He smiled a little, his whiskey-colored eyes absorbing the last of the glow to shine like polished gold in the darkness. “We are not men.”
“Then why make yourself known now? If God’s not going to send us help, why are you here?”
“Who says He has not sent help?” With a faintly sad smile, he melted back into the narrow pathways and I knew the moment he was gone. The weight on my chest, the mere pressure of his presence, was gone.
I sat there for a few more moments, rocking back on my knees and balancing my sword across them. I could still feel the minute texture of everything I touched, but it was no longer threatening to overload my circuits. Another few minutes and I’d be almost normal, I thought. If I had another few minutes. Gretchen was down in the lobby and inevitably, someone would come looking up here to see what had happened. Being caught here with an empty gun and a bared sword probably wasn’t going to end well for me.
“Man…man, are you okay?” Spencer’s voice was not nearly as harsh in my ears as I’d been fearing. I wondered that it had taken him this long to talk, when I’d been aware of his presence almost from the beginning. Mercifully, the rooftop no longer buckled when he approached me. I turned my eyes on him, mostly just to see what he looked like in my vision, and I was relieved to see that he was just…him. Somewhere in the last few minutes, I think I’d forgotten what normal looked like.
“I’m all right.” Gingerly, I got up, feeling my mail sitting against my back like it was so much raw meat. Under the padding, under my T-shirt, iridescent white tattoos writhed and slithered as they settled into their new homes. I could feel each one intimately, could point out where one ended and another began, though it would be invisible to the naked eye.
“Man…I saw everything.” There was awe in his voice. Funny how seldom we hear genuine awe in this day and age. “What…what was that?”
“You know what it was.” Moving to the pile of golem dust, I dug through it until I found the slip of paper. A business card, more precisely. I had a matching one in my wallet, belonging to none other than Reginald Goldman.
“What…what do we do?”
I finally turned to face Spencer, and he backed up a step. I can only imagine what it was he saw in my eyes. “We do nothing. You tell no one, because they’d never believe you anyway.”
“But…Gretchen Keene?”
“Gretchen Keene took her own life tonight.” For just one moment, I was tempted to look over the edge of the pool to the lobby far below, but I squelched the urge. Some things I just didn’t need to see. Not really. What I’d already seen had been bad enough.
20
Gretchen Keene was declared dead at 12:15 a.m., New Year’s Eve morning. Just like Axel and Cindy said, it was all over by New Year’s. Stupid me, I’d thought she had at least another day, twenty-four more hours to put things right, but…you see what happens when you assume.
Spencer’s presence turned out to be fortunate. When security and the police came storming out of the elevator, he was able to back up my story, swearing that yes, Gretchen had held me at gunpoint, then jumped to her own death. He didn’t mention golems, or angels, or the fact that my sword was tucked away under a bench far out of sight. Because really, who would have believed him? I was there, and I wasn’t sure
Still, the police held me for hours, asking the same questions over and over again, mostly centered around why in the hell I was wearing a full suit of mail armor. I used my one phone call to ring Ivan up, and by the time the old man arrived, the cops gave up trying to make me say something different. I gave them my contact information in Missouri, and they let me go.
“I am to being sorry, Dawson.” That was all Ivan had to say, and I was glad for his stoic silence. There was too much going on in my brain to make small talk.
My ticket back home wasn’t good until tomorrow, so that gave me an entire day to kill in L.A. First, Ivan took me to retrieve my gear, and inspected my back closely as I changed into a clean T-shirt. “I have never to be seeing the like.” One thick finger touched my shoulder blade, and the ridges of his fingerprint rasped like sandpaper. I hissed, jerking out of his reach. It was too sensitive, still. Tender.
“Now what are we to be doing?”
“Now I need you to help me play bad cop–worse cop.” Apparently, he got the reference, ’cause he didn’t ask me any more questions after that.
Tai and the real Dante had been taken to the hospital, and though I wanted to go check on them both, I just couldn’t make myself. I’d failed to protect Gretchen and I just couldn’t face either of them yet. If ever. There were, however, two people I very much wanted to visit before I left town. I chose the more pleasant—if you can call it that—of the two first.
With Ivan and a phone call to a faraway Viljo on my side, it wasn’t hard to find the address for Gretchen’s mother, and I knew we’d found the right place when we pulled up to find the house surrounded by a veritable army of paparazzi and news vans. They snapped pictures and tried to thrust microphones in my face as I got out of Ivan’s car, but one look from the big Ukrainian had them backing up a good couple of yards. Someday, I wanna learn to do that, just back people off with a look.
I didn’t know the woman who answered the door. Family friend, if I had to guess, and acting as a gatekeeper in this time of tragedy. She was ready to do battle, that much was clear. “If you don’t get off this property, I’m going to have the cops on your ass so fast…”
“I’m not a reporter. I’m…I was one of Gretchen’s bodyguards. I just came to talk to her mother.”
The fierce expression on her face faded into a bit of doubt, but I still don’t think she was going to let me in until a voice came from inside. “Let him in, Rebecca.” Reluctantly, the self-appointed guard let me pass, then made a show of slamming and locking the door behind me.
The house itself was…average. Everything was average. Seventies-era wood paneling, threadbare and scuffed furniture, a few dusty doilies, some knickknacks on the shelves. It could have been my mom’s house. It could have
