old VW.
Michael and Alicia got out of the car and went into the house, while I drove a slow lap around their block, keeping my eyes peeled. When I didn’t spot any imminent maniacs or anticipatory fiends about to pounce, I parked a bit down the street and walked toward Michael’s place.
It happened pretty fast. A soccer ball went bouncing by me, a small person came pelting after it, and just as it happened, I heard the crunchy hiss of tires on the street somewhere behind me and very near. I have long arms, and it was a good thing. I grabbed the kid, who must have been seven or eight, about half a second before the oncoming car hit the soccer ball and sent it sailing. Her feet went flying out ahead of her as I swung her up off the ground, and her toes missed hitting the car’s fender by maybe six inches.
The car, one of those fancy new hybrids that run on batteries part of the time, went by in silence, without the sound of the motor to give any warning. The driver, a young man in a suit, was jabbering into a cell phone that he held to his ear with one hand. He never noticed. As he reached the end of the block, he turned on his headlights.
I turned to find the child, a girl with inky black hair and pink skin, staring at me with wide, dark eyes, her mouth open and uncertain. She had a bruise on her cheek a couple of days old.
“Hi,” I said, trying to be as unthreatening as I could. I had limited success. Tall, severe-looking men in long black coats who need a shave are challenged that way. “Are you all right?”
She nodded her head slowly. “Am I in trouble?”
I put her down. “Not from me. But I heard that moms can get kind of worked up about—”
“Courtney!” gasped a woman’s voice, and a woman I presumed to be the child’s mother came hurrying from the nearest house. Like the child, she had black hair and very fair skin. She had the same wary eyes, too. She extended her hand to the little girl, and then pulled her until Courtney stood behind her mother. She peeked around at me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded—or tried to. It came out as a nervous question. “Who are you?”
“Just trying to keep your little girl from becoming a victim of the Green movement,” I said.
She didn’t get it. Her expression changed, as she probably wondered something along the lines of
I get that a lot.
“There was a car, ma’am,” I clarified. “She didn’t see it coming.”
“Oh,” the woman said. “Oh. Th-thank you.”
“Sure.” I frowned at the girl. “You okay, sweetheart? I didn’t give you that bruise, did I?”
“No,” she said. “I fell off my bike.”
“Without hurting your hands,” I noted.
She stared at me for a second before her eyes widened, and she hid behind her mother a little more.
Mom blinked at me, and then at the child. Then she nodded to me, took the daughter by the shoulders, and frog-marched her toward the house without another word. I watched them go, and then started back toward Michael’s place. I kicked Courtney’s soccer ball back into her yard on the way.
Charity answered the door when I knocked. She was of an age with Michael, though her golden hair hid fairly well any strands of silver that might have shown. She was tall and broad-shouldered, for a woman, and I’d seen her crush more than one inhuman skull when one of her children was in danger. She looked tired—a year of seeing your husband undergoing intensely difficult physical therapy can do that, I guess. But she also looked happy. Our personal cold war had entered a state of détente, of late, and she smiled to see me.
“Hello, Harry. Surprise lesson? I think Molly went to bed early.”
“Not exactly,” I said, smiling. “Thought I’d just stop by to visit.”
Charity’s smile didn’t exactly vanish, but it got cautious. “Really.”
“Harry!” screamed a little voice, and Michael’s youngest son, of the same name, flung himself into the air, trusting me to catch him. Little Harry was around Courtney’s age, and generally regarded me as something interesting to climb on. I caught him and gave him a noisy kiss on the head, which elicited a giggle and a protesting “Yuck!”
Charity shook her head wryly. “Well, come in. Let me get you something to drink. Harry, he’s not a jungle gym. Get down.”
Little Harry developed spontaneous deafness and scrambled up onto my shoulders as we walked into the living room. Michael and Alicia, his dark-haired, quietly serious daughter, were just coming in from the garage, after putting away softball gear.
“Papa!” little Harry shouted, and promptly plunged forward, off my shoulders, arms outstretched to Michael.
He leaned forward and caught him, though I saw him wince and exhale tightly as he did it. My stomach rolled uncomfortably in sympathy.
“Alicia,” Charity said.
Her daughter nodded, hung her ball cap on a wooden peg by the door, and took little Harry from Michael, tossing him up into the air and catching him, much to the child’s protesting laughter. “Come on, squirt. Time for a bath.”
“Leech!” Harry shouted, and immediately started climbing on his sister’s shoulders, babbling about something to do with robots.
Michael smiled as he watched them exit. “I asked Harry to dinner tonight,” he told Charity, kissing her on the cheek.
“Did you?” she said, in the exact same tone she’d used on me at the door.
Michael looked at her and sighed. Then he said, “My office.”
We went into the study Michael used as his office—more cluttered than it had been before, now that he was actually using it all the time—and closed the door behind us. Without a word, I took out the photos I’d received and showed them to Charity.
Michael’s wife was no dummy. She looked at them one at a time, in rapid succession, her eyes blazing brighter with every new image. When she spoke, her voice was cold. “Who took these?”
“I don’t know yet,” I told her. “Though Nicodemus’s name does sort of leap to mind.”
“No,” Michael said quietly. “He can’t harm me or my family anymore. We’re protected.”
“By what?” I asked.
“Faith,” he said simply.
That would be a maddening answer under most circumstances—but I’d seen the power of faith in action around my friend, and it was every bit as real as the forces I could manage. Former presidents get a detail of Secret Service to protect them. Maybe former Knights of the Cross had a similar retirement package, only with more seraphim. “Oh.”
“You’re going to get to the bottom of this?” Charity asked.
“That’s the idea,” I said. “It might mean I intrude on you all a little.”
“Harry,” Michael said, “there’s no need for that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Charity replied, turning to Michael. She took his hand, very gently, though her tone stayed firm. “And don’t be proud.”
He smiled at her. “It isn’t a question of pride.”
“I’m not so sure,” she said quietly. “Father Forthill said we were only protected against supernatural dangers. If there’s something else afoot . . . You’ve made so many enemies. We have to know what’s happening.”
“I often don’t know what’s happening,” Michael said. “If I spent all my time trying to find out, there wouldn’t be enough left to live in. This is more than likely being done for the sole purpose of making us worried and miserable.”
“Michael,” I said quietly, “one of the best ways I know to counter fear is with knowledge.”
He tilted his head, frowning gently at me.
“You say you won’t live in fear. Fine. Let me poke around and shine a light on things, so we know what’s going on. If it turns out to be nothing, no harm done.”
“And if it isn’t?” Charity asked.
