories. It was a rare enough thing these days, when so many kids, Native or not, wanted to get away from home as soon as possible and wanted nothing to do with the way of life of their parents or grandparents. She didn’t just want her students to see and hear the relics of a different time; she wanted them to see how these things could still have meaning today, and how they were passed down not as relics but as living wisdom. Even if it didn’t help them make the connection between the past and now, maybe they’d go home with a little more appreciation for the stories their grandparents told them.

On Friday, June 24, Angie ran into Frank in the office as the two were getting ready to head home. The weather was horrendously hot, and Angie was looking forward to the trip north. Aiden hadn’t been quite so excited. She’d been arguing with him about it since Karen had invited them up. Aiden had eyes for little beyond his studies. He didn’t think Angie had any concept of just how much class time he’d missed and how much work it was taking him to get caught up. He didn’t have time to just dart off for a little camping trip; he had tests to prepare for! Besides, there wouldn’t be any soft beds or electricity. How could he be expected to survive, much less study, under those conditions? But Angie had just about all she could take of Aiden’s constant studying. He wasn’t much fun anymore, and she thought that they both needed to take a break to spend time with each other. The ‘field trip’ was the perfect excuse. They would be in the middle of nowhere, at least as far as she could tell from the map Karen had sent everyone, and except for when they went to Pictured Rocks, their time would be their own. When she had complained to Reg about it, when he’d called to let her know that the flight arrangements had been made, he told her that the offer of clubbing Aiden to kidnap him still stood.

Now it appeared like Frank didn’t seem all that excited about the trip either, and Angie let her own crankiness show. She told Frank that she thought he needed to take a vacation, that he’d been crankier than usual lately. Frank replied that he thought she might be transferring her own feelings onto him. She told him to cut the ‘psychiatrist crap.’ She didn’t warn him, but, playing matchmaker, she’d already invited Lt. Worth to join them on the trip and the detective had accepted. She really appreciated the invitation, she’d told Angie. Now her boss seemed to be trying to back out. Frank wasn’t, actually. He was just giving Angie a hard time. Anne wasn’t though, when she told Tony she wasn’t going. Not much explanation, just “Camping? No.” She made it quite clear in very few words that Hong Kong was one thing, but the middle of nowhere Michigan was definitely another. The plane would be leaving around 7am, Reg told them all. And there was plenty of room for everyone’s gear. Be there or be square.

Up at the dig, there was the hustle and bustle of packing and unpacking. Several people would be leaving after the field trip, and several others were just getting there and needed orientation to the site and schedule. With the camp’s population at the season’s maximum, plus Karen’s and Leigh’s friends coming up that weekend as well, the extra tents needed to be set up to accommodate everyone. But the weather wasn’t cooperating. It had been raining since the day before, though at least it was warm, and it was a mess to try to put up tents in the rain. Karen checked the weather feed from the satellite, and Saturday promised to be beautiful, so she let the tents wait. Instead she teamed up the new diggers with the ones they would be replacing, and set them to walking through the camp routine. In a way she felt bad that the Summer students didn’t get the same relaxed orientation that the Spring and Spring/Summer kids did at the beginning of the term. But the dig was in full swing now, and she didn’t want to break stride to go to Detroit for a week of classroom time. So she had the new kids come up a few days early and let them ease into ‘dig life’ over the weekend. That gave them a couple days of intense work, then a Sunday to relax and assimilate all the new information.

Not much work got done on Sundays anyway. While she was by no means a slave driver like some other dig managers she’d worked under in her career, they had a very short season there in northern Michigan and she didn’t want to waste time. So weekend schedules were slightly different from the rest of the week. Everybody worked a full day on at least one of the weekend days, their choice since some of the kids might have religious reasons for preferring Saturday off to Sunday. The other day was theirs to do what they wanted. Some of them enjoyed the work as much as Karen, and Sunday morning would find them up and at it just like usual. For Karen, getting down in the dirt and focusing all her attention on a few square inches for hours at a time was as much a vacation from the rigors of teaching as a trip to the Bahamas might be for someone else. Although, really beautiful weather would lure her down to the lake just like it did most of the kids. And many of the kids liked to take the opportunity to head into town for, well, for a variety of reasons. The camp had a solar shower set up, but a few of the kids would pool their money and get a motel room for the day and use up all the hot water. Some kids wanted to go to the bars and meet people. Karen’s only requests were that they not drive back unless one of them was completely sober to do the driving, and that they let her know if they were spending the night in town. And some took advantage of being out of the city for a change, and explored what nature had to offer them.

For a couple of the kids, what nature offered was the same in the UP as it would have been in Detroit. David and Penny took every opportunity to sneak off into the woods, but they weren’t bird-watching. They always left the camp separately and returned separately, but, well, sound did carry when they were so close to the lake. Karen was pretty sure that there was more going on out there than just the sex, too. Occasionally, she got a whiff of pot from their clothes when they came back. But, as she told them at the beginning, she wasn’t the police or their parents. As long as she didn’t catch them doing anything illegal there in camp, she wouldn’t have any reason to call the authorities. The kids that went into town usually brought back beer, too, and, like with the pot issue, if she didn’t catch any of the underage students drinking it, she didn’t care. As long as come Monday morning everyone was ready to get back to work, they could relax and blow off steam any way they wanted. Karen took a step back and watched everyone scurrying around, kind of like giant-sized ants moving in patterns she didn’t quite understand. In a moment of reflection that didn’t involve thoughts of Justin, she realized that she’d ended up with a pretty diverse group of students and she wondered how it always seemed to work out that way even without her trying.

There was an exactly even mix of males and females on the team, and a good cross-mix of students from various backgrounds. Mahmud, Tariq, Jasper, Vijay, Beth and Anita were the new kids, and Karen didn’t have a feel yet for how they’d work out up here. But she would do everything she could to help them fit into the group and do well, just as she had for the other kids. DeShawn, Phyllis, Shirley, Jesus, Dorinda, and Ben had been there for just the Spring term. In fact, Shirley was already gone. Karen had tried to make her more comfortable at first, but the girl seemed to like complaining. Karen would never have shared it with anyone else, but she and Leigh, Chris and Jaime called her Shirley the Whiner in private. Almost all the kids complained at first. Many of them had never been out of the city beyond going to some of the local MetroParks, and even the poorest of the kids felt a new sense of deprivation out there in the ‘wilderness.’ Most of them got used to camp life, though, and some slipped into it like they were meant to be there. Even the freshman Andrew, the Goth kid who was there for the whole Spring/Summer term, finally resigned himself to making the best of it. He didn’t wear the black eyeliner and nail polish, but he was broody in a way that reminded Karen of other Goth kids. Lately he’d become even broodier, but he seemed like the “artistic type” and Karen couldn’t tell if it was something new or if he was just slipping more into his natural behavior. He’d even volunteered to do the cooking. He wasn’t the greatest camp cook ever, but he was getting better, and Karen appreciated not having to do it herself. She could in a pinch, and, like all of them, she took her turn while they settled into their routine, but cooking was never really her ‘thing.’

But Shirley whined about everything. The ‘bathroom’ facilities, the shower, the noises at night, the lack of other noises at night, the smells, the bugs, the food, the ‘accommodations,’ the entertainment or lack thereof, the dangers of wild animals. Even though the only ‘wild animal’ she encountered was Drew, who seemed to know that she was easily startled and took delight in pouncing on her while she worked or in brushing against the tent at night and making awful-sounding yowls. For the first time that she could remember, Karen was actually looking forward to this student going home. But not the way she did. She actually felt bad for the girl then. She didn’t notice right away, but Shirley was suffering, for once in silence. She’d gone out to use the ‘facilities’ and had forgotten her roll of toilet paper. Each of the kids had their own, since Karen had had trouble in the past with the rolls being carried off to line some small animal’s bed. Everyone else was working, and Shirley hadn’t wanted the embarrassment of trying to get their attention in this situation. So she looked around and found some handy leaves to use. Unfortunately, she hadn’t paid enough attention when Karen pointed out the poison ivy. By the time she’d left, she was taking a double dose of Benedryl and Karen had made her cut down her fingernails so she wouldn’t injure herself. She’d get a passing grade, but Karen didn’t expect to see Shirley in one of her classes ever again.

Besides Andrew, David, Penny, WEB, Carmen, John, Aziza, and LaTisha were there for the full term, as were Chris and Jaime of course. Carmen was a senior this year, and it was her third season at the dig. Karen trusted her almost as much as she did Chris and Jaime. But something had been a little off with her in the past week or so. She’d become withdrawn, and when Karen asked if everything was OK, Carmen had told her there was “nothing wrong.” Karen backed off and tried to keep an eye on her from a distance. When Carmen began wandering off alone after dinner and it became obvious that something was wrong, Karen tried to sense if the Unknown had anything to do with it. The slap of the Unknown startled Karen and she jerked back a little. It wasn’t overwhelming, but Karen really hadn’t been expecting to feel it at all so it came as a surprise. There was just a faint feeling that Carmen had been touched by something, like she’d brushed up against an animal and come away with shed fur stuck to her. Karen would have to keep an eye on her.

Leigh was doing the same with Andrew. She’d noticed right away that he didn’t seem to be getting close to any of the other students. He was a good worker, and always promptly finished whatever he was asked to do. Then he would wander off alone into the woods. Leigh noticed that he carried a sketch pad with him whenever he left, and instead of the dark and somber drawings she expected, she caught glimpses of nature drawings, plants, trees, birds, landscapes. Like his cooking, they weren’t great but he was getting better. Leigh considered how quiet kids like that often didn’t fit in because they’re more intelligent than other kids their age. She knew how that could be, and she tried to bond with him, asking him about his taste in music and books, hoping to find some way of getting him out of his shell. But he would just grunt non-committal answers at her, fending off every attempt with his armor of apathy and disinterest. Over the course of the past week, his odd behavior had seemed to Leigh to get even creepier.

Karen was glad the others would be there soon, in case something dangerous-weird was going on. She hadn’t mentioned it yet to anyone but Leigh since it hadn’t seemed threatening, but something else was happening, too. She’d never noticed it in previous summers, but at each ‘change’ of the moon this summer, at least the ones she’d been there for so far--the new and first quarter in May and the new, first quarter and full this month--there’d been gatherings of Native spirits at the edge of the lake. There appeared to be dozens of them, in full Native dress, and they were old; Karen could tell that they weren’t recently dead, since modern tribe members rarely wore Native dress except for powwows and other special occasions. After seeing them the first time, Karen had made a habit of taking a nightly stroll by the lake; and even though they seemed aware of her presence the few times she encountered them, they didn’t seem disturbed by it. Most of them seemed to be looking out over the lake. Karen really hadn’t paid attention to it before, but there was an island out there. She’d never been out there, and she didn’t know if any of the kids had ever bothered to go out in their free time, using the canoes she’d leased for them or just swimming.

Saturday morning, the sun was barely up as the Envoys, and Lt. Worth, gathered at City Airport. Reg had the jet fueled up and ready to go, and was helping the others get their stuff stowed. Frank was wearing hiking boots and canvas pants, and he carried his spare gear in a large duffle bag. Lt. Worth was already there talking to Angie when he walked up, so he was able to hide his surprise at finding her there. She was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt over a t-shirt, and she had an older model backpack that didn’t look like it had been used recently. She was thanking Angie again for the invitation and didn’t appear at all self-conscious about being added to the group. Justin had a bag for his personal stuff, and besides that had a couple hard-side gun-cases and a case of cat food. Karen had called and asked him for the food for Drew. The guns were his own idea; he wasn’t taking any chances. The way he figured it, the Envoys were probably inviting the Unknown along just by all being together in one place. Angie and Tony were both packed like people with military training, light bags with as much multi-use stuff as they could manage. Aiden had an old backpack that looked heavier than hell when he lifted it up the stairs. Angie wondered what he had in it. She was even more concerned when she nearly broke a toe tripping over Reg’s pack as she went to add her bag to the pile in back. It looked brand new, and there were bulges sticking out all over, particularly in places where there probably shouldn’t have been.

Once the plane was in the air, Angie satisfied her curiosity. After watching Aiden pull a couple books out of his pack and settle into studying, she took a look. There were a few necessary articles of clothing, and the rest of the space was filled with books. Neither Angie nor Teresa could get over lugging books on a camping trip. Aiden moaned that it wasn’t his idea to be dragged out into the wilderness and that he had to study if he was going to pass these tests and get back on track for getting his medical degree. Angie left him there, and she and Tony went up to check out Reg’s piloting skills. Angie asked Reg what was in his pack, and he told her she could take a look if she wanted. When she went back, she found that Reg’s brand-spankin’ new pack was filled with brand-spankin’ new stuff, half of which he’d probably never use. He’d asked the guy at Raupp’s to help outfit him for a trip to the UP, Reg had told her, and she figured that Reg had gone in ‘Visa first’, and the guy just knew a sucker when he saw one. She chatted with Teresa about camping as the two emptied everything out of Reg’s pack and began refilling it properly. She hadn’t been camping since college, Teresa told Angie, and that had been a few years back.

The conversation ended abruptly when Reg came strolling back and told them that he’d let Tony take the controls for a little while. As he was thanking her for repacking his pack, Angie was sprinting toward the cockpit, hoping to catch Tony before he sent the jet into a nosedive. Actually, he wasn’t doing too badly. He didn’t fly often, usually just enough to keep his license since CDI wasn’t overly-appreciative of dead consultants, especially ones they relied upon as much as they did Tony. And Angie wasn’t really in much of a position to complain, since it turned out she had less flight time than Tony in this type of plane. She spent more of her time in choppers, back in Iraq. But then, the Marines were as careful about what they let their bomb-disposal team members do as CDI was with Tony. She passed Reg on her way out of the cockpit as he went to take the controls back from Tony. He didn’t mind Tony flying the plane; but since Reg was responsible for it, he preferred to take care of the take-off and landing parts himself. And the flight wasn’t all that long anyway, only an hour and a half. In fact, the drive down to Nawakwa Lake might take longer, depending on what the weather had been like the past week. Even the “highway” from Grand Marais wasn’t much to write home about, and they were going to be mostly on small roads and two-tracks.

At least, Reg thought they were, until Aiden whined so badly about wanting “real food” in a restaurant before he was ‘dragged off into the wilderness’ that the whole group consented to drive up to Grand Marais for breakfast first. Leigh had driven up to meet the others at the airport, and while they loaded their gear into the Jeeps, Leigh called to let Karen know about the change in plans. The dig kept a couple of Jeeps at the Grand Marais Airport for the convenience of guests and for the ease of getting ‘re-supplies’ back down to the dig. Only so much stuff actually fits in a Jeep if you want to carry people in it too. Now, Frank and Justin split most of the gear (just what all the hell did Reg bring with him anyway?! It looked and felt like everything but the kitchen sink!) into two of the Jeeps. Frank and Teresa took one of those, and Reg and Leigh went in the other. Angie drove the third, with Aiden next to her studying and Tony and Justin poking each other like little kids in the back. As they pulled into town, Aiden looked up from his book just in time to spot the local motel, with the moose (was that thing wood or real?!) in front. Now he was whining about staying in a motel as well as about eating “real food” in restaurants. For a guy who’d spent time in the Army in Afghanistan, Angie’d never heard anyone complain so much about the accommodations before he’d even seen them.

The food was good in a way that only small-town diners can manage, and the waitress was nice, though Leigh did catch her rolling her eyes once or twice about the “trolls” up for the weekend. The guys were goofing around, like guys will, and the look on Teresa’s face made it clear that Angie’s behavior placed her squarely in the ‘guys’ category and that she found it all amusing, even though she didn’t say much. Leigh made sure to leave the waitress a nice tip to make up for her companions’ behavior, though it wasn’t rude, just a little childish. Leigh called Karen again just before they left town, and told her that they should be there around noon. Most of the drive down went well, with Justin and Tony trying hard to annoy Aiden and distract him from his studying. Reg and Leigh were in the lead, since they’d both driven down to the camp before, with Angie following and Frank bringing up the rear. They were almost to the camp’s “parking lot,” and Leigh was on the phone letting Karen know to expect them soon, when Reg slammed on the brakes and the Jeep slewed sideways in the mud. As the car slid, Drew leapt onto the hood, up the windshield and over the top into Reg’s lap. He stood and stretched like he’d just accomplished something important, then crawled up onto Reg’s shoulder and wrapped himself around the back of Reg’s neck. Karen asked what the sudden squeal was and Leigh told her, and in the background she heard Reg warn Drew that, though he appreciated the welcome, the cat might be safer waiting for them to park the Jeeps next time. Drew apparently didn’t even realize how lucky he’d been that Reg had spotted him a split-second before he’d jumped; otherwise he might have been a flattened hood-ornament rather than a stole.

Since the work had stopped anyway because it was lunch-time, everyone was around to be introduced to Karen and Leigh’s guests. Karen let Leigh start the introductions while she clung to Justin’s neck for the first couple minutes. Justin was surprised at how Karen’s hair had turned more of an auburn color in the last few weeks. He’d never seen her in the summer before, when spending so much time in the sun brought out the very little bit of Irish redness that had gotten passed on to her. Some of both groups had met before at the wedding, and Justin and Reg had been to the dig before as well. As the gear was unloaded, Karen and Leigh told the Envoys about the few unsettling things that had been happening recently, changing the subject back to ‘the students’ whenever Teresa was close enough to overhear. It was only as they’d talked about things last night, they told the others, that they’d noticed that something weird was happening. But there hadn’t been any time for investigating any of it yet. What no one expected was that Reg had decided to play chef for the weekend and treat them all to something special. As he had the coolers he brought lugged over to the ‘kitchen,’ Frank and Justin shared a brief look of “so THAT’s what that stuff is.” Karen gave them a quick run-down of the camp’s layout, and had to listen as Aiden complained that the lake, which was actually really nice for swimming, probably had mud and fish and slimy things in it. Andrew had been getting ready to make lunch, and had the bread all laid out ready to be spread with peanut butter, when Reg swept in. He also had the fixings for that night’s stew dinner ready to put together once lunch was done. Reg announced that he’d be making Quiche Lorraine for lunch and he’d be happy to have Andrew’s help. Andrew stared at him sullenly and shrugged, then started putting away his meal-fixings as Reg spread out his supplies.

Reg took over the kitchen and handed Andrew a knife to begin chopping scallions while he began beating eggs. He tried joking with Andrew, but the kid never cracked a smile. Karen felt bad for Andrew. She could tell that he felt like he’d been pushed out of the niche he’d made for himself, even though he acted like it didn’t matter and he didn’t care. She tried to explain to Reg, and to Teresa and Justin who’d also wandered over to help, that Andrew had been doing a fine job of feeding them up to that time. But as she did, she could hear others snickering about peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and she knew he could hear it too. She didn’t get it; she thought pb sandwiches were fine for lunch. And certainly no one else had been brave enough to step forward and volunteer to cook. Eventually, Andrew drifted away from the kitchen. Only Frank noticed that he headed for the lake. He’d gone out mushroom-hunting, and was on his way back with a bag full. When Justin asked if they were poisonous, Frank joked that he didn’t know and that someone would have to try them to find out. Actually, they were morels, and Reg was pleased to have them to add to dinner, which would be porterhouse steaks he told them. And Justin offered to catch some fish in the morning for breakfast. They tasted best when they went straight from the lake to the skillet, everyone but Tony agreed. He didn’t quite understand when no one wanted to take him up on his offer of fishing for breakfast. Karen just moaned that he’d killed every fish in the lake if he tried to fish with C-4.

Frank went back out to follow Andrew. The kid was acting suspiciously and Frank wanted to know why. With his military and FBI training, Frank was able to catch up to Andrew without him noticing. Or maybe he just didn’t care if he was seen. Frank studied him quietly and was able to sense that the kid had been touched by the Unknown. He was hiking around the lake, but it didn’t appear to be aimless wandering. The kid had a goal. He continued around to the boat docks that Karen had told them were there. There were a half dozen canoes tied up to the small dock, next to the public boat launch. The lake didn’t get a whole lot of traffic, even on holiday weekends, Karen had told them, so she’d arranged to lease the canoes and have them dropped off there for the summer, so the dig team would be able to use them when they wanted. Andrew untied one of them and got in, and started paddling out into the lake. When it became apparent that he was headed for the island, Frank took the rifle that he’d slung across his back and used the scope to watch the kid’s progress. He watched as Andrew carefully pulled the canoe up onto the rocky beach and headed toward the center of the island. Through the scope, Frank could see that the whole island was rocky, with occasional large slabs of limestone jutting up through the small trees and brush. Andrew went directly for a cave-like structure made out of two of those slabs that had fallen to rest against one another. It was like the kid had been there before. Frank studied the ‘cave’ and got a strange sense of ‘Unknownness’ about it, though he was too far away to tell for sure if there really was an Unknown presence there. Frank headed back to the camp.

By the time Frank got back, the quiche was ready. At a certain point, Reg had taken over the cooking and shooed the others out. Justin and Karen set up the tent Justin brought for the two of them (it was ‘amazing’ how long it took the two of them to get their sleeping bags moved in there!), and Aiden sat in a chair and studied while Leigh explained the dig to Tony, Teresa, and Angie. As soon as lunch was over, Aiden wandered off with a pile of books under his arm to go study by the lake. Angie disappeared shortly after, which surprised no one. Karen and a few of the other students, especially the new ones, who had a bit to learn before they would be completely comfortable with their assignments, went back to working on the dig. Leigh went with Frank, Teresa, Reg, Justin and Tony for a hike around the lake. The hike was going well, until Frank spotted Aiden and Angie “in flagrante delecto.”

The two never heard the others coming. But the hikers all heard Aiden and Angie. As Frank got to the edge of the small clearing the two were in, he asked loudly if it didn’t hurt to be bitten by a black fly “there.” Aiden, who was lying on his back, flung one arm over his face while he felt around frantically for his shirt with the other. Angie, who was on top, was the complete opposite. She calmly twisted around and slapped at the fly, drawing attention to the very Marine Corps-looking tattoo on her bare hip. Tony was already pulling his camera-phone out of his pocket as he apologized laughingly to Angie for causing Aiden to go from 60 to 0 in 2.4 seconds. Frank started laughing too, as Leigh grabbed for Tony’s phone and Justin asked what the hell Tony was talking about. There was a awful lot of ribald joking as Tony and Frank teased Justin about still having to have sex with Karen in the dark. Justin replied that it wasn’t true, but he just didn’t want to know anything about Aiden’s ‘little soldier.’ Angie barked “HA!” at the word “little,” and Aiden turned the most interesting shade of scarlet as he laid there with his shirt covering his face. Leigh was already dragging Tony away by one arm, so she never noticed Reg snapping a few shots with the micro-camera he always carried in his pocket.

When they finally got back to camp, laughing and joking on the way, Reg went to work on dinner. Leigh and Teresa helped this time, and when Karen and her students had gotten the pits covered for the night, she enjoyed taking a break to sit wrapped in Justin’s arms beside the campfire. Drew was still lying in the sun, curled up on a large rock, and Karen wondered if some ancient pet had once curled up the same way, as his Indian ‘servants’ sat beside the fire fixing their dinner. Reg made himself a lifelong friend when he presented Drew with the little pieces of steak scraps that he’d set aside for the cat. Drew had been picky about his food this whole time, never supplementing his can of mush and pile of dried cat kibble with anything he caught himself. Mostly he just played with the gigantic black flies and the small critters that wandered through and around the camp. But, this...this was the food someone of his position in the world truly deserved. When everyone was full of steak with morel cream sauce, and rosemany-roasted new potatoes, and fresh young greens with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing, accompanied by a fine red wine for anyone of legal drinking age who wanted some, the crowd of people gathered around the campfire for the usual evening entertainment. Then finally, around midnight, they began drifting away to bed. Leigh and Teresa both took cots in one of the women’s tents. Tony and Frank did the same in one of the men’s tents. Reg had managed to get his new 4-man tent put together with the help of the instruction sheet, Karen was amazed to notice. (A guy read the instructions?!) Aiden and Angie decided to take their chances in a quiet spot just inside the edge of the woods, the same as David and Penny would do a little later, when they thought no one would notice.

It was about 3am, Sunday morning, June 26, when Frank was awakened by the sound of a scream. He was up and out of the tent in an instant. He stood and listened carefully. He could hear movement from other tents and from the edge of the woods as several of the others got up. Aiden was cursing quietly in Arabic, and Angie was hopping on one foot as she pulled her boot the rest of the way onto the other on her way back into camp. She was carrying her gun and wearing a wrist flashlight, but was dressed in only a t-shirt and panties. Justin and Karen, Teresa, and Reg, stumbled out of their tents. They’d been woken too, though they weren’t really sure what it was that disturbed their sleep. Frank described to them the male scream he’d heard, that ended in a way that made Frank think it was choked off. Frank grabbed a few items from the tent, and told the others he was heading out to the lake in the direction the sound had come from. He looked around and asked if the Goth kid had come back. Karen rubbed her eyes and shook her head. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember seeing Andrew at all since lunch time. Leigh and Tony were just emerging from their tents as Justin suggested Karen do a head count. They all put on their comm units, Leigh and Karen fumbling a little as they tried to put the small items on correctly by the light of the campfire. Aiden grabbed his med kit and he, Angie and Frank started toward the lake and the boat dock. By now, some of the kids were starting to rouse. Karen and Leigh didn’t want to alarm them, so they didn’t say much as they checked and counted who was there.

5 of them were missing, Andrew, David and Penny, and Phyllis and John. Karen knew that David and Penny tended to go out together at night, but she didn’t know that John and Phyllis were ‘an item.’ Phyllis had just gotten there the day before though, so maybe they were. Karen let the other’s know, and Reg, Tony, Leigh and Justin began circling out from the camp in pairs to find them. Both Tony and Justin put on their night vision goggles before leaving. Karen and Teresa stayed in the camp to protect the remaining kids from whatever was out there in the dark. Beyond the edge of camp, a ground fog had risen and all the normal night sounds of bugs and bats and creatures small and not so small had stopped, adding a more ominous feel to the night. A few minutes later, Reg and Tony almost tripped over David and Penny sleeping together on the ground. They headed back to the camp with them. Karen told them that Justin and Leigh hadn’t come back yet and neither had John or Phyllis. The two men headed out to try and catch up with Frank, Angie and Aiden.

Frank and Angie were moving as quickly as they could without losing Aiden. Frank had the hand sun on to light their way, and he wasn’t even trying to move quietly. The three almost ran into John, who pushed his way onto the trail with his sleeping bag wrapped over his shoulders. The sound of something moving through the woods (the three Envoys, of course) woke him, and when he saw their light he went toward it. By now, Justin and Leigh had circled out far enough to cross the trail near where the four were standing. Justin offered to take the kid back to camp, and Leigh continued on toward the boat dock with the others. Justin passed Reg and Tony on the way back, and told them where the others were. Frank and the others hadn’t gone much farther when Phyllis stumbled into their path from the other side of the trail. She’d gone a little ways out to find a more peaceful place to sleep. After debating with herself a moment, Angie volunteered to take the young woman back to camp. She hated leaving Aiden alone to fend for himself; but he wasn’t really alone, and she knew she could trust Frank to protect him. And, though she liked Leigh alright, she knew that she was better qualified to be escorting this girl through the possibly dangerous woods alone than Leigh was. The two started back up the winding trail.

When Frank, Aiden and Leigh got to the docks, Frank noticed immediately that the canoe that Andrew had taken out was still missing. He scanned the shore of the island and spotted it where the kid had dragged it up the afternoon before. The light of the waning gibbous moon glinted off its metal hull. Frank started toward one of the remaining 3 canoes and Aiden dropped the med kit into the center of it. Frank looked at him and all Aiden asked was where he should sit. Obviously the medic didn’t have much experience with canoes, but at least he knew enough to put the weight of the med kit at the center. He pointed to the front seat, and Aiden carefully stepped in and squatted down onto the seat, grasping the gunwales tightly with both hands. Frank climbed in, and when Leigh untied the rope, he began paddling strongly out into the lake. Leigh spoke quietly into the mikes, letting the others know where Frank and Aiden were going.

It was about a 1000 feet from the dock to the spot on the island’s shore where Andrew had landed. Reg and Tony were just getting to the dock, and all three could hear the scrape of metal on rocks and Frank nosed the canoe onto the beach. Aiden hopped out and pulled the canoe up as Frank climbed out and grabbed the med kit. He handed it to Aiden and the two headed up into the center of the island, with Frank leading the way following the same path he’d watched Andrew take yesterday. Tony watched them through his binoculars as Reg pulled off his camp shoes and comm unit. He’d been training for a coming triathlon, and he figured that he could get out there faster swimming than he could in the canoe. Leigh and Tony climbed into the canoe as Reg untied it from the dock and slipped into the water still holding the rope. He looped the end of it around his waist and started swimming as the other two began paddling. He was a strong enough swimmer that he actually sped their progress across the lake, so Tony was able to stop paddling periodically to continue watching Frank and Aiden’s movements. Leigh let Justin and Angie and Karen know that they were following Frank and Aiden out to the island. By now Justin and Angie were on their way out to join the others and let everyone know, too.

It was almost 4am when Frank and Aiden got to the spot where Frank had lost sight of Andrew the day before. He shined the light into the ‘cave’ under the limestone slabs. It turned out that the crack went much deeper than it appeared, and angled down into the hill that made the top of the island. Frank asked Aiden for a roll of gauze as he looked around on the ground for a suitable stick. He wrapped the gauze around the end of the stick and pressed it against the trunks of a couple of pine trees nearby, then lit the make-shift torch and stuck the bottom into the ground outside the cave. Out in the canoe, Tony saw the torch flare up, then the light of the hand sun disappeared as Frank led Aiden down into the crack.

It was damp in there and the path was narrow and fairly steep, so that they had to sit and slid down feet first at one point, though the men were in no danger going into an uncontrollable slide. Frank mentioned that a rope might be helpful, and Leigh told him they’d bring the one from their canoe. As they got down a little further, the crack widened. Frank shined the light up at the walls and ceiling and the two men determined that the crack was actually a very old fault. But when he directed the light at the floor they got a shock. The light reflected back off a pair of eyes...Andrew’s eyes staring up blindly from the ground. Frank swept the light around the floor ahead of them and light glinted off pools of black...blood. Only Andrew’s head lay there at Frank’s feet, and soon he and Aiden were able to pick out other body parts strewn around the cave, an arm, then Andrew’s torso. Across the room, they saw a large altar-like block of stone. Fank continued sweeping the light around the room and they saw more blood and body parts. The others heard Aiden’s voice over their ear-buds say “Dear God....” He moved forward toward Andrew’s head, and Frank stopped him. The others heard him say “Hold your ground.”

By now, Tony, Leigh and Reg were pulling their canoe up onto the beach beside Frank’s and Andrew’s. Reg untied the rope from it and looped it carefully, and the three made their way up the hillside toward the torch. In the cave, Frank carefully checked every nook and cranny he could shine the light into, making sure there wasn’t anything waiting there to attack them. The ceiling was low, barely above Frank’s head. When he was sure the room was as secure as he could make it, he motioned to Aiden that he could move forward. Aiden crept forward and reached his hand out to touch the head. Frank stopped him and reminded him that it was a crime scene. And Aiden reminded Frank that this wasn’t the first time he’d been to a crime scene. As Aiden studied the head as much as he could without moving it, Frank studied the room, describing some of what he saw over the comm unit. At the cave mouth, Leigh was carefully tying off the rope for the others to use to get down.

There was something written on the walls in what looked like charcoal, he said, and Karen asked him to describe it. They kind of looked like cave paintings or pictograms, and Leigh told her that she’d make sure they got pictures. There were also odd-looking footprints on the floor, grey and rounded, like large moccasin prints. The floor was rock with a thin layer of dirt that must have sifted or drifted in. Karen asked if the prints had been made by someone walking through ashes, and Frank told them that it was like they were etched into the floor--he touched one and nothing came off on his finger and scratching it didn’t seem to do anything at all. The writing looked old, like it had been traced over many times, and it had an occult feel to it. It kind of looked like the photos he’d seen online of the rock paintings at Pictured Rocks. Aiden reported that the body parts looked like they’d been torn off. The room wasn’t quite awash in blood, but it was spattered around, with pools under and around the various dismembered parts. The footprints all seemed to be on dry spots. They were almost like the prints left when someone walked over a dew-covered lawn.

Reg started down the rope first, but never got more than halfway. He was overcome when the iron-y smell of blood registered in his nostrils, and he came up quickly and leaned against on of the pines, breathing deeply to kill the scent of the blood. Tony did the same thing, the porterhouse he’d had for dinner threatening to make another appearance. Justin and Angie were pulling up on the beach, and they got to the cave mouth as Leigh started down. Expecting the worst, from Reg and Tony’s reactions, she breathed through her mouth. Inside, Frank tried to sense the Unknown. The feeling swept over him, not as bad as the ‘Hell Mouth,’ but still strong and scary. Justin started down the rope after Leigh. He hadn’t seen Reg and Tony rush back out, so he didn’t anticipate the smell under it smacked him in the face. The other heard a few choice swear words muttered under Justin’s breathe, then they heard him swallow hard and continue on. When he got down there, Leigh was already snapping photos with her phone. She confirmed to Karen that the artwork looked similar to other Native American pictograms, only more sinister somehow. Angie stayed topside with Tony and Reg, to keep watch.

Aiden was creeping carefully around the room, studying what was left of Andrew. They could all hear him muttering, catching half spoken phrases like “no, no, look here...,” and “hmm, the upper arm...,” and “Imagine the strength needed...!” There was bruising and indentations on the upper arms, he explained, that indicated that the arms had been grasped and yanked off. It would take extraordinary strength to pull the arms off a living body, he told them. Karen really wished she hadn’t heard that. That meant that Andrew had.... Tony began scouting around the rest of the island. It was small and wild, covered with brush where small animals were nesting. There were a few tall trees at the center, and not much beach to speak of anywhere around the shore.

Justin studied the footprints. They seemed to wander around the room and altar randomly, with no well defined stop or start points. All of them were the greyish color, none bloody. And they were beginning to fade! He and Frank looked carefully around the room again, but there were no other ways in or out beyond the way they’d all come, and the prints did appear to go in and out the same way. Justin began tracking them up the slope. When he got to the top, he noticed that the print changed from grey to a tar-black as they crossed the threshold of the cave, the change occuring abruptly between one step and the next. But they were the same weird prints that seemed to be part of the ground, not impressed on the top in anyway; and these were fading too. Justin had Leigh take photos of the prints, putting a dollar bill down for size comparison and making sure to get a shot of where they changed from grey to black. He continued following the prints as they made their way to the top of the rock formation that made up the top of the island, where the prints just...disappeared.

Reg got back into town Thursday evening, in time to go to the funeral home’s visitation hours for Bob Newell. By Friday morning, May 27, Tony had left town. He’d gotten a call early that morning from his boss. They needed his expertise and there was a lot of work to do. If he wanted to take a break in the middle of it for a date, he had to get to the job site immediately. So he did. He’d almost blown it (pun intended) a couple times now with Anne; he was NOT going to mess up this time, especially after he’d had to talk her into the date this Saturday. Later that morning, most of the other Envoys went to Bob’s funeral. It was very well attended. Almost everyone from the security company Bob worked for was there, as were a few members of the DPD. Bob’s wife was holding up fairly well under the circumstances, though the children, aged 2, 4, and 6 years old, really didn’t understand everything that was going on. Frank’s kind words to them and to Bob’s family about how much he’d done to prevent a horrible crime that would have affected every citizen of Detroit brought them comfort, even when he couldn’t go into details about what Bob had done, ‘for reasons of national security.’

By noon, the Envoys were off to take care of their own business before meeting again for dinner with Fr. McLaren. Karen had gone to Oaklawn and Mt. Elliott cemeteries to check on their restrictions on headstones, then gone to a monument company to have stones made for Melissa and Jane Howard. They were simple. Melissa’s was inscribed with her name and dates of birth and death, and “Beloved Mother of Jane,” with a rose etched in one corner; Jane’s had her name and dates, “Beloved Daughter of Melissa,” and an etching of a rubber ball. Maybe it wouldn’t seem like much to someone else, but to Karen it only seemed right. She knew the little girl, maybe better than anyone else besides her own mother had. She couldn’t let them lie for eternity in unmarked graves, as if they’d never even existed. Leigh was downtown, doing research on the photos that had been found in Justin’s attic. Frank and Justin had gone to work after the funeral. They didn’t know exactly when they’d be leaving for Fr. Andrew’s funeral, so they wanted to get as much done as they could so they wouldn’t be too far behind when they got back.

Reg didn’t tell any of the others what he was doing. As far as they knew, he was working from home on his computer. What he was really doing was research on the powers and manifestations of ghosts. He was trying to find out all the most common ways that they were ‘seen’ or experienced. Cold spots, and poltergeist activity like strange sounds and the moving of objects were all fairly consistent indicators of spirit activity. Orbs or globes of light captured on film, often not seen until after the film was processed, were also pretty common. And dream presences and EVPs or electronic voice phenomena were often reported. Which was not to say that Reg didn’t come across a whole host of other things that people claimed indicated a ghostly presence, some pretty far out there. Luckily, he’d been able to set up a screening program that sifted through the millions of references to ghosts to come up with the stuff that might actually have some truth to it.

And Aiden continued to sulk because they wouldn’t let him out of the hospital. Everyone made it in to see him at some point during the day. The only thing that seemed to be saving his sanity and keeping him from trying to escape was one of the games he’d discovered on his new laptop, City of Heroes. Not that he’d had much time to play, with all the interruptions. He figured that they’d taken at least a couple gallons of blood out him, two or three vials at a time over the course of the past few days. And he’d been run through the MRI twice. He expected that soon the people from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not would be there to take his picture. It would get displayed at the museum right next to some guy who’d survived 18 lightning strikes or some woman who’d had 27 babies. Angie obviously had more uninterrupted time to play the game because her character was routinely kicking Aiden’s character’s butt. Except when he met a new ‘buddy’ named Kill Switch, who managed to take Angie’s character out. Now she was desperately trying to find this ‘Kill Switch.’ Aiden wasn’t sure if it was to team up or for a rematch. After several of his friends put their heads together via cell phone regarding his plight, Leigh suggested that he try calling Fr. Andrew’s friend Dr. Cochran to get him out, at least to go to the funeral. Besides, someone probably ought to tell the doctor about Fr. Andrew’s death anyway, and since Aiden was the executor of his will....

Frank had his own plan. Having Dr. Cochran spring him for the funeral was fine, but Frank had a way to get him out for dinner that night with Fr. McLaren. He showed up at the hospital with paperwork claiming that Aiden needed to be questioned, and, due to the sensitive nature of the information he had and the fact that the hospital was not the most secure place to do the questioning, he had to go ‘downtown’ to be questioned. Between the badge, and the paperwork the hospital would need to fill out in order to refuse the ‘request,’ and Frank’s promise that Aiden would be back later that evening no worse than when he’d left, the administrators and Aiden’s doctors finally gave in. They did insist, though, that Aiden use a wheelchair the entire time he was out. Luckily, the new car Frank had signed out after the ‘zombi incident’ had as large a trunk as the Lincoln had.

It wasn’t that Aiden wasn’t grateful for being released, even though it was only for the evening, but he wasn’t sure that scrubs were appropriate dress for meeting with a Vatican representative at Roma Café. He talked Frank into going past his apartment so he could change. But Angie hadn’t been warned that he was coming home, however briefly. She was sitting on the couch in a t-shirt and her underwear playing City of Heroes. When the door opened and Aiden walked in, Angie was off the couch like a shot. She hit him with a flying mid-air tackle that left them with her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. If Frank hadn’t been right behind him, Aiden would have ended up flat on his back. Instead, he had to waddle in far enough to let Frank close the door. Angie asked Frank to leave, just for an hour. Frank looked at his watch and told her that they had dinner in a half hour. He could almost hear the balloon burst. He was right, Angie admitted, and the two headed to the bedroom to get dressed.

They were back in fifteen minutes, but Angie still couldn’t keep her hands off Aiden. She kept touching him, mostly on the butt; Aiden certainly wasn’t complaining. When Frank rolled his eyes, Aiden asked if “the woman made me do it” was the oldest excuse in the book. Angie slapped him hard on the ass for that. Aiden finally had a chance to take a look around the apartment now, and he noticed that the place was a mess. “Weren’t Marines supposed to be all spit and polish?” he asked. Angie told him that she was mustered out now. Besides, he TOLD her not to clean up. Aiden argued that he’d meant that she not clean up any of his stuff, not that she not clean up her own mess. Frank suggested that Aiden consider his instructions to her more carefully the next time, as he opened the door. Angie gave her boss a peck on the cheek for his support on her way out into the hall. He warned her that there would be dire consequences if she ever did that at the office. The three headed out to meet the others at Roma.

At 7pm, the Envoys once again found themselves ushered to the ‘Mafia room’ in the back of Roma Cafe. There, they found Fr. McLaren already seated at the head of the table with a ‘rocks’ glass in front of him, with about two fingers of what was most likely Irish whiskey in it. “Order anything ye like,” he told them as they seated themselves. He was surprised to see Aiden there, and Frank explained that he “signed for him.” It would’ve taken 15 forms filled out in triplicate to stop an agent of the DHS from taking Aiden out of the hospital. The Homeland Security Act was a wonderful thing when used for the right purposes, he chuckled. Apparently Fr. McLaren had gotten enough information from Fr. Andrew to recognize everyone in the group. Reg had barely opened his mouth to introduce himself and the priest was greeting each person like he already knew them. He asked Karen if she was going by Mrs. Kazotchek or if she would still use Dr. Riley or something else entirely. Of course, it might not matter since he expected that they would all soon be on a first name basis, he continued. Karen looked at her hands, at the table, at the wall across from her, everywhere but directly at Fr. McLaren when she told him that she would still use Dr. Riley professionally but Mrs. Kazotchek for everything else. She couldn’t help it; she wasn’t going to let this guy, priest or not, think he could replace Fr. Andrew. She knew that she wasn’t coming across all warm and fuzzy, and she didn’t really care. She would try to keep from prejudging him, from disliking him just because of why he was sent there. It wasn’t his fault that Fr. Andrew was dead. And he had every right to be there. But he was acting all ‘buddy, buddy’ with them and Fr. Andrew’s body was barely cold and not yet in a grave. He would never take Fr. Andrew’s place. Ever.

He asked where Mr. Leonetti was, and Leigh told him that Tony had gotten called away for work. As the others started chatting with him like some old friend, Karen pulled back into herself. She knew that he was probably a really nice guy and all, but she felt like they were all betraying Fr. Andrew’s memory (or was it that she felt they were betraying her love for him) by so readily welcoming Fr. McLaren into their group. At least Frank wasn’t letting him just waltz in. Frank had his phone out and was snapping a picture of the priest. He was going to have the picture ‘run’ and see what turned up about this guy. When Fr. McLaren noticed, he sat up straight and smiled directly at the camera. He laughed when he told Frank that he expected Frank would find something from his younger, wilder days, before he found the Lord and mended his wicked ways. Justin, Leigh, Reg and Frank all, at about the same time, asked if he’d been in the IRA, and he said that they preferred Sinn Fein. Once they were all settled and their food and drinks were ordered, Fr. McLaren got to ‘business.’ He asked them if they had any questions, and nobody really knew what to say. He chuckled and said that he was sure someone had something they wanted to know. He told them that he knew he would never be able to fill Fr. Damien’s shoes. The look on Karen’s face made it quite clear that on this one point she fully agreed with him, and she made no attempt to mask it.

Frank asked if he could tell them anything about his mission here and what it had to do with the group. Karen looked him straight in the eye when she said, “More to the point, are you our new contact?” The tone of her voice was as business-like as she could make it, which made the question sound like a challenge. He would be trying to fill some of Fr. Damien’s role, he told them. He would be keeping an eye on and hopefully forestalling certain demonic activities in the US. Fr. Damien had been an exorcist; but there wasn’t much call for exorcism these days. There were usually other more mundane explanations for what at first appeared to be demonic possession, either mental illness or drug abuse. He didn’t need to tell any of them that “the ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night” were really out there, he admitted. But calling attention to them didn’t do much good, he said. Justin asked him if he could help them out some by telling them what he already knew about them. That they all belonged to a ‘super-secret group’ who stand between the darkness and the innocent, he said. As far as what Fr. Damien had told him, well, they all knew that he was never forthcoming with his opinions, except on “certain matters” he added with a wink at Aiden. Then he apologized for referring to him as Fr. Damien, but that was how he’d known him.

Fr. McLaren told them that he’d sort of been sucked into the vacuum created by Fr. Damien’s passing. With no warning that he needed to prepare for it. Unfortunately, he said, Fr. Damien’s sin had always been pride. Personally, his was gluttony, he added with a laugh and a raise of his empty glass. All he could really do was try to keep a rein on it. Justin offered to buy him another scotch, and he was quickly corrected by Reg, Leigh and Frank, as well as Fr. McLaren, that it was fine Irish whiskey that he was drinkin’. Anyway, he was not a member of the team’s “little fraternity,” he told them, though, like Fr. Damien, he might end up signing on at some point. One of the things Fr. Andrew had put in his report was something about them “stumbling around in the dark.” Justin asked him what his specialty was, since Fr. Andrew had been an exorcist. His expertise was Demonology, he said. Just because they don’t go around possessing folks the way the movies show it, didn’t mean that they don’t exist. Incidently, he told them, the ghul wasn’t gone for good, but it was banished back to Hell for now. Then Frank added that just because he was gone didn’t mean that he wasn’t still having an effect in the world. Fr. McLaren asked what he meant. Frank said that it could still be in touch with others in this world, others who could be set to taking his revenge against the team for him. The priest asked him how he knew this, and Frank told him about the dream he’d had.

When Frank had given them a quick synopsis of the dream, Fr. McLaren told him that his “sainted grandmother” would have told Frank that he had “the sight.” Justin said that he’d thought that “the sight” was what Karen had. There was a little discussion about all the different things that could be tossed under that heading. Then Fr. McLaren teased Frank that what his “sainted grandmother” really would have said was that he’d been “touched by the fairies.” Reg and Leigh were both quietly studying the priest during the conversation. Leigh didn’t sense anything Unknown about him though she got a hint of the Art. Reg got the impression that he was interested and amused about dealing with them, with an undertone of grief, but he was by no means taking the group lightly. Frank told them that the dreams usually occurred when he went to sleep with a particular matter on his mind. Sometimes he could even cause them that way on purpose. The dreams would hint at answers to the problem, though they were mostly allegorical in nature. Afterwards he always had nightmares, too.

Now Reg asked Fr. McLaren if there were any concerns he brought to the table. Justin asked jokingly if he was there to give them a ‘mission.’ “And then the tape recorder will blow up, right?” Fr. McLaren laughed. Besides escorting Fr. Damien home for proper burial, he would be a source of information for the team. And he’d learned a few ‘tricks’ in his time, he added. Nothing like Fr. Damien though. Fr. Damien was a rare sort, the only one of his kind he’d ever met, Fr. McLaren told them. He looked across the table at Aiden and narrowed his eyes. The others could see Aiden’s armor plating go up. Fr. Damien had been particularly concerned about Aiden’s growing powers, he said. He knew someone who could probably teach him how to control it. And he’d probably be able to persuade her to come to the States to do it, he added with a grin and almost under his breath. Fr. Damien was equally concerned that Aiden finish medical school as well.

Aiden and Angie had been sitting close to one another, and a couple of people had noticed that they couldn’t see the hands of either one. So when Fr. McLaren asked if there was anything he needed “to know about them,” Aiden blushed a deep red. Angie laughed, and Frank called for a ‘hand check.’ Angie and Aiden both lifted their hands above the table to prove they weren’t ‘doing anything’ under there. Karen and Leigh looked at one another and started laughing. Both of them had been wondering the same thing. Then Fr. McLaren asked Aiden if his father was really his father and Aiden went a shade darker than the others thought possible. He told the priest through clenched teeth, “He is.” Frank had been harboring the same suspicion, that perhaps Fr. Andrew’s interest in Aiden’s welfare was more than professional. He asked, “What about your grandfather?” Fr. McLaren asked how much the group knew about Fr. Damien. Not much. “He wasn’t very forthcoming,” Justin joked. They’d had to get his full name from someone else. Fr. McLaren told them that he’d never seen Fr. Damien take such an interest in anyone as he had in Aiden and Karen, but, as usual, he’d never explained why.

Then Fr. McLaren told them what he knew about Fr. Damien. Damien Andrew Grigori had been born in 1862, in Florence, to a sister of the St. Teresa Convent. Sister Phillipa was said to be a holy woman; she could heal through the laying on of her hands. She had insisted that the pregnancy had been the result of a visitation by an angel. The Mother Superior called in a special branch of the Holy See to investigate. Sister Phillipa had entered the convent right out of school and had lived there ever since. Mother Superior was concerned that it could have been that she was conned by some smooth-talking man. Or it truly could have been a visitation. There’d been rumors of things half-seen, the sound of wings and such. Sister Phillipa died shortly after giving birth. The Jesuits took the baby and had him examined. There were certain unusual physical characteristics, deformities of the shoulders, and a vestigial tail, and the term Nephilim was used. Reg and Justin interrupted him, asking him to explain Nephilim. Reg recognized it from the research he’d done when he first heard the name Grigori. But Justin had clearly forgotten everything he’d learned in catechism. He wondered if the Nephilim were somehow related to the Seraphim and the Cherubim, and thought the Cherubim were those winged babies.

As the others laughed, Karen explained that the other terms were sort of ‘ranks’ of angelic beings, and Leigh went into more depth. Then Fr. McLaren asked if they could come back to the catechism lesson another time and he continued the story. The Jesuits named the baby and chose to raise him to be a weapon in ‘the war they fought.’ Fr. Damien himself believed that his father had been a demon and his mother a holy woman. Certainly his longevity and special powers lent credence to that belief. So he chose to live his life in a way that would atone for sins that were never his. Personally, Fr. McLaren told them, he thought life was too short not to enjoy. This brought up the subject of Tony’s belief that Fr. Andrew had told him he needed more lust in his life. There was a great deal of laughter as the team told Fr. McLaren how Tony was acting on this. “Some people have selective hearing,” Justin joked. “Tony has creative hearing.” Frank, who had ‘happened’ to overhear the conversation between Tony and Fr. Andrew that had started the whole thing, told them all that actually Tony had been confessing, and Fr. Andrew had asked him if he didn’t have anything else, any lustful thoughts, to confess, since he didn’t feel that Tony was telling him everything. Tony twisted it around so that it sounded to him like Fr. Andrew thought he wasn’t lusting enough.

Fr. McLaren muttered something about thinking Sheila was better off with Tam than with himself, then said aloud that he DID know what he was missing, which he thought made celibacy a greater sacrifice than for someone who’d never had the experience. Then once again, he directed the conversation back to Fr. Damien, saying that he was beginning to understand the notes referring to the team’s amazing ability to go off on tangents. Anyway, he told them, he thought that the exorcist didn’t enjoy life enough and took on too much guilt that he didn’t deserve. But he was a good man and had been his mentor. He’d known him for 25 years, and he hadn’t changed in all that time until the past month, until the fight with the ghul. Whatever he’d done that night, he’d had to give up something of himself to do. Fr. Damien always used to say that he had two miracles in him, Fr. McLaren told them. Aiden became very interested in his plate all of a sudden, so he didn’t see the look that Karen shot across the table at him. But everyone else did. The look said that Aiden had better never forget that those miracles had both been used for his sake.

Fr. McLaren chuckled as he told them that his life now imposed a moderation on him that the friends of his youth would be amazed to see. Once he’d seen Fr. Damien’s body safely home, he would be returning to the US to be a resource for the team, and to make sure that the country hadn’t completely gone to Hell in a handbasket. He’d been charged with checking to make sure that it hadn’t become a Protestant theocracy. “American Taliban” was the precise phrase his superior used, he said. Frank, of course, was pretty sure that the country was already well inside that proverbial handbasket. But he reminded the priest that the Catholic Church had no room for pointing fingers at others. The Inquisition and the Crusades came immediately to everyone’s minds. No, it wasn’t a shining example in the past, Fr. McLaren agreed. But that had been a long time ago and he thought that they’d changed for the better over the centuries.

In any case, he had his own orders as well, that had nothing to do with the Envoys, he told them. And he had his own personal interest in the rise in activity of a darker sort here in the States. There had been some increasing discussion that this might be ‘the end of days.’ He personally didn’t think so, but it could well be, given some of the things that were going on. He’d hate to see the world go down in flames. “It’s a flawed place, for sure,” he said, “but it’s the only place we’ve got.” Justin asked him where he was staying, and Fr. McLaren told them that any parish would be more than happy to offer space to a representative from the Vatican. But, for the moment, Fr. Jerzy was putting him up at the St. Lad’s rectory. Justin let him know how relieved he was that his uncle now knew at least a little about what he’d been doing, so that he didn’t have to keep lying to him. He was also glad that he hadn’t been the one who’d had to tell him. He was wondering, he added, if Fr. McLaren knew what was wrong with Marlene, if Fr. Andrew had told him anything about the situation. From what Fr. Damien had told him, he thought Marlene might be ‘broken.’ But he’d have to see her before he’d know. And if she was, he wasn’t sure that there was anything that could be done for her. She would either make her own way through it or she might stay like she was. Karen could see that Justin felt awful about this, so she reminded him that she would be asking for Lita’s help for Marlene too. She might not reach her right away, but if her condition was related to what the ‘visiting houngans’ had done to her, maybe Lita would know what to do. When Fr. McLaren asked who she was talking about, Karen told him that Lita was an expert on voodoo that another friend had referred them to when they’d first been working on the matter. She’d been the one who told them how to defeat the Greater Zombi. The priest asked if she would share with him anything she could about it, and Karen told him that she would see that he got everything that Lita had sent her.

Fr. McLaren let them know that the Vatican had been thinking of having Fr. Damien’s funeral on Wednesday next, and they all agreed that it should work. They’d have to fly out on Monday (which happened to be Memorial Day, and Karen found that very appropriate) to get there by Tuesday. That would give them time to adjust to the time zone before the funeral. Then they began discussing whether there were any other pending ‘cases’ to discuss with Fr. McLaren while he was there. Justin wondered if all the bodies that had ‘left’ Oaklawn Cemetery the night of the zombi attack on the sound stage had been accounted for, and Frank told them that they had been. At some point, Karen wasn’t even sure when, she noticed that Reg was watching her. It wasn’t obvious, but it seemed like any time she looked in his direction, he’d stare, like he was trying to figure out if she was looking at him or not. She hoped he hadn’t gotten some weird idea that she had a thing for him. He was a nice guy and all, but she loved Justin and had no romantic interest in Reg at all. What he was actually doing was trying to tell if she was seeing Stephen there with him. He had no idea if Stephen was around him all the time or only sometimes. In any case, Karen hadn’t seen him at all that evening or since the party on Justin’s shop roof. If he’d really wanted to know when Stephen was there, he probably should have asked her. The last time she’d told him about it, it had seemed to freak him out; so now she wasn’t going to tell him unless he did ask her. Leigh, at least, had come out and told Karen once that if Karen ever saw her husband hanging around, to let her know right away. She didn’t go into details, but Karen knew that something Unknown had happened to her husband, and Leigh said that if he was around, it was definitely a problem.

The only things that they really had on their plates right now, at least that they could think of, were the Hell Mouth at Justin’s house and the voodoo snake god that needed to be hunted down. And they couldn’t really do much more about the Hell Mouth until Weeping Sparrow had finished her research and told them what needed to be done. Fr. McLaren asked who Weeping Sparrow was and Justin laughed, saying that at least the priest was more polite about it than his one cousin who wanted to know “what the hell kind of name is that?” Karen told him that she was an Ojibwa wise woman and friend, who recognized Justin’s property as the location of an ancient evil who was just beginning to waken. Justin added that whatever it was, it had caused THE flood. Reg and Leigh pointed out that almost every culture had a ‘flood myth.’ Then Justin asked Fr. McLaren how much he had told Uncle/Fr. Jerzy. Fr. McLaren told him that Jerzy knew what he knew now. And when he’d told him, it had confirmed that many things Jerzy had long suspected about the supernatural were true. He’d seemed relieved, Fr. McLaren said. But, for the safety of his parishioners, he added, it would probably be best if he didn’t know more.

By now, Frank’s Blackberry was coming back to life, bringing with it information about Fr. McLaren’s past. Though he looked in his early thirties, he was actually in his early forties. As he’d told them already, he’d been a member of Sinn Fein. But he’d never been a bomber. It appeared he was more like a lightning rod, a rabble rouser who made a target of himself. He was never a killer, but he did have a lot of arrests on his record. Then he had some kind of ‘conversion experience,’ joined the Church and hadn’t done anything since. While Frank was studying this, Leigh had asked Fr. McLaren if he happened to know any Lutheran ministers who might ‘know’ enough that she could go to them for confession. He didn’t. As she explained to the others the differences between Catholic and Lutheran confession, Frank sent a text message to his old FBI contacts George and Gloria, asking if they knew of any ministers that might fit the bill for Leigh.

Fr. McLaren told them that once they were back from the funeral, he’d be “kicking about” the US, visiting parishes and checking out rumors, but all of them could call him any time. Justin suggested that, if he had a cell phone, Reg could rig it so that they could find him if they needed him. But Fr. McLaren told them that he’d spent far too much time “dodging the bobbies” to have anyone knowing where he was at all times. He would let the team know if he came upon anything that they should be taking care of. Reg asked if there were any Catholic archives with information that the team might be able to use, stuff on death cults in particular. There were, and some even HE couldn’t get access to. However, useful though they might be, they were mostly still hard copy. For all the Vatican’s interest in technology and science, it was only slowly creeping into the 21st century and joining the ‘paperless age.’ The preponderance of death cults springing up not just in the US but around the world was one of the reasons that some in the Church were speculating that this was the end time. Most of these cults were full of idiots flailing in the dark based on the thoughts of someone touched by ‘something,’ he told them. But a few were much more serious trouble. Unfortunately there was no real way to know the difference, to tell if someone really was a minion of the Unknown, from a distance. So while non-lethal methods would be best when possible, the way he viewed it (and this was NOT the “party line,” he told them, so he would deny ever making this suggestion), “If you’re going to sin, do it well and be sorry for it later.”

The dinner had been reasonably sumptuous, and had ended with the waiters leaving the entire dessert tray so that everyone could have a chance to try several different things. Aiden had been eating like a man starved; he’d been eating hospital food for four days already, and he wasn’t sure how many more meals he’d have to eat there. The bill never even showed up at the table; Fr. McLaren told them that he’d already taken care of it. This one was on him; someone else could pick up the next one. Reg and Leigh went out dancing afterwards at one of the “industrial” clubs and had a great time. When both Aiden and Leigh called Fr. McLaren on Saturday, May 28, to have Dr. Phillip Cochran added to the list of attendees at the funeral, they found that if he didn’t answer right away, he called back just a short time later. Reg sent him an archive of material he’d collected, and Fr. McLaren emailed back that it would be passed on to the ‘appropriate people.’ Justin sent him a link to some ‘notes’ he’d been keeping on the things the team had encountered, though he wasn’t sure how useful Fr. McLaren would find them. And Karen made sure to send him everything Lita had sent regarding ‘voodoo.’ That evening, Tony flew back in from his job site just to take Anne on their date. It was so successful that the others didn’t even know that he was back in town until he let them know early Monday morning that he would meet them in Rome on Tuesday. He was going to get a charter flight through CDI, since he had to go straight back to the job site after the funeral. Unfortunately, Anne couldn’t get the time off to go with Tony to the funeral.

By Sunday morning, Fr. McLaren had the confirmation that the funeral would be Wednesday, June 1, and he called everyone with the information. When Reg found out that he was planning on flying back to Rome on a commercial flight, and not even first class, he offered that the priest should join them on the flight he’d already chartered. And they could even take Fr. Andrew’s body with them as well. Fr. McLaren gratefully accepted the offer. Reg told him that he would fly the plane himself, but then he’d be too tired to attend the funeral. Hiring a pilot might be a little expensive, but it was more comfortable and he could certainly afford it. Karen emailed Lita to thank her for the information she’d sent, letting her know that she’d been told by the others that the ritual for destroying a Greater Zombi had come in particularly useful. And she let Lita know what, as far as they could tell, had been behind the whole incident. She told Lita that she would have sent her a nice bottle of rum, if she’d had an address where she knew Lita would get it. Since she couldn’t do that, she told Lita that she should find herself the finest bottle of rum she could and send her the bill. She also told her about Marlene’s condition, and told her that if she had the time, she and Justin would appreciate her coming to have a look, to see if she could help, all expenses paid. Karen knew that Justin would fret about this until they had an answer, but she let him know that Lita was off doing research, so he shouldn’t expect immediate action. Frank was doing some fretting of his own, too. The DHS couldn’t find anything, not a single trace, that the mysterious woman from Kat’s funeral even existed. Which, of course, made him even more suspicious about her.

The Envoys who were going to Fr. Andrew’s funeral spent most of Monday, May 30, packing and taking care of any last minute details, and most of them took naps. They and their guest, Dr. Cochran, began arriving at City Airport around 6pm, and by 7pm their plane had been cleared for take-off, destination Rome. The flight passed relatively uneventfully. Karen brought Drew along, partly for company and partly so he could meet the others. He was dubious of the carrier at first; but once Karen explained to him that he had to ride in it if he wanted to go along to Rome with her (his only other option being to stay home alone for several days), he walked in and settled down. Once the plane was at altitude, Karen let the cat out and he went around exploring. She’d brought along a couple disposable litter boxes, and set up one in one of the bathroom for the trip over. Pretty much everyone agreed that Drew was an appropriate name for the cat given his appearance. When he got around to meeting Fr. McLaren, the priest squatted down to greet him. Without warning, Drew leapt up and swatted the priest across the face with one paw, claws out. He didn’t do much damage beyond a row of tiny puncture marks, but both Fr. McLaren and Karen were a little shocked by the cat’s reaction. Karen hoped that she hadn’t caused the cat to dislike Fr. McLaren because of her mixed feelings about him. When Drew was done visiting, he curled up in Karen’s lap as she sat staring out the window. Later in the flight, Karen was relieved to see the cat curled up on the priest’s chest as he laid back and dozed.

Reg told Angie to bring her laptop along so they could have a little online death-match. It lasted a while, and Angie did a respectable job (for a novice with some obvious natural talent, Reg said), but he eventually won. By the time that happened, Angie was so frustrated and pissed off at losing that she slammed the computer shut, grabbed Aiden by the arm and began to storm off toward the back. Dr. Cochran, who had appeared to be deep in conversation with Leigh (he had read some of her father-in-law’s writing), stopped the two. He told Aiden “You’re not cleared for ‘that’ yet. Sit down.” It was clear that Angie wanted to argue the point, but she actually seemed to be intimidated by the doctor. Maybe it was just because he’d been good enough to ‘sign Aiden out’ of the hospital for this and she didn’t want to make him regret his decision. Aiden slunk back to his seat. Angie went back over to Reg and ‘bitch-slapped’ him, then stomped off to a bathroom. Reg and Justin tried to get Aiden’s mind off it by engaging him in a Halo game, but ended up playing by themselves.

When Angie hadn’t come out after a couple minutes in the bathroom, Frank went to see why. He put his ear to the door and could hear her pounding the metal-lined wall. He went back and opened his bag, then went back to the bathroom and put one ‘door wedge’ in the top of the door and one in the bottom, as a joke. A half-hour later, when Angie had worn herself out, she found herself locked in. She didn’t think it was funny. A couple good kicks later, and the door flew open. As she walked up the aisle and past Reg on her way to the bar, she said calmly “Bathroom door’s broken.” Justin and Reg tried to get her to join the Halo game, but she refused, and disappeared into the bar area. Eventually, Aiden wandered off looking for her. Dr. Cochran was asleep by now, and the two were gone for quite some time. When they finally came back, separately, they both looked more relaxed. The thundercloud that had been hanging over Angie since the death-match ended was gone, and she was wearing a satisfied-looking smirk.

Almost everyone dozed off at one time or another, though for Justin that time happened to be just about an hour before they touched down in Rome. At one point, Aiden was lying on his back with Angie lying face down on top of him, both sound asleep. Justin came over and asked Karen how many people were on the dig. She wasn’t sure why, but she told him that besides her and Leigh, and Jaime and Chris, there were anywhere from 12 to 20 others. Not all the students signed up for the full Spring/Summer term, plus guests were always welcome to come up and play at being ‘archaeologists for a day.’ Karen didn’t bother to mention to anyone that Stephen had joined them, staying with Reg for the entire flight (as far as she knew based on what she saw while she was awake.) She would ask Justin later what he thought she should do. She didn’t want to alarm Reg, since the thought of Stephen being around seemed to bother him. But sooner or later he was going to have to deal with the issue.

A little later, Leigh, who had been stretched out under a blanket in one of the seats sleeping, woke with a squeal. She make a choking sound a little like a drowned cat and said something like ‘get off!’ followed by more choking noises and ‘him!’ She stood with a panicked look on her face and said, in a tone that bordered on a scream, that she was wet; then she ran to a bathroom and slammed the door. A moment later, she tossed her bra out; and a little after that she came out herself looking shaken, completely ignoring the bra that she stepped over, and curled up across a couple of seats and laid there shivering. Karen went over and lifted Leigh’s head gently and laid it in her lap as she sat down beside the frightened woman. Karen rubbed Leigh’s arm with one hand and stroked the hair back from her face with the other. When Leigh had calmed down some, she told Karen, in a voice barely above a whisper, that her husband was trying to drown her. She had been dressed only in her bra and panties, and those were the only things that had been wet when she woke up. Frank had gone over to investigate the bra once Leigh had left the bathroom. It was sopping wet with muddy water and there was a gob of muck near the center. As he touched the muck to see what it was, it disappeared. After that, Drew wouldn’t go anywhere near Leigh for the rest of the flight.

Tony was waiting for the others at the airport in Rome when they came through customs a little past 11am local time. As they walked toward the main entrance, they found a man waiting for them holding up a placard with Fr. McLaren’s name on it. The man led them to a large black limo, and the others got in and waited while Fr. McLaren gave the drivers of the large van parked behind the limo the paperwork necessary for picking up Fr. Andrew’s coffin. Once that was loaded, the two vehicles drove off to Vatican City. They passed the entrance and drove deep into the heart of the Vatican. When they finally stopped, they were met by five priests, also Jesuits Fr. McLaren told them. He and the other priests lifted the coffin when it was removed from the van. They carried it into a building and the others followed silently as they moved deeper, into what was obviously a crypt below the building. It wasn’t fancy, but there were engraved plaques on the walls, one with Fr. Andrew’s name among them. There were chairs set out, one for each of them plus 4 others. And there was a stand at the front of the room, ready to hold the coffin. As the Envoys and their guest, Dr. Cochran, sat, they were joined by a nun and 3 other priests, and Dee. Karen hadn’t expected to see her there. Neither she nor Fr. Andrew had seemed very fond of each other, to say the least.

As if he’d been waiting and watching them from some secret spy-hole, another priest joined them as soon as they were all settled in their seats. He was a tall, older man with a long narrow face, dressed in full liturgical vestments. His appearance there seemed to surprise Fr. McLaren. The funeral Mass, a full High Mass said in Latin, began right away. Karen didn’t know Latin, but it really didn’t matter. When you’ve sat through Mass every week for more than half your life, from shortly after your birth onward, the ritual becomes a part of you. Karen didn’t need to understand the words to know what was going on and where to sit, stand and kneel. And she didn’t need to speak Latin to follow along with every prayer, though she said them in English. Her tears came, unbidden, as soon as the priest began the Mass, rolling silently down her cheeks from behind her closed eyes. As if by magic, or perhaps by watching through the same spy-hole, other priests appeared and disappeared with all the necessary ritual implements--the censer with its smoking incense, the chalice of wine, the plate with the host, the small bowl of oil for anointing Fr. Andrew’s forehead and lips. As the Mass continued, Karen and a couple of the others there could feel the power building. It was like sitting inside a transformer as it spun up to full speed, similar but not quite the same as the power she’d felt when Anjanka had brought CJ back from the brink of death. The power, neither Good nor Evil, vibrated in their bones like sub-harmonics. It was the holy power of prayer.

As if he knew somehow, the mourners who were Catholic were given Holy Communion. Near the end of the Mass, the priest opened the coffin and looked at Fr. Andrew’s body as if he were looking for something specific, some sign. He said what Karen recognized as the sacrament of Extreme Unction, the Anointing of the Sick. But there was something else added that she didn’t recognize, though she could tell that it was not said in Latin. As the priest said the prayer, he anointed Fr. Andrew’s forehead and lips with holy oil in the Sign of the Cross. When he did this, Reg, Dee, Justin and Leigh all saw...the only way they could explain it later was that a trail of fire was left behind as the cross was traced on the dead priest’s skin. The officiant took the rosary from his belt and wrapped it around Fr. Andrew’s hands, which had been crossed over his chest. Then he leaned in and kissed Fr. Andrew’s forehead and closed the coffin. With a slight nod, Fr. McLaren and the other five pall-bearers stood and slid the coffin into the crypt, closing the small door behind it. The priest said a few words to Fr. McLaren, then left.

Other than the words and movements that were an integral part of the Mass, Karen hadn’t moved or spoken a word. Neither had Aiden. As the other priests and the nun filed out of the crypt, Dee asked quietly if any one else had recognized what was added at the end of the Anointing. They hadn’t. It was Aramaic, she told them, and meant “Go to your rest. You have earned your Peace. Be with God.” Fr. McLaren came over to the group and apologized. He seemed quite flustered. He hadn’t expected the Mass to be said right away, and he hadn’t expected that it would be said by Cardinal Bernardo, the head of the Jesuit order himself! The Cardinal had told him before leaving that he should make sure the group received all the hospitality the Vatican could offer. In fact, rooms had been prepared for them at the Vatican City Hotel. Both Fr. McLaren and Reg were also startled when they realized that one of the mourners was Dee Crystal. Both knew her show but hadn’t known, or been told, that Dee knew Fr. Andrew or might attend. Of course, none of the others, even Leigh, had known she would be there either.

Fr. McLaren told them that he’d never been to the crypt before and he sounded like he was surprised that the group had been brought there. Dee asked if she could be taken to where Pope John Paul II was buried. Fr. McLaren asked them to wait there, and he scuttled off. Ten minutes later, he returned looking stunned. “Follow me,” he said. They could go anywhere they wanted except the ‘restricted stacks.’ He and most of the group started toward the door, then stopped when he noticed that not all of them had risen to go. Karen was still sitting, the front of her shirt now damp with the tears that continued to fall. This was it, the last time she would ever be near him, and she wasn’t ready for that moment to end. Aiden hadn’t moved either. He sat with his head bowed, though he didn’t appear to be crying; and Angie remained sitting next to him, one of her hands lightly covering one of his. Fr. McLaren told them that they could stay there as long as they liked, and Justin sat back down next to Karen, laying his arm lightly across her shoulders. As much as he wanted to take this rare chance for a private tour of the Vatican, he didn’t feel right leaving Karen there to mourn alone.

Fr. McLaren led the others out and up to the rotunda, where John Paul was entombed. The honor they were being shown by the freedom of movement they’d been given became obvious to them when Fr. McLaren himself had to show a pass to be allowed in. Dee went over and stood close to the former Pope’s tomb, speaking quietly in Aramaic to her cherished old friend. The place was impressive, but all of them recognized that it didn’t have the same feeling of power and reverence as there had been in the crypt. This place was for show, but the crypt was the real deal. Reg was walking around stunned. He and Leigh still hadn’t gotten over the feeling of power they’d experienced in the crypt and tried to explain it to the others who hadn’t felt it quite so viscerally. Frank told them it sounded like a whole lot of faith in one place directed at one spot. And presided over by a guy who believes that he can tap into that faith, Dee added when she had finished her one-sided conversation. Fr. McLaren was still visibly rattled too. Dee asked him if there was anywhere he recommended they see, since he might know the treasures the place held better than any of them. The list of places they weren’t allowed was actually much longer than the ‘restricted stacks,’ but once the priest regained his composure after the suddenness of the funeral, he was an enthusiastic guide for their ‘back stairs’ tour of the Vatican.

Karen was quiet for a long time. She felt the comforting weight of Justin’s arm, but felt bad that he was missing the opportunity to see the Vatican on her account. After a while, she leaned close to him and whispered that she would be alright if he wanted to go with the others. He started to tell her that he wasn’t sure where they’d gone, when a priest stepped forward. They hadn’t noticed him there before, but he’d been quietly waiting by the door with a pager and cell phone, in case he was needed. Though she was still crying, she gave Justin a slight smile and squeezed his hand, then the priest led him off to join the others. As the group made its way through halls filled with exquisite liturgical garb and jewel-encrusted religious implements, they realized that there were few women besides the occasional nun or servant. By now, Fr. McLaren had become the consummate host, chatting with the group and answering questions before his curious guests even realized they had them. Not only had he not expected that the funeral would happen so quickly, he had thought that it might be better attended ‘internally.’ Not that he’d expected to see the new Pope there; Benedict didn’t like Damien, he told them. But luckily, he wasn’t in charge of the Jesuits, just the Inquisition. As soon as the words left his lips he covered them, having shocked himself that he’d let the internal dialogue slip out. But there was no one else around to hear it, so he was safe. Justin was surprised to learn that there was still an Inquisition; he’d thought that had ended hundreds of years before. Fr. McLaren explained that the office still existed, though it wasn’t as “proactive” as it had been in the past.

When Reg pointed out that he was pretty beat after the long flight, Fr. McLaren recognized that he wasn’t the only one. Since they hadn’t planned on returning to the States until Thursday anyway, he told them, they could continue the tour tomorrow because it was a very large compound. They could go straight to the hotel, since their bags had already been sent ahead to their rooms. They returned to the crypt and found Karen, Aiden and Angie right where they’d left them. Fr. McLaren indicated that it was time for them to go to the hotel, and the three stood. Karen shuffled over to the wall and laid her hand on Fr. Andrew’s tomb, bowing her head. She knew she would never truly be ready to say goodbye, so now was as good a time as any for saying it. She hoped that he knew how much he had meant to her and wished she’d had the courage to tell him when she’d had the chance. She heard Dee’s voice tell her how to say “Be with God” in Aramaic and she repeated it softly. She had no idea that Dee had sent that message to her alone, from near the doorway, and hadn’t uttered a word aloud. She felt warmth envelop her like a fatherly hug, and she took her hand from the wall and fingered the crucifix before walking slowly and stiffly to the door, Justin supporting her with his hand around her waist. Aiden followed Karen toward the door, Angie at his side and looking kind of worried. Leigh was standing near Fr. McLaren and suggested to him in a whisper that Aiden might need confession. Fr. McLaren whispered back that Aiden would come to him in his own time, that he couldn’t force the issue. As Aiden passed Fr. Andrew’s tomb, not stopping, he heard Dee tell him “If you have anything to say to him, do it now.” He jerked his head up to look at Dee in shock, then realized that Angie didn’t seem to have heard the comment. He said nothing, only continuing to make his way to the door.

At the hotel, they found that each of them but the married couple had his or her own room, all clustered near one another on the same floor. The hotel was quite luxurious, and they were receiving the full “guest of honor” treatment, with each room equipped with a bar, private balconies, and a basket of crusty bread and sweet butter to curb their appetites until supper. That would be at 8pm, Fr. McLaren told them. Until then, they were left to fill their time however they chose. Dee, Leigh and Reg changed and went to use the workout room and spa. Angie let Aiden, who was still quiet and withdrawn, into his room, then went to her own. No one noticed that she had pocketed Aiden’s room key; but as the trio waited for the elevator, they did notice Angie move from her room to Aiden’s when she thought no one was looking. The others went to their rooms to spend the next few hours relaxing or napping.

When Karen and Justin went into their room, they found that Drew had been left there with their luggage. He was still in his travel crate so that he couldn’t slip out of the room, but the staff had been thoughtful enough to put food and water and a small litter pan in the crate for him. Karen let him out right away, and Justin warned the cat that it had better be around when they packed to leave in a couple days or it would be spending the rest of its life in Rome. They weren’t coming back to get him, he told the cat. Drew put his little pink tongue between his lips and looked up at Justin with what Justin would have called a smirk, before hopping up onto the bed and making himself comfortable for a nap. The cat knew full well that Karen would, indeed, return to find him if he got left behind. He also knew that he wouldn’t do that to her, which had nothing to do with Justin’s weak threats.

Karen went out onto the balcony, and sat in one of the chairs and stared out at the view of St. Peter’s Cathedral. It was a beautiful and holy place, and she only wished that she had come there for a happier occasion. Justin went to the bar and poured himself a double shot of whiskey. He held the glass up and said a silent goodbye to Fr. Andrew, a man he had come to respect in spite of their differences of opinion. He might not have been able to see anything special about the old man himself, but he couldn’t deny that there must have been something special about him to make the woman he loved care for the priest so much. Then he poured two glasses of wine and carried them to the balcony. Karen needed to relax; maybe the wine would help. When she’d finished it, she drifted off to sleep, slouched back in the chair. Maybe tomorrow she could let go of her grief and enjoy with her husband this brief trip to one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.

By Wednesday morning, June 1, Dee had left, to return to her own husband who needed her so much. Fr. McLaren took the rest of the group and continued the tour he’d begun the previous afternoon. Even Karen joined them this time, and though there was still a certain sadness in her eyes, she seemed to enjoy walking hand in hand with Justin, taking in the sights. They all spent the day enjoying the hospitality offered to them by, well, whoever it was that offered it. They weren’t sure if Fr. McLaren had arranged it all or if it had been Cardinal Bernardo or someone else that they hadn’t even met. On Thursday, June 2, the same limo that had picked them up at the airport, returned them and their luggage there, including Drew, safely in his crate. Tony took the plane that he had chartered and returned to the work site, hoping to finish up as quickly as possible and get back to Detroit now that he had something more to go back for than to get attacked by zombies, ghosts and werewolves. The others had an uneventful return flight.

When everyone had settled in and appeared busy enough not to notice what Karen did, she got up and went to where Fr. McLaren was sitting. She stood there, twisting the life out of the hem of her shirt, and he could tell that something was troubling her. She was watching him intently and he noticed that her eyes were teary. "Father, can...can I ask you something?" "Of course." The priest sat up attentively. Karen sat down on the edge of the seat next to him. "Did he...did he ever tell you why?" "Why what? Why you merited his attention?" He shook his head with a smile. "Damien was never that forthcoming. I believe that he saw you as an innocent soul; someone capable of great good in need of guidance. Your gift is extraordinary, television aside, but you're as a babe with a shotgun--you've no idea what you've got, nor how dangerous it can be. It's much the same for Aiden--he's a great gift for healing, but I think Damien feared his penchant for fornication would taint it." He shrugged, with a charming smile. "I'm only guessing, but I probably knew him as well as any man could." He paused a moment. "Or was it somethin' else you were askin'?" Karen looked down and realized that she was stretching the hell out of her t-shirt, and she let go of it suddenly and clasped her hands. She looked back up at Fr. McLaren. "No. I...I was always afraid that if I asked him...." Her voice trailed off. She kind of shook her head and smiled--a sort of sad smile, and the first time she'd actually smiled at him. "Bubbles are beautiful, but if you try to touch them they always burst." She smiled again. "Thank you, Father." She stood and went back to her seat, where she sat and petted Drew and stared out the window.

This was beginning to happen a little too often. Tony laid there a minute trying to figure out where he was. Nothing in the room was familiar, not even after he opened his eyes. Nice looking. Comfy. But no place he’d ever woken up before. He sat up and realized that he was just in his shorts. He didn’t remember undressing. The last thing he did remember clearly was sitting down in the ICU waiting room, to wait for a call from the Vatican. Aiden and Angie were hurt, Fr. Andrew was dead...oh, and Reg was supposed to be bringing him coffee. He looked around the room and noticed that his clothes were neatly folded and lying on a chair. So, he didn’t undress himself. He really hoped it had been a beautiful woman who’d done it. Too bad he couldn’t remember THAT. As he thought about that, he noticed the sound of a voice from somewhere outside the room. No, not just a voice; it was a TV and it sounded like the guy who sold OxyClean. Tony crawled out of the bed and explored the room while he pulled on his pants and shirt. He checked his cell. Still no call from the Vatican. The display told him that it was a little after 6am on May 23. When he didn’t find a bathroom behind any of the doors, he went out into the hallway. He could hear the TV louder now, and after stopping into the bathroom when he found it, he followed the sound to the media room.

Of course, he didn’t know that was where he was headed when he set out. He still hadn’t figured out where he was, but he found Anne sound asleep in front of the TV with a pile of knitting in her lap. He didn’t want to wake her, she looked so cute curled up there; so he went in search of her kitchen. He didn’t realize that a nurse could afford such a nice place. The kitchen was all clean lines and organized cabinets. It only took him a few minutes to find the coffee maker and coffee, and he soon had a pot brewing. He didn’t know if it was the noise he’d made or the smell of freshly brewing coffee that woke her, but Anne slouched in a short time later. She grabbed a mug that had been sitting near the sink and, holding it out, groaned “Coffee.” He filled both their cups and after she’d had a few sips, she started to tell him what had happened. Reg had let her bring Tony here to his place. Tony had eaten a couple Coney dogs, used the bathroom, and then collapsed into the bed and hadn’t woken up since then. That was yesterday morning. Then Anne mumbled something about how ‘he ought to use less Ambien next time’ and she had to explain to Tony that Reg had drugged him. Tony began to object that he hadn’t needed the sleep; but when Anne pointed out that she’d tried to wake him a couple times over the last 24 hours and couldn’t, he agreed that maybe he did need it.

Now, she needed to get ready for work; she had to be there in less than an hour. She asked Tony if he needed a ride anywhere, and he told her he needed to pick up his car at Receiving. She let Tony know that Reg had left her a note that he’d left very early that morning for business that he absolutely had to take care of himself, but he’d left the keys to most of his cars and Tony was welcome to continue staying there if he wanted. Anne glanced at the rack of keys by a side door and Tony noticed that there were a good half dozen hooks, all with names above them. The keys marked Inge and Charlie were missing, and Anne realized that Leigh must have gotten up and left pretty early too, if Charlie was gone. Reg had also left a couple numbers to reach him if they needed to, but he’d left word with his company that the team could use any of the company’s resources that they needed. Tony asked her how she’d known to find him at Receiving in the first place. A friend had let her know that he was passed out in Receiving’s ICU waiting room on Sunday morning, she told him. She found Reg there keeping an eye on him, and Reg told her about Fr. Andrew dying and Aiden and Angie being hurt. Tony checked his cell again and started rambling about how the Vatican hadn’t called back yet.

But Anne was ignoring him and she seemed a little miffed. Tony wasn’t sure why; if he’d been sleeping, then it couldn’t be anything he’d done. He went over behind her and began rubbing her shoulders and asked if there was something wrong. Anne’s shoulders tightened and she told him that she didn’t want to talk about it right then, since there wasn’t time. Tony backed off and told her that he really appreciated her giving him the ride to get his car. “All part of the service,” she said curtly. They headed out to the car and Tony asked if he could take her out to dinner later in the week. Anne told him “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Since he wasn’t exactly sure what she was talking about, but she seemed to be mad at him, he kept his mouth shut. They rode down to the Medical Center in silence, and Anne barely said goodbye when she handed Tony the key to Reg’s house and he got out of the car. Tony remembered that when he’d tried to see Aiden at that same hour yesterday, he’d gotten sent away. So he got in his car and figured he’d try Justin. It was only a few minutes before 7am, but Justin was a business owner; he would probably be up and at work by now. When Justin answered, it sounded like he was whispering and he told Tony that he had to be quiet because Karen was still asleep. Tony was appalled that Justin wasn’t up and at work already and began teasing him about it. Then, when Justin mentioned that Monday was ‘paperwork day’ for him anyway, Tony teased him about being the only boss in the world who didn’t find some other schmuck to do the paperwork so that he could stick to doing the fun stuff.

When Tony finally figured out that he wasn’t going to get a rise out of Justin, he asked if there was any news about Aiden and Angie, or about Fr. Andrew. Justin told him that Angie had been released, Aiden was doing much better, and the Vatican hadn’t called him back yet either. Then he reminded Tony that Kat’s funeral would be at 2pm on Wednesday. Before hanging up, Tony suggested that Justin get to work soon, before his workers unionized. Next, he tried calling Aiden; since he was executor of Fr. Andrew’s will, he ought to have heard something about the funeral arrangements by now, right? When the call went straight to voice mail, Tony left the message “Let me know about Fr. Andrew’s funeral.” Then he headed off to National Coney Island for breakfast. When he was finished, he wasn’t sure what else to do with the day, so he decided to check out Reg’s house and the cars. And maybe drink a beer or two for Fr. Andrew. The priest HAD told him to get more lust in his life. Tony figured a little lust for beer might not be a sin, in that case.

When Justin got off the phone with Tony, he tried calling the morgue, to see if anyone had been by for Fr. Andrew’s body yet. It was too early to call Aiden; the guy needed his rest right now more than anything. He didn’t know that Aiden was already awake and had Leigh visiting him. The morgue attendant suggested that Justin contact Fr. Andrew’s family, since he couldn’t give out any information. There wasn’t much more Justin could do right now, so he started to get his stuff together to head up to work. As he did, he noticed the writing supplies out on Karen’s desk and found the letter she’d written, still on the scanner. He read it and was crying by the time he got to the end. He was a little surprised that he hadn’t noticed her get up or come back to bed; usually the smallest sound or movement woke him. Either his military ‘training’ was wearing off or he’d gotten more comfortable being with Karen than he realized. He went into the bedroom to let her know that he was heading out. She was curled up on her side, and Drew was curled up in the crook of her neck. He figured she must be pretty exhausted after yesterday’s shock and getting up in the middle of the night, and he almost hated to wake her. But he hated the idea of leaving without saying goodbye even more. He shook her gently until he could tell that she was beginning to wake. Then he told her that he would be at the shop and kissed her. She mumbled goodbye and rolled over. As Drew resettled himself after the disturbance, Justin reminded him in a whisper that no matter what the cat thought, the bed was THEIRS not his. Drew stuck his little pink tongue out in what was either an aborted nose-lick or a rude gesture at Justin. The cat had as much attitude as Diva had.

Frank was up early, too. It was barely light out and he was already fielding calls from DHS guys who had questions, not just about the funeral but about what was going on while Jared was out of commission. Even though he wasn’t technically taking over for Jared while he was on sick leave, the others recognized that Frank was a ‘rising star’ handpicked by Jared to head the Detroit office. They all wanted to get on his good side and stay there, at least as long as Frank was still on the way up. Secret Service would be handling the security at the funeral. Beyond that, he didn’t really know a whole lot about the rest. He had enough to keep him busy just keeping up with the paperwork here in Detroit. But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t keeping his ears open for info about the ‘accident.’ As far as his connections in the FBI could tell him, they were pretty sure that it was an attempted hit on Jared because of the recent busts. But which one? The Dearborn terrorist cell? Or the voodoo sect from Haiti? He didn’t have enough info yet to decide. In the meantime, he had to get things set here so that the place wouldn’t fall apart while he was in DC for the next few days. And he had plans for lunch, too. Lt. Worth. He was glad that she decided not to ask too many questions about the things he and the team did. He would’ve hated having to drag her into all this. He wondered if she’d heard yet about Bob Newell’s funeral. There’d been an email in his box letting him know; 10am Friday. He’d definitely be going.

Leigh wasn’t sure what it was that woke her at first. She’d heard...something. Movement? She knew that Tony was in the guest room downstairs, and that Anne was spending the night to keep an eye on him. And she knew that Reg was usually up early, too. She got up and got ready to greet the day. She found a note from Reg when she went down to the kitchen, letting her know that he was gone on urgent business and not sure when he’d return. That must have been what woke her. Tony was still asleep, and Anne had fallen asleep in front of the TV, too. Leigh wasn’t sure if it would disturb Anne if she turned the TV off, so she left it running. She checked her email and found the letter from Karen, and was touched by the weight of emotion that Karen had shared in it. Karen had always been friendly enough, but it was obvious that she didn’t open up to people easily. She’d been worried yesterday that Karen’s grief might overwhelm her because of that; but it sounded in the letter like Karen was already beginning to deal with it. That was good.

Leigh wasn’t sure what else to do with her day, though. Obviously Karen wouldn’t be going back up to the dig until after the funerals, and they still hadn’t gotten any word about Fr. Andrew’s. Maybe she’d start with a visit to Aiden. He might appreciate the company, since Angie was banned from visiting him at the moment. She stopped on the way to the hospital to pick up some fresh fruit. It would do Aiden good to eat something healthy like that; and, even if he didn’t, maybe the nurses and staff would appreciate something other than the typical sweets. Leigh got to Aiden’s room just as a nurse was leaving. Aiden seemed a little flustered, but he looked healthy enough. The nurse had been warning him that he MUST call for help if he wanted to use the bathroom. Aiden told Leigh that they’d taken the catheter out, and she understood both Aiden’s discomfort and the nurse’s parting words. She and Reg hadn’t stayed long enough during last night’s visit to tell Aiden about the afternoon’s events at Justin’s house, so she told him about it now. And he told her that the staff had told him that if he was good and didn’t cause trouble today, they’d reconsider his restrictions and maybe let him go to see Angie downstairs tomorrow. But they weren’t ready to let her up to his room yet, in any case.

There was a knock at the door, and head of chestnut-colored curly hair poked in as it opened. When he’d confirmed that the room was occupied by Aiden Carter, the man came the rest of the way in. He was a compact five and a half feet tall, in his early thirties with fair skin and freckles, dressed all in black with the Roman Catholic ‘dog collar.’ The priest introduced himself, in an Irish accent, as Fr. Colin McLaren. He started to ask if Leigh was “the young lady,” then corrected himself, realizing that she wasn’t. Leigh put out her hand to introduce herself, and Fr. McLaren took it and kissed it in the European fashion, saying that he now recognized that she was Leigh Sorenson. He’d “been briefed.” A look of sullen stubbornness washed over Aiden’s face. Now he knew who this guy was, and he steeled himself for the recriminations he expected would be forthcoming. Leigh warned the priest that she was not Catholic, but was a practicing Lutheran. He patted her on the arm and teased her that she should keep practicing, and Leigh knew that he was very different from Fr. Andrew.

Fr. McLaren told them that he’d seen Fr. Damien’s reports, and that he’d been sent to take some of the worries off Aiden’s hands. Leigh could see the tension on Aiden’s face as he went into full-defensive mode. The priest seemed to study Aiden for a minute. Then he said that he was “not surprised that ‘he’ did it.” Both realized that he was referring to Fr. Andrew’s saving Aiden’s life. Leigh studied him. She was looking for the indalo, and wondering just how much this priest knew. He said he’d seen Fr. Andrew’s (or rather, Fr. Damien’s) reports. Did that mean he was just his superior within the church hierarchy? Fr. Andrew had said that not every priest knew about ‘the Fight’ the same way he and the other Envoys did. She found no sign of the Envoys’ “secret handshake,” but she did notice that he had a signet ring with an unusual symbol on it on the ring finger of his left hand. She didn’t recognize the symbol, though, and she pulled her hair back to make sure that her own indalo was easily visible to him, just in case.

Fr. McLaren let them know that he would begin, that day, to make the arrangements to return Fr. Damien’s body to Rome. Leigh mentioned that some of them wished to attend the funeral if possible, especially Karen, and the priest said that he could arrange that as well. He would just need a list of who would be going. And they already had two other funerals to go to that week, Leigh added, one Wednesday in DC and another that hadn’t even been scheduled yet for the security guard killed Saturday night. Fr. McLaren told them that he could certainly arrange for Fr. Andrew’s funeral to be the following week. It might even take that long to get it arranged, since there was a great deal of paperwork involved just with getting the body sent to Rome. As Leigh sat down to write out the list, Fr. McLaren sat beside Aiden and began to chat with him. This priest seemed very young to both Leigh and Aiden, mostly compared to Fr. Andrew. Fr. Andrew had appeared to be in his 50's when Aiden, and later the other Envoys, had first met him. But over the past couple months, he’d seemed to age about 30 years, and Aiden wasn’t sure if it was Fr. Andrew that changed or his own perceptions of him that had. Leigh wasn’t really listening to everything this new priest said, but he seemed to have a very dry sense of humor and liked puns. He must have rubbed himself all over the Blarney Stone, because he was even managing to charm Aiden. Leigh could see the stubbornness melting slowly off Aiden’s face and the tension draining from his shoulders the longer the priest talked. As she finished the list and began listening to him, Fr. McLaren seemed to be speaking not quite in code but not overtly, letting them know that he knew about the team’s exploits.

He stood and gave both Leigh and Aiden his cell number and got theirs in return. Leigh also gave him Karen’s and Tony’s numbers, telling him that both were anxious to know about the arrangements for Fr. Andrew’s funeral as soon as possible. Leigh was afraid that Tony would have a stroke if he didn’t find something out soon. Fr. McLaren told her warmly that he could “shepherd” them through it, that he had “friends in high places, don’t ye know.” Leigh took the opportunity for a little light-hearted verbal Lutheran vs. Catholic sparring with him, saying that she probably had friends ‘higher than his. No intermediaries between her and the top.’ He left laughing. Aiden was much less sulky now, since the priest had come and gone without mentioning Aiden’s ‘short-comings’ or the ongoing struggles he’d had with Fr. Andrew. Leigh asked if there was anything else she could get for him, and preempted him by adding “besides Angie.” He asked if she could bring him his MP3 player and asked to have Angie load it with music for him. That might make him feel a little closer to her, at least, since she couldn’t visit him. He also told her he wished that he had a computer that he could use there. She didn’t mention that Reg had already commented on maybe getting both him and Angie laptops loaded with net-conferencing software and cameras. She promised the MP3 player would be there as soon as she could get it. And maybe, she thought to herself, Justin’s cousin could do something about the computers since Reg might be out of town for a few days.

When she left, she called Tony first. Partly because she wasn’t sure that Karen would be up that early and partly because she knew that Tony might have a fit if he didn’t get the news first that a representative from the Vatican had arrived. Tony answered the phone right away, but Leigh couldn’t hear him. There was a lot of noise coming from Tony’s end, Steppenwolf playing rather loudly and...was that engines running? After Tony said “Huh? What?” a couple times, there was a pause and the background sounds disappeared. He finally thought to shut off the stereo and engines. “What the heck?” he explained; Fr. Andrew had told him to get more lust in his life, and since Anne was at work, he’d settled for lusting after Reg’s cars and beer. Leigh told him that the priest, Fr. Colin McLaren, had arrived from Rome and would be making all the arrangements for sending Fr. Andrew back to Rome. She let Tony know that she’d told the priest as much as she knew about the two other funerals and he said he would make sure that everyone would be able to be in Rome for Fr. Andrew’s. She also let Tony know that she’d given the priest his cell number and she gave Fr. McLaren’s to him, in case he had any questions or concerns. As Tony was hanging up, Leigh heard the volume go back up on the Steppenwolf and the click of a key being turned in an ignition.

Leigh called Angie next, to let her know that the Vatican priest was there and that Aiden wanted his MP3 player. She told Angie about Fr. McLaren, and Angie seemed to think that the priest was just lulling Aiden into a false sense of security by being nice for now. Plus, she told Leigh, maybe he was only there to make the arrangements for Fr. Andrew and wasn’t going to be the team’s new babysitter anyway. Angie promised to get the MP3 player ready for whenever Leigh wanted to come get it, since she wasn’t allowed to see Aiden. Then Leigh called Justin. She let him know about Fr. McLaren and that he’d assured her and Aiden that they’d all be able to attend Fr. Andrew’s funeral. And she asked if Justin thought it would be possible to have his cousin get laptops for Aiden and Angie to keep in touch until Aiden was released, even though that might be in the next few days from the way the nurse sounded when she’d gotten to Aiden’s room that morning. Justin told her he’d be right on it. He asked if she’d told Karen the news yet and Leigh told him that was next on her list.

Since Leigh would be calling Karen, Justin called Timmy right away. He told him to get 3 laptops set up for a couple of friends--two with cameras, net-conferencing software and enough speed and memory for online gaming, the third with everything a guy might need when he was going to school to finish his medical degree. And Timmy should send the bill for that last one to him. He asked Timmy how much it’d be for delivery ASAP, and Timmy asked if it was to another hot chick like the last time. Not this time. One was going to a male friend who was in the hospital and the other (which, by the way, did he have an extra pink ‘skin’ for this one, just as a joke?) was going to a female former Marine friend. Timmy told him that he did have the pink ‘skin,’ but the delivery charge would be $100 and he wasn’t going to be anywhere around when the Marine chick opened her box.

Karen finally got out of bed a little after 10am. She felt dragged out, even though she’d gotten plenty of sleep. As she put out fresh food and water for Drew, she warned him that he’d better not pee anywhere other than his litterbox or his little kitty ears would pop from the g-forces when he was tossed out on his little kitty butt. He ignored her, which was about what she expected. When she showered, Drew balanced on the curtain rod above her, watching in abject horror. And as she dried off, he showed her how it ought to be done, cleaning his fur carefully with his tongue. It was about 11am when Karen’s phone rang. Leigh was calling to let her know about Fr. McLaren being in town. Karen asked if there would be a chance for everyone to meet this new priest before he left with Fr. Andrew’s body, maybe dinner or something, and Leigh told her she’d find out. Then Karen told Leigh about the new cat, and Leigh suggested that she use “balls” to check the thing out carefully. Karen promised she would when they were done talking, and the women chatted about Justin looking for a new shop and the couple finding a new house that they would pick out together. Karen offered Leigh first refusal on the condo, if she was still looking for a place herself when Karen and Justin moved. But she wouldn’t be offended if Leigh wasn’t interested. Condo-living wasn’t for everyone, and Karen could understand that Leigh might want to find some place that fit her better. They talked about going back up to the dig after Fr. Andrew’s funeral, and Karen asked about Aiden. Then they said goodbye.

Each got back on the phone right away. Leigh called Frank to let him know about the new development, and Karen called to let Chris and Jaime know what was going on and that she probably wouldn’t be back up to the dig until the following week. They were all excited about the first find of the season. That morning they’d confirmed that the team had found a new garbage pit, and they found a beautiful shard, about 1.5cm by 3cm. The conversation would have bored anyone but another archaeologist to tears, as the two grad students speculated to Karen about the size and shape and manner of production of the piece of pottery the shard came from based on its size and shape, and the possibility that they would find the rest of the piece soon as well. When Karen got off the phone a half hour later, she was glad she’d called them. Since hearing of Fr. Andrew’s death a little more than 24 hours before, her grief had caused her to question her own worth as a human being and doubt the possibility of taking any future pleasure in life. The only thing that had helped her keep her sanity was her love for Justin and his love for her. Now, Chris and Jaime’s enthusiasm over such a little thing as a 4.5-square-cm chunk of baked clay reminded Karen of all the little things in her life that made her happy and how much more she had to look forward to. She would never forget Fr. Andrew, but she wouldn’t be haunted by his death every waking moment for the rest of her life either. Just for a while.

Frank was already picking up the phone when Leigh remembered that he’d mentioned having a lunch meeting with Lt. Worth. She hoped that she wasn’t interrupting. When she asked if he was having a “fried bologna sandwich with Lt. Worth,” Frank completely missed her meaning. He told Leigh that he was just about to leave to meet the detective. Leigh explained that the ‘fried bologna’ comment was a joke about what he’d be telling Worth regarding the errant zombi. But, as usually happens, when she had to explain the joke it kind of lost its humor. Leigh told him about Fr. McLaren and about Karen’s request for a chance to meet him. Frank told her that he’d gotten the information about Bob Newell’s funeral, and Leigh told him she’d pass that on to the others. She already knew that she’d be going; his death was a true tragedy and she needed to pay her respects. When he was done talking with Leigh, Frank left to meet the lieutenant. She’d chosen a small diner about half way between their offices, and when Frank got there he found that she’d taken a booth in the back corner away from everyone else.

Once they’d ordered their food, Lt. Worth didn’t waste any time getting to the point. “So, where’s the body?” she asked. “Surely it didn’t get away from Frank Muelder, ‘Super-Fed’.” Frank told her that the guy had been trying to use caustic chemicals to undermine Cobo Hall’s foundation. With the place full, and especially with a huge wedding going on there, he must’ve figured that made it a prime target. He ended up falling into one of the barrels when he tried to get away and, well, with lunch coming he’d rather not go into the details. But, like any good detective, Worth couldn’t let go of the inconsistencies about the case. She wanted to know how the eviscerated bodies tied into the terrorism. She really couldn’t figure out how he was going to manage that. Frank was at a loss himself on that question. Frank told Worth that he could work it into the report if she wanted to get the case closed. She told him not to bother, that there were plenty of other open cases on her desk anyway so one more wouldn’t matter as long as he was sure the killings would stop. He was. He told her that he would be busy going to funerals the rest of the week, and she let him know that she was planning to be at Bob Newell’s as well. But that wasn’t the only one Frank had on his schedule. He explained that he also had the funeral of his boss’s fiancee to attend in DC on Wednesday and Fr. Andrew’s in Rome, whenever it was finally scheduled.

This was the first Worth had heard of Fr. Andrew’s death, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that it was related somehow to the “terrorism” and the eviscerations. What Frank told her, though, was that the priest was pretty old and the stress of having his friends in the hospital did him in. Rather than dwelling any longer on such a somber subject, Lt. Worth asked Frank if he was permanently assigned to the Detroit office. Frank told her that for now it was as permanent as anything in government ever was. Then Worth asked if the same was true for Sgt. Paloma. Frank had a feeling this was heading somewhere. It was. When Frank told her that Angie was a member of his team until she chose to leave it, Worth asked if it would be possible to have her teach some basic courses for the Detroit Police Department, since she was a military-trained bomb disposal expert who had experience in Iraq with IEDs. Just something so that her people would recognize when to call the Bomb Squad. Frank had already been thinking about something along those lines, and let Worth know that it was in the works. With the World Series and the Super Bowl coming, it didn’t hurt to show that the Detroit Police were being proactive about security, even thought there would probably be all sorts of Federal and military security forces there too. Over the course of the conversation, Worth had been trying to draw more information out of Frank about himself, his past, his family, his work. He recognized what she was doing, but knowing it didn’t keep him from letting slip that he’d been in the military himself at one time, working in Intelligence. Before the two left to head back to their respective jobs, Frank asked the detective if she needed an escort to Newell’s funeral. She wouldn’t mind having one, if he was offering, she said, and Frank told her he’d picked her up.

Leigh left a message on Fr. McLaren’s voice mail about getting together with the team before he took Fr. Andrew back to Rome. A short time later, he got back to her and they arranged to have dinner at Roma on Friday night. It seemed he’d be in town at least that long taking care of the paperwork, but paperwork was a burden he must bear. By the time Leigh called around to let everyone know about Newell’s funeral and dinner with Fr. McLaren, Tony was getting pretty buzzed. He’d decided that it would be pretty funny for Reg to find his cheap car in one of the empty garage bays when he got home. Besides, he wasn’t going anywhere in this condition anyway. He’d already raised an awful lot of glasses (bottles, actually) to Fr. Andrew’s and Kat’s memories. Now he’d raise a few to old Bob Newell’s memory, too. Or was it young Bob Newell? He actually never even saw the guy’s body. He’d been a little busy catching the zombi. But if Frank and Leigh said this guy got killed by the zombi just because he’d been trying to do his job, well, here’s to him. Leigh had a feeling that she’d be telling him all this again tomorrow. Aiden was pretty upset when she called him. The doctor had been in to see him and now they were saying that he might not be let out for another month! When they considered the condition he was in when he arrived there, and his previous trips to the hospital recently, they weren’t about to accept the “miraculous recovery” explanation again. This time they were going to keep an eye on him right there.

Karen had finally remembered to raise a Sphere near Drew as she’d promised Leigh; and, as she expected, the cat didn’t react at all. She was beginning to suspect that cats were just generally immune to disciplines of the Art. She let Leigh know when Leigh called to tell her about Newell’s funeral and dinner with Fr. McLaren. Karen wasn’t sure about going to the security guard’s funeral. She didn’t even know that a security guard had been killed the night of the wedding. And she already had two other funerals to go to, for people she knew. She wasn’t sure she wanted yet another reminder of all the awful things that were going to be forever associated in her mind with what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life. And it had been, until they all finally decided to let her and Justin know about everything that had happened that night. She knew that they’d tried to keep her and Justin out of things so that they could enjoy their first night as husband and wife, and she truly did appreciate that. But she couldn’t help thinking that if she and Justin had been there to help, maybe Aiden and Angie wouldn’t have gotten hurt, and then maybe Fr. Andrew.... Karen started crying again. She wondered when she would be able to think about him, his death, without crying. And she wondered if she would feel better or worse when she realized that she’d gotten to that point. When she was able to stop crying, she called CJ to keep herself from sitting around moping. She just wanted to chat a little, find out how CJ was doing and how work on the new show concept was going. It filled a little of what seemed like an endless amount of time that spread out like an ocean in front of Karen while she waited for Justin to come home.

Justin had thrown himself into his work that morning and ploughed through his paperwork in record time. By lunch time, he had a chance to take a breath and remember that he’d promised to call his uncle about getting together to “talk.” Jerzy was glad to hear from Justin when he called, maybe a little more glad than Justin was expecting him to be. Justin’s heart climbed into his throat when his uncle told him that he’d had a visit from Fr. McLaren. He didn’t know if that was good or bad since he hadn’t met the other priest yet. He’d been trying so hard to keep his uncle from finding out about stuff that could get him killed, and he wondered if this Fr. McLaren was ‘one of them’ or not and if he’d just ruined all the effort Justin had been making for the last couple of months. He hated lying to his uncle. But he would NOT drag the man into this fight. He asked his uncle if it would be OK to talk over dinner that night and Jerzy told him that it could wait until he’d gotten back from his friend’s funeral in DC. Justin offered to take Jerzy out for that dinner and Jerzy told him that they’d have a nice quiet dinner at the rectory. And when Justin asked if there was anything he could bring, Jerzy told him that he should just make sure to bring his new wife. None of this made Justin any more comfortable with the whole prospect. He told Karen about it that evening, and they both got their minds off their concerns by starting to discuss in more depth looking for a new house.

On Tuesday afternoon, Karen, Justin, Tony, Leigh, Frank and Angie all met at City Airport to take the jet that Reg had reserved for them to DC. Angie had never met Kat, but since she couldn’t get in to see Aiden in person, she figured she could go pay Aiden’s respects and give Frank an extra set of eyes for security at the funeral. For some reason Tony had decided that he should bring everything in his own personal Unknown/Undead-fighting arsenal along, just in case. He had holy water and stakes, plus guns and every type of ammo he had for them. The only special things Karen brought were one of the flowers from her wedding bouquet and a small amount of ritual herbs to help Kat’s spirit on its way. They all had dinner together, then went their separate ways for the evening. The next day, Frank and Angie left early to check out the security. Frank didn’t say anything about the dreams he’d had the night before.

Frank had been in a deep sleep. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he felt like he was moving. Or rather, that he was being moved. He was being spun around, carried by a tornado. All the motion was disorienting him and he began to feel nauseous from his equilibrium being thrown so off-balance. The tornado carried him, it seemed like forever. Just when he felt like his body couldn’t take the spinning anymore and he might be sick, the force of the storm smashed him down onto rocks. As his mind cleared, he saw that he was on cold, craggy peaks. The sky above him was so black that it felt like if he had reached out he might be able to touch the stars scattered across it. He concentrated, trying to get his bearings, and realized that he could hear music not so very far away, and voices singing something with a sort of Arabic flavor. He crept forward, toward the music, being careful not to be seen or heard. It seemed like the music kept moving ahead of him until suddenly he saw a cave open up before him and he could tell that the voices were coming from inside it.

The smells of sulphur and putrescence filled his nostrils, and he crept into the cave, staying close to the walls and in the shadows. Whenever the music and singing paused, he stopped, afraid that his movement might be heard or spotted. Then he would creep further. Finally he came to the edge of a cliff. Below him he could see a group of men, wearing djabas and turbans, around a fire that glowed with a black, oily light. The men were crooning, and stood weaving like snakes to their song. He felt like the song was telling him something but he couldn’t understand the words. He sensed anger and a world-spanning evil, an evil that knew he was there and would deal with him later, squashing him like a bug. Frank woke with a start in a cold sweat, and found his hand clenched tight around...sand. When he fell back to sleep, it was an unrestful one, filled with nightmares of being chased.

Kat’s funeral was at 2pm, and the Envoys were at the cemetery well before that. They knew that security would be tight and that, even though they’d been put on the list of mourners by Jared himself, they would have to go through the same search as everyone else. The Secret Service took Tony’s bag of ‘toys’, except for the holy water since they could confirm that it was nothing more than water. The rest would be given back to him after the funeral since it was all properly registered. The press and any other morbid onlookers were kept back by a line of local police. Jared arrived in an armored limo at the last possible minute. He was carried to the grave-side by attendants, since he couldn’t walk with his injuries, and was surrounded by eight other ‘men in black,’ one of whom carried an umbrella over his head even though it wasn’t raining. “To keep him from being targeted from above,” Justin whispered to Karen when she looked puzzled. The ceremony was brief and not particularly religious since Kat had never been. The crowd of mourners was large, but Karen had gotten the impression that Kat and Jared both had fairly large families. And it was amply peppered with guys in black suits who were talking to their cufflinks. Kat’s mom was easy to pick out, since she was crying loudly and expansively. Karen could certainly understand the emotion.

Frank and Angie spent most of their time scanning the crowd beyond the police-line. When Angie had asked, Frank told her that he couldn’t tell her exactly what they were looking for but he was sure they’d know it when they saw it. And Frank did. There was one guy. Tallish-shortish, lightish-darkish. One of those types that sort of blends in to the background. He was flitting along the edge of the crowd and just seemed...out of place. Frank got the feeling he’d come across the guy before, maybe one of those conspiracy freaks? And there was a woman. She was short and might have been Arabic. She had a camera and looked like she might have been part of the press contingent. But...Frank watched her and she never raised her camera, not even when all the other photographers did, like when Jared got there. As the service ended, Frank turned his attention to Kat’s casket. He was trying to see if there was any taint of the Unknown that might tell him if the attack had been from that ‘direction.’ All he got was a sort of ‘background count’ of Unknown feeling.

Jared stood painfully and was helped forward to the edge of the grave as the casket was lowered, and he dropped a single white rose onto the top of it. There was a glitter of light as it fell, and when it came to rest, they could see that Kat’s engagement ring had been tied to the stem of the flower. Then the Secret Service crowded around him again as he moved back to his seat. Others moved forward to pay their respects, and Karen was careful to scatter the herbs at the same time as she dropped the rose from her bouquet onto the coffin so that she wouldn’t alarm the security people. Most of the mourners were subtly guided away from getting too close to Jared. But the Envoys were allowed to approach him at his request since their presence had already been cleared by him personally. Karen could see that it was only by sheer force of will that Jared had kept himself from breaking down. That, and he’d probably asked them to cut back on his pain meds so he could use the pain to keep his focus. Soon, he was being whisked away in the limo, and as the friends made their was to their cars, Frank stopped to talk to the ‘suit’ who looked like he was in charge of the security detail.

A short time later, after they’d all gone to their rooms to change clothes and freshen up, they met in the hotel lounge before going to dinner. Angie hadn’t said a word yet about the pink laptop, though Timmy had let Justin know that it was delivered. He was anxious to know if she’d thought it was funny, and he asked if she knew that there were other ‘skins’ in the box with it. Angie refused to give Justin the satisfaction of an answer, and when Justin mentioned that it hadn’t’ cost her’ anything extra for the different ‘skins,’ she was appalled to learn that he had spent her and Aiden’s money without even asking them if they wanted the laptops. She had THOUGHT they were a gift. Justin didn’t know what to say, other than that the ‘school’ one for Aiden had been a gift from him. He was embarrassed that he hadn’t thought to consult them first and that he hadn’t thought to make it clear that he wasn’t paying for all of them. Karen wasn’t even sure what they were talking about. Justin had mentioned something to her on Monday evening about ordering laptops for them, but she still wasn’t running on all cylinders, so she hadn’t totally understood at the time.

When Frank got there, he handed each of them a photo of an Arabic-looking woman. She was a “person of interest,” Frank told them. He’d noticed her at the funeral, carrying a camera but never using it, unlike the rest of the press. He had some checking done and she didn’t appear to have a driver’s license from any US state or a valid passport or visa for entering the country. Karen asked what made Frank think that she wasn’t a US citizen. Admittedly, if she was, she ought to have some sort of state ID at the very least. But Dearborn had the highest concentration of Arabic people outside the Middle East, and many of them were US citizens, either born here or naturalized. Frank told them that he was just trying to cover all the bases. He was having DHS check her out, but he wanted all of them to keep their eyes open for her too. Leigh suggested that Frank also get a blow-up of the camera, in case Reg could tell if it was something other than a camera. He said he could do that and that he’d have ‘his people’ look at that angle too.

Then, attention turned to dinner. Frank suggested that they get some take-out and go visit Jared. None of them had had much of a chance to spend time with him, and his and Kat’s families would probably have finished visiting him by now. They stopped at several different ethnic restaurants and ended up with a half dozen types of food by the time they got to the hospital. The hospital was a public one, but it took a phone call and a few minutes of waiting before they were cleared to go up to Jared’s room. When they got there, it was apparent that this was a ‘secure’ ward on a ‘private’ floor. There were guards to greet them as they stepped off the elevator and a half dozen more guarding the room itself, who were ready to act as food testers for Jared until he let them know that he had the utmost trust in these six people. His and Kat’s families had, indeed, been and gone already, and he was grateful for the food and the company of friends. They chatted as they ate, and Jared told them that Kat had actually seen the car coming before he had. Instead of saving herself, she’d shoved him out of the way and taken the full force of the impact herself. Karen couldn’t help but wonder aloud how Kat had ever managed to get around in the high-heeled shoes she favored. Jared never understood it either, he said, but he’d seen her run in them more than once.

It wasn’t long before it was obvious that Jared was worn out, from the stress of burying his late fiancee and from the injuries he’d gotten in the accident that killed her. As the others were saying goodbye, Justin whispered to Karen that he wondered if “two balls of yarn” were enough to keep the cat entertained until they got home. When he’d repeated the question a second time and still got a blank look from Karen (Yarn? She hadn’t given the cat any yarn. What on earth was Justin talking about?), he started to say it a third time with obvious stress on the word “balls.” Then Karen finally got it! After she hugged Jared tightly and reminded him that he had friends who would do anything for him if he only called and asked, she started toward the door and raised a Sphere, trying to get as many of the guards as she could in its range. They all looked OK. As she was doing that, Frank was passing the guards copies of the photo that he’d given all of them. They spent the rest of the evening hanging out at the hotel. Justin made sure to call Timmy, and told him that he would be paying for all three of the laptops. Timmy had already sent out the bills to Aiden and Angie, and Justin told him to just send back any payment he might get from them and let them know it was covered. They flew back to Detroit Thursday morning. Five of them took Reg’s jet back, and Frank flew back commercial so he could travel with a couple of other people from the Detroit office. The ‘chatter’ on the flight was that they all thought highly of Jared. They liked working with him because he gave direction well, didn’t micro-manage, and gave ‘props’ where they were due.

When they got home and Karen was sure the cat (and the condo) had been OK while they were gone, she went out to look around at a couple ‘monument’ companies. She’d made a promise to herself a while ago and put off fulfilling it for too long now. She needed to have headstones put on Melissa’s and Jane’s graves. She didn’t have a ton of time, since she and Justin were having dinner with Uncle/Fr. Jerzy that evening; but she wanted to see what was out there. It had been a few years since she’d helped her mom pick one out for her dad, and she wondered what sort of engraving options she might have now. Tomorrow she would have a little more time to check the cemeteries’ restrictions on size and shape of the stones; then she could get them ordered.

When Karen and Justin got to the St. Lad’s rectory, they were met at the door by the housekeeper and led to the library, where Uncle/Fr. Jerzy was waiting to have a glass of wine with them before dinner. Neither Karen nor Justin were willing to start this conversation, and Jerzy stood watching their discomfort with a beatifically patient look that said “I can wait longer than you can.” He finally took pity on them and asked how married life was treating them. Both blushed, and Jerzy couldn’t help but laugh as he nodded his approval, saying only “Good, good!” A look of relief passed between the couple when the housekeeper came back to let them all know that dinner was on the table. As if facing the man across a table covered with food would be somehow easier than facing him over a glass of wine. When they’d settled into the dining room, the housekeeper let Fr. Jerzy know that she was leaving for the evening. More relief for the newlyweds. If they had to drag Uncle/Fr. Jerzy into this fight, at least there wouldn’t be anyone else around to overhear the conversation. As Karen surveyed the food piled high on the table, she reminded herself that she would have to get Marie to teach her how to cook some of these things. She recognized several of Justin’s favorite dishes, in quantities similar to Marie’s--meaning enough to feed the whole Polish Army. She wasn’t much of a cook in the first place, and she’d never be able to match how his mom and sister made them, but she would try at least. Justin noticed the quantity of food too and asked how they would ever eat it all. Uncle/Fr. Jerzy told them that he may not be able to cook it, but he could certainly manage to get the leftovers wrapped and into the ‘fridge by himself.

He knew that Justin was just stalling, trying to avoid the ‘talk’ he and Karen had been invited there to have. He asked how Karen was holding up. He knew that she’d been close to Fr. Andrew and his death had been a huge blow, he told her. That was confirmed by the raw pain that clouded her eyes when he mentioned the priest. He asked if she knew that Fr. Andrew had been quite fond of her, too, and Karen looked down and began twisting the napkin that had been lying on her lap. He wondered if she knew why he’d taken such an interest in her. Karen shook her head that she didn’t. The pain of his death was still to close to the surface and that made it hard for her to talk about him. When she’d forced back the tears that threatened to spill out, she looked at Fr. Jerzy with a wry smile and suggested that maybe it was because she was such an idiot he’d known she wouldn’t make it without his help. As Justin half-whispered to her that she wasn’t an idiot, Fr. Jerzy countered that perhaps it was because the priest had seen something special in Karen that was worth protecting. Karen fidgeted in her seat and fingered the crucifix that hung against her skin. She started trying to build a little wall around the pain. The wound the Jesuit’s death had left hadn’t begun to scab over yet and she was afraid the pain would overwhelm her. She couldn’t sit there and cry all through dinner; that would be incredibly rude.

Jerzy saw the discomfort it was causing Karen, and he let the subject drop. He turned to Justin next, and asked what he’d been doing the past couple months. Justin answered with a question, asking his uncle how much he ‘knew.’ Jerzy turned it back on Justin and told him he wanted him to go first. Karen just concentrated on the food on her plate. When Justin began to flounder, not sure where to start or how much to say, Jerzy once again took pity on them and said that he knew that Karen saw the dead and had all her life. Karen stared at the priest in amazement. How...? And how long...? Justin’s reaction was pretty much the same. And it was doubled when Jerzy told him that he knew that Justin’s first time with something like that had been when he was in the army; he’d come back changed. Justin began to describe what had happened, laying out the scene in fits and starts as he stumbled through that emotional mine field. How they’d been in camp, some guys working that night to avoid the scorching heat of the day, him and others sleeping. How he’d been wakened by the screams and shooting as...something...assaulted the front gates. He never knew what they were, just that they were impossible to kill. When they attacked a man, they would tear into him, eating.... When they were shot the bullets seemed to have no effect; whole limbs could be shot off and the things still kept coming. The radio operator kept calling for choppers to evac them and air strikes to kill the things that had surrounded them. They kept falling back until they reached the landing zone. They got as many men as they could onto the choppers that finally came for them, but there wasn’t enough room, and some of the guys had gotten cut off from the LZ by the creatures. And he’d had to leave them behind....

Justin broke down. He dropped his head onto his knees as sobs shook his body. He’d had to leave men behind and he’d never been able to tell the truth about what had happened. They didn’t want to hear the truth. He’d been forced to agree with the story the Army had created to explain it, in order to avoid being tagged Section 8. Then his mom had died and he’d been sent home and he had to live with the lies; he couldn’t tell anyone, not even Uncle Jerzy. Karen rubbed Justin’s back and stroked the back of his neck and she listened to the words that sounded like they were being wrenched out of Justin’s gut. She’d heard most of the story before, even the part about guys getting left behind, and it hadn’t affected Justin this much. This time it made her cry to hear the pain come out in his voice and to see the emotion twist his handsome face. She knew that it was finally being able to open up to his uncle, the man who had been like a father to him after his own had deserted the family, that had caused this release of emotion. And she also knew that it was the best thing for Justin. She knew the relief she had felt when she’d finally met other people who KNEW. And in some ways it hadn’t been as bad for her to live with the lies, since she’d learned how so long ago. In fact, she felt like it was harder learning how to live without them now. There were still so many people she couldn’t tell, couldn’t endanger by being open with them. Even with Justin, she sometimes didn’t tell him everything she saw, to try to protect him from it. She knew that he’d never been comfortable with knowing that there were things hanging around that he couldn’t see and couldn’t touch and couldn’t shoot with a gun or hit with his fists. And Sarah’s showing up at the reception didn’t help.

Justin’s sobs had finally quieted, and he sat and dried his face with his sleeves. Karen sat back and wiped away her own tears with her napkin. Even Uncle/Fr. Jerzy wiped away a few tears, and his love for his nephew was written on his face. He understood why Justin had never spoken about that before; and he knew that Karen herself had spent time in a mental hospital, as well, because of talking about what she saw, he told them. Karen stiffened and her ‘walls’ began to go up. She knew that Fr. Jerzy didn’t mention it because her past was an issue for him; he’d probably hoped that it would let her know that it WASN’T an issue. But so many years of protecting herself had made Karen sensitive to the possibility of being hurt and the walls went up without conscious thought. She had, for a couple years, she confirmed. But the tension was obvious in her voice and she looked back at her plate as she said it. Justin told him that he wasn’t sure how Karen had lived with the ghosts around for so long and not actually gone crazy. Uncle Jerzy suggested that maybe since they’d always been there, she was used to it. Karen told them that it would be worse if they weren’t there. They’d been there all her life. She had no idea what the world would be like without them. She could only imagine how terribly empty if would feel. Even when she couldn’t see them, she knew they were there and in some ways it was almost comforting to know it.

Jerzy asked them if what had happened to Marlene had been something along these same lines as well, and they looked at one another before looking back to him and nodding that it had. They really weren’t sure what had been done to her, Justin told him, and they were still trying to figure out what could be done to help her. Fr. Jerzy looked at them both carefully, to make sure he had their full attention and that they understood him when he said the next thing. He wanted them to know that they could tell him ANYTHING, in confession if they needed to, or not. Fr. McLaren had spoken with him and had explained some of Fr. Andrew’s mission here. Karen looked up at Uncle/Fr. Jerzy and wondered if.... She was afraid to bring it up because most people didn’t react well to knowing that they were ‘haunted.’ It sort of freaked Justin out whenever she mentioned the ‘people’ she saw, though he was certainly beginning to get used to it more now. Aiden was definitely better off not knowing; especially since he seemed determined to haul them all around with him forever. And it probably wouldn’t get any better when he became an ER doctor. The only difference would be that instead of going out to get them they’d be brought in to him. At that rate the guy was going to need some serious counseling. And Reg, well, he was in classic denial. She wondered what Stephen’s story was, what he had to deal with here and what Reg was dealing with that he couldn’t let him go. Jerzy could see that she was struggling with something, unsure what to do. He asked if there was something Karen needed to say and she studied his face, hoping the answer she needed would appear there.

Karen opened her mouth then hesitated a second before asking if she could really tell him ANYTHING. Then she took a deep breath and told him that there had been a girl with him at the reception. Justin turned and stared at her. She hadn’t told him about any other ghosts there; just Sarah. She saw the look and told him that she hadn’t mentioned the other guy that had a family resemblance to his family but wearing clothes from the ‘30s, either. Uncle/Fr. Jerzy suggested that they were there because it was a wedding, a special event, and Karen wondered how long he’d known about these kinds of things. She continued, saying that the girl had looked sad, and had stayed at his side and moved or sat when he did. Karen described the girl, about 18 years old and wearing clothes from the fifties. A look of...concern?...passed over Fr. Jerzy’s face and he crossed himself. He looked at Karen and then stood and excused himself, and Karen was horrified to think that she’d made the wrong decision and scared or hurt Justin’s uncle. He came back a minute later and handed Karen a photo as he sat down. It was the girl Karen had seen with him.

Her name was Alice, Jerzy began. They’d been engaged to be married. But she died of pneumonia, and he went into the seminary. The illness had come on suddenly, he told them, and she’d died in a matter of hours. They’d been together when she began coughing; she went home to bed thinking that she would be fine the next day. She’d been the love of his life. But joining the seminary hadn’t been as rash and sudden a decision as it might sound, he explained. He’d felt the ‘calling’ before, but he’d ignored it because of his love for her. When she was gone, he no longer had a reason to ignore it. He paused and looked around, then looked questioningly at Karen again. No, Karen told him, she wasn’t there. Jerzy looked almost relieved, and told them he hoped that he wasn’t holding her there. He’d never forgotten her, and kept her picture in his Bible. But he’d always expected that her soul would go on to be with God in Heaven and he prayed for her. Karen told him that sometimes they stayed because someone kept them there and other times because they still had something they needed to do, and sometimes just because they didn’t know where else to go. But she thought that maybe Alice had just wanted to make sure that he was happy with the life he had chosen when she had gone.

The three finished eating, trying to keep the conversation to lighter subjects. When they’d finished and cleaned up the dishes and put away the leftovers, Karen and Justin said good night. Before they left, Uncle/Fr. Jerzy reminded them that they could speak to him at any time about anything, and that Tony was welcome to confess to him too. But he should probably call first and make an appointment, just to make sure that he didn’t accidently end up seeing one of the other priests, he added with a wink. They told him they would let Tony know. Tony had been busy with his lust issues that evening. He’d called Anne, since Anne hadn’t called him since she’d dropped him off at Receiving on Monday morning. Would she like to go to dinner and a movie with him that Saturday? “Are you going to show up?” she fired back. “Or will you just leave early?” All of a sudden the giant lightbulb over Tony’s head went on and he understood what had been going on with her Monday morning. She was pissed because he’d ditched her at the wedding. How could he explain to her that he hadn’t wanted to, he’d HAD to? He told her that he’d gotten called by Fr. Andrew when Angie and Aiden had gotten hurt. When he saw the condition that Fr. Andrew himself was in, he couldn’t just abandon the old priest. Anne let him talk. He told her that she could pick the movie, anything she wanted, and Anne knew right away that she would be subjecting him to the most annoying chick flick she could find, even if she didn’t particularly want to see it herself. Then Tony told her that he’d make reservations at Morton’s Steak House in Southfield, and Anne was suitably impressed with his choice. OK, he had some flaws. But what guy didn’t? She’d give him one more chance.

Reg was almost ready to fall asleep himself. Watching Tony snore was about as entertaining as watching paint dry. Then a gorgeous red-head came in dressed in a nurse’s outfit and Reg had to wonder if maybe he HAD fallen asleep and was dreaming. It took him a moment to recognize her. It was the woman Tony had been with at the reception last night, Anne something. Right, Skotowski. It was right there on her name tag. She was standing there with her arms crossed, tapping her foot and staring at Tony. When she put her hand out like she was going to wake him, Reg told her that Tony’d had a little ‘help’ getting to sleep. She asked him what Tony had been given, and he told her that he’d emptied a capsule of Ambien into Tony’s decaf latte just a little while ago. Reg introduced himself and Anne asked if he knew why Tony had ditched her at the reception. Reg told her that it was a long story, and Anne responded that she’d just gotten off work, so she had the time. She sat down, and Reg could tell from the look on her face that he wouldn’t get rid of her easily.

So he asked if she knew that Tony was a bounty hunter ‘on the side.’ She did. And that he’d almost been killed on one job? Yes; she’d been his nurse while he was recovering. Well, Reg explained, there’d been another job, and a ‘loose end’ had turned up last night, and the team had no choice but to deal with it. Tony’d been up all night, most of it there at the hospital. Anne told him that she’d gotten a tip from a friend who worked there at Receiving, that her ‘boyfriend’ was passed out in a waiting room there. She worked over at the Rehab Institute herself. Two of Tony’s teammates, Reg told her, were patients there--Aiden and Angie. They’d been seriously hurt during last night’s job and he’d been watching over them all night. And Fr. Andrew, another friend of theirs, had died there just that morning while he’d been visiting Aiden. Reg just thought that Tony ought to sleep whether he wanted to or not. Anne told him that, as a licensed medical professional, she was obliged to remind him that he should never give drugs prescribed to him to another person. Reg told her that he knew that, but it seemed better than allowing Tony to do something stupid due to lack of sleep, and it was obvious that Tony was going to refuse to go to sleep himself.

Anne checked his pupils and his vitals. When she was satisfied that he really was just sleeping, she decided that she would take him somewhere more comfortable and keep an eye on him until he woke up. Except, she didn’t know where Tony was staying. Reg offered her the keys to his place and told her that there was a first floor guest room that she could put him in. Reg and Anne lifted Tony off the chair he was slumped in and roused him just enough to get him out to Anne’s car. Reg gave her directions to his place, then realized that she would have to get him inside by herself. She told him that she would just swing past National Coney Island on the way and lead him in with a coney dog. Reg laughed; she really knew the way to this man’s heart. Now that he was freed from watching Tony, Reg went back up to check on Aiden and Frank. Frank was standing in the hallway with his cell out when Reg got there. He was just going to call Reg. He’d gotten a call from work and he had to go in. Reg agreed to stay there with Aiden.

Aiden was sleeping peacefully when Reg went into the room. He stood there a moment, deciding which chair to sit in when he noticed a piece of paper under Aiden’s right hand, which hadn’t moved from the spot it was in after Fr. Andrew’s hand was pried out of it. Reg carefully slid the paper out from under Aiden’s hand. It was folded a couple times. Reg opened it and found that it was a hand-written note from Fr. Andrew. He pulled his micro-scanner out of his pocket and scanned the note into his PDA. Then he carefully refolded it and slid it back under Aiden’s hand. Leigh was still sitting with Angie when the nurse came in and woke her to take her vitals. Angie started to complain that she felt fine and asked when they would let her go. The nurse was singularly unimpressed with Angie’s whining and told her she might be released later. That would have to do.

Down in the chapel, Karen was running out of tears. Not that there wouldn’t be more later, but she was worn out with crying for now. She sat there with her head on Justin’s chest, feeling his arms around her and listening to his heartbeat. Suddenly she pushed back from him so that she could see his face. She had to speak to Frank...now. Justin stood and helped Karen to her feet. She wasn’t too steady, so he held on to her as they walked to Aiden’s room. When they got there and found that Reg was there and Frank was gone, Reg and Justin both could see the panic on Karen’s face. The puffy redness from all her crying couldn’t mask it. Reg asked if he could help instead. Karen didn’t know what to do. She knew that Frank ‘knew’ people and had the power to do this for her. He was Homeland Security, for christsake; he could do pretty much anything he wanted. She looked at Justin and told him, “they can’t take him.” She needed to be there, she told him. Justin stopped her and asked if she meant Fr. Andrew. She nodded. She had to be there when he...when they.... Justin and Reg could see the word form on Karen’s lips, but she never got it out. She had to be there when they buried Fr. Andrew. Karen put her hand to her mouth and looked frantically around the room until her eyes spotted the waste can. She dropped to her knees and threw up into it. Everything she’d had for breakfast (and she’d actually eaten more than Justin had ever seen her eat before--she was in a wonderful mood...that morning) was soon in the bottom of the can. All Justin could do was hold her long, loose hair away from her face and rub her back.

The sound of Karen retching woke Aiden. He asked Reg if she would be alright, and Reg nodded that he thought she would. When she finished, Justin helped her to the bathroom and sat her on the edge of the toilet, and put a damp washcloth on the back of her neck. When she finally straightened up, Justin asked her why she needed to be at Fr. Andrew’s funeral. Did she need any other reason than that she cared for him? She would have been yelling if she’d had the strength left for it. But Justin was concerned; he wanted to make sure that that was the only reason, and not because she thought that something bad...something Unknown...might happen to his body. No. She just needed to be there for herself, and to show the respect for him that he deserved. While he was laying there feeling guilty and wondering if Karen would blame him for Drew’s death, Aiden felt the piece of paper under his hand. He lifted it to look at it, then tucked it under the edge of his pillow to look at later. He had a feeling it was supposed to be private, whatever it was. Reg was relieved. Aiden still looked like he was in a great deal of pain, but he’d moved both hands now and that was good.

Down the hall, Angie was not being a very good patient. She was tired of lying there when she felt fine, and she wanted to see Aiden. She knew that he’d be taking Fr. Andrew’s death pretty hard, in spite of how much the priest had always irritated him, and she wanted to be there to help him deal with it. When she’d pressed the call button for the umpteenth time, the nurse finally gave in. Every argument they had for her staying put, she managed to counter, and she was soon being wheeled down the hall by Leigh toward Aiden’s room. Just as Leigh was pushing her through the door, Justin was helping Karen out of the bathroom and sitting her down in a chair. She looked like shit, but Justin was there with his arm around her. Angie had Leigh push her right up to the bed, so she could be there for Aiden the same way, if...no, when...he needed her. Reg reminded her that Aiden, at least, was in no condition to be kicked out of the hospital again, so they’d better behave this time. Angie got a wicked grin on her face which was matched by a wry grin on Aiden’s. Justin and Reg teased them a little more, but they both knew that Reg was right; and Aiden really wasn’t in any condition for ‘that’ anyway.

Aiden had managed to get the gist of what Karen wanted, though he was tired and sore and she wasn’t talking too coherently. He told them that he was the executor of Fr. Andrew’s will, and the priest had requested burial in Rome. He expected that they’d be sending someone for the body, and they would probably hold a memorial service here for him; but he wasn’t sure that they’d let any of them attend the actual funeral in Rome. Karen didn’t care. If she had to pay her own way over and stand outside the gates of the Vatican, she would be there. Justin could feel her spine stiffen with resolve. Karen wasn’t catching much of what went on in the room, but she got the impression that Aiden would just as soon not go to Rome. He felt responsible for Fr. Andrew’s death, and he told them that he felt bad that the last words that he’d said to the priest were harsh ones. Reg had noticed him tuck the note away, and now he caught Aiden’s eye and nodded toward the spot where he’d stashed it. Aiden pulled the note out, read it, then shouted an expletive, crumpled the paper and threw it with what little strength he had. Then he started crying. Not huge sobs like Karen had, but a flood of tears that rolled silently down his cheeks. Angie quickly locked the wheels of her chair and got up to sit on the bed next to Aiden, pulling him into her arms.

While Angie comforted Aiden, Reg retrieved the note from the floor and smoothed it out. Aiden noticed him start to hand it to Justin and started to object. Then, recognizing that Reg must have read it already, nodded his assent. The note got passed among the rest of the Envoys, who now knew that Fr. Andrew had known exactly what he was doing when he gave up his life to save Aiden’s. They pointed out to Aiden that he couldn’t blame himself for the choice Fr. Andrew made any more than Angie or Tony could blame themselves because Aiden had saved them. At one point, when Fr. Andrew’s possible ‘background’ came up, Reg excused himself and went into the hallway to Google “Grigori” on his PDA. He found out roughly the same thing that Leigh and Karen had already explained to the others--that the Grigori of Jewish legends were the “watchers,” the early shepherds of the first humans. They were taller than regular men, giants the stories said. There were both good and evil watchers, and the Nephilim were their children, the product of the union between watchers and human women. Back inside the room, the others told Aiden what they knew about his injuries. If Fr. Andrew hadn’t done what he’d done, Aiden might have died or, if he’d lived, might have been a quadriplegic. There was raw tenderness on his face when he looked at Angie and told them that he couldn’t have let her die. It disappeared when Justin poked him in the bottom of his feet with his car keys, to check that Aiden hadn’t lost feeling in his legs because of his injuries. He obviously hadn't.

Aiden hadn’t wanted Angie to see the note, even though she wanted to because all the others had. Now he finally agreed to let her read it, and the part about ‘if Aiden cared enough about her to save her life at the risk of his own, then he must care enough to marry her’ made Angie snort almost the same expletive that Aiden had. Even if Aiden asked her, she wasn’t sure that she’d agree to it. And Aiden certainly wasn’t going to ask her just because of the circumstances, either. Besides, Reg pointed out, making decisions like that shouldn’t be done under this sort of stress, even if they might be the right decisions in the end. Justin teased Aiden that by the same logic, maybe he ought to be asking for Tony’s hand instead, since he’d saved Tony’s life first. This led to some ribald jokes about Aiden pairing with everyone whose lives he’d saved. Just then, a nurse came in with medication and to let him know that she would be hooking up the self-medication controls for the morphine. She ordered everyone out of the room, and that included Angie. She’d “heard” about Angie already, and when the young woman didn’t move fast enough, the nurse went over and lifted her off the bed and back into her chair. She went out to get the controls for the morphine drip, and Aiden told them that the only reason he had Fr. Andrew’s medical power of attorney was because he was local and he had some medical knowledge. But Fr. Andrew had his because it was part of their “deal.” He didn’t say anything else though, because the nurse came back in and made them all leave.

They went down to Angie’s room, and Karen asked her how she felt. She’d remembered that that night was the first night of the full moon, and by this time last month, Aiden had been showing obvious signs of his ‘infection.’ She felt fine, Angie told them, and Justin asked how she liked her burgers, as a test. “A pint of blood, a couple of band-aids and a 50/50 chance of survival,” she said. Then she laughed and told them that was how she always took them though. Kind of a macho Marine, hunting her own meat thing. When the image of a hunter chasing a tube of meat was described, the conversation had only one way to go--down hill. Jokes about “tube steaks” brought raucous laughter; and when Karen, who hadn’t been paying much attention after Angie had said she felt fine, caught the gist of the jokes she turned pink. When the others had all laughed away their tension for the moment, Angie told them that she’d had an out-of-body experience in the garage. But she’d seen not just guys she knew from Iraq who she knew were dead, but also her mom, who she knew wasn’t. The tiny quiver in her voice was the only thing that gave away Angie’s concern for her mom, who was back in New York. Reg pulled out his cell and asked Angie what her mom’s phone number was. She told him before she realized why he’d asked, and started to object until he handed her the phone, which was already ringing on the other end.

Angie’s mom was immediately concerned, since it wasn’t like Angie to call her out of the blue. Angie told her that she was just killing time while she waited to get released from the hospital, that she’d had a minor accident at work and they’d insisted she get checked out, but she’d be fine. When she hung up, she told the others that she recognized that Fr. Andrew was like a mentor to Aiden and that it would be hard for him to get over his death; but she couldn’t be sorry that Aiden was the one who was still alive. The others murmured and nodded agreement, except Karen, who told them to stop talking about it when Justin added that he couldn't feel bad about Aiden's life being saved, in spite of the fact that it had meant that Fr. Andrew had to sacrifice his own. It wasn’t that Karen didn’t like Aiden too. She did. And he’d helped her out often enough, and she appreciated that. And she certainly would have been sorry if he’d died. But choose his life over Fr. Andrew’s? She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t argue about the choice he’d made, since it had been his choice to make. But she’d never be glad about it. She still couldn’t explain why she cared for the priest so deeply, and maybe now she’d never know. But it would have been the most heinous betrayal for her not to mourn his death just because Aiden’s life had been spared, and her stomach and heart twisted inside her to think about it. Right now she just couldn’t bear to hear the others treat it like a good thing, even though she knew that none of them had liked him as much as she had, or even at all, and that they weren’t saying that they were glad he was dead anyway.

Reg noticed that Angie’s voice was getting a little rough, so he went to the cafeteria and got her some jello and a couple of popsicles. When he got back, Leigh was mentioning that Dee knew someone named Mary, who lived in Scotland and might be able to help train Aiden how to use his gifts better. That was another of the things that Fr. Andrew had mentioned in his note, that Aiden should learn to control how he used his gifts rather than ending up inadvertently risking his own life to save someone else’s. But they all knew it might not be easy to talk him into going to Scotland for the time that would take. Sure, there were good medical schools there; and it didn’t mean he’d be there forever. All he’d done was complain about how Drew’s comment, the only reasonable one in his opinion, was too cryptic to be useful. But even though they might have found a way to respect that one of Fr. Andrew’s wishes, would Aiden agree to it if it meant ‘abandoning’ his friends, and more importantly Angie? Because that probably would be how he’d look at it. Reg suggested that they not give him the choice. If Angie would ‘sap’ Aiden, he’d supply the plane to get him to Scotland. Someone suggested that Reg might have another reason for wanting Aiden out of the way, since he was being so nice to Angie. She looked him up and down like a tiger checking out a steak. He was certainly good-looking. This led to more ribald humor centered around Reg’s attractiveness, but Karen wasn’t paying any attention. She was lost in her grief again.

Everyone was laughing until the same nurse who had shooed them from Aiden’s room walked into Angie’s with her medication. Now she wanted them to leave Angie’s room too. She seemed a little miffed that the group of friends was still hanging around ‘her’ ICU bothering ‘her’ patients. This time it was Karen who got a wicked grin on her face. She hadn’t been so totally wrapped up in her thoughts that she had missed that it was the same nurse. She glanced at the number of rooms between Aiden’s and Angie’s, and thought that maybe the nurse had been going room to room with the meds. It might be funny, she suggested to the others, if they turned up in the next room down. So she and Justin, Leigh and Reg went into the next room down the hall from Angie’s. There was a man in the bed, asleep, and a quick glance at his chart told them that he’d recently had bypass surgery. Karen didn’t want to wake him, so the friends waited quietly for the nurse to come in. When she did, it was obvious that she didn’t think their presence was nearly as funny as they did. The four started laughing, even as the nurse grabbed the nearest of them, Leigh, by the arm and half-dragged her toward the elevator. When the door opened, the nurse stood there until it closed again on the four, who laughed all the way down.

They were still laughing when the doors opened again on the first floor. But the laughing stopped when they saw Weeping Sparrow and her ‘posse’ standing outside the elevator. “You are a hard person to find, Raccoon,” she said to Karen. Karen wasn’t even sure what to say. She hadn’t known that Weeping Sparrow was looking for her, and she didn’t know that both Reg and Justin had called people asking for Weeping Sparrow’s help for Karen. Weeping Sparrow asked Karen what was wrong, who she had lost, because it didn’t take a wise woman to see the grief in Karen’s eyes. Karen swallowed hard and told her that Fr. Andrew had died. Weeping Sparrow hadn’t met him, she’d only seen him at the wedding, but she knew that he’d been a powerful man who’d lived a very long time and was very tired. She wondered where they could go to talk, and Karen offered her place. Right away everyone objected that it was too small. And considering that Weeping Sparrow’s ‘posse’ was over a dozen people--her four ‘body guards’ (‘kiiadigewininiwag’ Karen called them), five young wise women who were ‘in training’ with her, plus a half dozen other female relatives--they might actually have been right this time. Reg offered his place, but it would be a bit of a drive. Then Justin said he’d offer his if it weren’t for the Hell Mouth.

The talking stopped as Weeping Sparrow stared at him for a second. Justin thought that maybe she didn’t understand the reference and he started to explain it. But it wasn’t that. She might not watch TV herself, but she had plenty of children around who did and who had told her all about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. No, she was thinking that this might be as good a time as any to actually check the place out. Karen had told her about it, and she’d certainly recognized that there was something evil there, but she hadn’t experienced it for herself and she would definitely need to if she were going to help Raccoon solve the problem. So, Justin’s house it was. Justin drove his truck, which Reg had brought to the hospital for him, and Leigh and Reg followed him in Charlie, which Leigh had driven from Reg’s place so they’d have a way to get back there later. Karen would ride in the van with Weeping Sparrow and the others to give Little Deer, who happened to be the one driving, directions. It took them about 20 minutes to get up there. They parked by the shop, and began to walk over to the house. When they got within a couple hundred feet, Weeping Sparrow stopped the group. She apologized to Karen. She had thought that maybe, not being familiar with this sort of evil presence, Raccoon had perhaps exaggerated what she’d felt. The situation was much worse than Weeping Sparrow had realized.

Weeping Sparrow wasn’t the only one who was affected by the evil that was there. Karen had felt it before and was ready for the feeling, but she could tell that it was different now than the last time she’d been there. Last time, she could tell that it was dormant, biding its time. But now it was wide awake. Leigh had tried to sense if there was something Unknown there, since she’d never been to Justin’s house before. If sensing an Unknown presence was like feeling the rush of heat from a closed car in the summer, this was like opening a blast furnace. Even worse, though, was the feeling that Leigh got that, whatever this thing was, it had noticed her and thought she might make a tasty snack. Karen looked at Reg and Justin. Neither of them seemed to noticed the blast of...pressure...that Karen and Weeping Sparrow and Leigh did. But Karen saw Reg’s ghost friend again, and he was NOT happy. The guy, forty-ish and slightly Asian-looking, had his hand on Reg’s shoulder and was trying to prevent him from moving any closer to the house. When he noticed that Karen was looking at him, he looked at her and Karen saw that where his eyes should have been there were just deep black holes. Karen stepped in front of Reg. She quietly described the man who was standing behind him and asked if he recognized him. It was Stephen Adams, his late partner. Karen told him that Stephen was there, and had been at the wedding too, and he did NOT want Reg to go any closer to the house. Reg just stared at her. Stephen? Was there? His mind wasn’t ready to deal with that possibility. Sure, the others had said that Karen saw ghosts. But how could he know that that was for real? Karen saw the look of doubt and...something else...and told him that it might just be better if he took her word for it and waited there rather than agitating Stephen any further.

Weeping Sparrow thought they should all move away from it, and Justin indicated that there was a patio on top of the garage, if that would be far enough away. There were grills up there and since it was lunch time anyway.... The group went up and Justin and Reg began issuing instructions for putting together what had turned into an impromptu wake. Weeping Sparrow hadn’t forgotten that she was there to help Raccoon with her grief in the first place. Little Deer and the other body guards and a couple of the women headed out to the store to pick up burgers and hotdogs and all the other supplies that Justin didn’t have at hand. Weeping Sparrow told Karen that she thought that this WAS the spot where the legend had started. The evil that was there hated Love, and all four of the Envoys that were there were now or had recently been in committed relationships, had they not? So none of them were safe, she told them.

Frank had been called away to deal with some of the arrangements for Kat’s funeral. He wasn’t Jared’s second in command, but he was the highest ranking investigator under him, and it was up to him to determine what sort of security and surveillance should be set up. Maybe, if Jared had been the target of a hit, whoever had set up the hit would try again at the funeral, knowing he’d be there. Jared needed the tightest security, and if anything did happen, he needed the perp caught this time. When Frank had finished, he went back to the hospital. He went to Aiden’s room first, expecting to find the others there when none of them were in the waiting room or chapel. They’d been ejected, Aiden told him. He wasn’t sure why, but he’d heard a lot of laughing. Frank asked how he was feeling, and Aiden told him that, besides about a metric ton of guilt, he felt OK. Frank told Aiden he thought he had a martyr complex. Aiden showed him the note that Fr. Andrew had left (what the hell; everyone else had seen it), and Frank pointed out the same faulty logic that Justin had earlier. Aiden had saved Tony first, but Fr. Andrew didn’t suggest that Aiden marry him. And he obviously wasn’t suggesting polygamy, even though Aiden had saved Leigh in between. So the priest obviously had a ‘thing’ for Aiden himself. Aiden was laughing by now, and told Frank to stop, since laughing hurt. In fact, he hurt pretty much all over. He told Frank he should call Justin to find out where they all were.

Frank asked him if he had any stigmata yet. Anyone who was so willing to die for others should have them. Aiden objected that he wasn’t doing it on purpose, that he had no control over what happened. The whole ‘taking on injuries’ thing and bringing people back from the dead were kinda new to him. In fact, that was the one thing in the note that Drew might have been right about, Aiden said--that he needed to learn to control it. Frank pointed out to Aiden that he shouldn’t dismiss some of the other things Fr. Andrew said. He’d thought enough of Aiden, just as he was, to save his life. Aiden admitted that he owed Drew his life. “No,” Frank told him. “But Drew gave me his life,” Aiden argued. “No,” Frank said again. “He gave up his life to save you. There’s a difference.” Aiden looked like he was about to continue the argument when the nurse came back. “You’re not going to make me throw you out too?” she said to Frank. He told her that he didn’t think he could MAKE her do anything. But he wasn’t planning on staying anyway. He nodded goodbye to Aiden and went into the hall. He called Justin, who told him that they were up at Justin's house. Frank told him he would find his way there, let Aiden know that's where everyone was, then went down to Angie’s room.

Angie was just getting dressed when she heard a knock on her door. She was a little surprised to find that it was Frank. “Good!” she told him. “I thought I was going to have to call someone for a ride.” “Happy to be of chauffeur service,” he said. He asked how she was feeling, and she told him that she was fine. She was being written off as one of life’s little mysteries, since she’d shown signs of oxygen dep. but they couldn’t find any cause at all. Unfortunately, she had to go straight out of the building, “Do Not Pass GO, Do Not Collect $200, and Do Not Stop in Aiden’s Room.” On the way out, she did have to stop at the pharmacy and fill a prescription for Darvoset. While they waited for that, Frank mentioned to Angie that the others were at Justin's. She’d been up there back when she first got to Detroit looking for Aiden, and told Frank she could direct him there. As Frank drove, he told Angie to look in the glove box. As soon as she opened it, she started cooing “Oh, my little baby!” It was her gun. Tony had stuffed it in the Lincoln’s glove compartment the night before, on the way to the warehouse to bury the zombi.

Back at Justin’s, Reg asked Weeping Sparrow why she hadn’t just called to find out where Karen was. Electronics interfered with her ability to feel the earth, she explained. She didn’t have a cell phone and tried to avoid electronic stuff as much as she could. In fact, if he ever needed her to do any ‘working’ for him, Reg would need to take off all of his electronics. Justin joked that then Reg would be walking around naked, and Reg feigned offense. Since they had a little time before the shoppers came back with the food, Justin called his uncle; Fr. Jerzy should be done with Mass by now. He was, but he was surprised to hear from Justin so soon after the wedding. Justin told him that he had some bad news and wondered if Fr. Jerzy could call the Vatican. Jerzy could hear the stress in Justin’s voice and tried to lighten the mood by telling him that he didn’t recall anything happening at the reception that warranted a call to the Vatican. Justin relaxed a little and told him that it was nothing like that, although he wouldn’t be surprised if Jimmy ‘3' and ‘Little’ Tony hurt each other when they got home. No, the problem was that Fr. Andrew had died and no one seemed to know who to contact about it. He thought that Fr. Jerzy might know who to call. In spite of what Justin might think, Jerzy told him, he didn’t have a direct line to the Pope. He might be able to set up a meeting with the Archbishop, but that was probably about as ‘high’ as he could get. He would do what he could though, he promised Justin. He was sorry to hear that the other priest was dead. He hadn’t had time to talk with him, but he’d gotten the impression that he could learn a lot from him--like what Justin was involved in. Justin promised his uncle that he would see him to talk soon and tell him as much as he could. Maybe even that evening. No need to rush, Jerzy told him. He was still on his honeymoon, after all; tomorrow would be fine, he added with a laugh.

Justin pulled up the number he’d ‘captured’ when Fr. Andrew had called from Rome, hoping to be connected with someone who knew the dead priest. But after a few rings, the machine picked up with a greeting that said only “Leave a message,” in Fr. Andrew’s voice. Leigh was on the phone too, now. She called Dee, partly to find out if Dee had gotten through to her contacts in the Vatican, but also to find out if she thought Mary might be willing to teach Aiden what she could. Dee told her that, as far as contacting the Vatican, she’d done all she could and been assured that arrangements for Fr. Andrew were being taken care of. She asked Leigh to describe what she knew of Aiden’s abilities, and Leigh told her that he’d begun not just Healing, but actually taking the other person’s injuries onto himself. She would certainly be willing to ask Mary to help Aiden, Dee said, though she didn’t know how much Mary could help him; but he’d have to relocate to Scotland, temporarily at least. Dee told Leigh she’d get back to her as soon as she knew anything more, and they said goodbye. Just about then, the shoppers got back with all the makings of a barbeque lunch, and Frank and Angie pulled up as well.

Frank helped Angie, who was moving a little stiffly, climb the stairs to the roof. On her way past the tables where the food was being set out, she tried to swipe a finger-full of potato salad and got her hand slapped by one of the women working to get the buffet organized. So she ambled over to snag a beer, then sat down and put her feet up to watch the bustle of activity. Frank went back down to the yard to check out the Hell Mouth he’d heard the others joke about. But it certainly wasn’t a joke. He could sense it, that same rush of pressure that some of the others had felt, and Frank could tell that whatever it was, it was awake and alert and not particularly interested in him. He went back up to the roof and sat down by Angie, who offered him a beer. Karen was sitting and talking with Weeping Sparrow. She happened to look over toward where Reg and Justin and a couple of the ‘kiiadigewininiwag’ were getting the grills stoked up, and she noticed Stephen sitting on the edge of the roof watching the house. He still didn’t look very happy. Reg did, but it seemed pretty obvious that he was staying very involved in the party more to avoid dealing with the knowledge that Stephen was still hanging around than because he enjoyed throwing a party.

The Indians finally made Justin leave the grilling to them since he was spending as much time watching to make sure Karen was OK as he did watching the burgers. He went over by the women, and Weeping Sparrow asked him to tell her about the house. Had he felt or seen anything there himself? What did he know about its past? He asked if it was OK to talk in front of her posse and she told him “Of course.” But the look on her face said that she really didn’t understand the question. Justin tried to explain that it was some kind-of strange stuff, and while he knew that Indians might be more in tune with that kind of stuff because of their culture and beliefs, he didn’t want to talk about it in front of them if they didn’t already know what they might be getting into. Weeping Sparrow explained that all of the people with her were aware that there were many things in the world that most people didn’t see or feel, and powers that not everyone could experience. Some of the women were learning about these things from her, the others were close enough to her to know that she understood these things. The young men were there to guard her, and therefore were well aware of the things they might need to guard her from.

Somehow, the conversation segued from native culture and belief to casinos, which Weeping Sparrow thought weren’t necessarily good things. Yes, gambling was the second oldest sin and it would probably happen with or without the Indian casinos. But gambling could also ruin lives. On the other hand, the Indians could certainly use the money. She never went into the casinos herself though, because all the electronics bugged her. In fact, she could feel Reg buzzing from across the roof just because of the stuff he carried around with him. Then she directed the conversation back to the Hell Mouth. Justin told her what he could, how he’d heard crying in his bathroom and woken covered in blood that dripped from the ceiling, how Kat had felt something ‘lick’ her when she and Harvey and Karen had gone back to check the place out the next night, and how Harvey had felt his dead wife’s presence in the attic and almost gotten killed falling off the attic’s access ladder. And he told her what they’d found in their research, about all the deaths on the property, how this was the third house on the property and whatever was causing the deaths had only recently become more active, and how all the deaths seemed to focus on couples or people who had been in love. He even had a copy of the printouts, which he let Leigh take a look through.

Leigh looked worried, and asked if Weeping Sparrow thought it was safe for everyone to be as close to the house as they were. She wouldn’t recommend settling there permanently, Weeping Sparrow told them. The effects of the evil were probably felt a mile away, maybe even 10 miles. There was definitely a line of demarcation; she felt it as she crossed it. Anyone who currently was or recently had been in a committed relationship should stay away. Karen and Justin, obviously. And since it seemed like Reg’s ‘friend’s’ affairs weren’t settled yet, the two of them should probably stay away too. Even Leigh, she said, might want to stay away. She was not as free from her past as she might feel she was, but she was on the right path. The surrounding area, Weeping Sparrow told them, was probably used to the ‘background noise’ of being near the evil. Within a 2-3 mile radius, there was probably a higher than average incidence of unhappy families and domestic violence. She asked if everyone had heard the story she’d told to Raccoon, and Karen told her that she and Justin hadn’t had time to bring everyone else up to speed on it since they’d been dealing with other things lately.

Weeping Sparrow told them that she would tell everyone the story. She pulled her chair out to a more central spot and sat down, and an observer might have thought she’d rung a silent school bell. All the others who had come with her left what they were doing and sat around her, waiting to listen to the story she was going to tell. Even Karen sat to listen, since it was one thing to know a story and another to hear it told by an accomplished storyteller. Only Reg didn’t, preferring to take over tending the grills rather than sit still long enough to feel Stephen’s presence. When she was done telling the story of the evil chieftain and Gentle Spring Rain, she told them she would need to do much more research on the problem. She had already been talking to other elders and learning the old stories. If destroying the evil was going to be an easy thing then it would have been done long ago by the floods. Every culture had its ‘flood story,’ and while the immediate ending was usually good, it never prevented people from doing evil things in the future. Washing away the chief and his worshipers did no more than constrain the evil. At least it had been constrained for a very long time, since it sounded like it had only been in the last century that it had begun growing again.

Justin was upset now. He’d really liked the house, but now it was uninhabitable and he was stuck with it. Any attempt to sell it would only lead to awful consequences for someone else. The only way to prevent more innocent people from being hurt was to keep ownership of it. Leigh suggested having it condemned. The only reasonable story for him and Karen not living in it was to stick with the Radon gas or black mold story they’d already been using whenever anyone asked about it. If they could use that to get it condemned (surely Justin had a relative who worked for the local government and could arrange that), then they would have an excuse for keeping people away from it. Justin wasn’t happy about it, but it was beginning to seem like the only thing he could do. Frank asked him if there was anything he needed from the house, since Justin really shouldn’t be going near it but it seemed like Frank could without too much trouble. “Anything plugged in,” Justin told him.

Frank went in and started looking around at what was in the house. He asked the “linebackers,” the four sturdy young men who were Weeping Sparrow’s body guards, to give him a hand, and they started carrying things out and piling them on the lawn. As the stuff started piling up, the others on the roof began to tease Justin about how much stuff he had. Justin had never really thought about it; it didn’t look like so much when it was spread out around the house. He was going to have to think of somewhere to put it. Inside, Frank started down the stairs into the basement. As he got about halfway down, he felt...like he’d just stuck his bare feet into a fjord. It was so cold his brain couldn’t get his feet to move forward down the next step. One of the other guys had been following him down to help with whatever was in the basement, and saw Frank try to press forward and fail. He signaled the other three and they moved to surround him, with each acting as one corner of a box that would protect him. As soon as the last one was in position, the pain in his legs disappeared. He went the rest of the way down and got the sump pump, then surveyed what else was down there--a chest freezer, work benches, lighting. The five went back up and on the way, Frank studied the young men. They were all around 19-20 years old, and it seemed odd that they would be hanging out with an old woman. It was better than looking for real jobs, Little Deer told him. All they had to do was follow Weeping Sparrow around and be ready to protect her. In return, they got to go to wedding receptions and parties that some of the other guys their age didn’t.

Frank went out to the yard with the sump pump and hollered up to Justin, asking if he wanted that too. It took a good five minutes before everyone stopped laughing. Justin gave up and told him to just bring out everything that wasn’t nailed down. He was about to call around to some of his cousins and uncles to get help moving all the stuff to storage when Reg told him that he had a moving company on retainer for helping move his company’s equipment and material. They could be there fast and get it all moved even faster with a couple of full-sized moving vans if he needed it. Justin agreed. But, to keep the moving guys safe, Frank wondered if Weeping Sparrow could mark out where the edge of the worst effects were, so they could set all the stuff outside that line. She took a piece of the charcoal and marked a line about 100 yards out from the house. Justin went into the shop and got dust masks and gloves for Frank and the other guys, and Frank got the gas masks he still had in the trunk of the Lincoln. This way they could keep up the illusion that they were dealing with a black mold problem.

When Reg had finished calling the movers, he went back to scraping the grill. He was studiously avoiding having any free time to relax and think. Weeping Sparrow had been watching him avoid his companion all afternoon, and now she went to speak with Stephen. To everyone else but Karen it looked like Weeping Sparrow was having a very animated conversation with herself at the corner of the roof. Karen was a little surprised that it didn’t draw Reg’s attention since he was only fifteen feet away. Weeping Sparrow would talk for a moment or two, then Stephen would argue with whatever point she’d been trying to make. She would ask a question, and Stephen would either get angry or refuse to answer her. When it looked to Leigh like the ‘conversation’ (the half she could see, anyway) was winding down, she went over to ask Weeping Sparrow a question. When she got there, the area was colder than anywhere else on the roof. She’d noticed that Weeping Sparrow had made a comment about Reg’s “friend.” She’d been thinking about asking Reg out, but she didn’t want to ‘disturb anyone’ by her asking. Stephen looked her up and down and told Weeping Sparrow that “She’ll do.” She told Leigh that Stephen wouldn’t concede to tell her why he was staying around. It wasn’t entirely his idea and she didn’t want to interfere in their personal matters. But Leigh would be fine, Weeping Sparrow told her. Then Weeping Sparrow went back to speak with Karen some more.

Leigh walked over to where Reg was scraping the grates of the grills and started to help him. She asked if he’d ever been to a couple of the clubs she’d heard about, to hear the “techno” music. He hadn’t himself, but he’d heard about them and wondered if she would like to go ‘clubbing’ with him sometime. Somehow, Reg had managed to convert the conversation from Leigh asking him out to him asking Leigh out. As Weeping Sparrow wandered past Reg, she patted him on the cheek and kept going. Part of the reason Stephen was still there, she told Karen, was that Reg wouldn’t let him go. Karen told her that she was afraid that the same thing had happened with Sarah. Weeping Sparrow agreed. She reached out and touched what she could see of the chain around Karen’s neck, the chain that held the crucifix that Fr. Andrew had given her. That would protect her, she told Karen. His power would not fade for a long time. Karen’s face and chest tightened. She realized that if she couldn’t let him go he might be stuck like Sarah and Stephen were...and Jody had been. Fr. Andrew wasn’t there, Weeping Sparrow told her. Karen visibly relaxed. She didn’t want to be responsible for holding him there, she told Weeping Sparrow. Weeping Sparrow consoled her. He was very old, she reminded Karen, and he was ready to go. Karen wiped away the tears, but more just rolled down her cheeks. She couldn’t cry for him, or rather for her own loss, forever. But she wasn’t quite able to keep the sorrow inside yet. Weeping Sparrow asked her about the other things that had been going on in her life, to keep her from dwelling too long on her grief.

Leigh had gone to get more de-greaser, and Reg wandered over to the corner of the roof to watch Frank and the others strip Justin’s house. As he looked down to the yard, he felt an arm around his shoulders, with about the same pressure as the squeezes and almost-pinches he’d felt last night at the reception. He shivered and, glancing around, rushed off to clean something else. Stephen’s face fell when Reg ran away from him. Leigh moved over to where Reg was now working, trying to make sure he knew that she was there for moral support and company. Everyone on the roof would glance down into the yard every once in a while to watch the progress. Frank came up at one point, asking if Justin wanted to give him the combination for the wall safe or if he wanted him to just rip it out of the wall. Justin opted for opening it. He wasn’t ready to have the house torn to pieces quite yet. Frank went back inside and got out what was left in the safe. He was slightly disappointed in the contents; he was hoping to find out a little more about this Polish Mafioso and his organization. Instead, he got a birth certificate, high school diploma, mechanics certificate and a fair amount of cash and travelers’ checks that Justin kept to have liquid assets in an emergency. Hanging on a wall with some family photos, Frank found an elaborate family tree. He took a picture of it with his phone for future reference before taking it down and outside.

The pile of stuff in the yard was growing to almost epic proportions by now. Leigh said it looked like they were setting up for a potlatch down there, and Karen teased Justin that maybe they should have one. They were going to be combining two independent households into one, and they certainly didn’t need two of everything. Justin wasn’t really in the mood for that kind of humor right now. Karen recognized that he was essentially grieving for the loss of his house and let the matter drop; but eventually they’d have to deal with all the stuff, and she didn’t mind getting rid of her furniture and appliances and stuff if Justin wanted to keep his. Just then, Frank came out with a box filled with old photos that had been in the attic. Justin was surprised because he hadn’t put any stuff up there. So was Karen, since she didn’t remember seeing anything up there when she’d gone to find Harvey. Of course, she was more worried about him and it was almost pitch black up there, so there could have been a family of twelve living up there and she might not have known. Frank told them that there was a bunch of other stuff besides the photos and Justin told him to just bring out everything.

Leigh and Karen were both too curious about the photos to ignore them--it was like they were calling out to the two women from the lawn. So they went down to look through the things. They must have been from one of the previous owners of the house, since there were no pictures of the house itself. There were a lot of photos of kids, but they were taken somewhere other than this property. The rest of the afternoon and evening were spent the same way, relaxing on the roof and watching people move Justin’s stuff. By the time Frank and the guys got done emptying the house’s contents onto the lawn, Reg’s movers were there to load onto a truck everything but some personal items that Justin wanted to keep with him. Frank had to stop a few times to answer his cell and field questions about Kat’s funeral. Besides the surveillance arrangements that he’d made himself, he didn’t really know much about the funeral except that it would be Wednesday afternoon in DC.

Eventually, when Justin’s stuff was on its way to storage and the food was mostly gone, there was a sort of mutual agreement that it was time to head home. Weeping Sparrow and her retinue headed off in the van; Justin and Karen went back to the condo. Angie wanted Frank to drop her at Aiden’s place so she could get her bike and go to the hospital to see him. But she’d taken Darvoset and been drinking beer all afternoon (though, she wasn't stupid and had actually only nursed a couple of beers all that time), and Frank knew that she was an accident waiting to happen. She did hold her alcohol surprisingly well for such a small woman, but he wasn’t going to let her risk hurting herself after Aiden had almost died saving her. Leigh and Reg were going to visit Aiden before they headed back to Reg’s anyway, so the four headed over to the hospital together, Frank and Angie in the Lincoln and Reg and Leigh in Charlie.

The fun began as soon as they got there. Nothing Angie said would persuade the staff to let her even ride the elevator up to the ICU. Short of rapelling down from the roof to his window, Angie wasn’t going to get to see Aiden. And Frank wasn’t going to flash his ID to save her this time; he wasn’t willing to do that for something so trivial. But, she knew that it was sort of her own fault anyway. She poked around the gift shop looking for a card while Reg and Leigh tried to talk their way upstairs. When Leigh realized that Reg was beginning to babble and was hampering her efforts to get them up to the ICU, she sent him to wait with Angie. She couldn’t find a card that she liked, and none of the balloons or stuffed animals were grabbing her either. Reg grinned and stuck his hand in his pocket and brought out a condom, which he just happened to be carrying with him in case of an ‘emergency.’ Angie borrowed a marker from the cashier and wrote “Get well soon, promise! Angie” on the wrapper. Leigh came back to tell Reg and Frank that the three of them were allowed upstairs but only two at a time. Since Frank had spoken with Aiden earlier, he offered to take Angie back to Aiden’s while Leigh and Reg took her “card” up to Aiden.

When the two got up there, Aiden was watching TV and looking bored. The grin on his face when Reg handed him the “card” was more than worth losing the condom. Aiden slipped it into the drawer and laughed at the thought of the nurse finding it there. He asked how the Hell Mouth was and Reg and Leigh told him everything that had gone on that afternoon. Leigh was really eager to begin doing more research on the property’s past, and the stuff that was in the file folder would give her a good start. Essentially, Leigh told him, the place was “off-limits to anyone with a romantic pulse,” in Angie’s words. Leigh offered to bring Aiden some of his textbooks to catch up on studying if he was too bored with TV, and he reluctantly agreed. What he really wanted was to be out of there. He was getting really tired of being stuck in hospital beds, especially when Angie couldn’t visit him. And not just for the sex; he actually enjoyed just spending time with her.

Reg was just thinking that he’d have to get the two laptops with built-in cameras, so that they could see each other when either was stuck in the hospital (though it seemed like it was usually Aiden in that position), when his cell rang. It was Frank. As he was driving Angie over to Aiden’s, he thought that the two could at least talk to one another. Reg handed his phone to Aiden and Frank handed his to Angie. They didn’t exchange many words, but a lot was said anyway. Aiden warned Angie not to clean his place because then he wouldn’t be able to find anything when he got back. Angie laughed and told him that now she had something she could do to keep Aiden busy. They chatted a little more, then said goodbye. Then Leigh and Reg headed home themselves, and so did Frank. At Reg’s, Leigh headed off to bed, and Reg found Anne sitting in the media room with her feet up, knitting furiously. Tony was still asleep. When they’d gotten there, he ate, went to the bathroom and then went straight back to bed. She had to be back at work in half an hour; maybe next time Reg should only give him a half a dose, she suggested with a hint of frustration. Reg apologized. He knew that Tony ‘owed’ Anne, and he gave her a key to the house and his phone number, in case she wanted to come back in the morning. Anne told Reg that, as far as what little relationship they had, Tony was still in a ‘safe zone,’ at least for the moment, and then she headed back to RIM.

Something seemed a little 'off' at the condo as Justin and Karen started up the stairs. They weren’t exactly sure what until they’d climbed to the third floor. The light was out on the landing. But the new security system was up and running, and it hadn’t indicated a breach. The two climbed the last few stairs cautiously, and there, on the floor in front of Karen’s door, was a small cat, cleaning itself unselfconsciously. Karen picked it up and it put its front paws on her shoulders and regarded her as she regarded it. It was a male and mostly black, with white front paws and small spots of white on the tip of its tail and the front of its neck. It weighed maybe 6 or 7 pounds, and though it looked healthy, it didn’t have a collar or tags. Before she’d even had time to spot the thought forming, she knew that he would be named Drew. She asked if it had a name and he said “Mrroow.” She started to cradle him in one arm while she unlocked the door, and Drew moved up to sit on her shoulder. It wasn’t that she had any illusion that Fr. Andrew had sent the cat to her or anything like that. But he had liked cats and he’d said that cats seemed to like him. And with the little ‘priest collar’ and all, she couldn’t help but think of him.

Justin got out all the cat supplies that had been stashed in the closet after Diva’s murder. He hadn't expected her to be ready for another cat so soon. Karen put out bowls of food and water while Justin set up the litter box in the utility room. As he was working, he pondered how to bring up the subject of finding a new home for them. He didn’t mind staying at the condo for now, but he’d never really felt at home there. It was Karen’s place, and no matter how much of his stuff he moved in, it still felt like he was just a guest crashing there until he...they could move back into his place. As small as it felt to him, compared to his house, Karen’s condo really wasn’t too small for two people. But it wasn’t the sort of place that they could raise a family in, either. And he did want for them to have a family, someday. When they finally went to bed, Karen curled up in Justin’s arms, and Drew curled up on her side and purred them to sleep.

About 3am, Karen was lying there petting Drew and she realized that she wasn’t fully asleep any more. She hoped no one thought it was disrespectful of her to name the cat Drew. She’d never actually called him that herself. He was, and always would be, Fr. Andrew to her. But the loss of him was still so raw in her heart that she couldn’t have helped making the visual connection to him when she met Drew even if she’d been ready for it and tried not to. She pondered why she’d cared so much for the priest. Weeping Sparrow had asked her that this afternoon, and she didn’t have an answer. But it wasn’t for lack of trying to find one. She’d been actively thinking about it for a month now, and.... Suddenly it was there! She felt like a lightning bolt had shot through the top of her head without a sound. She checked to make sure she wouldn’t disturb Justin if she moved, then she edged her way out of the bed carrying Drew with her. When she got to her desk, she let Drew crawl onto her shoulders and she flipped on the desk lamp and pulled out pen and paper. It was all so clear to her and she had to tell the others. Tears were pouring down her face but they were as much tears of joy as tears of grief. She scribbled furiously, then realized that she would have to send it to the others by email. She turned on the computer and put the letter on the scanner bed. When the file was saved, she sent an email to all the Envoys with the letter attached:

Aiden, Angie, CJ, Frank, Justin, Leigh, Reg, Tony--

I was lying there, half-awake, petting the cat (yes, he was on our doorstep when we got home last night. I've named him Drew. You'll see why when you meet him.) and it struck me like a bolt out of the blue. I had to write it down and let you all know how I felt and what I'd discovered. Yes, I know I probably shouldn't have made a couple of the references and sent them in an 'unsecured' manner, but right now I just don't give a rat's ass. CJ, I don't know if you ever met Fr. Andrew, but I'm sure you've heard him mentioned. He died early yesterday morning sometime. Please excuse the smears. I was crying when I wrote it. Tears of joy as well as sadness. I'll be OK.

Love, Karen

[What they got was the following letter in an attachment to the above email. It's a scanned file. It's hand-written on college-rule lined notebook paper. There are a couple of spots that are obviously water stains, and the lines and writing under them have 'run' slightly. The time-stamp is about 3am, 5/23/05.]

He was brilliant! None of us saw it. Or rather, none of us realized it. I know you guys thought I was nuts, caring for him so deeply. Even I wasn’t sure why. Yes, I saw the flaws everyone pointed out. No, he didn’t show his emotions much, not beyond disgust and disappointment at our failings. No, he wasn’t very forthcoming with information, even when we asked him for it directly. But there was something else, something I couldn’t put my finger on, that drew me to him. I only just figured it out tonight. We were his children, and he was trying to bring us up the only way he knew how.

I’ve been trying to figure this out ever since I saw him lying there on the floor in front of the meat locker. He’d just sacrificed himself for us! Why? And why did that hurt me and scare me so much? Talking with Weeping Sparrow this afternoon made me look at the questions again. Why was I drawn to him? Because he believed in me. Believed in my ability to do the right thing without him having to tell me what that was. Believed in my ability to figure it out on my own without him having to spell it out for me. He didn’t just have faith in God, he had faith in ME, faith in all of us! He was the first person in a position of authority who didn’t underestimate me, right from the start, even when he knew about my flaws. In fact, I always felt like he might have overestimated me, that maybe I couldn’t be what he saw for me. Hell, I didn’t even know that you shouldn’t feed a ghost! What kind of an idiot am I? In spite of my stupidity, he protected me and gave me the space to solve the problem with the help of the rest of the team.

Over and over, he gave us gentle pushes in the right direction. Or sometimes not so gentle pushes. He pointed to the door; he didn’t open it for us or push us through it even when he could have and we thought he should have. It was up to us to choose and take action. And look at what we’ve accomplished! He told us to stay away from the zombies, that the problem was too big for us to solve. Was it an order? Or was it a challenge? It took us a little time, and more than one nudge putting us back on the track. But we did it. And we’ve learned so much in the process. Take help where you can get it, but don’t trust that it will always be there for the taking. Trust the gifts you’ve been given, but don’t take them for granted. And never, ever underestimate how much your friends are willing to do for you, just because they’re your friends. Love is a powerful thing.

I have a hole in my heart that will never go away. The only thing that makes it easier to bear is the love that put it there and the love that flows in and out of it. His love for us and my love for him and all of you. I think he did a very good job, and I'll miss him.

Karen

Reg had been subtly leading Justin and Karen back towards the reception halls as they talked (Princess had managed to get Wayne Hall and the Riverview Ballroom for the event--19,000 square feet with one long wall of glass overlooking the river, and the party filled all of it but what had been used for the wedding ceremony), and was pleased when the two got spotted by someone else and dragged back into the festivities. Now he could finally find Lt. Worth. As he was telling her that they’d managed to get the “situation” in the garage taken care of, while trying to dance around the truth with a cop who was far too astute to miss that fact, her cell rang. She rummaged for a second in a bag that, from the outside, looked too small to hold much of anything, and answered. It was Frank. He’d called to let her know that he’d be tied up for the rest of the evening. She would get a cab home, she told him, but it was going to cost him--lunch and a “tailored” explanation. Frank agreed that it was the least he could do. Then he asked her to send Reg back down before he said too much. Reg had forgotten, with everything that had been going on, that he was wearing a voice-activated mike and Frank and the others could hear everything he’d been saying. He excused himself, and Lt. Worth went out to snag one of the cabs lined up in front of Cobo.

Leigh had been busy checking over Angie and Aiden. Angie’s color wasn’t too bad, as far as she could tell in the beam of her flashlight. But Aiden’s breathing didn’t sound good, and his neck was already beginning to show bruising as if he’d been the one grabbed by the throat instead of Angie. On his way back down to the group, Reg stopped and picked up Charlie, his Chrysler 300. With a Greater Zombi and 2 injured team members, he figured they’d need more than just the truck. When he got to where the others were, Leigh filled them all in on Aiden’s and Angie’s conditions. They agreed that she should take them over to Receiving in Charlie, and they got the two into the car and made them as stable as they could for the trip. The zombi was still struggling inside the tarp and, though it wasn’t going to break loose anytime soon, the wiggling definitely would have made it tough for the guys to transport it in the pickup. Frank went and got the Lincoln he’d gotten from the car pool.

The three puzzled over where they could bury the thing. Tony even went as far as calling Justin’s cell to find out if he happened to have a cousin with a backhoe they could borrow for the evening. It was probably a good thing that Karen didn’t see him pull the cell from his pocket--and even better that Marie didn’t catch him doing it! Unfortunately for the Envoys in the garage, Justin’s brain hadn’t been fully engaged since the time he’d gotten to Cobo that morning, and he couldn’t remember which cousin it was who had access to which construction site. As Reg stood thinking and watching the zombi wriggle around on the floor, he had an idea to keep it more still. He took a couple of the ‘zombi-catchers’ and had Frank help him use the poles and duct tape to ‘splint’ the thing. It wasn’t perfect, but it might keep it from kicking out the Lincoln’s back windows. Suddenly, as they discussed the possibility of finding an open grave in one of the nearby cemeteries, Frank remembered where there was a perfect spot, somewhere isolated where they could dig a grave and bury a zombi-filled casket without having some unsuspecting person catch them at it--the old warehouse where the original team first encountered the zombies. The floor was dirt and should even be fairly easy to dig since, the last time they’d been in there, it had looked freshly turned.

When Leigh got to Receiving and told the ER crew that she had Aiden in the car, there was an unusual amount of laughing and back-slapping. Apparently there’d been a ‘pool’ on when he’d be brought in next, and one of the guys working that night had just won $10 because he’d bet on it happening that evening. All the laughing stopped and you could have heard a pin drop when they went to pull Aiden out of the car. A back-board and neck brace were brought out for Aiden, and both injured Envoys were put on gurneys and taken straight to curtained cubicles. A nurse came to ask Leigh what had happened, and she told him that Aiden had had to get between a really big guy and Angie. None of them had ever met Angie before, though they’d heard about her; word was out that Aiden had been ‘got good’. Looking at the tiny woman who’d just been wheeled by, they thought they understood why Aiden would have had to protect her. They had no idea. As soon as the ER crew was done questioning Leigh, she headed out to join the guys at the warehouse.

Frank, Tony and Reg crammed the struggling zombi into the back seat of the Lincoln, and policed up all the gear that had been left lying around. Then Frank and Tony, in the Lincoln, and Reg, in Justin’s truck, headed out to the warehouse. As they pulled out of the garage, Frank called Lt. Worth one more time. There was one last victim of the “murderer” who needed to be taken care of, Bob Newell. Worth told Frank that she’d take care of it. At the warehouse, the men quickly set to work with the shovels that were in the back of the pickup. Justin had been driving around with all the ‘zombi-killing’ gear in the back end since they’d come up with the plan and started collecting the stuff. As they dug the hole, they encountered some bones and decayed cloth. Just then, Leigh came in. From the looks of it, she determined that there had been at least two bodies buried there, and the clothes appeared to be styles from about 70 years ago. She carefully wrapped them in a bag she found in Justin’s truck when she went to put on some coveralls; they’d need to be re-buried and she didn’t want anything to happen to them in the meantime.

The guys got the coffin pieces put together, and dropped the box into the hole. They pulled the zombi from the back seat, and Leigh suddenly began to wonder if anything in its pockets might interfere with the destruction ritual, specifically if the thing had any seeds in its pockets. The ritual called for exactly 24 seeds to be buried with it. Somehow Reg got elected to ‘pants’ the thing, and he cut a small slit in the bottom of the tarp. The previously contained smell of water-logged zombi filled the air. There were no seeds in its pants (though, they were off now anyway and weren’t going back on), and Leigh remembered that it had been wearing a sweatshirt with no pockets on top. As Tony and Frank held it as steady as they could, Leigh and Reg worked on getting the prepared black suit wrapped around it and whip-stitched closed at the back. Leigh had to remind the guys a couple times that thumping the thing on the head was not going to knock it out or keep it from struggling. It was a Greater Zombi, after all. Leigh counted out the seeds from the Ziploc baggy one more time as she scattered them in the bottom of the coffin. Then the guys lifted the zombi and placed it into the coffin. It was still wiggling, but even when it had stopped for a moment, the lid didn’t fit quite right; with all the stuff wrapped around the zombi, it didn’t fit as neatly into the coffin as it could have.

The four hoped for the best as they grabbed the shovels and scooped up some dirt. When the first scoop of dirt hit the lid, they all heard a sort of WHUMP from inside the box, and the lid dropped neatly into place. They looked at one another for a few seconds, then Frank leaned down and lifted the lid slowly, not sure what to expect. Even before the inside of the coffin was visible, a putrid smell wafted up. At the bottom of the coffin there was a disgusting sludge where the wrapped up zombi once laid. Frank settled the lid back in place and they all shoveled dirt into the hole as fast as they could. They were just finishing up when Leigh’s cell rang.

It was getting close to 10:45pm and Karen had noticed the moon rising over Windsor. The almost full moon. She glanced around the crowd, trying to contain her rising panic, until she spotted Marie. Crossing her fingers, she went and asked Marie if she happened to have her cell phone handy. She did, and she dug through her tiny clutch purse and lifted it out. Karen smiled nervously and took the phone to the quietest corner she could find. Thank God, Marie had gotten Leigh’s number loaded into her ‘phone book.’ Karen hit the speed dialer. A moment later Leigh answered. Karen asked how Aiden and Angie were and mentioned that she’d just noticed how close to full the moon was. She didn’t want to say too much, since neither the phone nor her location were ‘secure,’ and she hoped that Leigh got her drift. She heard Leigh talking to someone nearby, then Leigh came back on to tell her that they’d managed to take care of their other problem and that the zombi was destroyed. Leigh was just killing time while Frank checked his Blackberry for the moon phase. Luckily, he found that they still had one more night before the moon was ‘full.’ Leigh told Karen, and before Karen hung up she could hear Reg’s voice in the background as Leigh shut her phone. He was commenting on how annoying Haywire could be, and he and Frank commiserated about it as the team picked up the last of their things and headed their almost separate ways for the night.

The night was still pretty young, so Tony was heading back to the reception. He really hoped that Anne hadn’t noticed he was missing. Frank agreed to drop him off at the safe house to clean up first, but Frank still had other things to attend to that night. Reg took one look at his clothes and told them he was going back to his place to shower and change before he returned to the reception. Leigh thought the idea was brilliant and decided to do the same. Things didn’t go quite so easily for any of the Envoys, though. Although the zombi was out of it, the smell of decay and river water lingered inside the Lincoln when Frank and Tony got into it. He’d have to sign out a different car on Monday, Frank thought to himself; at least this one wasn’t his. Tony washed up quickly and changed, but when he went back into the hall just before midnight, he couldn’t find Anne anywhere, even though the crowd had thinned out considerably. He went back to his place at the bridal table and found a note there in Anne’s handwriting. It said that she was making her own way home, as it was kind of late. She couldn’t wait to see how he explained his disappearance, if he could. Others walking by figured that Tony had just had too much to drink, as he stood there and muttered to himself about not dragging anyone else into the Unknown. When Justin and Karen went to leave, Tony joined the raucous crowd bidding them good night. He heard a few of the men even offer to stand in for Justin if he wasn’t “up” for the rest of the night. Justin not-so-politely declined. Tony joined some others who were moving the party to a nearby bar, since the clean-up crew was starting to move in to clear them out.

In the limo, Karen snuggled up close to Justin. She had something she really needed to tell him, but she didn’t need anyone else to hear this. Let the driver think it was ‘sweet-nothings’ she was whispering in his ear. What she was really whispering to him was that Sarah had tried to kill her. She hadn’t wanted to alarm him, and kill the party, back at Cobo, but he needed to know what Sarah had done, in case anything more ‘happened.’ She explained to him why she hadn’t said anything before; and she trusted Weeping Sparrow when she’d told them that Sarah wouldn’t bother them again that night. Then she told him how Sarah had tried to put her hands around her neck but was unable; and how Karen had felt Sarah try to push her out and possess her body. She wanted to make sure that Justin knew, if she started acting differently, that it might be because of Sarah. Justin’s face darkened with guilt and fear and anger. If only he’d told Karen before now; if only he’d been able to save Sarah; if only.... Karen turned his face so that he had no choice but to look straight into her eyes. It wasn’t his fault, she whispered fiercely to him. It wasn’t his fault that she’d taken drugs; it wasn’t his fault she’d died because of it; and it wasn’t his fault that her ghost had latched on to him and was now trying to attack her. (Well...maybe it was, because of his keeping her picture. But Karen certainly wasn’t going to say that--ever. He was already feeling bad enough about the whole thing.) They were both quiet for the rest of the ride, Karen wishing that she hadn’t just had to ruin their wedding night, and Justin hoping that he could salvage something from the mess he’d created and still make it the best night of their lives.

Once Tony had been dropped off, Frank called Lt. Worth to find out if Newell’s family had been notified yet. He felt a responsibility to be there if he could, and was relieved when Worth said she was just on her way to do that. She’d be happy to have Frank along, since it was a chore she hated doing, and agreed to meet him at a gas station along the way. He got there just after her, and she kind of regretted sticking her head inside the Lincoln as soon as she’d done it. She started to ask Frank what the awful smell was, but realized that she probably didn’t want to know the answer and suggested they use her car. Before they left, Frank went into the station and bought a couple of air-freshener pine trees--one for the Lincoln and one for his jacket pocket. He slipped that one into his pocket without her noticing before getting into Worth’s car. On the way out to Newell’s house in Warren, Frank told Worth what the “official story” would be--that Newell had been the first one to notice something that turned out to be a threat to the safety of the people of Detroit. Unfortunately, he’d gotten caught in the crossfire when a team had been brought in to deal with the threat.

When they arrived at Newell’s house, it was the stereotypical ‘death-notice’ scene, with the pregnant widow and 3 other young children clinging to her skirts. Frank let Lt. Worth introduce them and make the official notification. Then Worth watched in admiration as Frank went into ‘grief counselor’ mode, explaining to the woman how heroic her husband had been. He’d been the first to discover the terrorist activity, and he’d been the one to lead Frank to the scene. Without his help, Frank told her, many more people would have died. At this, the woman’s face lightened up a bit. Her husband had always wanted to be a cop, had always been meaning to go down and fill out the application. But with a family to support, he just never found the time. However, since he did do security work in downtown Detroit, he’d made sure that they would be well-provided for if anything happened to him. He had good insurance coverage; they’d be OK. Worth made sure the woman had family she could lean on and gave her the number for the department grief counselors. It was about 1:30am when Frank and Lt. Worth left the widow to her grief.

When Reg and Leigh were cleaned up and ready to go, Leigh asked if they could swing past the hospital on the way, to check on Aiden and Angie. This was when the night really began to fall apart. When they asked about Aiden’s condition, the nurse asked them if they were next of kin. The hospital needed to speak with either next of kin or someone with Medical Power of Attorney. Leigh immediately called Fr. Andrew. He picked up on the second ring. He would check himself out, though the staff wasn’t going to like it, if they could come and get him. So much for going back to the reception. At least they’d cleaned up before they’d stopped at Receiving. By the time they’d driven out to Grace, and Fr. Andrew had finished with all the necessary paperwork for signing himself out, and they’d gotten back to Receiving, it was 1:15am. As soon as they walked in, Fr. Andrew handed over the paperwork that assigned him Aiden’s Medical Power of Attorney. The three were taken to a small conference room by a nurse and told that a doctor would be there as soon as possible to speak with them.

The doctor, Dr. Harper, came in about a half hour later with a clipboard of notes. After Fr. Andrew assured him that he could speak freely in front of Leigh and Reg, the doctor asked a few questions. According to the ER notes, there’d been a fight of some kind? Leigh confirmed that. Dr. Harper told them that he’d need to file a police report, and, crossing her fingers, Leigh told him that that had been taken care of at the scene. She’d just have to make sure that Frank knew to get something filed before the hospital went looking for those records. Then he asked if Aiden had signed an organ donor card. He had once, but he’d had it canceled when there’d been an ‘infection’ scare. They weren’t sure if Aiden would make it through the night, Harper told them. His file contained a Do Not Resuscitate order; was that still right? Fr. Andrew sounded older than Leigh remembered when he said that Aiden should be resuscitated, but should not be kept alive on life support machines if there was no hope of recovery. Reg studied the doctor, trying to get a feel for just what Aiden’s chances were. He felt a mixture of emotions that, when he thought about it, made complete sense--dread, sadness, anxiety, and a little bit of anger. The guy probably knew Aiden, like most everyone at this hospital seemed to, making this part of his job harder than it would normally be.

Finally, Dr. Harper got down to the brass tacks. It was possible that if Aiden did live he would be a quadriplegic. Given his injuries, it appeared that he wasn’t punched in the throat, he was throttled. He was not particularly responsive at the moment; there was a lot of swelling. His spinal cord wasn’t severed, but it did appear to be badly bruised with some abrasion. It was still too early to tell how things were going to go, but fairly urgent decisions might be needed on a moment to moment basis throughout the night. Finally, he needed to ask...had Aiden been despondent lately? From his records, Harper could see that Aiden had had frequent serious injuries in just the last couple of months, and that could be a sign of suicidal tendencies. Harper didn’t bother to bring up Aiden’s brief stay in Rehab’s psych. ward. Reg spoke up and asked if the doctor had been told that Aiden was a licensed bounty hunter. The look on Harper’s face was equal parts surprise and disbelief. Reg indicated that the license should be in Aiden’s wallet, and he pulled it out when the doctor handed the wallet to him. Harper asked if the injuries had anything to do with that, and Reg told him that Aiden was injured in pursuit of a criminal, mostly because he had a tendency to get caught in the crossfire, so to speak, while trying to help other members of his team. That part didn’t surprise Harper at all. Fr. Andrew asked if he would be able to stay with Aiden, and Harper said that would be OK. Then Leigh asked if, since Aiden’s condition was so dire, it would be alright for other friends to visit him one at a time. After he told her it would be fine as long as it was only one at a time and not for long visits, she asked if he knew how Angie was. He told them he would check, and left the room.

Leigh took the opportunity to call Tony and let him know about Aiden. Tony told her that they should get Fr. Andrew in to be alone with Aiden, hoping that she would understand that he meant so that Fr. Andrew could do something to help Aiden. Leigh told him that it was already arranged. Tony said he was on his way over to the hospital, and asked if there was anything--food of some type--that he should get on the way. When they declined the offer, he said he’d just pick up a few things anyway. They all knew that none of them felt much like eating, but it was something to do while they waited for news. When she was done talking to Tony, Leigh called Frank. Frank had just been saying goodbye to Lt. Worth in the gas station parking lot. Leigh warned him that she’d told the hospital that a report had been filed and filled him in briefly on Aiden’s condition. When she asked about the dead security guard, she was disturbed to find out that the man had a wife and children. She relayed this to Reg when he noticed the sad look on her face, and Reg asked her to have Frank send him the widow’s name and address. She’d be getting a little something in the mail, to help out her and the man’s children. When Leigh finally closed the phone, she broke down crying about the tragic death. Reg put his arm around her shoulders.

When Frank closed his phone, he told Worth that one of ‘his people’ was more severely injured than he had realized. She told him that she didn’t believe the “terrorist plot” story, but she really didn’t want to know the truth. Frank agreed that she was probably better off not knowing, and told her that he’d send her a copy of the report first thing in the morning. Then he headed home to get started on the report. Tony got to Receiving about 2:15am, and was taken to the conference room. The doctor was just getting back with news about Angie. They wanted to keep her over night for observation since she was showing signs of hypoxyia for which they couldn’t find any obvious cause. (“In English?” Tony asked. “Oxygen deprevation.” Dr. Harper told them.) Otherwise, he told them, Ms. Paloma seemed fine, and they’d be doing a CT scan later. He asked if she had any family nearby who should be notified, and Reg told him that she was from New York. “But she’s close to Aiden,” Tony added, and Dr. Harper just said that he’d “heard that.” Then he told them that they were welcome to continue to use the room until it was needed again, but that he had to get back to his patients.

When the doctor left, Tony held out to Fr. Andrew the bag of food that he’d brought. Then, afraid that he was being too subtle when Fr. Andrew declined the offer, Tony told him that he looked like he was wasting away. Fr. Andrew replied that he was just getting back down to his ‘fighting weight’. Tony argued that maybe he was taking the whole “suffering for his faith”-thing a little too seriously. The priest replied that he wasn’t suffering, just very tired. The three then told him about killing the Greater Zombi and what Aiden had done. Fr. Andrew told them he’d noticed that Aiden’s talent was advancing, if he could now take the injuries of others onto himself; and they all agreed that it might not be such a good thing for him if he didn’t learn to control it better. With the thought that Aiden might not live to learn more control hanging unspoken between them, Reg offered to take Fr. Andrew up to Aiden’s room. Fr. Andrew told him that he wasn’t sure what he could do beyond prayer, but that he’d do that at least. Reg wheeled him close to the bed, put a cup of water on a nearby table, and left him there praying over Aiden’s brutalized body.

The three Envoys stayed together in the conference room until a nurse came by and told them she needed it for others. As they left for the ICU waiting room, they could see a couple of people being led up the hall, fear and sadness written across their faces. Leigh wanted to go check on Aiden, and Tony wanted to see Angie. Reg told them he’d wait for them in the waiting room, at least until Leigh needed a ride home. Leigh brought a chair over to the side of Aiden’s bed and sat quietly across from Fr. Andrew, each holding one of Aiden’s hands and praying for both his body and his soul. Lying there in the bed, pale and unconscious with an oxygen mask covering most of her face, Angie looked small to Tony. A lot smaller than when she was awake and wrapped in the force of her personality. Tony pulled a chair close to her bed, then checked that no one was hovering nearby in the hallway. When he was sure he’d have a few minutes to himself, he went ‘out of body’ to check that she was still “in there.” She appeared to be, and, satisfied that she was safe for the moment, Tony went to check on Aiden.

He found Leigh and Fr. Andrew bracketing Aiden’s bed, their eyes closed in prayer. Aiden looked awful under the dim fluorescent lights. The bruising on his neck stood out, all the more livid because of the paleness of his skin. He looked sunken, like Fr. Andrew had before they’d gotten his spirit back into his body. Tony broke the silence, asking Fr. Andrew if there wasn’t something they could do or someone they could call to help Aiden. “Sometimes, all you can do is pray,” Fr. Andrew told him. Aiden wasn’t ‘gone,’ Fr. Andrew said when he noticed the question on Tony’s face, but he wasn’t entirely ‘there’ either. Tony began to argue with Fr. Andrew, asking if there weren’t people at the Vatican who owed him any favors. Surely there was so much more good that Aiden could do; they couldn’t just let him die while they sat there hoping for the best! Fr. Andrew seemed almost sad when he agreed with Tony that there might be more they could do, "but at what price?" He chided Tony that he needed to have faith not just when good things happened but when bad things did too, and Tony stormed out, upset that he could do nothing to help the friend who had kept him from dying. He went to the chapel and sat down to pray.

Reg checked his watch. It was closing in on 3am, and he went to check on Leigh. They’d both been up for almost 24 hours now; she must be getting tired. As he headed up the hallway, he passed Tony, who looked like a man on a mission. Reg stopped to note that Tony was headed for the chapel before he continued on to Aiden’s room. He found Leigh sitting beside the bed, a mirror image of Fr. Andrew except that she was crying. Fr. Andrew suggested that she go home and get some rest, and Reg led her down to Justin’s pickup, which they’d used to bring Fr. Andrew, and the wheelchair that the nurse had insisted he use, from Grace to Receiving. When she was settled into the passenger seat, Leigh called the only person she could think of, Dee. Surely Dee would be able to help, or know someone she could call who would. Reg hadn’t met Dee and had no idea who she was. But Leigh’s half of the conversation sparked a thought. Maybe Weeping Sparrow could do something to help Aiden. He didn’t know much about her beyond that she was a tribal wise woman; but she obviously had some power that Karen trusted, because Karen had been much calmer after Weeping Sparrow had chanted over Sarah’s picture. And everyone at the reception had shown her as much respect as they did Twisted Pine and the Chief.

Reg mentioned the thought to Leigh when she was done with her call. She didn’t have Weeping Sparrow’s number, but Reg wasn’t the only one who had collected a few phone numbers at the reception. Leigh tried the numbers of a couple of very charming male members of the tribe, but both calls rang a few times then went to voice mail. Susan had been the only Ojibwa to give Reg a phone number. He hoped that calling at 3am wouldn’t kill any other chance he might have with Ms. Mankiller. The phone rang 4 times, and Reg was expecting it to go to voice mail when Susan answered. She was a little surprised he’d called at that hour, since he’d seemed to disappear from the reception so early; but she didn’t sound angry, or disappointed, that he had called. Unfortunately, it wasn’t entirely a personal call, Reg explained. He needed a favor, but he’d be happy to offer dinner on Monday night in return if she’d still be in town. She would be, she told him, and he told her that he needed to speak with Weeping Sparrow as soon as possible. Then he asked when and where he should pick her up for dinner. She’d meet him, she said, and he told her he’d make reservations. There was an uncomfortable pause when Reg realized the word he’d just used. Then Susan laughed as she suggested that ‘Injuns’ weren’t too fond of that word. She would call him back anyway, though. Now, all he and Leigh could do was wait to hear back from someone. The two went back to Reg’s house to get what little sleep they could.

Before Leigh had even finished talking to her, Dee was thinking about who she could call to help Aiden. The only person she can think of, with the talents that were needed, that she might be able to get ahold of was Mary. Mary was in Scotland now and Dee mentally calculated that it would be about 7am there, and hoped that she wasn’t waking her. She wasn’t. It sounded like Mary had been awake for a while already. Dee explained the problem and warned Mary that Fr. Andrew was already with Aiden at the hospital. Mary agreed to take the first flight over that she could get on, and told Dee that she only hoped she could get there in time. Then Dee heard a baby crying in the background, and Mary had to go. When she got off the phone, Dee looked for Fr. Andrew’s number. She really didn’t want to talk to him, but under the circumstances.... The call went straight to voice mail. She called Leigh back and caught her before she’d gone to bed. She asked Leigh to have Fr. Andrew call her, and the two women wished each other good night.

Tony stayed in the chapel for a few hours, then roamed the halls a little bit before finding himself back at Aiden’s room about 6:30am. He was about to go in when the morning shift nurse, who was just coming on duty, shooed him away. He went down to the cafeteria to get some coffee to go with the fruit and stuff that he’d bought, that no one had even touched yet. Frank had finished his report and sent it off to Lt. Worth, then laid down to catch a little sleep before he went over to the hospital to check on Aiden and Angie. When Justin and Karen finally woke up around 8:30am, they went down to have a little breakfast. Justin asked if Karen wanted to head out to Mass, since it was Sunday, but she countered, with a playful grin, by suggesting they go back to their room. Justin didn’t need much persuading. About 9am, Tony was sitting in the ICU waiting room, ‘resting his eyes,’ when the nurse came in looking really troubled. She needed him to go with her to Aiden’s room. Tony was on his feet in a New York second, sure that Aiden had died during the night since Tony couldn’t help him. But when they got to the room, Tony was surprised to see Aiden looking much better and all the squiggly lines on the monitor moving like they should be. While Tony tried to figure out what the problem was, the nurse went over and gently peeled Fr. Andrew’s hand out of Aiden’s. The truth finally began to dawn on Tony--Fr. Andrew had died! Sometime during the night, the nurse said. She’d been told that he was in there with Aiden, and when she’d gone in to see if he needed anything, he was...gone. She asked if Tony knew who to call. Tony wasn’t sure. Thoughts were running circles in his head, but he told her that he’d take care of it. He went to the waiting room and pulled out his cell.

Fr. Andrew was a priest.... Maybe Justin’s uncle Fr. Jerzy would know what to do when a priest died. He called Marie; she would have Fr. Jerzy’s number. The phone rang a half dozen times and then the machine picked up. Tony hadn’t considered the fact that Marie was probably getting the first really good night’s sleep in several weeks. He checked the phone book that was in the waiting room and got the number for St. Ladislaus church. It was Sunday morning, so Fr. Jerzy ought to be there. And he was, but that didn’t mean anyone was in the church office; the call was answered by the machine. Tony was running out of ideas. What about the Vatican? Fr. Andrew WAS their top exorcist, and they’d know what to do with him. Tony dialed information and asked for the Vatican, then had the operator put the call through for him. “Buon Giorno,” a female voice on the other end of the line said. Tony asked, in Italian, to speak with the Jesuit Exorcist Division. The woman transferred him to another line, and a man answered. Tony explained his situation and told the man he needed to speak with Fr. Damien Andrew Grigori’s boss. The man didn’t recognize the name, and Tony told him that Fr. Andrew was their top exorcist. That didn’t help much, but the man promised Tony that he’d check the data base and make sure the word of Fr. Andrew’s death reached the right person. Tony didn’t have time to wait for an answer. He called Grace Hospital. If Fr. Andrew was a patient there, they’d have contact information for him. He asked the switchboard for the nurse’s station on Fr. Andrew’s floor. But the only contact number they had in his file was Aiden’s. Tony headed back to Aiden’s room, hoping that Aiden was awake and would know what to do.

What Tony didn’t realize was that Grace did have another, unofficial, contact number for Fr. Andrew. It was Karen’s. Karen had been there, or at least called, every day since Fr. Andrew had been admitted. Most of the staff on his floor knew her now, and no one really wanted to make this call. Karen and Justin had just gotten back to their room after breakfast. They weren’t the only members of Justin’s family spending the night there, so they hadn’t been able to get out of the restaurant without a hitch; but they weren’t planning to leave the room again for a while. Karen had almost forgotten that she even owned a cell phone. She’d tossed it into her bag when she’d dropped it off at the hotel yesterday morning, and hadn’t thought to turn it off first. When she heard it ring, she couldn’t even think who might be calling. The dig had been shut down for the weekend and the whole team had been at the wedding. (“Those nasty sneaks,” she chuckled to herself.) She opened the phone without even looking at the caller ID. “Karen Riley?” the woman’s voice asked. From that point on, Karen barely had another coherent thought. It was Grace Hospital. She sat down hard on the edge of the bed. Fr. Andrew had died. “But HOW? He’d been fine, a little tired, when he....” He wasn’t there, so she didn’t really know what had happened. “Not there? But he’d been taken back there....” He’d checked himself out and was picked up by a man and woman to go visit a friend at Receiving late last night. “Receiving? Checked out? Who...?” Karen’s head felt like it was in a vice and all the insides were getting squeezed out. She wasn’t even sure if the things she thought she was saying were actually coming out as sounds. There were times that the nurse on the other end of the line wondered if Karen was still there, because there was no sound at all from Karen.

Justin stood there and tried to get Karen’s attention. He signed “Who?” to her, and then she went as pale as...well...as a ghost. He tried again, and saw no response beyond a limp movement of her hand. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Aiden? But Reg had said he’d just tapped himself out again and would be fine. Who else, then? Who had Aiden tapped himself out healing? He tried to remember what Reg had said last night. He heard Karen say something about Receiving, and a minute later she closed the phone and sat there dumbly on the edge of the bed. Justin was about to kneel down in front of her when his cell rang. It was Frank.

When Tony had gotten back to Aiden’s room, Frank was there. Tony told him what he knew and asked if he knew anyone else to call since he’d already tried the Vatican. Frank asked if Tony had called any of his other teammates yet, and both headed out of the room pulling their phones from their pockets. Tony called Reg, who woke Leigh when he got the news. When Reg told Tony they’d be on their way as soon as possible, Tony asked him to get some coffee for him on the way. And maybe one of those cranberry muffins. Then he remembered the muffins were at Caribou Coffee and asked if there were any of those in Detroit. Maybe some lemon pound cake then, if Reg was going to a Starbuck’s. Tony sounded a little...confused. As he got dressed, Reg grabbed the box of Ambien from his medicine chest. Tony might need it. Frank called Justin. He was a little surprised when Justin answered on the second ring. When Frank told him what had happened, Justin finally understood what had happened to Karen. He lifted the cell phone from her hand and checked the ‘last call’ ID--Grace Hospital. He’d barely closed the phone after Frank’s call when Reg called him. All of them knew that Karen would be hardest hit by this and they’d all hoped to make sure it was broken to her easy. Too late. Reg offered to come down to pick them up and take them to the hospital. Justin had completely forgotten that his truck wasn’t there, that Reg had told him he was borrowing it last night. He agreed and hung up to get Karen ready to go. When he told her that Reg would be coming to get them, she immediately objected. Too slow! If Reg was coming from home, in Grosse Pointe, that’d take forever. She had to be there now! This had to be wrong! He couldn’t be.... “No! Cab!” was the only thing that actually made it from her brain to her lips.

Justin called down to the desk, and they headed down the elevator to the front entrance. On the way out, he called Reg back and told him they were taking a cab and would meet him at Receiving. At the hospital, Frank went to check on Angie. The EEG monitor wasn’t showing much activity beyond that she did still have basic brain function. Other than that, she looked alright physically. He checked her chart and found the note that her pupils were unreactive. But comparing the monitor to an earlier EEG print-out, it looked like her brain function was improving. Back in the waiting room, Tony dialed the number he had for Dee. He didn’t know her too well, but he knew that Aiden trusted her and that she had ‘history’ with Fr. Andrew. Maybe she’d know who to call. Dee was surprised to hear the news, but even more surprised that Tony had tried calling the Vatican directly. She wasn’t really sure who to call since the Church had a new Pope whom she didn’t know personally. But she did have a number for the man who had been Fr. Andrew’s superior. He might not be anymore, but she would give him a call. First thing when she hung up though, she called Mary and caught her just as she was about to board a plane. No sense in her making the trip now. It sounded to Dee like Damien had saved Aiden himself, at his own expense. Then she tried the old number she had for Fr. Damien’s superior. A little while after Tony had finished talking to her, Dee text-messaged him that the Cardinal in charge of the Jesuits was dealing with the matter.

Dee had barely finished TMing Tony when her phone rang. This time it was Leigh. Dee told her that she’d just gotten the news about Fr. Damien, and Leigh wondered aloud if he wasn’t as bad a person as Dee had always thought. Maybe, maybe not.... Then Leigh asked about Alister. Dee told her that he was doing well and the two said goodbye. Dee wasn’t about to tell Leigh the truth; she had enough to deal with right now. This was not turning out to be one of Alister’s better days. He’d gotten very agitated at about 6:45 that morning and hadn’t calmed down yet. She closed the phone and went to be with her beloved but disturbed husband. Frank went back to Aiden’s room. Aiden seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Fr. Andrew’s body was gone.

Tony was sitting in the waiting room fighting sleep. He’d been awake for over 24 hours now. Frank had half-heard Tony’s half of his call to Reg, and Tony had sounded a bit loopy. Now he sounded a little more lucid as he told Frank that the nurse had asked permission to move Fr. Andrew’s body, and he’d OK’d it. Reg and Leigh came in just then. When Reg had gotten back to the truck after getting Tony’s coffee and cakes, he’d spiked the coffee with some of the Ambien. When he saw Tony, he was glad he’d come prepared. Tony looked dead on his feet. Frank filled the two in on Aiden and Angie’s condition. Reg warned Frank that Justin and Karen were on their way, then he went to see Aiden and Angie while Leigh stayed with the soon-to-be sleeping Tony. When he got back, he would stay with Tony while she went ‘visiting.’ Frank headed down to the first floor. He wasn’t sure which door Justin and Karen would come in, so he started with the main entrance. As he was getting around to the ER, he could hear Karen’s voice.

Justin had the cab pull up to the Emergency entrance, mostly because that’s where he was used to going when he came to Receiving. Karen had spent the entire ride leaning stiffly against his side, even more stiffly than she had that first time he’d put his arm around her, at the library back when they’d been doing research on Jane. He wished there was something he could do to take away the pain that she was in. When they got inside, Karen grabbed the arm of the first person she saw in scrubs. Unfortunately, he was just an orderly. She asked where Fr. Andrew was. “The chaplain?” the young man asked her. “No! The priest who died here last night!” she told him, barely controlling her grief. The kid told her he didn’t know, that he’d have to find out. “Then DO IT!” she screamed at him. He left at almost a run, eager to get away from the crazy woman. Frank came up just then, having heard her, and asked if she wanted him to take them to the morgue. She looked at him almost like she didn’t know who he was, and nodded, whispering “yes.” She didn’t actually “see” him. But something in the back of her mind recognized Frank’s voice, and its concerned tone made her trust him more than had all the fights he'd been in with the team so far.

He led them to the basement, and Karen vaguely remembered being down there before. Something about zombies...and Vanya. Frank flashed his badge and told the attendant what they needed, and he led them to a bank of small square cooler doors. He opened one door and pulled out the tray which held Fr. Andrew’s body, then turned down the sheet covering it and left the three alone with the dead man. For a second there was no sound at all in the room except the squeaking of the attendant’s shoes on the tile floor. Then Karen let out a tortured moan and started to collapse to the floor. If Justin hadn’t been expecting it, he might not have been able to catch her. Frank helped him lower her to the floor, where she sat, leaning against the wall of coolers, sobbing. When Frank had seen the body lying there, just for the hell of it he tried to sense if there was anything Unknown about Fr. Andrew. He remembered the things some of the others had said about the priest, and he was curious. He felt...something. Not dark and nasty like some of the Evil things he’d encountered. Not light and fluffy like some of the Good things he’d encountered. The feeling was somewhere in between and it was fading, along with the warmth, from the dead man’s body.

The two men stood there a little while, listening to Karen’s sobbing grow ragged. In her head, Karen was carrying on a conversation with herself. His face had looked peaceful. Almost like he was glad to leave at the very end. She could imagine his spirit slipping out of that skin, like a butterfly emerging from the dried-out husk of its cocoon. She’d never seen his physical face look like that before. It looked almost as pure as his face had been when she’d seen his spirit, that time they’d had to look for Aiden’s. Except that the light was gone. Gone forever. She felt like she couldn’t breath. A terrible scene was being played out on the inside of her eyelids, over and over, every time she shut them. There he was, lying on a bed, the light glowing around him, out of him. But the bed transformed into a metal tray and then into a coffin, and as she watched, helpless to stop it, the lid closed down, cutting off the light and leaving her sitting there in a pitch-black darkness. Opening her eyes wasn’t much better. She wondered if she’d actually gone blind, because she couldn’t see anything. Was this what it was like for the catatonics? She thought about curling her hands into fists, but wasn’t sure if they’d actually obeyed her thoughts. She wondered if this was what it felt like to die. Somewhere far away, she heard Justin’s and Frank’s voices drifting by her like they were in the wind.

Frank was explaining to Justin what happened to Angie, and then to Aiden, and what had appeared to have happened to Fr. Andrew. According to Tony’s and Leigh’s accounts, Aiden had looked like hell last night. Angie might have been on the brink of death, if not dead, and Aiden seemed to have taken her injuries onto himself to save her. That left him at death’s door instead. Leigh and Tony had both left, and Fr. Andrew was alone with Aiden. In the morning, Aiden was doing better; the color had come back into his cheeks, and he was breathing a little easier. But Fr. Andrew was dead. Tony told him that he’d argued with the priest, in favor of doing anything possible to save Aiden. Had Fr. Andrew been persuaded by Tony’s arguments; had he given his own life in exchange for Aiden’s? Frank didn’t sound like he believed that was possible. Karen wondered what Aiden’s spirit looked like now. The one time she’d seen it, Aiden had been almost gone, his spirit pushed out by Jody and his body’s life almost completely drained by her. It didn’t look much better than his body had that time. He’d looked scruffy and tired. What about now? Was it the willingness to trade one’s own life for another’s that gave a spirit that sort of glow that Fr. Andrew’s had had? Did Aiden’s spirit glow, too? It sounded like he’d done nothing less to save Angie. Tony’s seemed to glow, too. But she couldn’t remember her own glowing. Did that mean she was defective somehow? Would Fr. Andrew have done the same thing for her? Probably not. Was it because there was something special about Aiden or something wrong with her? What about the others? Theirs probably glowed too. She was probably the only one whose didn’t. Would Justin leave her too, because her spirit didn’t glow? Or because it was her fault that Angie and Aiden had almost died and Fr. Andrew did die. If only she’d taken a minute or two to plan a way to capture the zombi instead of just pushing it into the river. It was her fault the thing had still been loose. If it hadn’t been, none of this would have happened. And she wouldn’t have been sitting there in the morgue next to Fr. Andrew’s dead body. It was her fault, and she deserved whatever pain that brought. She forced herself to close her eyes again, her self-imposed penance for killing one of the holiest people she would ever meet.

Justin looked at Frank and told him that because of what the priest had done, he’d take back everything bad he’d ever said about “the old bastard.” The movement, when Karen stood, startled the men. Every muscle in her body looked stiff enough to break bones as she moved to stand directly in front of Justin. “DON’T CALL HIM THAT!” she screamed at him. The sound of her voice echoed around the metal and tile room. Someone might have thought that Karen had just driven a stake straight through Justin’s chest if they’d seen the look on his face. He had no idea that she might actually hear what he’d said, and now he felt.... He couldn’t even think of anything to compare it to. He’d never felt so horrible in his whole life. Not when he’d begun blaming himself for Sarah’s death; not when he’d stuck his foot in his mouth by inviting Karen to use his shower; never. He whispered an apology to her, but the fire that had burned in her eyes as she’d said it had gone out. She turned and looked around absently, as if she didn’t quite know where she was or why she was there. Frank softly asked her if she wanted to go to the chapel now. Her nod was almost imperceptible. She wasn’t sure she’d even moved. Frank cupped his hand under her elbow like you would a blind person’s, and gently guided her toward the door. Karen wondered if this was what it felt like to be a ghost, there but not there, wanting to communicate but not knowing how, wanting to leave but not knowing where to go, wanting to tear the world apart trying to regain what she’d lost. Frank nodded to the attendant that they were done. Justin followed them out, staying close to Karen’s side in case she needed him. He couldn’t think of what else to do.

When the three got to the chapel, Frank guided Karen toward the front of the room. He asked if she wanted to talk and she shook her head. She shuffled to the front row of short pews and knelt, folding her hands and bowing her head. Her hair fell forward and shrouded her face, and she couldn’t feel the tears dropping onto her tightly clasped hands. Frank sat down a few rows back, there in case Karen changed her mind...or lost it completely. Justin felt like he was being torn in half. He wanted desperately to go to Karen, to wrap his arms around her and take the pain away. But she’d made it clear through her body language that she didn’t want to be touched, that she needed space to grieve. His eyes never left her as he backed out of the chapel. He turned and went to check on Angie first. He sat down beside her bed and laid his hand on her arm. He couldn’t really feel the energy flow from himself into her, but her eyes fluttered and opened, and the line on the EEG monitor jumped into action. She looked confused, and Justin assured her that she would be alright. Her eyes flashed the question, and Justin told her that Aiden was OK too, but that Fr. Andrew was gone, that it seemed he’d given up his life to save Aiden’s. She thought she was dead, she told Justin. Then she asked if he and Karen had gotten their wedding night. Justin blushed, and Angie smiled as she shut her eyes again.

Then Justin went to check on Aiden. By now, Reg had seen both friends and had gone back to keep an eye on Tony while Leigh went to check on them. She’d only just left Angie’s room before Justin got there, and he found her sitting beside Aiden, her eyes closed in prayer. Aiden looked a bit frail, but the monitor activity wasn’t too bad. Justin sat beside him. He put his hand on Aiden’s arm and let his energy release into Aiden. He couldn’t actually see the change happen, but when he looked away and then back at Aiden, he looked a little more healthy and no longer sunken. Aiden didn’t respond right away, but a minute later his eyes opened. His voice was really rough when he asked if Angie was OK. The nurse had only removed him from the respirator a little while ago, when the doctors were sure that he’d be able to breath on his own again. Leigh and Justin told Aiden what had happened, that he’d saved Angie’s life and that Fr. Andrew had died saving his. Aiden got a stricken look on his face, and wished aloud that he’d had a chance to apologize to the priest for the last thing he’d said to him. He wouldn’t tell them what that was, but he did say that he had Fr. Andrew’s will. Then he raised his hand to wipe away the tears that had gathered in the corners of his eyes and spilled down into his ears. He didn’t notice Leigh’s and Justin’s looks of relief. The doctors had been afraid that Aiden might be paralyzed. At the very least, he still appeared to have control of his arm.

Leigh and Justin rose to leave and told Aiden to get some rest. Outside the door, Leigh asked Justin where Karen was, and the look of pain on his face as he told her she was in the chapel told Leigh almost everything else she needed to know. Justin saw the next question form before Leigh asked it--Was she alone? Frank was with her, Justin said. Leigh headed down to the chapel, and Justin went to the waiting room, where he found Tony, sound asleep, and Reg keeping an eye on him. He told Reg that Aiden was awake, and Reg was as relieved as Leigh to find out that Aiden had moved his arm. He asked if Justin could stay with Tony while he went to see Angie and Aiden. Justin said he would, and pulled out his phone and Karen’s, which he’d kept after sliding it from her hand in their hotel room. As much as the thought hurt him, it seemed like she would need more support than she would take from him. Maybe Twisted Pine or Weeping Sparrow could do for her what he couldn’t? He called the contact number that Karen had for the Tribe and got the Tribal Police. He asked if he could be put in contact with Twisted Pine or Weeping Sparrow, and the man on the phone told him that they were at a wedding in Detroit. Unfortunately someone had to stay and keep a lid on things there, and he’d been the someone. Justin told the guy that it was HIS wedding and he needed to get ahold of them as soon as possible. The cop told Justin that they were staying with family, but he’d try to reach them and have them get in touch with Justin. There wasn’t much more Justin could do.

Reg checked in on Angie first. She was a little more awake now, and told Reg that she’d had the strangest dream. “Did the man-catchers work?” she asked. Reg told her they had and how impressed he was with Justin’s stroke of genius in creating them. “Did Frank really push Aiden out of the way of the zombi?” she asked. Reg confirmed that what she’d seen had really happened. It was like she’d been watching it all from above, she told him. And she saw other stuff too, after--her mom and a couple of guys from Iraq that she knew were dead. And she remembered not being able to move her body even though she’d tried. Reg told her that Aiden was fine, answering the unspoken question, and he could tell that Angie was relieved to hear that Aiden wasn’t ‘broken.’ Reg told her to get some rest, then went to see Aiden. Aiden was resting peacefully when Reg poked his head in, so he left quietly rather than disturb him and went back to the waiting room. When he got there, Justin went back to the chapel.

Karen hadn't moved a muscle the whole time she'd been kneeling there. She was still afraid to close her eyes; she wanted to remember Fr. Andrew as he'd been and imagine how he'd be, not picture him lying there.... She wondered if the photographer had gotten a picture of him at the wedding, and she was glad that she'd had a chance to say goodbye, even though she hadn't known that it would be for the last time. She tried to picture him, staring hard at the floor, willing the image to form in front of her eyes. And every time it did, it was his spirit like she'd seen it when he'd taught her how to leave her body. Except now she saw him with the wings she knew he'd have, the wings she'd always thought he should have, great white eagle wings.... Surely he'd paid whatever penance he thought he owed. She wondered if death had been as easy for him as when he slipped out of his body before. And she wondered if she'd been wrong to call him back after the fight with the ghul. He'd seemed so tired. She mentally kicked herself for being so selfish that she'd never considered the possibility.... And then she kicked herself again for being so conceited as to think the choice had ever been hers at all. She prayed hard that God welcomed him back the way he deserved. And she prayed that, in spite of her deficiencies, God might see fit to help her through her grief. Yes, he'd already given her friends, my God so MANY friends, and the most wonderful man, to help her. Maybe there was some lesson in that.... She prayed that they'd all be able to forgive all the stupid mistakes she'd made that caused so many injuries and deaths.

When Leigh got to the chapel, she first went up to Karen’s side. Karen’s whole posture told Leigh that she didn’t want ‘company.’ Leigh laid her hand on Karen’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze to let Karen know she was there for her, then she went back and sat beside Frank. With Leigh there, Frank got up to leave and passed Justin in the hallway. Justin told him that Aiden and Angie were awake, and Frank said he’d be going up to see Aiden. When Justin got inside the chapel, he saw Karen exactly where she’d been when he’d left, as if she were a statue. He whispered to Leigh the suggestion that she stay with Angie since Frank was with Aiden and Reg was with Tony, so that no one was alone right then. Then he went up and slid into the pew next to Karen. Karen had had some sense before that someone had stayed with her in the chapel but at a distance. Now she felt Justin’s strong quiet presence beside her. She turned, half sliding back onto the pew, and buried her head in his shoulder, her silent tears wetting his shirt. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him, stroking her hair tenderly with one hand, tears rolling down his face.

Aiden’s eyes opened when Frank entered his room. “It’s a good thing you can’t die from guilt,” he told Frank. Frank told him that Fr. Andrew’s death wasn’t his fault, not any more than his own would have been Angie’s fault. It was Fr. Andrew’s choice to make, as much as saving Angie had been his. And Fr. Andrew was probably still around somewhere watching him, Frank reminded Aiden. Aiden cracked a weak smile. He just couldn’t let Angie die, he explained, as much to himself and Fr. Andrew as to Frank. And he added that he was beginning to think that if you said “please God don’t let him die,” the SOB actually listened! Then a look of horror passed across Aiden’s face. “Oh, God. Karen. She’s gonna hate me now,” Aiden moaned. “No,” Frank told him. “She probably blames herself,” he added with a wry smile. Aiden suddenly looked tired. “I’d like to sleep now,” he told Frank, and Frank left him there, to think, and to sleep if he could.

When the Mass was over, Karen and Justin and the wedding party were dragged away for more pictures. Karen did make sure to say goodbye to Fr. Andrew before he left. He was still very weak, and it was obvious that he wouldn't be able to stay for the reception. She was just happy that he'd been well enough to come to the wedding at all. Karen was just about ready to scream after what seemed like the thousandth picture, when the photographer told them that he was done with the formal photos. He would be spending the rest of the evening moving around photographing the reception. The videographer was already in the reception 'hall', taping the festivities that had started even before the new couple had gotten there. Well, put a bunch of Irish and Poles in a room with an open bar and what else would you expect to happen?

Pierre got the couple and their wedding party arranged into the receiving line, and they spent the next hour or so meeting and greeting everyone who hadn't already settled into drinking and partying. Actually, that wasn't entirely true. Many of the guests had merely begun visiting with friends and relatives they hadn't seen in a while or meeting new friends and relatives. Karen finally got her chance to meet Edward, but she was almost sorry that she had. Her mother first hugged her tight, crying again after managing to dry her tears of happiness long enough for the photographs. Then her mom introduced Edward Harrington, the distinguished, 60-something, silver-haired gentleman that Karen had seen sitting next to her mom at Mass. As he lifted Karen's hand and bent forward to kiss it, Karen raised a Sphere of Protection. She was almost disappointed that he didn't 'wink out' or even flinch, because before he'd even touched his lips gently to the back of her hand, she disliked him. It wasn't anything he said or did. In fact, he appeared genuinely happy to finally meet her and said as much. There was just something about him that set her teeth on edge. She tried to be as polite as she could when she replied that she was “so pleased” to finally meet him, too. Her mother had seemed so happy since she'd met him, Karen told him. And that was the truth. What she didn't say was that she'd been concerned for her mother's safety and happiness ever since her mom had told her about Edward. Karen hated the fact that she'd been wary from the moment that her mom told her that Edward was a motivational speaker (and a “life coach” he told her, a term that Karen had never been able to figure out and that kind of gave her the creeps all by itself). She’d tried very hard for most of her life not to prejudge people based on what she heard about them or the labels that were attached to them. She watched carefully as Edward moved down the line meeting Justin and the others. She'd be keeping an eye on him, and she'd have to find out what everyone else thought about him. Who knows? Maybe she was totally wrong about him and it was only jealousy because her mom was at her wedding with someone other than her dad (never mind that her dad was several years dead) that was coloring her opinion.

Only the elders of the Tribe went through the receiving line, and the same was pretty much true of Karen and Justin's birth families as well. Every elderly aunt hugged Karen and told her that they'd never seen her or Justin so happy; every elderly uncle warned Justin that he'd better do right by Karen. Twisted Pine, Karen's mentor, leaned in close to Justin, squeezing his hand tightly, and whispered in his ear, “Hurt her and I'll kill you.” The glint in his eye, tempered by a smile, warned Justin that he wasn't joking. But Justin wasn't either, when he replied that he'd sooner kill himself than ever hurt Karen. And every one of the younger men, and some of the older ones as well, that bothered to go through the line, especially those from Karen's family, took the opportunity to test their strength against Justin's with bone-crushing handshakes. From the laughing and jokes, it looked to Karen like Justin was passing every test. And, though she didn't realize it herself, she'd already passed the big test for Justin's family. Marie loved her, for herself as well as for the fact that she was the one woman who finally made Justin happy. That was all she needed to do to be warmly welcomed into the Kazotchek fold.

Karen's feet were killing her by the time they were finally allowed to sit down at the bridal table for dinner around 5pm. Karen had always hated trying to balance plates and napkins and silverware while going through a buffet line, so she'd told her mom and Marie to make sure that the dinner was served family-style at the tables instead. Not that it meant that Karen and Justin got to eat much of it anyway. Between their stomachs being too tense to eat much and all of the more 'perverse' of the guests clinking their glasses with their silverware to make the couple kiss, neither of them had the time or interest to fill up. As Karen looked out at the sea of people spread across the room, she noticed a distinguished man sitting next to Reg, gazing at him protectively. Reg didn’t seem to notice his companion, as he talked with the person sitting on his other side. She could see the back of the chair adding an odd burgundy tinge to the man’s impeccably cut suit and wondered if the man was Reg’s dead partner. She studied him so that she would be able to describe him to Reg later--not that night, of course, since she had no intention of ruining the party for herself or any of her guests by bringing up ghosts. She wasn’t sure how Reg would react to knowing that the man was there looking out for him. It really freaked people out most of the time to find out that they were being ‘haunted’, even if the spirit was totally benign. But maybe the next time she saw Reg, they’d have a chance to talk.

When Karen’s gaze fell upon Edward again, Justin noticed a shadow pass across her face. He asked her if something was wrong, and she leaned close and told him about her impression of Edward. Karen could tell that Justin wasn’t sure what to think. He hadn’t felt anything strange about the man himself; in fact, he thought Edward was a nice enough guy. But he knew that he needed to take Karen’s instincts about him into account. There didn’t seem to be anything Unknown about him, Karen told Justin, but she thought there was something creepy about him nonetheless. “Taser, not .357?” Justin asked her. “Right,” Karen said, just before the glasses started ringing again. It made it tough to eat, but she was too wired to be hungry anyway. And she certainly didn’t mind the part where she had to kiss Justin! People were just finishing their food, and the DJ announced that as soon as the wedding party was ready, they’d get the joint jumping with the bridal dance. After that, the dance floor would be “open for business.”

Justin led Karen out to the center of the floor, and for the millionth time that day, Karen felt everything else slip away as she gazed up into Justin’s eyes. When the rest of the room swam back into her peripheral vision, the song was over and she couldn’t have told anyone what it had been. After that, both Karen and Justin were whisked away by other partners, and they only caught glimpses of one another as they passed in the crowd. At least, until Justin noticed that several of his male cousins were trying to take advantage of his distance by groping his beautiful new wife. Karen wasn’t used to this sort of attention. Justin had been a complete gentleman, especially after their first kiss had been so awkward. She barely knew these guys, and they were grabbing her in a way that she thought should have been reserved for two people who knew each other a whole lot better than that. She was trying to deflect their attentions as artfully as she could manage so that she didn’t create a ‘scene’; but she was flushed with embarrassment by the time Justin pushed his way through the crowd and clamped his hand down hard on her latest partner’s shoulder. She could see the jealousy and anger starting to color Justin’s cheeks, and she laid a hand on his arm. He had been threatening bodily harm through clenched teeth before Karen could get his attention and prevent him from carrying out the threat. He stomped off angrily toward Uncle Jerzy, his wayward cousin being dragged along behind. Karen tried to watch what was happening, as another cousin, this time one of hers, took advantage of the opportunity to take the unfortunate young man’s place. She wasn’t sure what was said, but the next time she looked in that direction, Justin was gone and Jerzy was talking with Justin’s two grandmothers and Marie. It was the last time Karen was groped by anyone other than Justin that evening.

A little bit later, the DJ announced that the cake would be cut, and Karen’s mom came along, pulling Justin by one arm, and led them over to the cake. Edward had to leave by 7:30 since he had to fly out for a speaking engagement in Texas, and he’d be taking Cathy home then. But she didn’t want to miss anything, so they needed to start getting the ‘important stuff’ done. After the cake was cut, Cathy informed them, they’d have a little more time for dancing and visiting, and then Karen would be tossing the bouquet and Justin the garter. That way, everything would be done before she had to leave. Frank had brought Lt. Worth as his date for the evening, and Karen spotted them dancing a couple times. And Reg was turning out to be the ‘beau of the ball’. He practically had to beat the women off, and some men as well. A lot of people were slipping sly looks in his direction when they thought no one else was looking. The ‘man’ who had been sitting next to him was watching him dance and mingle with fondness and amusement. He seemed to be guarding Reg, but certainly not in a paternal way. When one young woman who should have been ‘cut off’ several drinks ago slipped her hand under Reg’s jacket in a provocative way as they stood talking, the man stood and took a few ‘steps’ in their direction, looking a little angry. But he grinned when Reg deflected the woman’s assault by taking her to the dance floor, being careful that she didn’t stumble over her own feet.

Tony had invited Anne to attend as his date, forgetting that she would have been there anyway, and Karen spotted the two of them spending almost as much time talking as dancing. And Leigh didn’t want for partners either. Karen felt a twinge of sadness as she watched Leigh. She liked her a great deal, and the two got along well, being so similar in personality and interests. She was looking forward to having Leigh along on the dig and getting to know her better. But none of that could change the fact that Kat should have been there, standing in the wedding. She would have been stunning in the burgundy dress in a way that Leigh didn’t seem to be. Karen wasn’t sure why, because Leigh was certainly a very beautiful woman in a tall, willowy way. What Karen didn’t know was that Leigh had been concerned that no one should outshine the bride at her wedding, and had asked the seamstress to make sure that her dress wasn’t too form-fitting, lest she draw attention away from Karen. CJ stayed for a while, until Lars insisted that she not wear herself out too much. She couldn’t get up and dance yet, but she seemed to enjoy chatting with people. Angie and Aiden didn’t show up on the dance floor together at all; but that seemed to be more by Angie’s choice than Aiden’s. When Karen asked, Angie said she didn’t dance. But Aiden certainly tried. Unfortunately, when he danced with Karen, she found out why he spent more time mingling than he did on the dance floor. The guy had two left feet. He stepped on her dress a couple times and her foot another, apologizing after each misstep, and Karen assured him with a grin that she would continue to like him anyway.

Every time Karen happened to glance over to where Twisted Pine was standing, he seemed to be watching her. No matter where he was or who else he was standing with at the time. He would smile and nod to her, and her heart warmed at his approval. She wished that she’d had a chance to have him meet Fr. Andrew. In fact, she wished she’d had a chance to introduce Edward to Fr. Andrew, too. Hopefully both could happen some other time. Weeping Sparrow seemed to be having a good time as well, moving through a crowd that seemed to clear a path for her when she and her ‘posse’ of Native women went by. And at one point, Karen noticed Fr. Jerzy and the Chief huddled in a corner talking. Fr. Jerzy was another one who seemed to avoid going on the dance floor. When Karen asked him to dance, he instead led her to a chair and sat her down under the guise of allowing her a chance to rest her feet and chat with him. She noticed that he did this with everyone who approached him with a request to dance. As she watched him, she saw a young woman near him, about 17 or 18 years old and dressed in fashions of the fifties. The girl was watching Jerzy, anxiously and a little sadly, sitting near him whenever he sat, standing and moving with him when he stood. Karen also saw another spirit who bore a striking resemblance to some of the men in Justin’s family, though he was dressed in the style of the 1930s. Altogether so far, Karen had spotted a couple dozen guests that no one else could see.

Reg didn’t see them, but he did notice, as he danced around the room, more cold spots than he would have expected, and rarely in the places he would have expected them. He’d also felt a pat or what might almost have been a pinch several times throughout the evening when there was no one near him. Reg was on the dance floor, dancing with a redhead who could have used a little less alcohol and a few more dance lessons, when a statuesque Ojibwa woman in full Native dress approached him. She moved like a panther closing in on prey, and when she cut in to rescue Reg from his sorry fate, the redhead wasn’t sure what had happened other than that she was suddenly left standing without her dance partner. The elegant woman, who was almost as tall as Reg, had noticed that Reg seemed to have had a hand in organizing the party and wanted to congratulate him. It was a great event. She just wished that her brothers (Reg followed her glance in the direction of a couple of young Ojibwa men near the bar) would stay away from the bar, “Injuns and ‘fire water’ not mixing and all.” Her name was Susan, she told him, and she was one of the dancers who would be dancing in the tribal wedding ceremony a little later. As Reg danced with her, he got the feeling that he was being stroked all over, though the two never changed their formal dancing posture. When the song ended, Susan told him that she’d be in town for a couple more days, as she wrote her name and a phone number on a napkin. “Susan Mankiller,” she’d written; Reg was quite sure the name fit.

Once Susan had ‘broken the ice’, Reg was approached by a stream of Native girls and women of all ages with requests for a dance. He’d already spent the better part of the reception so far on the dance floor with women of all ages and shapes, from both Karen’s and Justin’s families, making sure that every one was having the time of her life. And it wasn’t just the women who approached him. By the end of the night, Reg had acquired 32 phone numbers, 11 of them from men, written on every sort of material with whatever writing utensil was at hand. And he wasn’t the only one making sure the party was a success. Though Aiden couldn’t dance well, Karen found out he had a beautiful tenor voice. A small disagreement near the bar had been threatening to grow into a fight, and suddenly Aiden was there, defusing the situation with the opening bars of a rousing Irish drinking song which the others soon joined in singing. And no matter how many times one group or another of the new couple’s teenaged cousins or nephews attempted to add a little ‘cheer’ to the punch that was there for the underage guests, Aiden seemed to notice and have the punch ‘refreshed.’ Between those two men and Pierre, they managed to keep most people from getting too soused, and the mood of the reception stayed positive.

Not that all the invisible guests joined in the great mood. As Karen stood near the bar to take a break, and watched the crowd, she noticed that the moods of a few were at odds with the spirit (pun intended) of the occasion. Justin had been dancing with Weeping Sparrow, who looked at him with an expression of concern that reminded Karen of the look the wise woman had given Kat that afternoon at her condo. When Karen had introduced her to Justin in the receiving line, Weeping Sparrow had told Justin that he had “many trials to face,” but that he had “a good heart” and that he “shouldn’t be afraid to rely on the help of friends.” She’d also told him, with great warmth, that he made “Raccoon” (Karen’s Ojibwa name) happy. When that dance ended, Justin began dancing with Marie. That was when Karen noticed for the first time a young woman, a ghost, watching him with a hungry look. She looked about 18, thin and pretty and blonde in a way that screamed “cheerleader,” but sad-looking somehow, wearing a sheath dress, with a hairstyle and make-up that reminded Karen of how some of the girls wore theirs back when she was just starting college. Karen’s stomach knotted; she had a feeling she knew who that girl was, and she was afraid of what her presence might lead to.

By now, Reg had been introduced to Edward, and recognized the man’s name. His catch phrase was “a wealth-bringer,” and in ads for his seminars he claimed that “becoming wealthy is possible for everyone” and ”by your efforts, your company can be at the top.” None of Reg’s companies had ever held one of Edward’s seminars, and Reg had always gotten the impression that there was a slight sheen of sleaze about the guy. He’d never heard anything specific about the seminars except that they seemed to be wildly successful. Only a few times had he ever heard anyone say that they hated Edward, and most people seemed to like, if not love, him. Karen had already spoken to her sister and brothers to find out what they thought of Edward. None of them seemed to get the ‘willies’ about him like Karen did, but they didn’t gush about him either. Sean seemed to like him, and Patrick thought he was OK. Leslie mostly felt a little weird thinking about their mom dating ‘and stuff.’ Karen had to agree about that. It was strange.

The DJ announced that it was time for the bouquet and garter toss, and the dance floor cleared for Justin and Karen. Someone made sure there was a chair there for Karen to sit on, and she managed to not turn too red when Justin worked his way up her leg to get the garter. Angie was shamed into joining the crowd of unmarried women for the bouquet toss, but she stood at the back with her fists firmly planted in her armpits since she’d rather get beaned by the wad of flowers than risk catching them sheerly by reflex if they came her way. When it was over, Karen went and got Twisted Pine. She wanted him to meet Edward before he and her mom left, so that she could see what he thought of the man. Twisted Pine was, of course, very polite and seemed quite pleased to meet Edward. Karen inwardly cringed. What if she WAS the only person who couldn’t stand the guy? How would she know if she was right or wrong about him? She hugged her mom, and even let Edward give her a hug goodbye. (Luckily her mom was having so much fun dancing with him all night that Karen had managed to avoid having to do so.) It was almost 7:30, and Cathy’s energy was starting to flag. She and Marie had been running almost constantly for the past 3 weeks to put the wedding together, and now the adrenalin rush was wearing off. Plus, Edward had to leave anyway; so he could take Cathy home before he was on his way to Texas. Once they were gone, Karen asked Twisted Pine what he thought of Edward. He was non-committal, causing Karen even more concern. She’d been hoping he would tell her that he sensed something horribly wrong or evil about Edward, so she’d be justified in disliking him. Karen expressed her fears about the man who had swept her mom off her feet. All Twisted Pine would say was that Karen should trust her instincts and keep an eye on him.

Karen went to the bridal table to sit down and pick at the piece of cake that had been put there for her. She was pondering the problem she had with Edward. Reg happened to be walking by behind Karen when he passed a cold spot. But this one was different from the others he’d noticed. The temperature seemed to drop by a good 40 degrees. Karen hadn’t really been paying attention, so when Reg said something to her, she turned to look, first over one shoulder then the other, to see who was behind her. But it wasn’t Reg who caused the look of fright that passed across her face. Justin’s former girlfriend was there too, and was trying to wrap her hands around Karen’s neck. Karen shuddered with a sudden chill. Reg noticed the fear and asked Karen what was wrong. She tried to compose herself, hoping that no one else had noticed, and told Reg that she’d just been startled. But Reg wasn’t buying that and he pressed her again. This time she told him that there were guests there that no one else could see, and that not all of them were happy to be there. Now Reg was worried. And so was Justin. From across the room, he’d noticed the fear on Karen’s face and the worry on Reg’s as he spoke with her. Justin made his way across the room and sat beside Karen. She couldn’t lie to him, but she didn’t want to alarm him or ruin his evening; so when he asked what was wrong, she only told him that it was a ghost that she thought might be his former girlfriend. Justin’s gut tightened.

As Karen told him this, she felt another chill, like a cold pane of glass cutting through her, as the ghost tried to push her out of her own body. She shuddered again. Reg spotted Weeping Sparrow and went to get her. Hopefully she could do something to help Karen. Justin asked her to describe the girl and Karen did, and a look of...sorrow?...fear?...she wasn’t sure what, grew on Justin’s face. It was Sarah, he told Karen in a choked-up voice. He should have told her before. Long before now. Karen told him that she knew, that Marie had told her about what had happened. And she hadn’t asked him because she knew that it was a painful subject, and she figured he’d tell her when he was ready. Justin dropped his face into his hands. He should have told Karen about it a long time ago, he almost sobbed into his hands. Reg came back leading Weeping Sparrow, and he pulled a chair close to Karen and Justin for her. As she sat, Reg told her that Karen had seen ‘guests that weren’t there.’ She confirmed that there were ‘many there who belonged there though they couldn’t be seen.’ She asked Karen to describe who she’d seen that had caused her such concern, and Karen described the girl. Justin told Weeping Sparrow that it was a former girlfriend, Sarah Radcliff, who had died back when they were in college together. Justin pulled out his wallet and dug through it until he pulled out a photo that was ragged along the edges and stuck to another card from many years of being pressed together. It was the blonde girl that Karen had seen watching him, who had tried to choke her and take possession of her body.

Weeping Sparrow held out her hand, and Justin handed her the photo. She asked why he still kept it after so long, and Justin said he’d forgotten he even had it. He was close to crying, upset over not having told Karen about what had happened so long ago, and afraid that she would misunderstand his still having Sarah’s photo. Karen saw the pain in his face, and it twisted like a knife in her heart. She couldn’t bear to see him hurting like that, and wished that she could wipe the pain away like she would a tear, and that she’d been better able to disguise her shock and fear when Sarah had tried to attack her. She hadn’t wanted anything like this to ruin their wedding day. Weeping Sparrow held the photo and began chanting very quietly, rocking in time with the chant and looking at the picture. After a few minutes, she told Justin and Karen that they should be safe for the rest of the evening. Justin asked if he couldn’t just tell Sarah that it was over, sort of break up with her. Weeping Sparrow warned him that that could be dangerous and just make the spirit more angry. Then, spotting Aiden and Angie together across the room, she asked about them. Karen chuckled and said that maybe Aiden could help Justin break up with Sarah--that he’d had a lot of practice at breaking up with girls without making them mad at him. Weeping Sparrow told her that Aiden would have trouble breaking up with Angie, though she might break up with him, since he was no longer dangerous. With that, Weeping Sparrow got up and patted Karen on the shoulder. She told Karen that they’d do the Tribal wedding ceremony soon. It would take them a little bit to prepare, and the ceremony would take about a half hour and they would need the dance floor for it. Then she rejoined her little group of Ojibwa women and started spreading the word to get ready for the ceremony. Karen hugged Justin as tightly as her strength would allow, then went to tell the DJ that the Tribe would be needing the dance floor in a little while.

Reg didn’t say anything, but he was beginning to hear some chatter on the ‘security team’ ear bud. Like Angie, Leigh and Tony, Frank was trying to keep his eyes open for signs of Unknown trouble. They hadn’t caught the Greater Zombi yet, and so they’d all been on ‘alert’ for that reason to begin with. But with the wedding festivities moved to Cobo, which was right on the same riverfront that was being prowled by the zombi, their alertness had been intensified. He had only just told the others about the recent string of unusual deaths, at Justin's birthday party a couple nights ago. He hadn’t wanted them running around waving their guns at every drug dealer and homeless guy within a mile of the river before they figured out the zombi's next move. He stepped out into a hallway to give his ears a rest from the music when he heard the faint sound of a car alarm coming up a stairwell that led to the parking garage under the building. Frank felt a shiver run up the back of his neck. He glanced at his watch as he asked the security office to have the alarm checked out. It was 8pm. Security told him that they were sending Bob Newell down to check it out.

Frank told the others over the voice-activated mike that he was going down to check out the alarm himself. Angie had already been assigned the duty of getting the ‘mundanes’ out of the way if anything threatened them, so she stayed put for the moment. Leigh went out to follow Frank into the parking garage, and Tony followed her out, stating that he’d go check on Bob. Once Karen and Justin had left the bridal table, Reg had gotten surrounded by yet another throng of ladies looking for a dance partner. He excused himself, then went to the security office to check the camera system. When he got there, about half the cameras were down. He went out and found Aiden, and told him only “heads up.” Then he went back to the office to offer Frank and the others whatever information he could to help.

First, Aiden went to the DJ and requested a few high-tempo songs to get the crowd of guests up and moving, just in case something happened. It would be a lot easier to get them out the doors if they were already on their feet. Then he went to the bar and told them to start watering the drinks. Things would go more smoothly if people were beginning to sober up a little. He told the caterers to stop refreshing the platters of food that they’d put out for anyone who didn’t have enough to eat yet, and to put out pots of coffee. He hoped that these subtle hints might persuade people that it was time to start clearing the place out before they might be forced out by whatever had spooked Frank. Reg went to the wait staff themselves and suggested that they try to divert people away from the parking garage for their own safety, since there seemed to be a problem with the security system. Princess had already lined up a parade of cabs and limos to shuttle around those who were in no condition to drive themselves and those who’d parked over at St. Ladislaus. Reg told them to take advantage of the ready vehicles or to suggest that people allow the valets to retrieve their cars from the garage. Then he went back to monitor the cameras again.

By now, the tribal dancers were ready and the DJ announced that the ceremony was about to begin. The dance floor cleared and a circle of drummers took their places and began drumming and chanting. Soon, the dancers moved onto the floor and began to dance around the drummers. Since all the guests were now surrounding the dance floor, watching the ceremony, Angie warned Frank and the others that she would be coming down to the garage too. Reg continued to watch the video monitors, reporting to all the Envoys where each of the others was. He had the head security guard try to raise Bob on his radio, since Reg couldn’t find him on any of the working cameras, but Bob’s radio seemed to be dead. That was strange, because the program that Reg had installed to warn him of any system failures hadn’t reported any problems. Frank went to his car and got a shotgun, then he began to move toward the river. Behind him, one of the mercury vapor lamps that lit the garage went out. He reported it to the others. Reg let them all know that Angie had moved out of camera view. Over their ear buds, the others heard Angie say, “Yeah, no kidding...it’s....” Silence. Angie’s mike had gone dead.

Ahead of Frank, two more of the lamps went dark. He moved cautiously forward and narrowly missed tripping over Bob’s prone body. The security guard was lying chest down, with his arms flung out to the sides, his gun still in his hand but his head lying at an angle that looked seriously wrong to Frank’s trained eye. They would later find out that the poor guy had three kids and a pregnant wife. From several lanes over, they heard 3 shots--Angie’s hand cannon. Reg heard them through his ear bud. Frank flipped on the ‘hand-held sun’. Tony and Leigh reported that they could see it ahead of them, but none of them had caught a glimpse of the muzzle-flash from Angie’s gun that might have given them an idea of exactly where she was. Frank realized that the zombi could be causing the lights to go out, which might affect the ‘sun’ if he got too close, so he also cracked a chem-light, just to be safe. Reg left the office and went to find Lt. Worth. Leigh and Tony began working their way toward Frank’s light, as he worked his way between the cars, headed in the direction from which he’d heard Angie’s gunshots. As he swept the area ahead of him with the ‘sun’, he caught a glimpse of a tall man-like shape moving quickly between the cars and headed for the river. They all heard a short burst of Arabic curses in Angie’s voice that was quickly choked off. Upstairs, the ceremony continued.

Reg warned Lt. Worth that there might be a problem in the parking garage. Frank and his ‘team’ were checking it out, but he thought she should know in case they had need of police backup. Then, at Frank’s request, he found Aiden and the two headed for the garage after grabbing the med kit from the coat room where Aiden had stashed it. Frank opened the chamber of the shotgun and dropped in a phosphorous gel round. It’d be a hell of a lot easier to catch the thing if they could tell where it was. He saw movement and took a shot, and the three Envoys saw the glowing gel spray across a support post. The damned thing was moving pretty fast. Leigh felt her toe connect with something on the floor, and a gun went sliding across the ground and into the side of Tony’s foot. He picked it up and signaled the others that it was Angie’s. They were on the right track. Frank swept the ‘sun’ ahead of them again and spotted the zombi, which had Angie under one of its arms with its other hand clamped over her mouth.

When Reg and Aiden got to the garage, they went straight for Justin’s truck, which had the zombi-catchers in the back end. Aiden set the med-kit in the bed and climbed into the passenger seat, while Reg took the driver’s seat. Frank told Reg that the zombi had Angie and appeared to be heading for the river and asked Reg to cut it off. Reg figured it might be better not to tell Aiden yet, so he didn’t do anything stupid. Frank loaded another phos-gel round and took aim at the zombi. He didn’t want to risk hitting Angie, so he aimed for the thing’s leg, hoping the force of the round might take its leg out and slow it down. The gel capsule hit it this time, and while the force didn’t knock the zombi off its feet, it did cause it to stumble and loosen its grip on Angie. Frank, Tony and Leigh could hear her begin cursing again and saw her shadowy form struggle to pull away from the zombi’s. They could also hear the squeal of tires as Reg finessed the truck around the end of a line of cars and gunned the engine as he straightened it out and headed for the river-end of the lot. Aiden hung on to the ‘Jesus bar’ and expressed to Reg an interest in getting there in a manner that would leave him still able to help if it was needed. When Reg got to the far end of the lane and could see the zombi’s figure silhouetted by Frank’s light, with the glowing phosphorous gel spattered across the back of its legs, he hit the brakes and pulled the steering wheel hard to one side, swinging the back end around so that the truck’s lights fully lit the zombi..

Now that the zombi was lit from all sides, by the phos-gel, the truck’s lights and Frank’s ‘sun’, Tony took a shot at its leg and hit it. But the bullet seemed to have no effect on the thing. Aiden swung out the door as the truck rocked to a stop when Reg threw it into “park.” Leigh and Frank closed in on the zombi, which was now holding Angie up by her neck. It opened its mouth and let out a howl, and Aiden saw Angie being throttled by the creature. Frank dropped his shotgun and dove for the zombi’s neck, but the thing dodged without losing its grip on Angie. Reg jumped from the truck and grabbed the zombi-catchers before heading for the fray. Tony ran to Reg and took the catcher that Reg held out toward him. Aiden flung himself toward the zombi, and getting right in front of it, yanked Angie from its grip with strength that the others didn’t realize he had, leaving himself in her place. As he watched her fall, Aiden could tell that she was in bad shape. Frank moved in and pushed Aiden toward Angie’s prone figure. She needed his help too much for him to sacrifice himself to the zombi. Her throat was crushed, and her lips were beginning to turn blue from the lack of oxygen.

As he passed her, jockeying for position, Reg handed one of the catchers to Leigh. Reg shifted the other two catchers to his off hand, and used the third to snag the outstretched arm with which the zombi had been holding Angie. Tony moved around and managed to drop his loop in just the right spot to catch the zombi’s opposite foot. Reg dropped one of the remaining catchers in front of Aiden, who was too busy working on Angie to notice, and tossed the last to Frank, who was standing directly in front of the creature. Aiden grabbed Angie and dragged her towards the truck and med-kit, and away from the fight. The zombi turned it’s attention to Frank, who was too close for it to ignore. The thing swung its free arm at Frank, who could almost taste its decomposing flesh as its fist flew by his face. He happened to be holding the catcher that Reg had tossed him, right in front of his face. By some minor miracle (if one believed in those things), the zombi’s fist passed into the loop of the catcher, and Frank pulled it tight as he stepped away from the blow. With three of its limbs restrained, the zombi struggled to keep its balance, making it easy for Leigh to catch its last free leg with her loop. Coordinating their movements, the four Envoys took the creature down. It took them another twenty minutes of work to bind the struggling creature with duct tape and get it wrapped in a tarp, which they also taped shut. When they finally had a chance to check on Aiden and Angie, they found him collapsed across her. He’d had to use all the energy he had left to keep her from dying from the damage the zombi had caused.

The tribe’s wedding ceremony was just ending and Justin and Karen were getting ready to leave, when Reg came up from the garage looking for Lt. Worth. He needed to let her know that things were under control. The newlyweds noticed that Reg was brushing dirt off his hands and looking ever so slightly more disheveled than when they’d seen him last. As they looked around and realized that all the other Envoys had disappeared from the party as well, they intercepted Reg. All he would tell them was not to worry, that they WOULD have a good wedding night. Oh, and he was going to be borrowing Justin’s truck. They right away suspected that the others had been dealing with “something”, probably the zombi. Karen even looked a little disappointed that she hadn't been able to help. Reg had no idea that she felt responsible for the thing's still running loose. Justin asked if everyone was OK, and Reg told him they would be. More to the point, Justin asked if Aiden was down. They could take the hint that they were supposed to just go and enjoy the rest of their evening. But Justin was the only one who might be able to get Aiden back up on his feet so that he could continue being helpful after he’d gone and knocked himself out. Reg allowed that maybe Aiden had pushed himself too far, again, but he figured that Aiden would be OK with a little rest and told the two to go back to the party.

The next couple weeks passed with little excitement for the Envoys. Aiden dragged Tony over to the hospital to see a doctor, so that he could stop having to pretend he was still sick and so that the other Envoys could stop having to cover up the fact that he wasn’t. Getting a clean bill of health also allowed him to begin putting the moves on Anne without her putting a stop to “her patient” hitting on her. And once Tony’s boss found out he was hale and hearty again, Tony was gone on business most of the time anyway. When all the paperwork from the raid on D’Arcy’s warehouse was processed, it turned out that he had been on Haiti’s Most Wanted list. This new coup got Frank off the hook for showing up at his boss’s heel for every appearance he was asked to make regarding the department’s work, and got him out of having to speak to Senate subcommittees about his own work.. He’d just given the State Department a good bargaining chip in their relationship with the Haitian government. It didn’t get him off the hook for his paperwork, though. He also finally received the bounty hunter licenses for the others, and passed them out after hesitating a couple days while he continued to ponder whether this was really such a good idea.

Angie had seemed a little lost for lack of things to do, now that disaster wasn’t imminent; so Frank worked with Lt. Worth to set up some IED training sessions for the Detroit Police Department. With both the World Series and the Super Bowl coming to Detroit in the next year, it wouldn’t hurt for everyone in the department to have some idea what an IED looked like and what to do in case one was found, even though there would probably be HS, FBI and various military units in place for the events as well. Aiden spent his time dealing with Wayne State’s Medical School, getting “incompletes” registered for all his last term’s classes since he’d been in the hospital so much, and registering for all the classes he could take this summer to make up for lost time.

Leigh continued to stay at Reg’s house while she looked for a place of her own. Reg just couldn’t stand to see her driving a rental car when he still had several cars in his garage, so he gave her the keys to “Charlie”, his Chrysler 300. When he wasn’t working, he spent as much time as he could over at Justin’s shop. Part of this was because Justin was still working on replacing the engine in Inge, his BMW, and part of it was to impress his friends, who didn’t believe that he’d gotten THE Justin Kazotchek to work on his car. But mostly it was so that the two could work on a couple of projects together. Justin had asked Reg to help him beef-up the security at Karen’s place, and the two were working on how to do more remote surveillance before assaulting the Unknown, so they didn’t have to put any of the team in direct danger to find out what they were up against. The surveillance project would be an ongoing thing, but the security problem was quickly solved. Justin replaced the current French doors with a set with a more secure locking mechanism that braced the gap where the doors met. Then he had decorative ironwork grills added to the doors for additional strength. Reg installed cameras on all the doors, and arranged for an alarm system which would notify both Justin and Karen by phone of a breech. The system also included motion sensors covering the whole interior of the condo that would relay data to a computer on request, so that activity could be pinpointed for response.

Once Marie had warmed up to the idea of having some fancy wedding planner be her lackey, she welcomed his help. That gave her the extra time she needed to plan a small surprise birthday party for Justin’s birthday on the 19th. Reg had given Karen three names which she had passed on to Marie. Marie ended up choosing Peter Jacob, whom Reg had affectionately referred to as “that old queen.” Reg had been a little worried about what asking Peter this favor might cost him; but once Peter met Marie and Cathy, he assured Reg that it was his pleasure to do it. He found both women charming, and he stroked Marie’s ego until she even agreed to a change in the wedding colors, from mint and peach (Peter shuddered every time he even thought about it) to burgundy and gold. While Peter started working on some of the details of the wedding plans, Marie had a chance to call around to Justin’s close friends and family and begin to pull the birthday party together.

Karen and Justin picked out rings, bought gifts for the wedding party, and went to fittings for their wedding attire whenever Marie told them to. Otherwise, they went on with all the other things they considered important. Justin even got back to showing up at the shop on a regular basis, which made Jerry happy; and Justin made sure to give Karen’s Jeep a thorough maintenance check before she had to leave for the UP. He also worked on a zombi-catching idea he’d had. When Karen had mentioned the idea of catching the thing in a net of some sort, Justin’s brain started working. What he came up with was a twist on the “man-catcher,” the same sort of devise that animal control used nowadays to restrain aggressive animals. Only his was made with more heavy-duty materials to stand up to the Greater Zombi’s strength. And they included a hook on the bottom of the handle that would allow it to be attached to a hitch or winch, which several of their vehicles had, so that holding on to the thing, once it was caught, didn’t just rely on the strength of the Envoys on the other end of the sticks.

These tools, plus the fact that they’d agreed at dinner the night after the death of D’Arcy that they’d collect and have readily accessible everything they needed for destroying the zombi, might make catching and killing it easier than killing D’Arcy had been. Every chance they got over the next couple weeks, Karen and Leigh would review the ritual with whoever they could get together. Catch and incapacitate the Greater Zombi. Dress it in a black suit, the pockets of which had been slashed and turned out. Bury it in a coffin with 24 seeds (the type of seed didn’t matter). Once the lid of the coffin was closed, the zombi should crumble to dust, according to the info Lita had sent them. They got 24 seeds in a Ziploc bag, seeds large enough that they would notice if one somehow fell or bounced out of the coffin, plus a few extra in a separate baggie, in case they couldn’t retrieve any that ‘escaped.’ They got the largest black suit they could find (the instructions didn’t say it had to fit well), and slashed and turned out the pockets. And they found not only a plain wooden-box coffin, but also a couple light-weight cardboard ones that are normally used for cremation, in case it would be easier to take the coffin to the zombi rather than the zombi to the coffin. They also gathered several shovels. The instructions said to “bury,” but they also said that the ritual was complete when the lid was closed. So they had to be ready to dig a quick hole, if they needed it.

Karen turned most of her attention to preparations for the dig (plus spending a little time on the side shopping for birthday and wedding gifts for Justin), which made her happy. And she still made regular trips to Grace and Rehab to visit Fr. Andrew and CJ. Classes for the Spring/Summer terms started on May 9, and the sheer excitement with which she looked forward to the dig was passed on to her students as they all prepared for it. They spent the first week of classes on campus--reviewing procedures, doing paperwork and receiving their assignments. News of the progress of Karen’s wedding plans spread fast; sometimes Karen wasn’t even sure how the news got out, since it seemed like her students and the rest of the department knew things before she did. She got equipment packed for transport up north, and helped her students work out their travel arrangements. At first, Justin seemed determined to go with her and stay for the length of the dig, and he wanted to take a trailer-load of weapons and protective gear with them, enough to fight a World War it seemed to Karen.

But she thought it would be silly for him to waste all that time when he wouldn’t be able to help much with the dig and he could be at home taking care of his business instead. So she let him take her holster shopping, so that she’d have her gun close whenever and wherever she went. Then she had him pick her up for lunch a couple times that week, so he could meet the students who would be going with her. That made him feel a little better about her safety. And Leigh volunteered to join the dig, since she was on sabbatical anyway, and that made Justin feel a lot better. Karen had Reg help her get a new satellite phone, so she wouldn’t have any problem getting hold of Justin nor would he, getting hold of her. In the end, Justin decided to ride up with her to see the dig site when she first went up there on Sunday, May 15 and had Reg fly up and pick him up at the Grand Marais Airport to bring him home on Monday afternoon. It was good to know that both Reg and Tony could fly him and the others up there, if anything DID happen.

And, of course, something did happen, but not at the dig site exactly. About 4am on Tuesday morning, Karen was woken by the ringing of the satellite phone. She answered and immediately heard the pain in Jared’s voice. There’d been an accident. He and Kat had been leaving a restaurant a few hours ago, and as they crossed the street a car came barreling at them from out of nowhere. He’d tried to get her out of the way, but.... Kat was dead. Karen’s throat closed up and tears filled her eyes, and even the cool crisp air of the UP spring didn’t make breathing any easier. Kat had wanted Karen to know that she understood about Diva and that it wasn’t Karen’s fault, Jared told her, that the kitten had a mind of its own. A tortured laugh croaked past Karen’s lips; that kitten did have its own way of doing things. The funeral would be on the 25th, Jared said. Karen asked him if there was anything she could do, if there was someone there to help him with...everything. His family and Kat’s were already on their way, he told her. That, and the fact that he hadn’t escaped injury either, were the reasons why the funeral wouldn’t be until the following week. But he’d gotten off lightly compared to Kat, with only a broken leg and maybe a fractured pelvis, and a few minor injuries. He apologized for ruining her and Justin’s wedding, and Karen heard the pain of his loss make his voice crack. Kat had been pestering him about making their own...wedding...perfect, and he.... Karen assured him that he wasn’t ruining the wedding, though they’d all certainly feel the pain of Kat’s absence, and that what had happened wasn’t his fault. She told him that the important thing right now was for him to concentrate on healing, and that if he needed anything he should call her. He said that he was going to be calling Frank a little later, and that he’d have to impose on Frank to take over some of his duties at HS. Karen reminded him that he had friends that would all do anything they could to make his burden lighter, and they said goodbye.

Karen hung up the phone and sighed heavily. She used the corner of her pillow to wipe away the tears that had rolled down her cheeks and hit the speed dialer to call home. They hadn’t really known Kat that long before she moved to DC to be with Jared, but the stress they all lived with now made them all bond faster than Karen would have thought possible. In such a short time, she’d had to run from zombies with these people (she’d always wondered how Kat managed to walk around in those high heels, and expected her to break a leg trying to run in them), fallen in love with Justin, seen the joy in Kat’s face after Jared proposed, watched Harvey have to deal with the Unknown attacking his daughter and have to leave the team because of it, and had so many of these new friends end up in the hospital.

When Justin first answered the phone, she knew he’d been sleeping because his voice sounded groggy. But when he heard her voice, she could tell by the change in his that the shock had caused a spike in his adrenalin. Suddenly Justin was wide awake. She told him that Kat was dead, and described the call she’d gotten from Jared. She needed him to call the others and to start making arrangements for at least the two of them to go to the funeral. And she told him to let Frank know to expect a call from Jared. When she’d said everything she could think of, she told Justin she missed him and she’d see him on Friday, and they hung up. She’d managed to keep the surprise party a secret so far, and she didn’t want to blow it now, in spite of the circumstances.

Then she called Leigh. She was so wide awake now that she kind of forgot just how early it was until Leigh’s groggy voice answered. Leigh was the only person she could think of who she was close enough to that she could ask to take Kat’s place in the wedding party. But since the wedding was only a little over 4 days away, there wasn’t much time to get her fitted for a dress. First Karen apologized for calling at that hour. She didn’t want to alarm Leigh, she said, but she’d gotten a call from Jared that Kat was dead after a hit-and-run accident. She asked if Leigh would do her the honor of standing up in the wedding in Kat’s place. Leigh was flabbergasted. She’d been planning on being part of the ‘security team’ since they still hadn’t caught the zombi. She didn’t really expect that it would get close to the church in broad daylight, especially since that was hallowed ground, nor that it could get as far from the river as Wayne State’s campus, where the reception was being held, without being noticed, but she preferred to be prepared. On the other hand, she couldn’t very well turn down a request like this, especially when it was due to the death of a fellow Envoy. She told Karen that she would, and Karen gave her Marie’s phone number and address, to get her started on the dress-fitting. When she’d hung up the phone, Karen turned over and buried her face in her pillow. Now that the necessary calls were made, she could afford to cry for her friend.

Justin got up and went to the kitchen, and started a pot of coffee. He wouldn’t have been able to get back to sleep now even if he’d wanted. He really didn’t want to have to go through the whole story a half-dozen times, so he started calling everyone and linking them into a conference call. Tony, Frank, and Aiden and Angie were all woken from sound sleep when their phones rang. Leigh had already gone down to join Reg in the kitchen. She would wait until a reasonable hour to call Marie, but she knew that Reg was usually up and getting a jump on his email by this hour. Justin told them all what had happened, at least as much as he knew, which was everything that Jared had told Karen. (They could all hear Angie in the background, asking Aiden who Kat was. Leigh had already told Reg, when he’d asked why she was up so early, so he didn’t need to ask.) He hated to impose on their friendship, he told Reg, but if he and Karen, and anyone else who wanted to go to the funeral, couldn’t get commercial flights on such short notice, he wondered if Reg could make some sort of arrangements to get them to DC by the following week. Reg assured him that it wouldn’t be either an imposition or a problem. He was also setting his computer to work catching any info that might go through DC police systems regarding Kat and Jared. Tony immediately started badgering Frank to find out what happened and to catch whoever killed Kat. There wasn’t even a way to know yet whether Kat or Jared was the target, Frank told him; and since Jared was the Deputy Associate Director of Domestic Investigations for the Dept. Of Homeland Security, then the FBI would already be on the case and there wasn’t much more that he could do than they could.

What Tony didn’t know was that while Frank talked to them on the phone, he was already on his computer, requesting information from his sources inside DC and out. Was there some connection to the terrorist cell from Dearborn that they’d wiped out? And which one WAS the target? He wouldn’t know until he started getting more info. As soon as he got off the phone, he got ready and headed down to his office. Just as he was getting in, his cell rang. It was Lt. Worth. There was something weird going on along the riverfront, and she thought he ought to know about it. One death was nothing surprising, even when the guy had his chest hammered in by a blunt object. A second, with his right arm and left leg ripped off and missing, was creepy but still only a coincidence as far as most cops were concerned. And since they’d both been homeless, nobody had given the incidents much attention. The third, another homeless male, this time with his rib cage ripped open (maybe by fingernails?!) and the heart missing, told her that this was more than just random violence caused by perps hopped up on PCP. All these had occurred over the course of the last 14 days. But early this morning there’d been a fourth death. A female prostitute was found, like the others within a mile of the river, with her skull smashed to tiny pieces and the brain missing. She would be sending him everything she had on the cases.

The forensics team had found no viable fingerprints related to any of these deaths. However they did find smudges that might indicate that the perp had used acid or some other chemical to burn off his fingerprints. It wouldn’t be the first time a hit man did something like that. But who would take out hits on people almost nobody cared about anyway? The other really strange thing was that the coroner found bits of necrotic tissue that didn’t belong to the deceased in the wounds of all four victims. Inquiries had been sent to the Windsor Police, and she was still waiting for a response from them. Frank knew right away what was causing these deaths. He just thanked Lt. Worth for bringing them to his attention and told her he’d check the cases out. Then he called Karen. He needed to know if there might be any pattern to what the zombi was doing or some purpose it might be working toward, anything that might help the team anticipate where it would turn up next. All Karen could tell him was that once the creature who had created it was dead, or at least banished far enough away that it had no control over the thing, the zombi would revert to whatever natural tendencies it had before the person’s death, unless it had current and uncompleted instructions from its creator. And the longer it had been in existence, the more its natural tendencies would be perverted by its being a creature of the Unknown. So even if the person had been gentle before, the longer it was a zombi, the more violent and evil its actions would become. And from what he described to her, it didn’t sound like this guy had been a Boy Scout even before death. When she was done talking to Frank, Karen called Justin. She asked, in passing, if the zombi-catchers weren’t done yet, but she’d actually called to make sure that Justin had let Fr. Andrew and CJ know about Kat. Just because they were currently out of commission, didn’t meant they shouldn’t still be told about everything that was happening. Justin promised he’d let them know.

Leigh called Marie about 9am, hoping that she wasn’t waking her. But Marie was already up and working. She had a surprise party to arrange, on top of the wedding, so she didn’t have time for sleeping in. Marie was shocked and sorry to hear of Kat’s death, but she had never actually met Kat so her biggest concern was how her death would mess up the balance of the wedding party. Karen had anticipated that, Leigh told Marie, and that was why she was calling. She would be taking Kat’s place in the party and needed to be fitted for the dress in a hurry. Marie told Leigh the address of the dress shop they’d been working with and told her that she’d be calling the shop right away so they’d know Leigh was coming. Marie also called Peter, to let him know about the latest complication, so that he could get the dress maker to expedite Leigh’s dress. Early Wednesday morning, as Frank was on his way back into the Federal Building, he heard a large splash in the river, about 200 feet away from where he was. He ran in that direction, but could find no sign of any large disturbance in the water or along the river’s edge. He’d been out patrolling the riverfront that night, hoping to catch the zombi in the act. And he would keep doing it every night until they caught the thing, now that he knew that it was prowling the area. Later that day, Marie called Justin to remind him that he’d promised to be to her place at 6pm sharp on Thursday for dinner and she wasn’t accepting any lame excuses if he missed it.

Thursday morning all hell broke loose, and it had nothing to do with werewolves, zombies, ghosts or the deaths of friends. Reg was sitting at his computer, starting his day with coffee and email like usual, when Peter called on the edge of hysteria. Had Reg had any idea how many guests were invited when he’d given Marie his name? Peter had been going through the RSVPs, trying to work out the seating arrangements for the reception, when he came across one that read “We will all be attending.” It was signed “The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe.” Peter had done a little checking. Had Karen bothered to tell anyone that the tribe amounted to some 600 people?! Suddenly the total guest list had jumped to almost 1200 people!! There was no way that the hall Karen had arranged for on the Wayne State campus would hold even half that amount! And they’d never fit into the church! Where was he going to put all these people?! He wasn’t even sure that they’d be able to afford something bigger; and the only place he’d been able to find so far was Cobo Hall! Reg calmed down Princess (his pet name for Peter--which did seem highly appropriate at the moment) and suggested he get to work getting the whole thing moved to Cobo then, since it sounded like there were a lot of people he was going to have to call. Reg wasn’t sure what Karen and Justin’s budget was for the project, he told Princess; but if they couldn’t cover the whole expense, he would make up the rest. And he suggested that if Princess couldn’t make contact with all the guests to let them know about the change, he should make sure there were buses waiting at the church to shuttle the others to Cobo and back. But he should probably clear everything with Marie and Fr. Jerzy first. Princess said he would, and as the two said goodbye, Reg could hear Princess muttering about phone trees to contact all the guests.

Karen was up early, making sure (one last time) that everyone completely understood their assignments, and that her two senior team leaders (her PhD candidates, whose names would appear as co-authors when the findings from the past couple years’ work at the dig were published) had all the emergency numbers handy, and knew how to use the flares if there was a problem with the satellite phone, and remembered the directions to the nearest hospital at Grand Marais and the Grand Marais Airport, and had their vehicles gassed up, and.... Chris and Jaime practically had to pick her up and put her in the Jeep to get her on the road in time. Jaime pointed out that Karen was worse than Jaime’s mom had been the first time she and her sisters had been left with a sitter. Karen grinned. Chris and Jaime shared a look of relief when Karen was finally on her way. She had no idea that the entire dig team would be busy shutting down the dig on Friday morning so that they could be at her wedding. They wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but it was probably better that she didn’t know it yet.

As soon as she got across the bridge, Karen’s cell sprang to life, letting her know that she had a message. She pulled off into the Welcome Center rest area to check what they were before she went any further. She was afraid that something had already gone wrong at the dig. Actually, she had three messages, none from Chris and Jaime. First there was one from Marie, letting her know that there’d been a little problem with fitting the large number of guests into the hall that had been reserved, but it was being taken care of. (Karen’s stomach tightened.) Then there was one from her mom, wondering who the hell Karen had invited and how were she and Justin ever going to afford such a large wedding. (Karen was puzzled. She thought she’d made it clear to them that she was inviting the Tribe. Now she was beginning to wonder how many people her mom and Marie had invited. She knew that Justin’s family was large too, but just how many people were coming?) The third was from Marie again, in a tone of voice that sounded like everything was completely normal, making sure that Karen was going to make it down in time for the surprise party. Karen shook her head. She ran into the bathroom (Rule #1--When driving long distances, NEVER pass up the chance to stop at a bathroom.), then hit the road again. Another four and a half hours and she’d be at Marie’s. Luckily, she’d gotten some suggestions from Marie, and had gotten and wrapped Justin’s birthday present (the whole series of Romero’s “Living Dead” movies and “Sean of the Dead”, which actually sounded like a cute movie when she read the back of the case at the store) and left it with Marie before she left town.

It was a little after 5pm when Karen pulled onto Marie’s street. Marie had already told her to park her car in a neighbor’s driveway a couple doors down, so that Justin wouldn’t spot it. When Marie let her in, she had an expression on her face like the cat that had eaten the canary, and Karen wondered if the surprise this evening wasn’t just going to be for Justin. Other people started arriving shortly after--Karen’s mom, Uncle/Fr. Jerzy, Leigh, Tony (unfortunately Anne had to work), Aiden and Angie, Frank, Reg and Peter, Jerry and a couple of the other guys from Justin’s shop, CJ, in a wheelchair pushed by Lars. She looked a little tired, but Lars was very attentive. He was big and blonde and strong, and Jerry seemed to think he looked familiar, like maybe he was an ex-Lion or some other sports figure. There were also a few of Justin and Marie’s relatives that Karen hadn’t met before, their grandparents and a couple of aunts and uncles. Fr. Andrew had sent his regrets. He was still not well enough to go out, and if he wanted to attend the wedding, he needed to remain where he was and rest. Altogether there were about 30 people there, and Marie found herself hard-pressed to find hiding places for everyone as 6:00 approached. She warned everyone not to come out or shout “Surprise” until she told Justin to “go sit down at the dining room table.”

Justin arrived at 6pm sharp, like Marie warned him he’d better, and as soon as Olivia had let go of his waist, he went to the small table by the front door and placed his gun inside and locked the drawer. It was something he and Mikey had worked out back when they’d found out Marie was pregnant with Olivia. Neither Justin nor his friend and new brother-in-law wanted guns lying loose around the house with a child in it. It had gotten to be a habit over the last few years, even though his gun no longer shared the space with Mike’s. Marie told him to “wash up and go sit down at the dining room table,” and people seemed to pop out from behind every wall and piece of furniture in the house, all shouting “SURPRISE!” Marie pushed Justin’s lower jaw up with her index finger before she hugged him so she wouldn’t get drool all over her head. Even Olivia was excitedly signing “Surprise!” as Justin swung her up into his arms and gave her a hug. And Karen couldn’t have asked for a better response than the wide-eyed look she got from Justin when she pushed out through a throng in the kitchen doorway to go give him a birthday hug.

Everyone crowded around Justin with hugs and handshakes and slaps on the back. Then, when things started to settle down a bit, Marie pulled Karen and Justin into the small hallway to the bedrooms. She had some news for them. She waved Peter over, and told them that, since the number of guests was much greater than she’d realized, Peter had made arrangements to move the whole wedding to Cobo Hall. She almost wished she’d had a camera handy to record their response. Their eyes got big and their mouths dropped open and they kept looking from her and Peter to each other, and back again, while the information settled into their brains. Everyone else in the place already knew about the change, since the phone tree had been at work since the decision had been made that morning. A moment later, someone was shoving plastic cups of beer (Reg had gotten a keg of Murphy’s and one of Guinness) into their hands and pulling Justin toward the table of gifts that had appeared in the living room. Now he could smell the food that Marie had been working on all afternoon, the scent wafting through the house once the door to the basement, where all the food and tables had been set up, was opened.

The party lasted for an indecent amount of time, well past Olivia’s bedtime. When Justin saw Karen’s gift, he pulled her into a hug and whispered to her that she didn’t need to get him anything since she was already giving him a better gift than he could have hoped for. Karen turned pink. It was the same thing that Marie had said to her when she’d asked for gift ideas. She knew that she felt that way about Justin, and she couldn’t imagine her life without him in it. But it was weird and hard to wrap her head around having someone feel that way about her. All the Envoys at the party shared wry glances when they saw what she’d gotten Justin. A few other people noticed their chuckling, but none were in on the ‘inside joke.’ At one point, Leigh drew Karen into a quiet corner and asked if she would do her a favor. It concerned Leigh that the wedding was no longer going to be held on hallowed ground. Something as sacred and important as their wedding needed that sort of protection, especially when they knew that there was still evil lurking about the city. She would be speaking with Fr. Andrew about his blessing the space, and she wondered if Karen could speak with her mentor about having a Tribal holy man or shaman bless it as well. Leigh just wanted to cover all their bases. Karen promised that she would call the Tribe first thing in the morning. At another point, as the party was beginning to wind down, Karen felt her phone vibrate. Since she had told her students, and Jared, and CJ, and the nurses at Grace Hospital who were in charge of Fr. Andrew to call her if they needed her for anything, she wasn’t sure who it could be, but it was probably important. She went to the bathroom to check it. The calling number was blocked, but the display showed that she had a text message. She opened the phone and checked it. All it said was “It’s not too late.”

Frank had quickly grown tired of Tony’s phone calls and had programmed his phones to send any calls from Tony’s phone straight to voice mail. That didn’t prevent Tony from pulling Frank into a corner at the party, before he’d managed to slip out, and asking again. Tony had been calling every few hours since Tuesday, demanding to know if Frank was working on finding Kat’s killer and what progress had been made. Unfortunately, there was a disturbing lack of information coming in. The FBI was indeed working the case. A friend in the Bureau had told him that they’d tracked down the car from what Jared had been able to tell them and from images on traffic cams in the area of the accident. It was stolen, and they’d found it abandoned in a garage. The attendant couldn’t remember anyone particularly unusual leaving the structure, though he was able to say that no one had gone out at an unusual time. So the driver must have waited until the morning rush to leave so that he wouldn’t be noticed. They couldn’t get anything useful from a nearby ATM’s camera and several cameras in the garage were not working. When they were checked, they were all the ones that would have recorded the car entering or the driver leaving, and all had had their lenses painted over with good old-fashioned spray paint over the course of a couple days, so the pattern hadn’t been noticed by the security company. One other thing they had been able to determine was that the heel on one of Kat’s shoes had broken, which must have caused her to stumble. Everything they’d found so far made it look like an organized hit, probably on D.A.D. Birkoff. Kat was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But this wasn’t the only thing on Frank’s plate at the moment. He’d been trying to work out with Jared which of Jared’s ‘appearances’ Frank had to cover until Jared was back on his feet. And there was the little matter of the missing Greater Zombi. There were four deaths that he could already attribute to its hands, and its attacks were getting more frequent. So when he’d been done at the office the past couple nights, Frank had also been patrolling the riverfront through the night. He’d usually been getting food from the vending machines in the Fed. Building, and catching catnaps between quitting work in the evening and starting his patrol at dark, and again for a little bit after dawn until the others started coming in. Tonight would be no different, except that his dinner was eaten at this birthday party. Whenever he had the chance to get one or another of the Envoys alone for a moment, he filled them in on the recent attacks. Finally, he took a moment to send a quick text message, then headed for the river. The night was relatively quiet again, until about 5am. Frank felt his phone vibrate. It was Worth. She’d just gotten word from the Windsor Police. They’d found a body; it’s abdomen was ripped open and its entrails were missing. She would send him the details as she got them. Frank went back to his office. In the past, he’d found it particularly helpful to sleep on a matter in order to find an answer to some question that his waking brain wasn’t able to work out. He shut the door and put his feet up, and pondered the question of what the team could do to anticipate where the Greater Zombi would appear so that they could capture it and kill it.

Frank slipped off to sleep. He could hear music, and slowly he became aware of his surroundings. He was on a dance floor. He was dancing...with Lt. Worth, who looked fetching. He looked up from his partner’s face and his view began to expand out. There were other couples on the dance floor with them, and they were all dancing to a slow waltz. It seemed like there was a spotlight shining light down onto the dance floor. The crowd of dancers grew to dozens and then hundreds. He glanced down and noticed a low mist swirling around his feet, and it felt cold on his ankles. He took a deep breath, and his nose was filled with smells of earth and decay. The dancers began to resolve into individuals. They were all beautifully dressed in a baroque fashion, the women’s dresses beaded and brocaded, the mens’ shirts with ruffled collars. He and Lt. Worth turned on the dance floor, spinning in time with the music and the other dancers. He began to study the faces of the other dancers as they turned to face him, but there was something wrong. Their faces were grey and dead-looking, their lips decayed. He looked up and realized that the spotlight was actually a nearly full moon. He looked down. The dance floor had turned to dirt beneath his feet. They were dancing in a graveyard. The flesh of the other dancers’ faces began to fade until it was almost transparent, and then it disappeared altogether and he was watching skeletons spinning in a mockery of dance. He looked down at his partner, and Lt. Worth gazed up at him. Then she smiled and he saw her teeth...just before they bit into his neck....

Frank jerked awake in a cold sweat. It was still early, and no one else had come into the office yet. He wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve, and walked around the room a couple times to settle himself before sitting down at the desk to jot down what he remembered of the dream. A lot of people in fancy dress, and him with Lt. Worth, all dancing in a graveyard at night. He’d invited Lt. Worth to accompany him to Justin and Karen’s wedding tomorrow night. And it was a big enough party that it had been moved to Cobo Hall, which just happened to be on the river. He called Leigh; he needed her to do some quick research for him. He needed to know if there had ever been any graveyards where Cobo now was. Reg was already up too, as usual. He was working out some programs that would notify his security team if anything weird happened to the interior security systems at Cobo. Cobo would have its own security teams in place like usual whenever the place was in use. But he’d seen some of the effects of the thing the others had called Haywire. If Cobo’s security network went down, he wanted to know about it so that he could warn the others.

Karen called the contact number that she had for the Tribe, which happened to connect her with the tribal police. Wanda answered, and told Karen that there had already been plans to do a blessing, and that everyone would be there. Karen was delighted that they would all go out of their way for her like that. Wanda told Karen that she was as much a daughter of the Tribe as she was, even though Karen wasn’t born to it. Besides, they’d heard that the Irish throw a hell of a party! Karen let Leigh know that everything was set for a Tribal blessing. Leigh told her that Fr. Andrew had also agreed that a blessing was in order. Leigh called Frank back several hours later. There had been several different graveyards in that location over the last few hundred years. Apparently the Native tribes, primarily the Ottawa, had had burial grounds there, and the first French settlers as well. And there was mention in military records that a cemetery had been located there just outside the walls of one of the early forts for the settlement. All of them were long gone before Cobo was built, though that didn’t necessarily mean much.

Since there hadn’t really been time to arrange a bachelor party (nor a bridal shower--though Marie warned Karen that there WOULD be one when she had time to arrange it), Tony, being the friend that he was, arranged for a Strip-o-Gram for Justin, to be delivered at the shop. Jerry claimed that he had to hold Justin down for it, when he saw Tony later at the wedding rehearsal. But he and the other guys at the shop certainly appreciated it even if Justin didn’t, and he bought Tony the first beer at the rehearsal dinner at Sweet Georgia Brown. The rehearsal went pretty smoothly, although it was obvious that Uncle/Fr. Jerzy was a little freaked out about the change of venue and the projected size of the crowd. And there were no fist fights at the dinner, even though there was plenty of alcohol being drunk by a crowd of Irish and Poles. In fact, a number of the people at the party besides Justin (who had a room at the Marriott since Karen told him he couldn’t see her again until the wedding, though she’d have never admitted to being superstitious), were staying downtown that night because they couldn’t manage the drive home. Peter had already been lining up downtown hotel rooms, and cabs and limos, for reception guests who shouldn’t be on the road; so it wasn’t any trouble to line up a few more to cover the rehearsal dinner as well. But at one point, Justin’s phone rang. He opened it to find a text message: “It’s not too late.”

The morning of the wedding, Karen was as nervous as a cat in a rocking chair factory. She just knew something was going to go wrong, because she just wasn’t lucky enough to have everything to do with her wedding go right. The wedding was at 2pm, so by 11am she was holed up in the room that Peter (oops, sorry, today he was Pierre!) had designated for the bride and bridesmaids. The make-up artist and hair dresser were there waiting for her when she came in, and they started with her and moved on to Marie and the other bridesmaids as they came in. Karen wondered if Justin was being fussed over the same way. She wasn’t sure she liked all the attention, but it made her mom and Marie and ‘Pierre’ happy that she was at least tolerating it. Next she had to get into the dress and veil and gloves, with the seamstress standing by in case of loose hooks or snagged threads. As soon as they were all dressed and touch-ups to hair and make-up were done, the photographer came in and took a series of pictures with Karen and everyone else in the room. Several different times. In about a hundred different poses. In fact, at one point, Karen was beginning to think that passers-by were being dragged in from the hallway to pose with her!

Finally, Karen could hear the music begin playing over the speaker in the room. They’d gone over how everything would happen, in what order, and with what music as background, during the rehearsal. Guests were being seated during this music. Finally, her mom gave her a rib-crushing hug and left to be seated in the area that had been designated as the ‘Church.’ She hadn’t seen it, but Frank told Leigh and Angie when the Tribal shaman and Fr. Andrew had finished blessing the space. He wouldn’t tell any of them why, but he’d spoken to all the Envoys except Justin and Karen that morning as they arrived at Cobo. He’d made sure that they had tiny ear buds and mikes, undetectable to anyone who wasn’t looking for them, to keep the team in touch in case something did happen. He’d wanted someone to be in charge of keeping the ‘mundanes’ out of the way if they had to capture the zombi during the wedding, and Angie had volunteered. Aiden already made sure that his most well-supplied med kit was stashed in the coat room for quick access, and they all knew that Justin had made sure all the other zombi-catching and -killing supplies were in the truck too. He’d have done it even if Karen hadn’t repeatedly asked him to, too. And until Karen had asked Leigh to stand up in the wedding party, Leigh had been planning on being part of the ‘security team’ too. So Frank tried to keep them all informed.

Pierre came in and hustled the bridesmaids out. Each would walk up the aisle and meet her groomsman near the front, then split, to sit--bridesmaids on the ‘bride’s side’, groomsmen on the ‘groom’s side.’ Next up was Marie. She met Jerry at the altar and they waited there, beside Justin, for Karen to come in. When Pierre came to get her, Karen started chanting in her head the ‘mantra’ she’d chosen--“It’s just like class.” She used to be afraid of speaking in front of groups. But years of practice, first teaching occasional study groups as a TA, then full classes as a GA, and finally teaching all her own classes as a professor, had made it not so bad as it had once seemed. Surely this wouldn’t be much different.... She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and walked through the archway Pierre had set up at the far end of the room. When she got through and saw the mass of people--her families and friends and Justin’s family and friends, Fr. Andrew, the wedding party and Uncle/Fr. Jerzy--she froze for just a split second. Pierre saw her hesitate and he hissed at her to keep going. Hearing his voice broke the sudden spell of fear that had arrested her footsteps, and she continued to chant “It’s just like class” the rest of the way up the aisle.

When she got to the ‘altar’, she was wearing a grin that covered her face. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the others had told her she’d been glowing just like she’d seen Aiden’s hands glow when he Healed someone. That was what she felt like. It was only many years of practice at following the order of Mass that kept her from completely losing track of what was going on. She barely noticed that Fr. Jerzy got rattled and repeated one section twice. All she could feel was the warmth of Justin’s arm against hers as they went through the prayers, the cycles of standing, sitting and kneeling, carried along by the voices and movements of their families and friends. Then, she felt the strength of Justin’s hands as they gripped hers, and saw the fierce love in her heart reflected in his eyes as they said their vows. As Fr. Jerzy prepared for Communion, he almost fumbled the chalice, and Karen had to swallow down her heart after he recovered and set it safely back on the altar. She’d felt Justin tense too, and she wondered if he’d have dived to catch it like a baseball if it had actually gone flying. The humor helped calm her nervousness as they took Communion, then stood to help. After this, they exchanged rings. When Justin said “With this WING, I thee wed,” Karen faithfully repeated it in spite of the mistake. Even the most masterful of the Persian rug weavers would weave a tiny mistake into their rugs, lest they become prideful of their work, because only God can create true perfection. She didn’t notice the tears streaming down her face as she slid the ring onto Justin’s finger. And when he raised the short veil that covered her face and kissed her, Cobo Hall and all the 1200 or more people filling the place, except for her and Justin, disappeared.

Karen felt like she didn’t even need to move her feet to get down the aisle after Uncle/Fr. Jerzy said the Benediction and the Wedding March began. With the multitude of camera flashes going off, she couldn’t tell that there were ‘press’ in the room. But Marie was annoyed. She wondered why they were there, and asked Pierre to get rid of the ones that weren’t family or other invited guests, and to warn them all, even her family, that she’d better not see this wedding splashed all over the morning’s paper. But they couldn’t have resisted the draw. It wasn’t often that people rented Cobo Hall for a wedding that included almost 1200 guests! This was news, at least for the social section of the paper, and they needed to know who the couple was that could throw an event like this.

Tony didn’t know what hit him at first. One minute he was sleeping peacefully, the next he was on the floor and rolling to get his legs under him. He hadn’t been woken up like that since he left the Army! But this time the waker was Angie. She’d stayed with Aiden until a nurse finally told her that she needed to leave and let Aiden rest. Dialysis is an exhausting process even when a person is used to having it done; but that, on top of having been worn out from the night’s work, left Aiden too tired to even notice if anyone was in the room with him. At least Angie had gotten a little sleep before the staff booted her out at shift change. It was still fairly early Tuesday morning, May 3, and Angie needed to do something to work off excess energy. So she was going to clean up the mess in Karen’s bedroom. But she needed an extra set of hands and no one else was around. And besides, Tony still had a key to Karen’s place, since he’d been “recuperating” there, and that meant that Angie wouldn’t have to break in. The first thing they tackled was getting rid of the rest of Karen’s mattresses and bedding. Then they cleaned up the vomit and blood and kitty bits. When Angie was satisfied that the place was clean and that Karen wouldn’t find any leftover reminders of what had happened, the two went out shopping, and bought new mattresses and bedding. When Angie decided that they were done, the condo smelling faintly of various cleaners, she and Tony went out for breakfast, then she dropped him off at Grace Hospital to visit Fr. Andrew, before going back to Receiving herself to visit Aiden.

When Leigh woke up, she realized that concern about the way the fight had been handled the night before had been nagging at her brain all night. She had spoken with Frank and Angie briefly by phone before going to bed, but she wanted to consult with Fr. Andrew about the ethics of the things they had to do in this 'fight'. On her way to the hospital, she stopped to pick up a fruit basket for him, something a little more useful than a plant or flowers anyway. She described to him what had happened the night before, and the way that Tony and Justin had appeared to shoot the defenseless and unaware dancers with little regard for their deaths. She was concerned not just about Justin’s and Tony’s behavior lowering them to the level of the creatures they were all sworn to fight, but also about the safety of the souls of the murdered dancers. She knew first-hand that a soul under the influence of the Unknown at the time of death was more likely to come back as something nasty. And she was relieved that her concern was shared by the priest. It didn’t matter to her how the point was gotten across, as long as someone got Tony and Justin to understand that they should entertain less lethal options first when dealing with human ‘bad guys.’ Leigh left, having a few other calls she wanted to make that morning.

A short time later, Tony went into Fr. Andrew’s room and found him poking distastefully at a tray of food that must have been his breakfast. “Why aren’t you eating that,” Tony asked, adding that he needed to build up his strength. “Smell it,” Fr. Andrew responded. Tony leaned over the small table and wrinkled his nose in disgust. Now he knew why. Tony started talking about what had happened the night before, not knowing that Leigh had already told Fr. Andrew about it. Fr. Andrew asked Tony why he hadn’t looked for some less lethal way of dealing with the non-combatants, and Tony tried to explain about it being the heat of battle. The two discussed why there were better options, then Fr. Andrew asked if Tony had anything else to confess. Tony told him that he hadn’t had any time to sin lately, even though he had a gorgeous nurse looking after him (somehow, every time he had the opportunity to become amorous, he fell asleep), and Fr. Andrew told him that he shouldn’t allow the fight to prevent him from living his life. Then he told Tony that as his penance he should spend a little time considering better ways to subdue regular humans who were caught up on the wrong side of the fight, for the sake of their souls and Tony’s. Before leaving, Tony asked if Fr. Andrew wanted him to smuggle in something better to eat and Fr. Andrew declined the offer. Somehow, chili dogs just didn’t sound appealing right now....

Frank’s first priority that morning, after checking his desk and computer for anything that might be more pressing, was accounting for all of the equipment he’d handed out the night before. Some of the stuff could be chalked up to ‘collateral damage’ and written off. He’d already managed to get his little team of crackpots their own Kevlar vests and a set of voice-activated mikes to keep the team in touch on jobs like last night’s, not to mention the explosives that Angie didn’t think he’d noticed missing after ‘cleaning up’ the butcher shop. But he couldn’t write off the flame-thrower without an explosion to explain its loss. And he sure as hell didn’t want the assault shotguns floating around loose. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust that Justin and Tony knew how to use them. But if they fell into the wrong hands.... He really didn’t want to have to explain how the guns he’d checked out ended up getting used in some drug- or gang-related shooting. He called Tony first. That guy liked the flame-thrower just a little too much. He was pretty sure that Tony was hoping he wouldn’t notice it was missing, and the disappointment in Tony’s voice when he heard Frank’s told Frank he’d guessed right. It took a couple minutes of cajoling before Tony would even admit he still had the stuff, and a few more to talk him into giving it up peacefully. They’d meet at the safe house to transfer the equipment, then go have lunch at the Willy-I-O.

Frank called Justin next. Justin had no problem with returning the shotgun he still had. Things had just been a little hectic when he’d been stripping off his equipment and the gun got chucked in the truck with everything else when they had to rush Aiden to the hospital. He knew that Karen had plans for after giving her exam, so he’d meet Frank and Tony at lunchtime too. Karen was just getting ready to leave for campus. She’d gotten up when her alarm went off (she felt better than she had when she’d collapsed in the bed at 2am, but she could’ve used more sleep), and found Justin already up. His body clock had woken him at the usual time, and she found him typing on his computer, probably catching up on paperwork for the shop, she figured. Right away, Karen told Justin that Diva, or rather, Diva’s spirit had visited her during the night. She’d been half-awake, about to turn over, when she noticed a weight on her chest, and purring, in the same place that Diva usually curled up at night. When she opened her eyes, Diva was lying there and licked the tip of Karen’s nose, but Karen could tell that the kitten wasn’t actually solid. It was as if the kitten’s spirit had come back to reassure Karen that she was OK. Karen fell back to sleep to the sound and feel of purring, and when she woke again the cat was gone.

The exam was scheduled for 10am to noon, and since it was her Intro. class, there’d be a few students who needed the whole time to finish. She’d be able to use the time to catch up on email, and to send an email to Frank, reminding him to keep his ears open for anything that might tell them where the Greater Zombi was. She also wanted to explain the method they’d need to use to destroy the thing and some ideas she’d had for how to capture it. Someone other than her and Leigh probably ought to know what needed to be done. After that, she needed to get her Jeep and go see Fr. Andrew (since it was about time she made her confession, plus she wanted to see how he was doing), then go see CJ (since it was about time that she told CJ everything that had been going on.) Beyond all that, all she was hoping for was dinner with Justin and a little time to do everything she needed to before the wedding and the dig. “Shit! That’s right!” Karen thought to herself. “We don’t have rings yet! Or gifts for the wedding party!” She’d have to mention that to Justin. She didn’t know how he felt about wearing a ring. She was a little afraid to think of him getting a finger or hand ripped off if the ring got caught in some moving part of a running engine while he worked; so it was fine with her if he’d rather not wear one at all.

Justin had to drive Karen to campus and on the way they discussed the wedding plans, gifts (he actually had been thinking about that and suggested TomToms, which Karen thought was a brilliant idea), rings (he wanted one, even though he’d have to take it off at work or else wear it on a chain around his neck or something) and the honeymoon. Karen felt kind of bad that she was being so unromantic about it, but with the dig going, she was hesitant about disappearing for a couple weeks for a proper honeymoon. Justin understood how much the dig meant to her and agreed that they could schedule a trip someplace nice when it would be easier to tear her away from her work. Instead, they’d just spend the weekend at the nicest hotel in Detroit--the Marriott Ren Cen--before she went back up to the UP. The fact that she couldn’t argue with everyone that told her she ought to take a vacation because they were right, didn’t make it any easier for her to walk away from the work that she loved. At least she agreed to let him fit her for a better holster, so she could keep her gun close at all times when she was up there alone. Well, not exactly alone, she reminded him, but she knew what he meant.

Justin was going to pick her up after the exam to take her back to the condo to get her Jeep, but in the meantime, he’d leave her to her students and disappear for a while. He didn’t tell her that he was going to use the time to clean up the mess at the condo. He wanted to surprise her. He could tell that she’d been a little disoriented when she woke up in a strange place that morning, and knew that she’d be more comfortable being back in her own place, as long as there were no reminders of what had happened to Diva. It didn’t matter that the critter was OK now and “in a better place,” neither of them needed to be reminded of what they’d seen there. Justin was shocked when he went in and found the place sparkling clean already. He found a note from Angie, with receipts for the mattresses and bedding, that said she only left the receipts in case there was anything wrong with what she and Tony had picked out and she didn’t expect Justin or Karen to repay her (she’d never be able to spend all that reward money anyway!) Angie had done a nice job picking out the bedding, it matched Karen’s decor, and the mattresses felt pretty darned comfortable. He’d have to get something nice for her and Tony, maybe cases of their favorite beverages or something, to thank them for all their trouble.

Leigh called Angie first. She had nothing really planned for the day and wondered if Angie would like to help her clean Karen’s condo. Angie told Leigh that she and Tony had already done it but thanked her for thinking to ask. Next, Leigh called Tony, and told him that she needed to talk to him about some of the things that had happened the night before. Tony told her that he was meeting Frank at the Bat Cave for lunch and that she’d be welcome to join him. He didn’t bother mentioning that they been planning to go to a strip club for lunch. Maybe he’d have to rethink that if she’d be coming along.... Leigh agreed to meet them and called Justin next. Justin was killing time puttering around the condo, burning some incense he’d found to cover the smell of the cleaners, when his phone rang. It was Frank, and he wanted the assault shotgun back. Justin agreed to meet him and Tony for lunch after he’d brought Karen home. He’d barely hung up when Leigh called saying that she needed to talk to him about the previous night’s events. Justin told her that he was meeting Frank and Tony for lunch, and Leigh told him that she was too and they could talk then. By then it was time for him to pick up Karen.

Justin didn’t say anything about the condo being cleaned as he drove Karen home. He wanted to let Angie surprise her the way she’d surprised him. It took a little persuading to get Karen to agree to go up to the condo, but Justin assured her that he’d stay with her the entire time. Karen’s jaw just about hit the floor when she walked in. Even before she got as far as the bedroom she could tell that the place had been cleaned. There was the smell, for one thing, because she was quite sure she hadn’t burnt any sage before leaving yesterday evening. But the place just felt...better than when she’d left it. Justin told her that Tony and Angie had done it and showed her everything they’d done. Karen’s heart swelled up with pleasure that her friends cared for her enough to go to all that trouble, and she was gushing thanks to Angie when Angie called her a few minutes later. She’d wanted to let Karen know that she and Tony had cleaned the place so she wouldn’t be afraid to go there. Then Angie suggested that the whole team get together for dinner (well, except Aiden since he was still on dialysis.) Karen thought that was a great idea and said she’d spread the word. She asked Justin to let the others know when he saw them at lunch, then Justin went off to have lunch with Leigh and the guys and Karen went to see Fr. Andrew.

Leigh got to the Bat Cave a little early, and found Tony wrestling a huge box through the back door. He’d decided that if Detroit was going to be his new base of operations, at least for now, the Bat Cave would make as good a place as any for him to stay when he wasn’t traveling for work. But Aiden had been outfitting the place long before the team came into their big reward money, and it had been furnished in “early frat house” style. The cots were OK in a pinch but he wanted a real mattress, so he’d gotten a bed for himself when he and Angie were looking for Karen’s. And he wasn’t about to stare at four blank walls when there was a great wide world of cable TV out there to be explored. So he’d gone out after talking to Fr. Andrew and first found himself a nondescript car to use here in Detroit, and then gone TV shopping. The end result was bringing home the finest television his money could buy. Leigh went with him to return the truck Tony’d rented to get the TV home, and on the way she broached the subject of the previous night’s events, primarily the unnecessarily high amount of collateral damage--meaning the number of dead.

Leigh explained to Tony that she’d talked to Fr. Andrew about her concerns and that he’d agreed that it would be better to find other ways of dealing with the normal humans the team might encounter during a fight. From a strictly pragmatic point of view, she told him, killing these people might not be the best idea. The souls of people in touch with the Unknown when they died were more likely to come back as something nasty and Unknown themselves, ghosts or even worse things. This meant the team would have to deal with them twice. Wouldn’t it be easier, she suggested, to not kill them the first time, allow them a chance to redeem their souls, and save the team the trouble of having to kill them again? Tony thought about it for a second and told Leigh that she explained things much better than Fr. Andrew had, and that her logic made a lot more sense. He assured her he’d be putting some thought into non-lethal options for dealing with any bad guys who weren’t outright evil.

When they got back to the Bat Cave, Frank and Justin were already there. Tony reluctantly handed over the flame-thrower and assault shotgun, and Frank told him that he could keep the explosives. Tony bristled immediately and told Frank that he’d brought those himself. Frank reminded Tony that there were some “left-overs” from wiring the butcher shop before the werewolf fight that he’d ‘allowed’ Angie to ‘acquire’ as they cleaned up. He was willing to trust that they were in responsible hands, but Tony shouldn’t press his luck. Tony agreed, and quit grumbling about having to give up the borrowed ‘toys.’ The four went to lunch, then Tony went back to setting up his TV, Justin went to start brain-storming with Reg about beefing up security at Karen’s place, Frank went back to work and Leigh went out to start looking for someplace more permanent to live, since she’d also realized that she’d be spending enough time in Detroit to make having a place worth it. She hadn't failed to notice that Justin had managed to avoid taking with her about the warehouse assault. She didn't want to bring it up in front of the other guys, so she let the matter drop until later.

Karen saw Fr. Andrew and made her confession. As she’d suspected, he wasn’t pleased about the choice she’d made, but he could tell that she was sincere in her promise that she wouldn’t be sinning again, so he absolved her of the sin. However, he did remind her about the Church’s stand on contraception, even when the sex is within wedlock. When she’d gotten that ‘chore’ over with, Karen began to tell Fr. Andrew about what had happened the night before, until he stopped her because he’d already heard that story twice. She chatted with him a little more about what had happened, then Karen left, somehow feeling both better and worse at the same time. Next, she went over and filled CJ in about killing the zombi master and there being a Greater Zombi running loose (or maybe swimming loose), and about how the wedding plans were going, and about the new guy that had joined the team. At least this new Envoy, Karen told her, had already been aware of the Unknown, and he was relieved to find others who understood that he wasn’t nuts. It wasn’t like having to start from scratch, like they had to with her and Angie because they’d never encountered that kind of stuff until they got too close to the truth by being too close to an Envoy.

Around 5:30pm, the team members who weren’t at work or in the hospital began to gather at a local restaurant. Reg couldn’t make it because he had a few things to take care of at his company’s offices, Gary was home spending time with his family, and Aiden, Fr. Andrew and CJ were still in various hospitals around town. Frank, Justin and Karen, Tony, and Leigh were all chatting and waiting for Angie to arrive before they ordered their food, when Angie came in with Aiden. He was leaning heavily on Angie’s arm and still looked pale and drawn from the poison. He’d been kicked out of the hospital, Aiden told them, and his glance at Angie as he said this told the others everything they’d needed to know. Angie told them that the staff said that if he was healthy enough for “that”, then they could use the bed for someone who was in worse shape. Karen turned pink and wondered how the two could be so bold as to do something like that in such a public place, where someone could walk in at any time (and obviously did.) Tony, of course, thought this was the best possible thing Aiden could have been doing to recuperate. That was no surprise; but when he told them that Fr. Andrew had told him that he needed more lust in his life, the others couldn’t control their laughter. They all knew that Fr. Andrew would have said no such thing, and teased Tony about his selective hearing and unique way of processing and remembering what other people said.

They all ordered their dinners, and Frank told them that Lt. Worth had elected to not get involved with the things the team dealt with, at least right now. He told them that he’d persuaded her by explaining that she’d never be able to go back to just being a cop again once she knew. But she did agree to continued ‘inter-agency’ cooperation with Frank and his team as long as it didn’t mean doing anything illegal. Then Aiden broke his big news. Gary had fired him. It was Gary’s way of telling Aiden that he wanted him to focus on his schooling. Once Aiden had finished his course work, he could have his job back, if he wasn’t too busy being a doctor. Everyone got excited. It probably felt a little harsh to Aiden when Gary told him he was fired, but they all knew, and even Aiden had to agree, that it was the best thing for him. As much as he loved being a paramedic and helping people, he’d be an even better doctor--and he deserved the break from having to be Envoy, student AND paramedic with only the same 24 hours in every day that the rest of them had. This prompted Frank to volunteer the news that he’d decided to finish working on his psychiatry degree. That way, he told the others, he’d be able to prescribe medication. Karen laughed and told him, with a wink, that that didn’t mean he could give them all Valium to make them behave. He looked at Aiden and laughed, and suggested that the best part was that it only took the signatures of two licensed doctors to commit someone. Aiden started to laugh too, until Karen shouted at them that it wasn’t funny.

Justin could feel her start to shake with fear against his side. The look of abject horror on her face reminded Aiden of what he knew about her background, and he assured her that Frank didn’t mean it that way. He told Frank about Karen’s past, and Karen interjected, in a voice that told them all that she would go to extreme measures to insure it, that she wasn’t going back. Aiden tried to calm her down by telling her that it also meant that the signature of two doctors could get someone out. Karen thought of the trouble they’d had in getting Aiden out of the hospital. She could see from the looks on Aiden’s and Frank’s faces that they hadn’t meant to hurt or scare her. Aiden looked awful, like he’d just been forced to kick a puppy. He knew, but had totally forgotten what Karen had been through. Karen knew that Aiden would never do something like that to her, especially after having to suffer being committed himself just a couple weeks ago; but she didn’t really know Frank well enough to trust the same of him yet. Justin felt Karen begin to relax again, but it still took her a while before she could stop just poking at her food and actually eat some of it.

Leigh quickly changed the subject to take Karen’s mind off her fear. Since almost everyone was together that had been at the warehouse, she wanted to discuss what she felt was the unnecessary killing of the dancers. She hadn’t had a chance to talk directly to Justin about it, but thought maybe it was something the whole group should talk about, anyway. Angie agreed, and said that if Leigh hadn’t brought it up, she would have. Angie told them that, as a cop, she had been trained not to use more force than necessary against someone. Tony objected that she ought to know that they were taught differently in the military, and Angie replied that they weren’t in the military anymore. Leigh told her that her opinions on the matter were very similar to what Fr. Andrew had said when she’d discussed the matter with him, and everyone had to laugh when Angie muttered that she never expected to agree with him about anything.

Justin and Tony asked what they were supposed to do when all the best ‘less-than-lethal’ weapons--like pepper spray, tasers, rubber bullets or CS gas--were either illegal or restricted to police use only. Frank suggested that he might be able to get the team prior authorization to use that kind of stuff if they knew ahead of time that they were going into a fight, like they did with last night’s assault on the warehouse. The guys asked again when the team would be getting their bounty hunting licenses, and Frank told them he’d check on the hold-up just to shut them up. He knew from experience that paperwork never moved quickly through government channels. It was only the fact that he’d handed his bosses a pretty hefty prize that even got him the privilege of requesting the licenses in the first place. It didn’t necessarily assure him of a speedy response. The Envoys continued to chat, about ‘work’ and other things, until they all agreed that they had other stuff to do and headed their own ways for the night.

Tony laid there a second with his eyes closed. This didn’t feel like the warehouse roof. Was going up there a dream? He carefully cracked open an eye and felt around with his hands. He wanted to make sure he wouldn’t fall off or into something if he moved, or set off any traps or alarms, before he sat up. Just bein’ careful.... In a few seconds, he was able to figure out that he was lying on a cot at the Bat Cave. Maybe it was just a dream. He started to sit up and felt paper crinkling against his chest. He yanked it off--it was the note that the others had pinned to his shirt. They figured he couldn’t really miss it that way. If they hadn’t been so tense, there might have been jokes about stapling it to his forehead. But, under the circumstances, none of them were in a joking mood. The note was just the basics, in Karen’s handwriting--“you fell off the ladder and knocked yourself out cold; we’ve gone to kill the zombi master at x address; left at 9:45pm; call when you wake up and I’ll answer if I’m not busy or....” Tony checked his watch. It was a few minutes after 10. He hoped they weren’t “or....” already.

The team was just straightening their body armor when Karen felt her phone vibrate against her side. She’d taken a moment to try to sense if there was anything Unknown hanging around, and was still shaking off the wave of...(she couldn’t really attach a name to the feeling she got when she sensed the Unknown; it wasn’t nausea, it wasn’t a particular smell, it was like the wave of heat that rolls over you when you open the door of a car that’s been sitting closed up outside on a hot day, but without the heat)...Unknown that had swept over her. It wasn’t as bad as the blackness that had blinded her for a couple seconds when she went into Justin’s house, but it was pretty damned strong, so she didn’t recognize the vibration as her phone right away. It took her a second to dig it out from under the vest (they aren’t really designed to fit short women), and when she answered, it was Tony. “So you finally woke up, eh?” she asked him. He asked how far it was to the address they’d given him and Karen told him that it was only a few buildings down the river from the warehouse he’d fallen off of. Tony failed to see the humor in the comment and asked if someone was going to come and get him. Karen told him not to tell anyone that she’d told him, but, Angie’s Harley was in the Bat Cave kitchen if he knew how to hotwire a bike; or Leigh’s rental car was parked out back and the keys were on the kitchen counter. Tony opted for the car, with its handy trunk to stash his bag in. He told Karen he’d be there as soon as he could be, maybe 15 minutes, then collected his bag of goodies and his guns and headed out to the car and on his way to the riverfront.

As he expected, Frank found out when he got to the Federal Building that the mountain was really a molehill. All they really needed was his signature on some paperwork he’d submitted earlier in the day. Too bad that good performance was punished with more paperwork rather than rewarded with less. When he’d taken care of the details, he checked his cell. Sure enough, there were a couple of messages. The first, from Karen, said that they’d ‘gotten what they needed’ and were heading for the Bat Cave. The second, again from Karen, was left just a few minutes ago. They were going to take out the zombi master at x address, and he should join them if he could. Frank plugged the address into a map program on his PDA--just a few doors down from the warehouse they’d just been at, so it wouldn’t take him long to get there. That was good; since he was at the office anyway, he could requisition a few things before he headed over there....

When he submitted the req. form, the wise guy in charge of the equipment lockers asked if there was going to be another big anti-terrorist raid. The look on Frank’s face told the guy that he wasn’t getting any information and that he should’ve known not to bother asking anyway. The guy shrugged. He couldn’t help but ask, since the first item on the list was the flame-thrower. The guy told Frank that he was lucky the thing hadn’t been returned to storage yet. On the other hand, he was unlucky it hadn’t been returned to storage yet--because that meant the tank hadn’t been refilled either, so he couldn’t guarantee how long it would last. Frank told him he’d take it anyway, along with anything else he could get. That amounted to a couple of tasers (one with only one shot left), a couple flash-bangs, a few tear gas grenades, and a few assault shotguns. He got himself a handful of knock-back rounds for the shotgun, too. The others had already told him that bullets didn’t seem to do much more than slow zombies down anyway, and these would work better for that. He had the stuff loaded in his trunk (good thing the ones who’d been with him at the warehouse earlier still had their vests on and he’d left the other vests in Justin’s truck; otherwise it all wouldn’t have fit) and headed down along the river to the warehouse district.

The six Envoys had some time to cool their heels now, while they waited for Tony, so they started casing the joint. It was about the same size as the other warehouse, but much newer, probably late 60s or early 70s, and all brick. They checked the roofs of this building and the others within sight for look-outs or snipers and saw no one, so they began to move around the building in two groups, one trio going clockwise, the other counter. When they met back at the truck, they’d discovered that all the windows were blacked over or boarded, so they couldn’t get a look inside. There was a pedestrian door on the front/street-side of the building, two big loading doors on the wharf-side, and a loading door and a pedestrian door on the parking lot side. There were no doors on the fourth/alley side of the building. It was tall enough to be two stories, and appeared to have the usual flat roof, with a ladder to the top on the alley side of the building. Karen was just asking the others if she should scout around ‘out of body’, to see if there were look-outs that they couldn’t see with their eyes, when they saw a car turn onto the street and glide toward them. They held their breath, and there was a collective sigh when they recognized Leigh’s rented Malibu.

Since Karen had already done several Spheres of Protection that afternoon, Tony agreed to go ‘take a look’ at the place. His body slumped back in the driver’s seat of the car as his spirit flew up to check the roofs from above. He didn’t see any look-outs, but noticed that there were two skylights on the warehouse roof that spanned almost the entire length of the building. These were blacked over just like the other windows had been. He could hear, very faintly, what sounded like drums and chanting drifting up from the skylights, and he decided to get closer and look inside. He floated down to a skylight and started to push his face ‘through’ to see inside. As his head and shoulders ‘popped’ through the blackened glass, he was almost run over by a huge bat-like incorporeal creature as it flew past him. The thing had a wing-span of about 15 feet, and Tony sensed something that was more feeling than sound that made him think the thing was using echo-location. He froze, expecting the thing to turn and attack him, but it continued silently gliding along to wherever it was going. When Tony was sure it hadn’t spotted him, he ‘pushed’ himself ‘free’ of the glass and flew back to his body.

The others saw Tony take a deep breath as his spirit re-entered his body, and he started to say that he hadn’t seen anyone guarding the place except.... The briefest look of terror flashed across Tony’s face, then his body slumped back down into the seat. Aiden felt for a pulse, and when he couldn’t find one, he and Reg grabbed Tony’s body and maneuvered it out of the car and onto the pavement. Aiden began doing chest compressions, and when Reg bent toward Tony’s mouth to do the breathing, Aiden directed him to get the breathing bag from the med kit. They worked at this for a minute with no results, and Aiden decided they’d need to ‘shock’ him. He pulled the portable ‘paddles’ from the kit and had Reg help get the bulletproof vest off Tony. Tony didn’t even notice what was being done to his body. In fact, he didn’t even realize that he wasn’t in it. He went from one person to the next, shouting, asking if they’d seen the giant bat, trying to grab their shoulders and shake them. But they were all ignoring him. Didn’t they understand that he was trying to save their lives?! When he got to Karen and she shook her head and waved her hand as if she were brushing away a mosquito, Tony finally began to notice that his hands seemed to go right through her shoulders, and it finally dawned on him that he’d popped back out of his body when the shock of encountering the bat had sunk in.

Frank saw Justin and Karen standing to one side of what he thought might be Leigh’s rental, looking down at the ground, as he pulled up. They didn’t even look up when he parked the car and joined the edge of the circle. Some hotshot ‘bounty hunters’ these guys were. Aiden was just opening Tony’s shirt, and Frank could see the paddles on the ground next to him, when they all saw Tony take another deep breath. Tony sat up and shook his head, and Frank wondered aloud why Tony seemed to spend so much time flat on his back. There was some nervous laughter and a joke about the ‘clumsy explosives expert’ as Aiden checked Tony over. He was fine, but still a little shaken up about his close encounter with the incorporeal bat. He described what he’d seen and heard to the others as they helped him to his feet. And, since he still looked a little ‘off’, both Justin and Aiden took the opportunity to ‘boost’ his energy while they had their hands on him. Then he asked Frank if he’d brought any cool ‘toys’ with him, as he refastened his shirt and vest.

As the others brought Frank up to speed on what they’d gotten from Nathan, done with him, and found when they cased the building, Tony slid away from them and around to the back of the Malibu. He popped the trunk and, checking again to make sure they weren’t watching him, stuck his head in it and began pulling things from his bag. He almost smacked his head on the trunk lid when Angie asked what he was doing. He hadn’t even heard her come up behind him and try to look over (or rather, around) his shoulder. He’d just finished tucking a couple of small blocks of C4 into his vest pockets, so he passed a couple more over his shoulder to the small woman behind him. “They’ve got safety timers,” he told Angie matter-of-factly, “3 second minimum.” Angie and Tony walked back around the car, trying to act nonchalant, and heard the others discussing which door they should enter by. Tony told them that he could make them a door anywhere they wanted one. Frank stopped to stare at him for a second, then suggested that they might be better off having an emergency exit rather than a ‘surprise’ entrance, in case they had to leave in a hurry and were cut off from the doors. Tony asked where he should put it. Frank pulled the IR binoculars from his trunk and scanned the building, but couldn’t discern any particular ‘hot spots’ along any of the walls he could see. They finally decided on the front corner of the building near the alley, more or less opposite the river-side doors they’d decided to go in. That way, if they did get surrounded, the zombi master might think he had them trapped when they tried to gather at that spot.

Tony told the others to stay back, just in case, as he and Angie went over to set the explosives. They could see Tony attaching the charges to the wall, then Angie pointing and talking, then Tony moving a couple of the charges and sticking a couple others he’d brought back into his pockets. (They weren’t trying to bring down the whole building, Angie reminded Tony, just trying to open a man-sized hole. If he used that much C4 and blew support beams, the whole building would follow.) They jogged back over to the cars, and Tony asked if he could have one of the assault shotguns. Frank handed him the one he had and went back to the trunk. When Tony spotted the flame-thrower in the trunk, his eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas. Frank almost cracked a smile as he lifted the thing out of the trunk and held it out toward Tony. Tony grinned and handed the shotgun to Reg as he reached out for his ‘old friend.’ Reg looked at the shotgun with a bit of dismay. He tried to object that he had his taser and Glock, and Tony told him to just hang on to the shotgun for him in case he needed it. Reg slung the gun over his shoulder as Tony settled the tanks on his back and tightened the straps. “Couldn’t get a full one?” he asked Frank, when he realized that the tanks seemed kind of light. Frank told him that they were lucky to have that one since it hadn’t been put back into storage yet. Everyone else double checked their weapons, and Karen asked if maybe she should put up a Mental Shield for them before they started. Justin suggested that she wait, since it only lasted a short time and it would take them a minute to get around to the back of the building and get inside, then find the zombi master. She could always put it up when they actually found the bad guys. Karen felt a nagging sense that they’d run into trouble sooner than they expected, but she dropped the issue and followed Justin and the others along the alley and out to the river.

When they got close to the loading doors, they could see that there was a small pedestrian door built into one of them. So at least they wouldn’t have to get through the big doors to get inside. Frank and Justin went to either side of the smaller door, and the others, Angie at the front, stood out of the way for Frank to go in first. Frank tried the knob and found the door unlocked (Karen’s stomach got a little tighter--the guy was either stupid or he was expecting them), and he nodded at Justin to open it to let him in. Frank had grabbed a small but powerful ‘flashlight’ that he’d called a “hand-held sun” from the trunk, and he readied this in his left hand while he held the shotgun muzzle up against his shoulder, ready for anything. Another nod and Justin pulled the door open and Frank stepped into the doorway and flipped on the light. He didn’t see anything right away, so he took a step inside and swept the room with the light. There were piles of boxes around the room, as if someone were actually using the place for legitimate business. Justin had stepped up behind him, ready to enter next, and Angie and Tony were behind him, waiting their turns. Leigh was behind them, with Karen and Reg next and Aiden, lugging the med kit last.

Frank swept the light back across the room, and that’s when he spotted it--a zombi shambling toward him from behind a pile of boxes. Frank lowered the light to the floor by its strap and dropped the grip of the shotgun into his left hand, racking a load. An unearthly sort of moaning howl rumbled up from the zombi’s chest and past its rotting lips, and even though Karen and Tony couldn’t see the thing, they knew what was making that sound. Karen’s stomach finished curling in on itself, and she had to swallow hard to keep it from climbing up her throat. This sounded like the same kind of thing that ‘nibbled’ Justin’s shoulder and left the humongous bruise on his back, and sent Tony to the hospital with cholera. “Damn it!” she thought to herself as she pushed back the fear. “I knew I should’ve raised the Mental Shield before we went in.” In front of her, she could see Leigh stiffen, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Reg look around frantically before throwing his back against the wall and gripping his gun to himself like a security blanket. Most of the others hadn’t heard or seen these things before, and if she’d had time to care, she would have sympathized with their fear. But they couldn’t afford to have half of the team wetting themselves right now. Karen raised a Mental Shield.

She heard the BOOM of Frank’s shotgun as he sent a knock-back round into the thing’s chest, but couldn’t see that the thing barely paused in its forward motion. It just smiled at Frank as he stepped through the door, going in a few paces and to the right, clearing the way for Justin. Karen concentrated on Leigh’s back, watching her shake off the fear instead of thinking about Justin stepping into the open doorway with a zombi somewhere beyond it. Justin pulled the trigger of his shotgun and sent a large slug into the thing. But he and the others in the doorway saw the slug rip through the creature and its flesh close up behind it. He stepped in and to the right, and as Angie stepped forward, Karen heard Leigh mumble that the thing was a Greater Zombi. Angie shot at the thing with her ‘hand cannon’, but before the echo of the shot had even started bouncing toward Windsor, Karen knew that it would do nothing. She and Leigh exchanged worried looks. They’d both done a great deal of research, and they knew that these things were impervious to all physical damage. Only certain discipline attacks could harm one, and only a special ‘ritual’ involving dressing it in a black suit and burying it in a coffin could destroy one. But, worst of all, not even the most powerful human veau bokor could raise one; it could only have been raised by a creature of the Unknown.

Angie watched her bullet enter the creature’s forehead cleanly through the center; but before the bullet had even cleared the back of its head, the hole in the front was closing. Angie’s eyes got wide as she stepped in and to the left beside Justin. Tony stepped into the doorway and raised the nozzle of the flame-thrower toward the thing. “Let’s light ‘em up,” he said, and he pulled the trigger. There was a WHOOSH as flaming liquid squirted toward the zombi, and it lit up the room as its clothing and skin caught fire. Karen’s feet felt like lead as she moved up behind Tony. “Clear the doorway,” she was shouting. She didn’t really need to shout, since they were all still very near one another and were all wearing voice-activated mikes that Frank had given them to stay in contact. But the sound of her heart pounding in her ears made her feel like she was trying to talk under water, and the adrenaline it was pumping made her yell. “We can’t kill it, but I can get it out of the way if I can get behind it.” The thing continued forward, looking from person to person like it was picking its target. It turned to its left, picking the one target that was separated from the others, Frank. It swung one burning arm at him as it got just within reach, and sent Frank flying to the floor, where he laid still.

Tony had backed out of the doorway as Karen requested, and Angie and Justin backed up to the door, their eyes on the creature and Frank’s motionless form. Karen explained that she could force it out and into the river with a Sphere if she could get behind it. Angie volunteered to watch her back, and Justin went out to warn the others out of the way. Karen and Angie moved in quickly, before the zombi could block their way. Luckily their movement kept its attention away from Frank. As soon as Karen had the thing directly between herself and the door, she raised the Sphere. In an instant, the zombi began to move away from her and toward the doorway, flames still consuming its clothing and flesh. It was moving faster now, taking no time for pondering its options, just doing its best to escape the power of the Sphere. Karen moved toward it, urging it toward the edge of the wharf, with Angie watching behind them, in case there were more of the things, or maybe something even worse. PLOOSH! The thing stepped off the edge and tumbled into the murky water, which closed over it and put out the flames. Justin scanned left and right, and spotted a large coil of rope. He asked Reg to give him a hand, and the two dropped the bundle directly into the center of the ring of ripples, hoping that that might hold it down for a while.

Karen managed not to drop to her knees when the Sphere wore off, but it took all the determination she had left. She sagged like she was nothing but an empty set of clothing with no mannequin inside to hold it up, and leaned against the wall, looking wearily at the others as Aiden and Angie carried Frank out onto the wharf. She’d just used up all she had. As much as she wanted to help now, she would only be a hindrance; if she tried to help rescue Lt. Worth, she might end up needing the rescuing, and none of them could afford having to waste their attention on her. She wasn’t sure she’d even spoken loud enough for anyone to hear her when she said, “I can’t go back in there.” Reg was just coming back out with the ‘sun’ that Frank had set down. He wasn’t looking too sure of himself as he fumbled for the ‘off’ switch, but there was a certain determination on his face that she was sure had been on her own more than once. Nothing like facing down a zombi to teach you how much spine you really have. Her mind drifted back to the first zombies they’d faced, her and Justin and Kat and Harvey. Harvey was gone now, trying to protect the one thing in his life that he still had left. He’d almost lost Katie to the Unknown just like he’d lost his wife and others close to him. CJ was lucky she’d made it out alive--lucky that they’d been able to get Vanya’s and Anyanka’s help....

The sound of Aiden’s voice close to her drew her attention back to the group of Envoys there on the wharf. Aiden was just saying that she could stay there and keep an eye on Frank. He was a little singed, and would have a nasty bruise and a headache when he came to, but he’d be alright. Then Aiden said that he’d stay out there with them too. Trying to lug the med kit in would only slow the others down anyway, and they could just holler if they needed him. Karen wondered if he was just trying to make her feel better about being so utterly worthless in this fight. Angie came over and gave Aiden a kiss before turning back toward the warehouse door, readying her gun. Karen shuffled toward Justin, and reached up to pull his face down to hers. She was afraid that if she tried to go up on her tiptoes, she might fall over. Justin pulled her close with his left arm and kissed her. “Be careful in there,” she whispered to him. When he disappeared through the doorway, she lowered herself carefully to the ground and lifted Frank’s head onto her leg to cushion it a little while Aiden cleaned his burns. Tony slung the ‘barrel’ of the flame-thrower over his shoulder and took his shotgun from Reg with a wink and a grin.

The remaining five Envoys moved through the open space toward the front of the building. Now that they had the time to look, without a zombi demanding their full attention, they could see that there was a small room blocked off in the far right corner from where they’d come in. Looking through the empty hole in the door where a window had once been, they could see that it had probably been an office. Now that it was quiet, the only other sound the gentle lapping of river water against the wharf pilings, they could hear chanting from the far left corner of the building. The ceiling was low enough that they knew there must be a second floor, so they began to look for the stairs up. They found them in that far left corner, and the sound of the chanting got louder as they neared the stairs.

They started cautiously up, Justin, Tony and Angie in the lead, and Leigh and Reg bringing up the rear. They spread out a little when they got to the top. The large open room that made up most of the second floor was empty except for a ring of burning torches in the center of the room which circled and lit a veve exactly like the one that had been on the roof of the other warehouse. At the far end of the room were two doors, the windows in them blacked out like all the others in the building had been. From the one to the left, they could hear the sound of drums and chanting. The five crept along the wall, carefully avoiding the large open space with its veve and circle of torches. When they got to the far end, Justin and Angie quickly checked behind the right hand door. It opened into a small room crammed with stuff, mostly old office furniture and equipment. Then they went to the left hand door, Justin and Angie bracketing it and the other three standing to one side. Angie pulled open the door, and Justin stepped in first, shotgun out in front of him. Scanning the room, he saw a scantily-clad man dancing around a veve that had been painted on the floor. The man held burning embers in his outstretched hands and spit fire from his mouth, obviously being ridden by a loa. Standing near the center of the veve was a figure in red and black robes holding up a ceremonial knife with both hands at about head-height. On the floor in front of him, directly under the knife and in the very center of the veve, was Lt. Worth, bound and gagged and stripped to her underwear. He could tell that she was conscious by the way she struggled. Around these two men and the lieutenant, outside the veve, danced 18 other men, what was left of the hounfour of 24 men that Nathan had described.

Justin stepped to one side of the door to let Angie in as he aimed his gun at the figure with the knife. He pulled the trigger and the slug narrowly missed two of the dancers in the outer ring. Then, like a scene out of The Matrix, the slug seemed to slow down as it came within a fraction of an inch of D’Arcy’s chest, and Justin watched as it swerved around him and slammed into one of the dancers passing behind him. The poor guy dropped like a stone, never knowing what hit him, and Justin let loose with a string of swear words that would’ve made his drill sergeant proud. Angie moved in and took aim at a dancer directly in front of her. This guy fell too, as soon as the bullet hit him. Tony moved in, scoping out the situation and Leigh moved in beside him. She remembered the conversation she and Karen had had back at the Bat Cave, about taking out the ceremonial ‘tools’ to stop the ritual if they couldn’t take out the priest. She dodged around the dancers and went straight for D’Arcy. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to get the knife out of his hands, but she hoped the Aikido she’d been practicing was good for something. As she swung her arm under D’Arcy’s arms and tried to sweep them and the knife back over his head, Tony aimed the shotgun at a cluster of dancers. The spray of buckshot took down four of them.

Reg came in last. He had the ‘sun’ in one hand and his Glock in the other. But when he saw the guy spitting fire, he had an idea and he holstered the gun. When he’d seen Tony pulling on the flame-thrower outside, he’d grabbed the small fire extinguisher from the back seat of Justin’s pick-up, just in case Tony started something on fire that they really didn’t want burned. Now he pulled that off his belt, where he’d slung it, and got close to the dancing man and pulled the pin and squeezed the trigger. Foam sprayed out, covering the upper half of the man’s body and dousing the flames. The man stopped his dancing and looked straight at Reg. Reg wasn’t sure if he was hearing with his ears or if the sound went directly into his brain, but he ‘heard’ the man say “So you want to play? Let’s play.” Then he felt something that he’d never felt before and hoped never to feel again. It was as if some slimy...thing...tried to slide into him. He’d never been raped, but now he had some idea of just how sick and dirty it could make a person feel. The man who had been ridden by this thing a second ago dropped to the floor as it left him for Reg. But as quickly as Reg felt the thing press against him, it slid off again and disappeared. Reg wasn’t sure exactly what had happened or how he’d kept the thing from taking over his body, and he shuddered violently. He saw Leigh struggling with the guy in the red and black outfit, and an almost naked, bound woman struggling on the floor, who he assumed was the Lt. Worth that they were supposed to be rescuing. He moved in to grab her and get her out of harm’s way.

Outside, Karen was watching for any sign that the zombi was trying to get out of the river. She had to smirk as she wondered if a Greater Zombi could even survive being dunked in the Detroit River. Not much else could. OK, she was being a little harsh. The river really wasn’t all that bad anymore. People had finally wised up and started trying to clean it up a bit, and companies weren’t dumping quite as much ‘effluent’ into it as they had before the Clean Water Act. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been down along the riverfront. Well...not counting coming to check out the warehouse the first couple times. It wasn’t like she’d actually even noticed the river those times. Too much other stuff going on, and the first time it was the middle of the night anyway. So, why did bad guys have to do this kind of stuff in the dark anyway? Not that she minded the dark. She’d always felt comfortable in the dark, like she was wrapped in a warm blanket.... Karen was a little startled to feel Frank’s head stir in her lap. Aiden leaned in to help Frank sit up, and they could all hear a shotgun blast followed by a string of curses in Justin’s voice and the blast of Angie’s hand cannon. Frank stood and waved off Aiden’s help, then headed for his car. Tony had said there were skylights on the roof, Nathan had told them that the ceremonies were performed on the second floor, and he’d seen a ladder on the side of the building as they cut through the alley to the wharf. All he needed was the climbing gear he kept in his trunk. They’d never expect him to come in that way.

Leigh’s unexpected attack had loosened D’Arcy’s grip, and the knife clattered to the floor. But he would make this woman pay for the disruption. Leigh smelled something odd, but before it even fully registered in her brain, a wave of nausea crashed over her and she dropped to the floor retching. As she crawled away from the veve, her last two meals being violently expelled from her stomach, she still had the presence of mind to grab the knife when she set her hand down on it. Reg was just straightening up and lifting Lt. Worth from the floor as he got a whiff of the same smell. Luckily, he was already leaning away from the cloud that was beginning to envelop D’Arcy, and the gag covering the lower half of her face kept Worth from taking too deep a breath of whatever that stuff was. Reg felt the bile rising in his throat as he dragged the cop toward the door. Justin watched the column of smoke rise around D’Arcy and wondered if he could hit the guy now. He took a shot at the center of the smoke and heard a grunt of pain come from inside it. Tony took another shot at more of the dancers, felling another three.

Angie spotted Leigh crawling away and holstered her gun. Several of the dancers, who seemed to have been unaware of the commotion, narrowly missed Leigh as they continued their circuit around the veve and D’Arcy. Angie squatted and helped Leigh stand, then threw her over her shoulder and carried her toward the door, the taller woman’s hands, one still holding the ritual knife, almost dragging on the floor behind the former Marine. The number of dancers was quickly dwindling as Tony tried to find another cluster to aim at. He settled for a loose group of three, but only managed to drop one more of them. When Reg got to the door, he dropped the lamp and the fire extinguisher, and picked up the bound woman and carried her toward the stairs. Angie was following him out with Leigh over her shoulder when they heard a CRASH of broken glass in the room behind them.

Frank had made it across the roof and, listening carefully to where he was hearing the gunshots, found a spot where one of the skylights crossed over the fight. Attaching his climbing gear to bolts that must’ve once anchored a ventilation unit, he stepped out onto the glass, ready for the shock when it gave way under his feet. One hand gripped the rope against his side, ready to lower him once he was inside. The other steadied the rope above his head, to help prevent him from swinging, and allowing him to use his arm to protect his face from shards of broken and falling glass. When his fall was brought to a sudden stop as he dangled above the fray, he studied the scene, carefully lowering himself another few feet to hang above and to one side of the column of smoke at the center of the room. He glanced toward the door and saw Reg maneuvering through it with a nearly naked Lt. Worth in his arms, and Angie right behind them, with Leigh thrown over her shoulder. Then he heard Justin’s voice through the ear-bud, warning Aiden that he had incoming wounded. Justin and Tony were still a few feet inside the door, guns aimed at the now small cluster of men in the center of the room. Frank had the clearance, so he grasped one of the flash-bangs hanging from his belt and dropped it in the center of the room.

When Aiden heard that someone was wounded, he stood and picked up the med kit. He figured that he might as well meet them half way and inside, giving the injured protection from the dropping temperature. Karen wasn’t sure what she could do to help, but she was feeling particularly useless as she listened to the sounds of gunfire from above and she needed to do something. As she followed Aiden in, she told him to just tell her what he wanted her to do. “Keep my head from hitting the floor when I fall,” he told her over his shoulder. Karen rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t really fault him for doing the same kind of thing she’d just done to herself. They flipped on their flashlights and could see two figures moving toward them from the far left corner of the room. Then they heard a small explosion from above and to their right. Karen squeezed her eyes shut tight and swallowed hard to keep her heart from climbing out. It was Justin’s voice telling them there were wounded, so he wasn’t one of them. And neither of the figures they were watching lumber toward them was tall enough to be him. But that meant he was still up there where the explosion just was. And she didn’t have the time right now to get all wobbly over things she was only imagining, even though when she shut her eyes she could see Justin’s body being blown backwards, over and over again, as if she were standing there watching it for real.

Then, inside her head (at least, she thought it was inside her head; it didn’t seem to be coming from the ear-bud) she heard a sound. It was...creepy and...she couldn’t find a single word to describe it...but it was like the sound she’d heard in the southwest on a spring dig, when they’d found a den full of snakes that were just waking from their winter hibernation. Only worse because it wasn’t coming from something she could name, something outside of her. It was raspy and dry and sibilant, snakeskin sliding over snakeskin, a hundred snakes all hissing at once. Inside that sound, there was a voice. “This is not over. Some day you will see me again. But for today, take him. I’m done with him.” It almost startled Karen when she heard Reg’s voice a dozen yards away, mumbling “I’ve taken it up the ass before, but this gives it a whole new meaning.” She and Aiden met Reg and Angie, with Leigh and Lt. Worth, in the center of the warehouse. One look at their faces told Karen that they’d heard the voice too.

Upstairs, the remaining dancers stumbled when the concussion from the flash-bang hit them. Dazed, momentarily blinded and deafened, they bumped into one another as they finally realized that they were under attack. They began to stagger towards where they thought the door was, a couple bumping into the walls, their hands out in front of them as they groped their way out and away from the explosion. Justin and Tony and Frank all exchanged glances when the voice spoke inside their heads, double-checking that each wasn’t alone in hearing it, that the other two had as well. When the voice stopped, the robed figure, the veau bokor Jean D’Arcy stood still for a split second before collapsing to the floor. Cursing, Justin sent another slug into the prone body. Tony lowered the shotgun to the floor and dropped the muzzle with one hand, and shrugged the nozzle of the flame-thrower off his shoulder. Gripping it tightly with both hands, he growled through clenched teeth, “This one’s for Diva.” Tony pulled the trigger and D’Arcy’s body lit up the room. Frank pulled his knees to his chest, hoping to keep the soles of his shoes from melting, not to mention his feet and legs.

Reg lowered Lt. Worth gently to the floor, and Angie set down Leigh as carefully as she could. Leigh was still gripping the large ceremonial knife tightly in her hand, though, looking at her, Karen wondered where she found the strength. She curled around her middle into a fetal position. Her skin was the color of the lumpy paste Karen remembered using in kindergarten (she never got over seeing one boy eat that stuff...bleeeh, God, that was so disgusting, she couldn’t even eat lumpy Cream of Wheat for a long time after that....), and she was shaking like she was freezing to death, and Karen could see the vomit soaking into the front of her clothes and smell the...odor of.... Karen stepped back and opened her mouth, consciously forcing herself to breathe through it rather than her nose. She’d always been a little sensitive to the ‘power’ of certain smells, and she couldn’t go puke in a corner and keep Aiden’s head from colliding with the floor at the same time. She moved back up to stand close behind Aiden. Aiden squatted and took the gag off Lt. Worth and cut the rope binding her arms and legs. She was shaking, but assured Aiden that it was mostly just that she was cold. She wasn’t going to admit to being scared by what had been about to happen to her, or by the thing that had taken her from her car. Not yet, and not to these nut cases.... She did turn to thank Reg for getting her out of her precarious position, though.

Aiden moved over to where Leigh was lying, Karen staying right with him, and he let loose a string of Arabic that Karen was pretty sure was swearing. She glanced up at Angie, and the grim grin of surprise and respect on Angie’s face told her she was right. Aiden knelt beside Leigh and closed his eyes, then laid his hands on her chest just below the collarbone. His hands began to glow, faintly at first, then growing a little brighter. He held them there for about 20 seconds, and Leigh felt like the poison in her lungs was being sucked out of her. He never even lifted his hands. Aiden just dropped sideways, obviously unconscious. Karen caught him, her arms around his shoulders, and let his head drop back against her shoulder. When she had him steady, she cradled his head with one hand while she lowered him into Angie’s waiting embrace. Leigh sat up, shaking off the last effects of the poison. She was just telling Karen what had been happening upstairs when they heard feet on the stairs.

When the eight remaining dancers felt the cooler air of the main room on their faces and chests, they began to run toward the stairway, not even noticing that they bumped over the torches surrounding the veve in their fear and eagerness to escape. They felt for the wall with their hands, and when their feet had worked out the measure of the stairs, they came down them as quickly as they could. They still couldn’t hear because of the ringing in their ears, and some were only beginning to be able to see past the flashes of light that seemed to still be shooting across their eyes as their optic nerves fired randomly. When the flames consuming D’Arcy’s clothing had died down enough to give Frank a spot to land, he lowered himself to the floor and unhooked the rope from the rapelling belt. He unslung the shotgun from over his shoulder and headed out after Justin and Tony, who had finally given up beating the dead horse and gone after the remaining dancers. He didn’t want to have to explain how the dancers ended up with burns and bullet holes in their backs, and Tony and Justin had looked a little too wound-up to make that distinction before they pulled their triggers.

Frank caught up to them downstairs, and the three easily rounded up the confused men. Tony and Justin began cuffing them with zip-ties while Frank checked that they could hear him and began reading them their rights. Reg offered to carry Lt. Worth out to the car, since she was still barefoot. He’d set her down and was opening the car door for her when his cell rang. It was Collins, the pilot who had flown Nathan out of town. He sounded nervous, his voice tight and a little high with tension. He’d landed in Tampa but now he wasn’t sure what to do. His passenger was...dead. His eyes were bugged out and his tongue was...was all swollen and sticking out, and...uh...it was pretty...uh...gross. He’d buckled the guy in before they took off, and he’d been fine, except for being a bit edgy. He’d been talking about how someone was after him and wanted to kill him, so Collins had taken the extra precaution of locking the cockpit door when he went in. It was just the two of them on the plane, he was certain of that. But when he came out.... Reg calmed Collins down and told him to lock the plane up tight. Reg told him that he’d be talking to someone in Homeland Security, and that Collins should just sit tight until the H.S. guy called him. Reg shut the phone and staggered to the back of the car when his stomach finally gave up the fight against the poison he’d inhaled, and he dropped to his knees and puked.

Leigh still felt a little unsteady, but as she went outside she realized that Lt. Worth must be freezing by now. She went around to the truck and pulled one of the spare blankets out from the back seat. She got over to the car to find Reg on his knees, leaning weakly against the back bumper and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. She held out the blanket for the detective, then went around to tend to Reg, who was beginning to shake and was holding his middle like he might vomit again. She knew exactly how he felt. Back inside the warehouse, Angie decided to get Aiden and the med kit outside. She was trying to work out how to carry both when Karen offered to carry something, whichever of the two was lighter--Aiden or the kit. Angie lifted Aiden into her arms, and Karen picked up the kit with both hands. Aiden was stronger than he looked, she thought to herself, if he could lug this thing around without showing the strain. As Angie went by, Karen heard her mutter under her breath, “You know I’m not a bottom.” Karen felt her ears turn pink and she turned her attention to lifting the kit and carrying it a few yards before she had to set it down for a second to rest her arms.

Frank, Tony and Justin linked the dancers together to keep them from ‘wandering off’, then sat them down inside the warehouse. Then they went around and collected anything they didn’t want left behind, like the shotguns and the hand-held sun. Leigh was going back to get the med kit when she bumped into Angie carrying Aiden and Karen shuffling out with the kit. She and Karen shared the weight and got it out to the car, and Leigh dug through it to find whatever she could to help get the poison out of Reg’s system. The other three men came around the corner of the building a minute later, each carrying a few weapons and other odds and ends. Tony went around to the back of the car, and when Leigh helped Reg move, Tony began pulling off the equipment he’d been wearing and carrying and placing it into the trunk. Frank and Justin had gone to the other side of the car, where Lt. Worth sat wrapped in a blanket. The look she gave Justin when he rolled up the balaclava would have withered a full grown oak. "I suppose your girlfriend's around here somewhere too," she said. Justin began to apologize profusely for his earlier behavior. Worth stared at him, stony-faced.

The detective finally, grudgingly, accepted the apology, but only because she owed them all something for saving her life. And they had, she admitted, since she was quite positive that those people would have killed her. But, looking directly at Frank this time, she said she wanted the truth about what was going on. Tony, from behind the car, and Karen, from over beside Justin, both said (just loudly enough that they were sure she’d hear them) “No, you don’t.” Frank told her that he’d just gotten information that evening that D’Arcy had been in Galveston, where the gang unit thought that he was trying to start up some kind of death cult. Worth stared at him with a look that warned him she wasn’t swallowing any more of this group’s BS. Frank sighed. He told her that was probably the best way to spin the story for the official reports. Then he asked if she wanted him to take care of the ‘clean-up’, but, lifting her chin defiantly, she insisted that he call the Detroit Police, saying that it was rightfully their bust this time. Frank pulled out his phone.

Reg still felt horrible, but when he heard Frank talking on the phone, he knew that he needed to let him know about Nathan. He had Leigh wave Frank over when he’d finished talking to the DPD, and he described what Collins had told him. Frank had someone at his office put him through to Homeland Security in Tampa. He was on the phone for a little bit, and when he got off he told the others that the Tampa coroner had determined that Nathan had been crushed to death. “Like by a constrictor?” Karen asked. There were knowing glances between the Envoys. Frank told them that he’d told the Tampa HS guys that Nathan had been involved in some voodoo cult up here and might have taken or been given some strange drugs before leaving Detroit that caused violent convulsions. They seemed to buy that story, having a little more experience with voodoo down there.

Frank had moved away from Worth while he was dealing with this problem, but she’d been watching him and trying to catch what he’d been saying. Now she pressed him again to tell her the truth before the black-and-whites showed up. Frank dodged the issue again, saying that he’d tell her everything over dinner if she could wait that long, and suggesting that she might want to be dressed when the units got there. Justin offered her one of the spare cover-alls that he kept in the truck, but she had issues with the ‘fit’. Justin claimed they were one-size-fits-all, but Karen countered that they were one-size-fits-none, to the knowing chuckles of the other women standing there. Frank offered her one of the HS jumpsuits from his trunk and she accepted the offer, and she did end up accepting the cap and socks that Justin offered. Karen asked Reg where he’d left the detective’s cell and PDA, after he’d retrieved them from her car. He pointed at the truck and grunted, and Karen took that scant bit of info to mean they were somewhere in the truck. She found them and brought them over to Lt. Worth, saying that she thought Worth might need them. Worth thanked her, but Karen got the impression that, behind the thanks, the detective was wondering if this bunch of misfits had been digging through her personal stuff already.

By now, Leigh could no longer take the gross feeling of the mess she'd made of her clothes. She asked Frank for another jumpsuit, if he had one; then, still carrying the large knife, she went over to the truck and rummaged around until she found the ‘wet wipes’ that she knew Justin kept in it. She found a slightly protected spot and stripped out of her clothes and used the wipes to clean herself up as much as she could. When she was sure that she couldn’t do more without a hot shower, she pulled on the jumpsuit. Justin caught a glimpse of her stripping and spun around to avoid looking. Karen and Angie noticed and shrugged it off; neither one was overly-concerned with what others might have thought ‘immodest behavior’, since they’d both been in situations where they’d had to do the same. Aiden was still unconscious, and Reg had struck the others as uninterested in naked women, if he’d even been healthy enough at the time to notice. The two other guys who were in any condition to find Leigh’s state of undress interesting, Tony and Frank, were too busy with what they were doing to even see her.

Leigh was just rejoining the group when they all heard sirens headed their way. Frank and Lt. Worth warned them that they’d better hit the road if they didn’t want to be involved. Angie was still holding Aiden, and Leigh noticed that he looked more unwell than he would have been if he’d just used up all his strength. Angie laid him down, and Leigh and Justin examined him. His breathing was shallow and raspy, his pulse was weak, and his skin was cold and clammy, like Leigh’s had been when the poison was still acting on her system. Aiden didn’t just knock himself out this time--he had actually sucked the poison into himself. Justin grabbed a syringe of adrenaline from the open med kit while Leigh worked to get the bulletproof vest off him. As soon as Aiden’s chest was clear Justin drove the needle into it like he’d been taught in his Army first aid training. Now they really didn’t have any time to waste. Tony was climbing into Leigh’s car and asking if anyone was riding with him, but no one seemed to be paying attention. Angie, Leigh and Justin loaded Aiden into the bed of the pick-up. Reg was still a little shaky, but he offered to drive. Karen seemed a bit dazed, so Reg helped her climb into the cab of the truck, then he got behind the wheel. “Receiving,” Justin shouted as he pounded on the back window, indicating that they were ready to roll in the back end.

Reg hit the gas, and the truck’s tires squealed as it pulled away from the curb. Tony, on the other hand, rolled away quietly, hoping Frank didn’t notice he was leaving and stop him. He’d managed to stash the flame-thrower and one of the assault shotguns in the trunk, along with his vest and all the ‘toys’ he’d brought himself. Maybe if Frank didn’t notice, he’d get to keep them. He cruised carefully back to the Bat Cave, managing to avoid the web of cop cars blazing toward the warehouse. He rolled to a stop back where he’d first gotten into the car an hour or so ago, and checked that he hadn’t been followed. Then he unloaded all his ‘loot’ and hid it inside, feeling rather smug. It didn’t matter if the tanks were empty; he knew the formula for napalm (which was essentially what was inside the flame-thrower), and it would be easy enough for him to refill the thing himself.

At the hospital, the ER staff practically rolled their eyes when they saw Aiden being carried in. They were about ready to keep a bed prepped just for him, he was in there so often lately. “What is it this time?” the doctor asked, as the crew swarmed around Aiden and started checking his vitals. “Gas,” Justin told them, and he and Leigh described his symptoms and what they’d already done to him. Within a very short time, they had Aiden hooked up to dialysis, to filter the toxins out of his bloodstream. They’d be keeping him for a day or two, depending on how much poison was in him and what type. Angie planned to stay there, at least for a while, and they left her sitting in the waiting room, until Aiden was in a room where she could sit with him.

Back at the warehouse, Lt. Worth was walking a fine line between victim and ‘tough cop’. She was very matter-of-fact as she gave a statement to the next highest-ranking detective on the scene, but then she made it very clear that this was HER crime scene. For Frank’s part, he just followed her lead, staying quietly in the background until she asked for his comments. It was Worth who had called in Homeland Security on this case, since D’Arcy was Haitian, he told the other cops. He was only there because she’d requested it. He was still working out exactly what kind of spin he’d put on all the dead bodies inside, but at least he didn’t have to come up with the whole story on the spot. He and Worth had a little time to put together the report. But, more important, he had to figure out how to convince her that she really didn’t want to know the whole truth about what had really happened here.

By the time Justin, Karen, Leigh and Reg were leaving the hospital, Karen felt dead on her feet. She wondered if she looked like the catatonics that she’d seen in the hospital, because that’s what she felt like. She had several people bump into her as she stood amid the bustle of the ER, until Reg noticed that she was in the way and guided her over near a wall. She let him. While the fact that people were bumping into her did register somewhere deep in her brain, she couldn’t seem to work up the energy she needed to make her feet and legs work. When Justin and Leigh were done talking to the doctor, they and Reg and Angie were half way to the waiting room before Justin noticed that Karen wasn’t with them and went back to get her. And even then she only went along because Justin was guiding her with his arm around her shoulders. Even her brain didn’t seem to be working much anymore--no daydreams, no mental ‘wandering’, just sound and light going in and hitting a blank wall where her hearing and sight ought to have been. Angie assured the others that she’d be fine there alone and she’d let them know when Aiden was awake.

When they got out the doors, Justin lifted Karen into his arms and carried her to the truck. All she could manage was to lay her head on his shoulder and wrap her fingers weakly into his jacket, mumbling about how useless she'd been, just a dead albatross around the necks of the others. When he sat her in the truck and started pulling open the velcro tabs, it faintly registered that she still had that uncomfortable Kevlar vest on. She’d forgotten about that.... Justin drove Leigh back to the Bat Cave to get her car when he was sure that she was well enough to drive alone. Tony was nowhere in sight when they went inside to get the keys, but his jacket was hanging on the back of a chair, so they left quietly to keep from waking him. Justin commented to Leigh and Reg about taking Karen home, and this finally sparked enough of her neurons into firing that she was able to voice her dissent. She couldn’t go back there yet, she whispered. The sight of Diva played across the inside of her eyelids again, and her voice faded into a quietly choked whimper. She couldn’t even manage tears right now. Leigh suggested that they go to a hotel, but Reg invited them to his place. It did have five bedrooms, he said. A few more of Karen’s neurons fired into action and she remembered that she had to give her last exam at 10 the next morning. She squeaked this out, and Reg assured her that she would get there, he would see to that.

Justin pointed the truck toward Grosse Pointe, with Reg in the back seat giving him directions and Leigh following in her rental since Reg insisted that she should stay with him rather than in a hotel. When they got there, Reg disabled his security system with a remote, then re-enabled it when they were all inside. He showed them to rooms, Justin following behind him with Karen in his arms, and mentioned that they were free to use the jacuzzi, after saying that he would get them sheets and blankets. Justin asked Karen if she wanted a hot bath and she whispered “Sleep.” She was barely still conscious by the time Reg got back with the fresh linens. Justin set Karen down on the edge of the bed, but before he could kneel down to pull off her boots, she’d laid down and rolled herself into a blanket (the way she used to in the hospital, something deep within her brain reminded her) and fallen dead asleep. Reg and Justin made sure the alarm clock was set to get Karen up at 8:30am. Then they tiptoed off to another part of the house to chat awhile about better surveillance methods until their adrenaline levels flagged and they headed to bed too.

It was about 6:30pm, and the five headed for the ladder. Tony was a couple rungs from the bottom when his foot slipped. He cracked his head hard enough to knock himself out cold when he hit the ground. Aiden checked him over and, except for being unconscious, he seemed OK. Justin was just pulling up, and the team decided to stretch Tony out in the back seat of the pick-up until he came to. As soon as he was tucked in, Justin and Reg explained about the mattress in the back end, and ‘what’ was in it. They made sure to lower their voices when they described what had been done to Diva, to try and save Karen the trauma of hearing about it again. When Aiden went to check over the ‘bad guy,’ Angie came over to Karen and patted her on the shoulder, sympathizing with her about her loss. Karen was a little surprised by it; Angie’s sympathy was honest and not at all what Karen expected from the ‘tough gal’ former Marine.

When Aiden was sure the guy was safe enough and healthy enough, everyone’s attention went to the missing Lt. Worth. Reg and Justin were shown around her deserted car, which, they noticed, was still in running condition. The engine wasn’t slagged like Reg’s had been, nor were the cell phone or PDA in her purse; but the dash instruments, radio and on-board computer were. It was as if maybe the radio and computer were targeted and the dash blew because it was all wired together. Frank also told them that they’d found nothing in the warehouse, no sign that anyone was currently or ever had been inside, though the floor looked strangely like it had been plowed. When Reg and Justin were sure they wouldn’t find anything that the others had overlooked, it was agreed that they’d go back to the butcher shop to question the ‘bad guy.’ Before they left, Reg grabbed any of the portable electronic stuff from Worth’s car, in case he could tease anything useful from it later.

It was a little after 7pm when they got to the butcher shop, each vehicle traveling a different route, in case they were being watched. After a few minutes of discussion, they decided to do the questioning inside the meat locker, since it was pretty well sound-proof. To disguise the interior, they set up the spray booth they’d used for grinding the silver for the paint. While a couple of the guys worked on that, Aiden went out and got a sturdy chair in which to restrain their ‘informant.’ Karen already knew that she couldn’t be inside with the guy, but she was glad no one asked her why, because she really couldn’t have explained it. It wasn’t that she was afraid of doing him harm since she wouldn’t. She understood without needing to ask him that he was probably compelled to do it by someone, or something, that could do him more harm than she could. And it wasn’t that she was afraid of what the others might do; Aiden had already made them swear that they wouldn’t do the guy any physical harm. And nothing the guy could say would erase the image in her head of what was left of Diva. For right now, she just couldn’t be in close physical proximity to the guy who did...that. Besides, since the handle had been removed from the inside of the door when Aiden had been ‘using’ the locker, someone needed to be outside to open it when the others were done.

As the guy was brought in from the truck, Reg noticed Karen’s discomfort. He asked her what sort of plans had been made for her and Justin’s wedding. She knew that he was trying to distract her, and she was grateful for it. She launched into a description of the plans so far, with the disclaimer that she was doing almost none of the real work involved, that luckily her mom and Justin’s sister Marie were willing and more than able to take care of it all. But when she got to the part about their colors being mint and peach, Reg visibly cringed. Those colors were all wrong for them given Karen’s and Justin’s coloration. He thought maybe burgundy.... Karen objected that the dresses were already ordered, and that she didn’t want to offend her mom or soon-to-be sister-in-law by suggesting that she trusted the opinion of some guy she’d just met regarding wedding colors more than she trusted theirs. He offered Karen the names of some professional wedding planners he knew. He thought that any one of them would be able to help Marie and Kathy get things settled in less than three weeks, even if it meant reordering the dresses. “Just remember to mention my name when you contact them,” he told her. Karen agreed to at least make the offer to Marie, and she pulled out her laptop to email her.

The distraction had worked, and things were pretty much set inside the locker by 7:30pm. Angie was also staying outside the locker so that Karen wasn’t alone, though Karen told her that she’d be fine if Angie wanted to be inside. Justin, Reg, Leigh, Aiden and Frank would be inside. Aiden had some sodium pentothal to use if the guy proved to be unwilling to help. Even if it weren’t that the stuff was tricky to administer, Aiden would still have wanted to be in there to keep the others from damaging the guy ‘accidently.’ Justin wasn’t pleased that he wouldn’t be allowed to inflict bodily injury on the guy who’d shredded his fiancee’s kitten all over their bed. But they agreed that he was certainly allowed to threaten injury, or worse. As they were going inside, Karen teased Frank that she was going to make him tell Jared to tell Kat about Diva. That was one conversation that she really didn’t want to have, though she’d do it because it would be better for Kat to hear it from her, painful though it might be. When they were all inside, she checked that Tony was still more or less comfortable in the pick-up, then she got online to email Marie.

Inside the closed meat locker, Justin pulled the plugs from the kid’s ears and the gag from his mouth, and started the questioning by asking what would make someone do something like that to a poor defenseless kitten, then threatening that maybe the same should be done to him. The guy was silent. Frank stood in one corner, looking menacing, and Reg stood in another, brandishing the taser. Aiden squatted near the med-kit he’d brought in to monitor the guy if he had to use the pentothal. Leigh joined in, trying to reason with the young man. But neither threats nor reason would make him even tell them his name. All he would say was that “he” would do much worse to him than they could. He was fairly young, maybe in his low 20s, and skinny, with muddy white skin. Frank motioned the others over and asked if they’d patted him down yet. In the rush to get him camouflaged and out of the condo, Justin and Reg hadn’t thought about it. Then Frank’s phone rang. It was a call he had to take, so he knocked on the door to be let out. In the outer room, he went near the back door while listening intently. When he closed the phone, he told Angie and Karen that the call had been his boss and he had to get back to the Federal Building right away. But he assured them he’d be back as soon as he could and told them to call him if they left the butcher shop.

Justin checked the guy’s back pockets and, sure enough, found a thin wallet. Inside he found a license, $15, and a very old condom. The license told them that this young man was Nathan Parker, 22, of Detroit. Now Justin and Leigh went back to doing ‘Good Cop/Bad Cop’, with Justin threatening the kid and taunting him, and Leigh trying to reason with him. When Justin disparagingly asked who he was carrying the condom for, he replied “Yo mama.” Justin’s arm cocked back and he swung his open hand at the kid’s head. Aiden launched himself at Justin’s arm, but Leigh caught it at the wrist a split second before Justin’s hand would have connected with Nathan’s face. There was no doubt that the kid felt the breeze of the hand coming at his head and heard the slap of Justin’s wrist into Leigh’s hand as she deflected the strike. They plugged his ears again. Justin was frustrated that even so little as a slap was denied him, but the others suggested that the guy must’ve realized how close he’d been to getting hit.

As they were arguing the finer distinctions of what each considered ‘injuring’ their potential informant, Leigh noticed that the floor looked a little foggy, like someone had set up one of those fogging machines in the locker. When she pointed it out to the others, they realized that it was cold and quite unnatural. It appeared to be coming under the door and was crawling up their legs. Nathan, still wearing the ear plugs and blindfold, started struggling, telling them that ‘he’d found him and was going to kill him.’ When they pulled the ear plugs and asked who he meant, he still refused to tell them, even when he was promised that they would protect him. He assured them that there was no way they could protect him against “him.” Aiden knocked on the door to have it opened, so they could see if the fog was outside the locker as well.

When they saw that it was, Leigh suggested that Karen raise a Sphere. Then she projected a Mental Shield to help keep everyone focused. Karen started to tell the others to gather inside the locker, and that was when they all realized that they could no longer hear anything. All the sound in the building had been damped. Karen grabbed Angie’s arm and pointed her into the locker. Her Sphere wasn’t large enough to protect a bigger area than that. Somehow, too, she knew that they weren’t done with the ‘bad guy’ yet, and in spite of how she might feel toward him, he needed to be protected as well. She stood behind the struggling kid (he wasn’t really that much younger than Karen, but his obvious fear made him seem very young right then) and raised her Sphere. The fog rolled back toward the walls and the room filled with sounds, Nathan struggling in the chair, everyone else commenting on the silence and the fog and what they should do now. Then, a few seconds later, everything went silent again when Karen’s Sphere went down. The fog began rolling back in and shadows seemed to reach out for them from the walls. Karen put up another Sphere and immediately suggested that they grab the chair and get them all the hell out of there. The shadows and fog had been pushed back again, but Karen warned them that it wouldn’t last long and they didn’t have time to argue.

Reg and Justin went to either side of the chair and grabbed the arms, lifting it Nathan and all, and took a couple steps toward the door. Aiden was already in the doorway, and had turned back to make sure the others were following since he could no longer hear them. Just then, the others all saw a large black snake slither up behind Aiden. It didn’t have wings but it was much bigger than the one in the parking lot of the motel, about the size of a giant anaconda, filling the doorway. It opened its mouth and dropped its head, and Leigh and Angie pulled their guns and aimed straight at it. Justin and Reg dropped the chair, Reg aiming the taser at the snake and Justin pulling his gun too. Before Aiden could turn to see what they were aiming at (he knew it couldn’t be him--he trusted that Angie would never do that without at least warning him), the snake knocked him to one side as it pushed through the doorway. Now it was obvious that the snake wasn’t about to attack Aiden--it was going for Nathan.

Leigh shot silently at it but the snake didn’t seem fazed. The odors of decay and rot and river water floated around the thing. Reg fired the taser at it. As the darts touched it, there was a spark of the taser discharging and the snake spasmed as it was shocked. But the darts fell silently to the floor when they skittered off the snake’s scales. Karen held her breath, waiting for the thing to attack the kid. In the space of a few seconds, she’d realized that, even though she was getting weak, she would try to put up one last Sphere to protect him if, or when, the snake attacked. If it had been a choice between protecting him or protecting Justin or any of the other Envoys, it wouldn’t have been a choice at all. She really couldn’t care less about his safety. But she knew that he was their best chance to find out where Jean D’Arcy was and she had to protect that information, at least until they’d gotten it out of him. Justin and Angie shot at the snake almost simultaneously. It was strange, seeing the muzzle-flash but not hearing any sound. The snake jerked as if it had been cut nearly in half, then it faded away.

As it faded, sound filled the room once again. Justin pulled out his knife and cut Nathan loose from the chair. Now they couldn’t shut the guy up. He pulled off the blindfold and information spilled out of him like water through a broken dam. He was a member of the hounfour run by Jean D’Arcy. There were 24 members, and they’d been promised power and wealth by D’Arcy when they’d joined him. But they hadn’t seen any of that yet. In fact, he’d have left the group by now, except he’d seen what D’Arcy could do. They met twice a month on the upper floor of a warehouse that D’Arcy owned on the riverfront, for rituals that ended with blood sacrifice. Usually a servitor (that’s what D’Arcy called them, he said) was ridden by a loa during the ritual, but he hadn’t been yet. Some of the others had gotten tired of waiting for the promised power and wealth and had started doing the rituals for themselves. But since two days ago, there’d been no sign of those “independents.” There was supposed to be another meeting tonight, but he wasn’t going. He’d had enough. D’Arcy was going to kill him and the only chance he had was to get as far away as he could as fast as he could, and no one was gonna stop him.

Reg had his phone out in an instant. First he called for a cab. Then he called one of his company’s pilots. He told the pilot to get one of the planes ready, that he was going to have a single passenger to take somewhere. Where? Anywhere the passenger wanted within 4 or 5 hours flight of Detroit, but he wasn’t to tell Reg where that was. The less Reg knew, the less he could tell someone else, he figured. Nathan stared at the group warily. He didn’t believe that they were not only going to let him go, but that he was actually going to get flown on some guy’s private jet wherever he wanted. Justin pulled out his wallet; he had a couple hundred dollars in it. He pulled out all he had and stuck it in Nathan’s wallet before handing that back to him, telling him that he probably needed it more than Justin did. Karen wrapped her arms tightly around herself. She knew they had to do this. Letting D’Arcy get ahold of the guy was worse than what he’d done to Diva. Maybe. Of course, that didn’t mean the thought of making him fend for himself hadn’t crossed her mind. But if she let it happen, she’d be no better than the things they were fighting; and she’d promised Fr. Andrew, and herself, she wouldn’t let that happen. As the cab pulled up at the end of the alley, Nathan told them the address of the warehouse. He got in the back seat, while Reg leaned in the front window and gave the cabbie a couple bills and told him to take the kid up to City Airport. The address Nathan gave them was only 3 buildings away from the warehouse they’d been investigating.

By now, both Justin and Aiden had noticed that Karen was looking pretty worn out. It twisted Justin’s gut that he couldn’t do anything for her. But he’d already helped her out once that morning, after the seance. That, on top of the fact that he couldn’t even manage to protect her from having her kitten shredded, made him feel like the world’s hugest jerk. Karen saw the shadow of the thought darken his face and she took his hand and squeezed it. She wasn’t sure what was bothering him, but his touch always made her feel better and she hoped hers did the same for him. He pulled her into a tight hug, apologizing for what happened to Diva and for having to let the ‘bad guy’ go. Aiden came over and put his hand on her arm, giving it a small squeeze and giving her a boost of energy. She thanked him with a slight smile; it was all she could manage right now for anyone besides Justin. It was about 8:30 when Justin, Karen, Reg and Leigh piled into the truck and Angie and Aiden got on the bike, and they all headed back to the Bat Cave to discuss their next move. On the way, Karen called Frank’s cell and left him a message that they’d gotten what they needed and were heading for the Bat Cave. They only really had one option--going after D’Arcy. They would leave Tony at the Bat Cave and all go in the pick-up over to the warehouse. They knew that tonight’s sacrifice could be a big one--Lt. Worth. And they didn’t really know when the ritual started, so they didn’t have much time for planning. Leigh and Karen pointed out a few things they thought might be particularly pertinent that night that they’d surmised about this sort of group from their and Lita’s research; things like if a servitor is being ‘ridden’ by a loa, he or she might have unusual powers, and that destroying ritual instruments might prevent the ritual from succeeding. Karen also reminded them all that if they killed D’Arcy, any existing zombies he had created would still be running loose, and if they didn’t have any current instructions, they’d do whatever they felt like.

The Envoys spent the next hour collecting the things they thought they might need and preparing themselves and their equipment. Angie pushed her bike into the Bat Cave for safe-keeping, but took the keys so that Tony couldn’t take it for a joy-ride if he woke up before she came back for it. A little before 10pm, they were about as ready as they’d ever be. They left a note for Tony, explaining what had happened to him and where they’d gone. They also called and left a message for Frank with the address of the warehouse. As they loaded stuff into the back end, they found that Frank had left their ‘bullet-proof’ vests there before heading to his office. In the truck, Karen thought to warn the others that she didn’t have much energy left for Spheres or Mental Shields; she might be able to do one more, but beyond that she’d risk putting herself down.

The confused look on Reg’s face led Karen and Leigh to go into ‘teacher mode’ and explain as succinctly as they could The Art. They told him that basically it was a way of channeling energy that allowed some people to do unusual things--like Karen’s Sphere of Protection or Leigh’s Mental Shield or Aiden’s Healing or Justin’s Restoring Willpower. If you had one of these ‘gifts’, oftentimes you might have others, like Karen could also do Mental Shields and she could summon ghosts and leave her body as well. Other people, like Angie and Frank hadn’t exhibited any of these gifts yet, and relied on their own skill and intelligence in fighting the Unknown; but that didn’t mean that they didn’t have one or more of these powers waiting latent. Justin hadn’t known how to Restore Willpower when he first became an Envoy, but he had the untapped talent for it and, with some instruction from someone who knew how, he learned how to use the talent he had. Then they explained briefly what some of these Arts did. And that, unfortunately, the people and creatures fighting for the 'other side' had their own version of The Art, things like summoning or creating the black snakes, or what had happened to his car, called Haywire.

It was 10pm when Justin flipped off the headlights and rolled up near the warehouse. The six got out and gathered their equipment. Leigh suggested a prayer circle, and they joined hands as Leigh said a short prayer giving thanks for all the good things they’d each been given and asking for divine protection in the coming fight. Justin also asked God’s help in the battle. Karen pulled a small plug of tobacco from her pack and lit the end, letting it burn down to her fingertips as she chanted quietly in Ojibway, asking for the Great Spirit’s aid and protection in the fight against this evil. Angie racked a shell into the chamber of her shotgun and said, “I’m ready to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum.” Finally, Reg spoke the ‘gladiator’s salute’ in Latin--“We who are about to die, salute you.” All that was left was the shooting....