9: What the Saint Said

It was not like in the movies. There was no millisecond when I realized with sickening clarity who had been accused, tried, and convicted in one fell swoop. Time did not slow down as Jack raised the gun and fired a single shot. I did not see it making its flight slowly across the room and toward its destination. There was no time for me to shout, "No!" in that same slow-motion scream, or dive heroically out of my chair to intercept the path of the bullet. None of this occurred. In fact, before I even truly realized what was going on, or who Jack's target was, the bullet had torn its way through her brain.

Thistle was dead before she hit the ground.

And that was when time ground to a halt. For a second that felt like years, nobody moved. Nobody spoke. And then, from somewhere inside me, a complaint that Something Was Off Here was issued.

"Good God, Jack," I said. So calmly. So rationally. So very much as if he'd not just shot the girl I was in love with in the forehead, and had instead just made some off-color joke.

"Problem solved," he said, and then left the room.

My heart was pounding somewhere in the vicinity of my throat. I stared at her body. At the bloody spot on her face, and the blood pooling around her head. Gladiola had moved cautiously to her side, touched her cheek, and begun to cry.

Very slowly I stood up. Magdalena, too, was crying now, hand over her mouth. But hers were—at least a little—the tears of the relieved. There was no doubt in my mind as to who had made the phone call. As to who had killed Thistle.

The Newly Dead parted before me, except Gladiola, and her I pushed aside without thought. She wasn't real. None of this could possibly be real, because how could there be a world without Thistle? My Thistle?

I dropped to my knees beside her. Running one arm behind her back, I pulled her up, onto my lap, ignoring the dampness on the back of her head that was now soaking into my pant-leg. I touched her lips, her cheekbone, and tried so hard not to see the bloodied hair and shattered bone and tissue, and the lifeless, staring eyes. They were still so blue. It wasn't fair that they should remain so vibrant, when there was nothing left to make them that way. I looked into them, but they looked past me, at nothing. They saw nothing.

Where had she gone, so quickly? How could it be that she was gone, when only a minute ago she had breathed? Had smiled her good mornings at me? What was life made of, really, that it could be so quickly shattered? That it could be so easily driven from a body?

And that was all I held, now: a body. Ashes only—the phoenix had flown. Thistle was gone.

I ran my fingertips over her eyelids, shutting away that azure-blue, and half expecting them to open again. Slowly, as if she was awakening from a dream. From a nightmare. From anything, so long as she only woke up, and opened her eyes! I watched her face for a moment, hoping against hope that her eyelids would flutter, at the very least.

They did not.

That was when I broke down. Sobbing, I pulled her against my chest, and held her there tightly. She smelled the same—what cruel joke was it that this lifeless corpse looked and smelled the same way that my Thistle had? And still, I expected her to move again—to wake up, and stretch her arms around me, and say, "Lory, I can't breathe, you're holding me too tight," and then laugh, and sit up, and smile, or at least move, damn it! At least move a little bit, so that I would know that she was in there!

But she did nothing. She did nothing at all, and so I clutched her to my breast, and rocked her like a child, and sobbed.

"Lory," Sidney said, after some time—how long I don't know. I had nearly exhausted myself of tears, at any rate. He put his hand on my shoulder.

"Don't touch me," I yelled, jerking up and turning toward him fiercely.

"Lory, please," he pleaded. He looked so tired. "She's gone. Just put her down."

I turned away from him, back to Thistle. Her eyes were still closed. Her chest neither rose nor fell. She was starting to lose heat, and soon she would be cold, and there would be no pretending that she was alive anymore, then.

Mechanically, I set her body back on the floor. I touched my fingers hesitantly to the bloody spot on her forehead.

"She's dead," I said, as if just noticing this fact.

Sidney took hold of my arm and half-pulled me to my feet.

"Let's get you cleaned up," he said. Because her blood was all over me—my shirt, my arms, my pants, and somehow in my bangs and on my face. How had I done all that? Had she bled so very much?

I followed Sidney upstairs numbly, no longer thinking anything at all—what was the point? I felt as if I'd been drained of all emotion.

Or at least I thought so, until Sidney started to dab at the blood on my face with a wet washcloth, and then I started to cry again—that blood on my face was the last time I'd ever touch any part of her. It was the closest I'd ever get to her again. It had been inside of her, very recently—had traveled through her legs, her liver, maybe. Her heart. And now it was on my face, on the washcloth, not at all where it belonged.

He dropped to his knees in front of me, and wrapped his arms around me.

"Shh…" he said. "You couldn't have known. None of us knew. It's all right."

But it's not all right, some dim corner of my mind protested, but I didn't quite know what to make of that. I just cried.

When I'd managed to compose myself once more, Sidney got clean clothes for me, and helped me wash the blood off. He started to guide me back to my bedroom, but I did not want to go there. Her clothes were on the floor. Her scent was on the bed. He said that he would clean all that up for me, and I let him.

I went back downstairs. No one was in the kitchen, but the table had been moved back, and the blood had been cleaned up. And Thistle—or Lexina, or what was left of either—was gone. But the bowl of cereal that she had so recently eaten out of remained. I knelt down and picked it up, and stared at it numbly.

So she'd been right. All that time, she had thought that Jack thought her to be treacherous, and she was right, and I'd tried to comfort her. I had tried to let her believe differently—to make her believe differently, and maybe she would have lived, had I not been so selfish. Had I not been so blind. I should have known, from the way he was acting, from the way he had acted the night before—the things he'd said. And we'd talked of running away! Why had I not said, "Let's leave tonight?" then, when we'd held each other, and said that we'd see the Taj Mahal?

That memory tormented me, now—the memory of how her body had felt, pressed against mine. And how I'd never know that joy again.

I spent the rest of the day in a state of catatonic disbelief on the couch, suspended between reality and television, and offers of food and comfort from the Newly Dead and Sidney and Magdalena, none of which I either wholly rejected or accepted.

That night I lay awake in that insensate condition, far too conscious of sheets that did not belong to me, and the reason for this.

When sleep finally did come to me it was full of strange dreams, and I woke once, and threw an arm out for comfort, expecting my hand to come into contact with Thistle's hips, or waist, or shoulder, even, only to find the bed flat, and empty. And lonely. And again, I cried.

I called in sick to work the next day, and spent it in much the same manner. The day after, I returned to the soda shop, only to have Hugh send me home again, saying that I looked awful. That night, Jack offered to take me out.

"To the Black Bull, even," he said.

I declined.

"C'mon, Lory," he pleaded. "Let me get you something. We could go get dinner, or see a movie. Hell, we could even get ice cream. I'll treat you to anything you want. You gotta want something, right?"

I gave him a look that told him very plainly what it was that I wanted.

He left me alone, after that.

It was on that night when my cell-phone rang. It was 1:00 in the morning, and I had been asleep—although I'd been asleep since 8 o'clock, having had no reason to be awake, no one to be awake for, and gladder, therefore, to be asleep.

Groggily, I took the phone from its place and searched for the correct button.

"Hello?" I mumbled tentatively, unsure who would be calling me at 1 a.m.

"Alister?" asked a decidedly male voice which took me a second to place.

"Edward?" I asked, upon recognition.

"Look," he said, tone all business. "Beatriz went into labor."

"What?" I nearly yelled, stumbling out of bed and toward the calendar on the opposite wall. "But she's not due until… until next week."

"I know that!" he snapped. "But Mama Nature makes her own plans! I thought you should know, anyway. You are her only family, I guess. No matter how much I detest you, she'd want for you to be here."

"Where are you?"

"St. Mary's. Waiting room. And boy, am I going to be doing a lot of waiting."

"Well, I'm coming," I said, throwing open the closet door, and grabbing a pair of pants.

"I assure you," Edward said, "I won't have gone anywhere. But if you stopped somewhere first, and got me, say a doughnut, I would be ever so grateful."

"I'll consider it," I said.

"All right, then. Buh-bye."

He hung up, and I dressed quickly.

"Thistle," I started to say in my excitement, turning back to the bed.

But she wasn't there.

Downstairs, I left a note taped to the television and then was gone.

"I didn't think you'd actually bring doughnuts."

"We're going to be here for quite awhile. And anyway, if you've got something in your mouth, you can't say anything idiotic."

"Words of wisdom. Surprising, coming from you."

I took a seat, and glanced at the clock above the receptionist's booth. 2:14 a.m.

"Why aren't you in there with her?" I wondered.

"I've been in and out. …Really, I'm… kind of squeamish."

"I never would have guessed it," I said, repositioning myself so that I could put my legs across the next chair.

"Sarcasm doesn’t' suit you," Edward grumbled, sitting down in a chair on the opposite side of the room.

"That wasn't sarcasm," I informed him. And it hadn't been—he didn't seem like a squeamish person. He was more like a small dog who would bark at anything up to five times his own size, but run away if it should show any signs of displeasure—maybe a little spineless, but not squeamish, per se.

"You're kidding," he said, and I looked up and across at him, and shook my head. He raised one eyebrow.

"That was dangerously close to being a compliment."

I shrugged. I didn't really feel like talking to him. I stood and went to a table at the end of the room which was strewn with magazines. One particular cover caught my eye—it was a news magazine featuring a man hidden in shadows so that you could not see his face. But his hand was clearly visible. He was holding a stick of dynamite out to the readers, like a gift. The fuse was lit. 'The Terror Continues,' said the headline. I picked the magazine up, along with several others.

"What're you reading?" Edward asked.

"Magazine," I said, completely uninformatively, and aware of it.

"I see that. Which ones?"

I held up several covers for him to look at. He nodded, leaned back, and shut his eyes.

"I think I'll try and get a little sleep."

"Oh?" I asked, opening the news magazine. "Don't you feel bad about that?"

He opened his eyes.

"About what?"

"About sleeping. While your wife is suffering through childbirth. I feel bad about it, and she's not even my wife."

"Thanks for ruining it for me," he said, standing up and heading to the magazine table.

Despite this, we both dozed, me without really meaning to. I read the article about us—about the Hungry Ghosts—and it made me sick. It had a pitying tone, as if the writer merely felt bad for such clearly disturbed people. It was almost forgiving. We'd killed their children—it was war—and they still had mercy. Eventually the tone of the article became so boring that my head drooped, so that my chin rested on my chest. I only meant to rest my eyes for a moment, because they were getting tired from reading, but soon I was half asleep.

Then I looked up, but it was more shadowy in the waiting room than it had been, although the lights were still clearly on. Thistle was standing over me, smiling serenely.

I jerked, dropped a magazine off of my lap, and came awake. I looked groggily up to the clock on the wall. 3:37. Edward, across the room, was also asleep. I stretched, and stood, and went over and shook him. He snapped awake, and looked up at me.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"Go see how Beatriz is doing," I told him.

He sighed, as if I was really putting him out of his way. He stood, though, and pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket.

"Go get me some coffee," he commanded. "I'm feeling magnanimous, so go ahead and get yourself some, too."

I nodded, accepted the money, and headed out the front door as he headed farther into the hospital.

I stepped out of the hospital doors, and found that it wasn't as cold as it had been the last few weeks. But I was glad, at least, that Jack had delivered on the jacket he'd promised me.

I remembered passing a convenience store a few blocks south of the hospital, and turned in that direction.

What an odd feeling—to be leaving a hospital at that time of night. With Edward's money in my pocket, no less. And that dream I'd had, just then, about Thistle. It hadn't quite felt like a dream. I bit my lip—hard—to stop the sudden feeling of hollowness in my chest like someone had scooped my heart and lungs out. What had she said, that night? Something about Ambrose, staring in the windows at her—why had she told me that? Had she realized, maybe, what I had done? And was that dream, just then, what it had felt like for her? Was a dream like that perhaps a warning of death? What Gemma had said—had she meant me? And if she had, would I see Thistle again?

"But you want to live," said a voice behind me.

A chill climbed up my spine, and I turned to see who was following me.

No one.

I turned all the way around to get a better look—and yes, the street was completely empty, with nowhere for someone to have hidden. And yet, I could have anticipated that.

"I'm going mad," I said to myself, more loudly than was necessary. My voice was a concrete sound. Definitely real, and traceable—it came always and only from me. I turned back around and there, in front of me, stood a girl. She was young, and slim, and pale, and wearing no shoes. She smiled.

"You've always been mad," she said. "Or that would be the standard answer, anyway. I'm usually not fond of standard answers. …Unless I coined them myself."

"Who are you?" I asked. Her presence had turned my stomach to ice-water, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. She wasn't quite real looking.

She smiled again, sweetly—but the sweet of rotting fruit and foliage.

"You know me," she said.

"I'm sure that I don't," I replied, slightly indignantly. She just continued to smile. Her eyes were dark, like deep wells, and deep water, and open graves.

"You want to live?" she repeated, but as a question, this time.

I nodded hesitantly.

"Do you? Really?" Her voice was as sweet as her smile, and every bit as cold. "Even with your heart's desire cold in the ground?"

"Who are you?" I repeated—whispered, really. All of my instincts told me to run. To get far away, and curl up in the fetal position somewhere warm and dark, because I had no power here.

"That's what I liked about Animals," the girl said. "People are animals, on some level—on many levels, really. Do you suppose Devas have instincts like yours, Starry-eyes? Do you suppose Devas have fight-or-flight?"

I think my heart actually palpitated at that time. I started to sweat, and drawing breath was a struggle.

"You like having that?" she wondered, and then giggled coquettishly. "It makes you human. It's what makes you alive. You want to be alive? Even with the one you would call your true-love gone?"

I nodded again.

"You want to live," she said, verbalizing the desire.

"Yes," I replied. "I want to live."

She smiled again.

"You know what the Saint said to that?" she asked. "He said, 'Don't hurt me! Don't hurt me!' and cowered." She giggled again. "But that's not the right answer. In fact, that's not even an answer at all!" She looked straight at me, then. "But you want to live, do you? So do it." She laughed. It was the sound of falling stars. "Go get your coffee, Alister," she said, and her voice was suddenly scornful. She walked past me, stirring the air, and leaving warmth like a spring breeze and the scent of gardenias on the air, and I dared not look back. It was, in fact, an effort to move my feet at all.

"That was clever of you, Alister—to get four cups instead of two."

I took one of the cups and then passed the tray to him.

"You gave me enough money, so I thought that was what you wanted," I said, crossing the waiting room and sitting back down.

"That's good," he said contemplatively. " Taking some initiative."

"I wouldn't call it that."

"Which is kind of like insulting yourself. Come on, take a compliment when someone gives you one."

"It's so unusual to hear one from you. I wasn't prepared. I'll be more careful in the future."

He laughed.

"You know, you're really not as stupid as I used to think you were."

"What a nice thing of you to say," I replied.

"See? You're already learning to accept compliments."

"Clearly you're a good influence."

"Maybe I am," he said, grinning. The smile faded suddenly. "I mean… I hope I am. I'm going to be a father. And you're going to be an uncle."

"I hadn't thought of that," I said, sitting up a little straighter—because I hadn't. "I never liked our uncle," I started to tell him, although I didn't know why. Maybe because it was nearly surreal—sitting in a hospital drinking coffee with Edward, and just having had a conversation on the street with a frightening little waif who, as far as I had known up to that point, was not actually a little waif at all.

"Why not?" Edward asked, seemingly—even more surreal—genuinely interested.

"He wasn't nice. He teased us horribly. And he always smelled like…" Suddenly, I couldn't quite remember, although it had been so vivid for an instant. "…I don't remember what he smelled like. It was there a minute ago," I said softly, mostly to myself, "but now it's gone."

I looked up, and found Edward looking back at me.

"Struck by lightning, huh?" he asked, with that usual crafty gleam in his eye that reminded me suddenly of Jack. "Beatriz told me about that. About how you can't remember things. What sort of things are they, that you don't remember?"

"How would I know that?" I snapped.

"I was just wondering," he said defensively.

At that moment, there was the clicking of shoes down the hallway, and a nurse—a Deva—hurried toward us.

"Mr. Rosenbaum," she said, "your wife requested your presence." And then, out of the blue: "You're both so tense. Please try to remain calm, in the delivery room—your mood seems to be reaching her through the Shekinah."

"Don't be stupid," he said, not even looking up at the woman. "She's tense because she's having a baby, and I'm tense because I'm nervous about it. Standing up, he rolled his eyes. "Go tell her I'm coming." The nurse hurried away, and he sighed. "Honestly, Alister, don't go spreading this around, but sometimes I hate them as much as you do. Honestly," he finished, heading off down the hall.

I watched him go. Blinked a few times. Tried to reconcile that statement with Edward in general, and wondered why he'd confided that in me. Things just kept getting more and more surreal.

Ann-Marie Rosenbaum was born at 11:09 a.m. on December the fourteenth. She was small, and pink, and the fine hair on her head promised already to be as dark as mine had ever been. Edward was so thrilled that he actually embraced me, much to Beatriz's amusement. She herself was exhausted, but serene, and glad to hear that I'd been in the waiting room for nine hours.

"My God," I found myself saying, "My little sister is a mother." I couldn't believe it—and wouldn't normally have said this, either, except that the caffeine high had lost its edge, and I was awake by sheer force of will only. But Beatriz thought that it was funny, and so did Edward, and also the nurse who happened to be in the room.

I left not long after, but not before Edward—Edward and not Beatriz—invited me to their annual Christmas party.

I went home, ate brunch, and dragged myself upstairs to a bed that still felt empty, but—strangely—not uncomfortably so any longer.

The next day, Jack approached me during breakfast. It was the first time I'd spoken to him since he'd tried to bribe me the night of Ann-Marie's birth.

"Lory," he said, "We need to talk."

"About what?" I asked, not looking at him, but instead at my instant oatmeal. The Newly Dead were pretending to ignore us. They'd moved, since that day, from their usual spot along the kitchen wall to an area more behind the table. An area more shielded from the door.

"Privately," he said.

"About what?" I repeated.

"Lory," he repeated, continuing the pattern, "We need to talk."

After a moment's hesitation, I stood. He smiled with relief, and headed into the living room. I followed. He went to the far side of the room, and sat down behind the little-used desk in the corner. I stood in front of the glass sliding doors at that end of the room, and looked out at the snowy yard between house and barn. Jack cleared his throat.

"Lory… I want things to be back to how they were before."

"Before what?"

"You know what I mean."

"I have no idea what you mean."

"Before Thistle," he said.

My head snapped up, but I continued to stare out the window.

"She was bad news, Lory," he said lowly. "Bad news. It's better this way. You didn't really love her."

At this, I did turn to look at him.

"Do not," I said coldly, "tell me who I do and do not love."

He looked at me sadly.

"I hadn't thought… Lory, I promise I'll believe you, no matter what you say. And I'll forgive you if you say yes. Please tell me—were you in on it?—her plot to inform the Seraphim, and get us all killed?"

I gritted my teeth together and slammed one fist against the door frame in rage.

"You know damn well who made that phone call, Jack!" I nearly yelled. "Don't you try to tell me about love."

He shook his head.

"That's not love, Lory," he said.

"And what the hell do you know about it?" I asked. I turned, and made as to leave, but Jack's voice stopped me halfway across the room.

"Because, Lory. Love doesn't try to change you. It accepts you for who you are. Thistle changed you."

I stopped, listening, but didn't turn back to look at him.

"Or can't you see it?" he asked. "Can't you even see how she changed you? Was she that much the sorceress?" he asked, quietly, almost as if to himself, "Did she have that much power over you, that you'd listen to her, over me—me, who's always done what's right for you, Lory. Who's known you and been your friend—your real friend—for so much longer?"

"Changed me?" I asked, still not turning.

"Yes! Think over the last few weeks, Lory. You haven't been thinking about our cause at all. Think about it. You didn't want to do anything. You just wanted to be with her."

It was true, I realized. I hadn't thought about it, because I'd been so happy, with Thistle. I hadn't needed it, or wanted it.

"She was distracting you," he continued. "Intentionally."

Had she known what she was doing to me? Had she wanted it that way?

"That's not true," I muttered.

"It is true. Think about it—the only other time she went on a mission with us, the Seraphim showed up."

"Not true. She went to the library with me. That went fine."

"But that was before Ambrose. You can't think she didn't know about that, too, Lory. You were gone for too long to have just chased him over the stream."

"No, no, no! She couldn't have known about that, either!" I said, wrapping my arms around myself. She hadn't. She'd trusted me, and I'd trusted her, and what he was saying, it couldn't be true. It couldn't.

"Listen to yourself!" he cried. "Even if she hadn't known, she had to have suspected—anyone would. She would have distanced herself from you, because of that. But she didn't, Lory. Because she wanted you on her side. She wanted to betray us, through you. And betray you, too. She would have betrayed all of us, but most of all you, because you thought you loved her. Because you were close to her. Like Caesar and Brutus, Lory."

"Like Caesar and Brutus…" That night… She had succumbed to me so easily. Had it been an act, then, after all?

"Remember when she first came up to you? And that was how it happened, if I'm not mistaken—she came to you. You didn't know why. You didn't trust her at first, either, remember? You told me."

"I never said that I didn't trust her!"

"You thought she wanted something from you."

"But—"

"You know I'm right."

He was. He was completely right—I had thought she wanted something, if only bigger meals. But even if it had only been something that small, wouldn't it still mean that she had been using me?

"Y-you're right. I did," I said. "But only because—"

"But only because she hadn't had time to get her claws in yet!"

At the anger in his voice I turned, finally, to look at him again. He looked upset, but as he saw me turn his expression softened.

"Lory. I'm only trying to protect you. I just…" He looked away from me, sighed deeply, and then looked back. "I just want to go back to how things were before she showed up. It wasn't that long ago. I know we can do it. You went soft for a while, but you can toughen up again. You can go back to being 'take-no-prisoners' Siderius, just like always. You've always been like that, Lory. Even back in the home. I remember watching you playing soccer with the kids your age, once, and you were vicious. I remember thinking, 'That kid is tough as nails.' Even back then. You can go back to that. I know it. You just have to wake up, and see how she used you. How she twisted you. That wasn't love, Lory. It was manipulation."

He looked at me. For a moment I looked back at him, but then found myself looking away. At the floor.

"I'm sorry, Jack," I said. "Maybe… maybe you're right." And if he was right… that meant that she had been using me, that whole time. I bit my lip, half in disbelief, half from the anger that was starting to burn in me. Had I been that easy to manipulate for her? It made sense now—it really did. That first night that I spoke to her, she had wanted something, and I had known it, but I had ignored it, because she seemed so nice, later. I had been foolish enough to love her! It was too much of a fairytale, after all, for it to have been true.

"Don't be sorry, Lory," he said, and he was suddenly in front of me, hand on my shoulder. "It wasn't your fault. You thought you loved her. But it wasn't real. I know you'll be more careful, next time."

I nodded slowly, lost in thought.

"Just remember," he continued, slipping away from me. "The cause comes first."

"The cause comes first," I repeated. Because that had been my mistake, hadn't it?—losing sight of my purpose in life, because she seemed more important. Because I'd been selfish, by choosing my own direct happiness—even if that had been a lie, too—over what really mattered.

Because, in the end, even if she hadn't been manipulating me, she had still betrayed me by making me lose sight of my goals—the goals that I'd been working out and living toward for most of my life.

Because love was a distraction. A nuisance. A trap. It was time to get back to my goals.

It made perfect sense—and Jack was only trying to do what was best for me, and for everyone else, too. But, I had to wonder why I still felt as if someone had taken my heart out of my chest and left in its place a lump of lead.

"Gaudium Gladius," Jack started, as we all ate dinner that night. 'All' being everyone except Sidney, but that I was starting to get used to.

"Who's that?" Magdalena asked.

"Did I ask you to talk?" he snapped. "Hold your horses and I'll explain it." He looked around at us, to make sure that we were all paying attention to him. And of course we were, so he continued. "Gaudium Gladius," he said again, looking sharply at Magdalena, "is not a who. It's a what. It's that sword Sachever had. Remember that? Remember how it glowed?" He looked around the room again, which involved turning all the way around in his chair to see the Newly Dead. "Dammit!" he said, while doing this. "What're you all back there for? I can't see you, and I don't like it. Go back to where you've always been." They all hesitantly picked up their plates and moved back toward the wall, but there was a particular, noticeable spot where nobody sat down. Jack smiled once they were back in their normal place, and continued.

"He made it glow. He commanded it to glow," he said, looking at them. "We saw it, didn't we, Lory?"

I nodded.

"And it cut through solid steel like it was butter," he said, pounding one fist on the table. "And damn it, I really liked that knife, too—it was well-made." He cleared his throat. "Anyway… I've been doing some research, lately. This sword, it's a pretty new thing. They found it seventeen years ago, under the catacomb floor in the Temple of the Shekinah."

"How do you know that?" Magdalena asked skeptically.

"Because I went to the library, and looked for 'Gaudium Gladius' and found old newspaper articles! Now stop interrupting—you're ruining the flow of the story!" They glared at each other for a second before he continued.

"Nobody knew where it came from," he said. "It's all spooky-like, you know? One day one of the priests just went down there, I guess, and saw this ray of light or some shit like that coming up from between the cracks in the floor. So they rip the floor up, and what do they find? This nice old sword, that nobody knew was down there to begin with. And that temple is old, man. It's gotta be, what? 'Bout three-hundred years old, or so? And it's built on top of an even older place, too. Some old Christian church or something, right?" he asked, looking around at us for agreement.

I nodded.

"There's some legend about that, isn't there?" he asked. "Like, the priest converted or something, and got excommunicated and burned at the stake or something like that. Anyway, that was a freaking long time ago, and it's not really important, except they think that the sword might be something that survived that old church getting torn down. I don’t know the first thing about that, and apparently neither does anyone else, but know what?—it doesn’t matter. What matters is, we're getting our asses kicked because of this sword, and we don't even know who these kids are. Just that they kind of want to kill us, and they have the uncanny ability to know where we're going to be, and when, and apparently the girl can also feel where we are." He looked around at us.

"It's strange," I said suddenly. Jack gave me a look, but let me speak.

"I mean," I started to say, again, "she's Hoffman's daughter. But when I went over there, he told me that she's only half Deva. He said she can't feel the Shekinah. I remember that. And I thought… I thought the Shekinah let Devas feel how you are. Not where. So how can she know where we are?"

"I don't have any idea," Jack said. "But I do have something else figured out." He leaned forward, and put his elbows on the table. He had an uncanny knack for making you think that he was letting you alone in on a big secret, even when he was telling a roomful of people, as now. "If we don't get that sword, we're going to continue to get our asses kicked."

I blinked at him. That had been kind of a let-down statement.

"Wait, I'm not done," he said, sensing this. "Think about it. There've been no reports of this sword going missing from the Temple, even though Sachever's clearly got it. Therefore," he said, leaning back in his chair, "we can reasonably deduce that they're working in conjunction with the Temple."

A sudden thought occurred to me.

"The big temple?" I asked, "on the north end of town?"

"Yeah," Jack said. "They're the ones with the sword."

"Oh my god," I said, hitting my forehead with the heel of my hand.

"What?" Jack asked suspiciously.

"Hoffman's house," I said. "It was just past that, maybe five miles. I had forgotten how far out the Temple is. That's why they didn't freeze to death—because they went there. Dear god, how could I have been so stupid?"

"Whoa, Lory. Chill. You've been forgiven. We're dealing with it." He smiled glamorously.

"How are we dealing with it?" I asked.

"We're going to break into the Temple," he said flippantly. "Or sneak in. Or something. I'm working it out." He pushed his chair back from the table suddenly, and Triss had to move quickly to avoid being stepped on. "But in the meantime," he said, putting his plate in the sink, "I'm going to go see if we're on the news at all tonight." He grinned rakishly, and left the kitchen.

I was alone downstairs, still watching television, when a movement outside caught my eye—a dark figure in the back yard moving unsteadily against the snow and moonlight. My first instinct was panic, to be honest—remembering what Thistle had said about Ambrose, and the several dreams I'd had about Thistle—but I realized quickly that it was too tall to be either one of them. And it was definitely human. But I didn't even realize who it was until he threw his coat off, and I recognized the loud shirt as being one of Sidney's.

Unsure of what he was doing, I turned the television off, hurried to the sliding door and threw it open.

"Sidney!" I yelled, but he was staring up at the moon, and seemed not to have heard me—although there was no way that he could not have. There was not another sound to be heard, and he was barely thirty feet away. "Sidney!" I yelled again, and he still ignored me. He swayed slightly, and then fell to the side.

"Damn it," I muttered to myself. Wearing only house shoes, I went out into the snow after him, assuming that he'd passed out. But, when I got there, I saw that he hadn't. He was laying on the ground, staring up at the moon, with wide-eyed wonder and a little bit of fear. He seemed not to register that I was standing over him, now. I retrieved his coat from the ground and threw it over my shoulder before returning to him. I prodded him in the ribs lightly with one foot.

"Come on, Sidney," I said. "Get up. It's cold out here."

"It's colder underground," he replied, not looking at me. "I'm just getting used to it."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, exasperated already. I just didn't want to have to keep dealing with this. I kneeled down and grabbed him under his arms, and the smell of amaladine was so strong that I choked on it, and felt as if I might vomit. He was dead weight in my arms.

"Come on," I said, "Help me a little." But he didn't seem to be paying attention to me, any longer. I dragged him back into the house, and by that time he seemed to have actually passed out. I put him on the couch, and went to shut the door. I came back, and put a hand to his face, to see if he was cold, or feverish, or anything like that. His skin temperature seemed fine, but I realized with a start that I could feel no breath leaving his nose. His mouth was slightly parted, and so I put my hand there, and found no air movement there, either.

"Oh my god," I said aloud, panicking. I couldn’t remember what one did to a person who wasn't breathing. "Somebody!" I yelled. "Help!" I knew for sure that brain damage resulted from being without air for too long, and so I did the first thing that occurred to me—I slapped him.

Strangely, it worked. His eyes opened, and he made a strange noise, but was breathing again, anyway.

"Lory?" he asked unsurely.

"God damn it, Sidney," I said, angry now. "Do not go to sleep, do you hear me?"

"I hear you," he said. "Why would I want to go to sleep?" he asked, but closed his eyes again anyway.

"Keep talking to me," I said. "What did you do, tonight?"

"Have you seen Gemma again?" he murmured.

I started to reply angrily, but then stopped.

"Yes," I said, thinking about it. "I think I did. Why?"

"What did she say?"

"She asked if I wanted to live."

"And you do want to live," he said, opening his eyes again. "So do I, Lory."

"Oh my god," I said, for what felt like the third or fourth time. "Sidney, you're killing yourself! You've got to stop doing this. You've got to."

"I can't," he said, smiling, and looking at the ceiling. "It's too late."

"But you're making what she said true by yourself, by believing in it, don't you see?" I asked, grabbing a hold of his shirt and shaking him, to make sure that he was paying attention. And then I realized that that was almost exactly what Thistle had told me. I let go of his shirt.

Smile still in place, his eyes drifted over to me.

"One of us is going to die," he said. "But does either of us really have anything to live for?"

"Yes," I said emphatically. "Sidney, you're living for something. We have a cause—a purpose. You can't forget that."

"I haven't forgotten it. Neither has she forgotten about it. Do you mind if I watch television, Lory?" he asked suddenly.

I shook my head, and handed him the remote.

"I'll go to bed, soon," he promised, already channel-surfing, the light of the screen reflected strangely in his eyes.

I nodded, and stood, feeling strangely resigned to… something.

"Life and death," I heard Sidney saying, as I climbed the stairs. "Life and death, Lory, and the world goes on."

Unless, I thought, you're the one who's died.