“You could teach me.”
He smiled. She didn’t.
“Maybe I have better things to do than take care of you,” she said.
“Whoa. Where did that come from?”
Sharon drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She kept her eyes straight ahead. If she looked at him, she couldn’t stay mad. She cared for him too much. Hell, she might’ve even loved him, and the ridiculousness of the idea made her smile humorlessly.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“You. No. You never do anything wrong.”
And he didn’t. He couldn’t do anything wrong because he wasn’t human. He was so far beyond human that you might as well call a hurricane wrong. Or label an asteroid malicious just for wiping out the dinosaurs. If he was to destroy the world, wasn’t that within his rights?
Except he didn’t do that. He never hurt anyone. He was the gentlest soul she’d ever come across, and while some might think it easy to be kind when you had no needs or wants, when you were immortal, invulnerable, and so above the petty squabbles of this world, Sharon suspected the opposite was true. She’d imagined herself in his position before, and it always ended with her going mad at all the insignificant specks buzzing around her, crushing them and their cities in her rage.
She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
He made the ill-defined noise he reserved for those moments when human behavior escaped him.
“It’s my problem,” she said. “I just didn’t expect for it to come so soon. I thought we’d have more time.”
If she’d admitted it, she hadn’t expected this moment to come at all. She’d known that Calvin would leave one day. But considering the miserably short life span of humans, she’d always assumed that the day would be long after she’d died. Greg had always said it would be soon, but she’d just attributed that to the necessity of running a cult. You couldn’t tell people the end of time was a thousand years away. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear. People wanted front-row seats to the big show.
She apologized again. “I’m just being stupid. I know you need to go, and I should just be glad to have known you. It’s more than I deserved.”
“Hey, I won’t hear any of that,” he said. “This means something to me too. You’re more than just the lady who takes care of my laundry.”
“You’re just saying that.”
Calvin put a hand to her cheek and turned her face toward his.
“You’re special.”
“There are a million people out there just like me,” she said.
“Maybe. But when the time comes, I won’t remember any of them.”
“I bet you say that to all your laundry ladies.”
She didn’t know if she believed him, but just that he’d said it made her feel better.
When they got home Sharon shut herself in the bathroom and called Greg. He answered the phone. He always answered, day or night, always him and not some underling. Greg, for all his faults, took the business of the Chosen as sacred and not to be shirked. He answered with his usual aplomb.
“Yello.”
Sharon sat on the toilet and explained the Diana situation.
“I see. And how did she find out?”
“I don’t know. She just did. She had this eyeball entity with her, and it couldn’t stop staring at Calvin. I think it can see things and gives her the power to see things.”
“Interesting.”
“I told her you’d talk to her. Tomorrow.”
“Well, I don’t know if you recall, but I’ll be rather busy tomorrow.”
“I know, but I did promise her.”
“Promises won’t mean much in the future.”
“Yes, but they mean something now.”
“I have a lot on my plate.”
Sharon said, “But what if she interferes? She is a warden. She has entities of her own.”
“Now you’re just ing absurd. Fenris has nothing to fear from whatever influence she’s amassed. Nothing can stop the future.”
“I know, but you can at least consider it. One last convert, one last soul to save.”
“If she has her own link to the greater universe, she’s already saved.”
Sharon swore. She despised that he was right.
“I’d like her to understand better, once it’s all over.”
“Her understanding won’t matter to you, once it’s all over.”
“But it matters to me now.”
“Sharon, I just don’t see the point.”
“I’m asking, Greg. That’s the point. I’ve been contributing to this venture for years now, and I’ve never asked for any favors. This is my favor. You don’t want to go into the future with a debt hanging over you, do you?”
“Debts won’t matter in the—”
“Goddamn it, Greg.”
He was silent for a few moments.
“Okay. We’ll arrange a meeting.”
“Thank you.”
She hung up and stared at the bronze cast of a crescent moon with a human face and a great big smile hanging beside the bathroom mirror. For the first time in a long time, she saw the smile as the grim grin of a dangerous universe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Diana found West on a ladder, changing smoke detector batteries in the hall.
“Hi,” she said.
He grunted.
“You’re not busy, are you?” she asked.
“Just taking care of a few things, Number Five.”
He descended, and she helpfully held the ladder.
“I’m not distracting you? Because if this is important…”
He grabbed the ladder, moved it a few feet down the hall, and climbed it again. There were a surprising number of detectors. So many that West had a paper bag full of batteries in his right hand to replace them all.
“These aren’t like cosmic smoke detectors or anything?” she asked. “It’s not like if the batteries die in them the universe blows up, right?”
“Nope. Just being safe. Can never be too safe.”
“Oh, good.” She laughed to herself. It was silly to think everything West did had grand importance. It was ridiculous to assume that everything in the apartment building was connected by invisible strings to something vital to the universe outside.
He climbed down and repeated the short journey down the hall to another detector. She tried to be helpful and pointed out he’d missed one.
West stopped and wheeled upon her with unexpected energy. “We leave that one alone, Number Five. We don’t ever change the batteries in that one. No matter how often it chirps for them.”
The detector beeped.
