Daphne had moved into the rooms upstairs soon after the new year, once he had finished converting them into a separate apartment. Izzie had been splitting her time between Virginia and the city in the months since, but it seemed to Patrick that he should be charging her rent, too, considering how many weekends she spent there.
“You’re going to be seeing a lot more of me,” she said, with a crooked smile. “My request to transfer to the Resident Agency here went through. Gutierrez has been promoted to run the Field Office up in Portland, and Daphne is being bumped up to take over as the new R.A.”
Patrick wasn’t surprised to hear that Gutierrez had gotten the nod. In the fallout of the Ink investigation, Izzie and Daphne had downplayed their own roles, leaving Gutierrez to bask in the effusive praise of the mayor, who credited his Resident Agency with providing crucial support to helping the RPD stitch up the narcotics ring that the public now believed had been operating out of the offices of Parasol. The official story was that the company’s CEO had been tragically killed by that same narcotics ring when he uncovered their activities and tried to put a stop to it, and that one of Recondito’s finest had suffered a gunshot wound while trying unsuccessfully to save him. It was an explanation that fit the publicly known facts, and though Patrick was uncomfortable with the momentary fame that he enjoyed after articles ran with headlines like “HERO COP SOLVES MURDER OF FELLOW OFFICER AND SOFTWARE CEO,” it kept anyone from trying to poke holes in the story.
“Wait, does that mean your girlfriend is going to be your supervisor?”
Izzie shrugged. “It won’t be the first Bureau regulation that I’ve broken since coming here.” She slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder, then closed the door. “Don’t worry, though, I’ve got a line on a place of my own. Nice red-brick house in Ross Village. My grandmother would have loved it.”
She took a few steps down the sidewalk, peering down the alley to look at the mark that Patrick’s great-uncle had left on the rear of the house a lifetime ago.
“So how are things here?” she asked, turning back in his direction. “No major disasters I should know about?”
Patrick leaned on the handle of his cane with both hands.
“We’re keeping a lid on it.”
The Ridden were off the streets, and unless someone managed to get down into that abandoned mine outside of town, they weren’t likely to be back any time soon. But as they’d learned from Alistair Freeman’s journal and their discussions with G. W. Jett, the Ridden were only one of the potential dangers that came along with living in a true place like Recondito. The walls between the worlds were thin here, and there were always things that were breaking though from the Otherworld and beyond.
The front door to his house opened, and Joyce leaned out the gap, her hand on the knob.
“You ever coming back inside? I’ve had breakfast waiting for almost half an hour.” She turned and flashed a smile at Izzie. “Hey, you. Daphne’s upstairs, I’ll let her know you’re back.”
Then she disappeared back inside, and from the open door came wafting the smell of fresh-baked island donuts.
“So we’re good, then?” Izzie said, looking in his direction.
“Good enough for now,” Patrick answered. There would be time to tell her about the possession that he had dealt with a few days earlier once breakfast was done. “Yeah, we’re good.”
The Ridden might have been gone, but the city still needed someone to protect it from other threats from beyond. Already they had faced a number of other minor incursions, and it was only a matter of time before something major broke through. But they had survived one encounter, and they would be ready for whatever came next. They would have to be.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a huge debt of thanks to Bill Willingham, Lilah Sturges, and Mark Finn, who were generous with their advice when the earliest version of this story was first coming into focus, to Allison Baker for her support and encouragement in all the years since, and to Jeremy Lassen for helping bring it into focus.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Roberson is the co-creator, with artist Michael Allred, of iZombie, the basis of the hit CW television series, and the writer of several New York Times best-selling Cinderella miniseries set in the world of Bill Willingham’s Fables series. He is also the co-creator of EDISON REX with artist Dennis Culver, and the co-writer of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D., Witchfinder, Rise of the Black Flame, and other titles set in the world of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy. In addition to his numerous comics projects, Roberson has written more than a dozen novels and three dozen short stories, and has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award four times; twice a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer; and has won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History in both the Short Form and Novel categories. He lives with his daughter, two cats, and far too many books in Portland, Oregon.
