The hotel was one of the older ones, from before the days when gambling had been legalized in Atlantic City. Ria had booked their rooms through LlewellCo, to avoid any possibility that the Fairchilds would be able to find out where Ace was staying the night before the hearing.
When Hosea went to check in, Ace stayed in the car, hunkered down low in the seat, her cap pulled down over her ears and the collar of her wool coat turned up over her neck. After a moment she reached into her purse and dug out a pair of sunglasses and put them on.
There was no reason any of Daddy's people would be looking for her here. Ria had promised her that. They'd be expecting her to come down tomorrow with Mr. Tilford, maybe, or be staying at one of those big fancy hotels on the Boardwalk.
But nothing about any of this was exactly going the way they'd expected, was it? When she'd filed those court papers, Ria had told her that she wouldn't have to go back to her parents, even though they'd have to know where she was, but she'd expected that they'd at least try to get her to come home. But it had been almost four months, and she hadn't heard one peep out of either of them.
She frowned. Maybe Daddy hadn't told Mama she'd turned up again, especially since she was being so undutiful? It was possible. He'd certainly do that if Gabriel Horn told him to. Daddy would do just about anything Mr. Horn said.
And maybe it was Mr. Horn who said Daddy wasn't to write her. . . .
Soon enough you'll know, Ace told herself grimly. You'll see your father tomorrow. And maybe Mama too.
Just as long as Gabriel Horn wasn't any part of it.
She shivered, and scrunched down even lower in the seat. She remembered the first time she'd ever seen him. It was a few months before she'd decided to run away. She'd been fifteen then. Not exactly naive—nobody who grew up at the center of Billy Fairchild's Chautauqua could lead a really sheltered life—but she hadn't seen a tenth of the horrors she'd see later, when she took to the road.
But nothing that would ever happen to her later—not the people who tried to hurt her, not the people who tried to take from her, not even the dark things that had chased after her, Magnus, and Jaycie—had been as terrifying as the first time she'd looked into Gabriel Horn's eyes.
Daddy had brought him home to dinner one night. That wasn't unusual; her father was always bringing home people, especially people he was thinking of taking on, and Mama took pride in her table and welcomed guests. Ben and Joshua and Andrew—all of Daddy's inside top-level folks—were there to meet him.
He'd brought Mama flowers and candy. He was dressed up fine, in an expensive suit and a shirt with French cuffs, all smiling and nice-mannered. Daddy'd been excited, Ace could tell.
"And this is my daughter, Heavenly Grace," Daddy had said, introducing her.
"Ah, the little songbird. You must be very proud of her God-given gifts, Reverend."
Gabriel Horn was a tall man, as good-looking as a movie star. He'd taken her hand and bowed slightly, almost as if he were about to kiss it. Startled, she'd looked up.
His eyes were as green as glass, and colder than ice. Something about them seemed to burn, making her feel as if she'd been stripped naked right there. She'd caught her breath in a strangled gasp. Suddenly she'd wanted to turn and run away right then, run and keep running, but nobody else had seemed to see anything wrong with the handsome dark-haired fellow, and Mama was looking at her with that firm expression that told her she'd better not forget her manners.
So she'd forced herself to smile.
"Very proud," Gabriel Horn said again, letting go of her hand. He had a deep voice, perfect for preaching, and she'd wondered for one horror-struck moment if he was one of Daddy's new deacons. If he was, she'd see him every day on stage.
And she'd known right then that she never wanted to see Gabriel Horn again.
Dinner had been horrible. Mama had flirted with Mr. Horn just as if she were a young girl again, and Daddy hadn't seemed to notice or mind. Ace had barely been able to eat a bite; at least she'd found out that Mr. Horn wasn't to be a deacon. He was going to be helping Daddy out with the business end of things. His new advisor, Daddy had said.
But that didn't mean Ace didn't see him. Mr. Horn became a frequent guest at the house—and sometimes, when he thought she wasn't looking, she'd see him watching her. Not in any sexual way—that would actually have been better. She could have understood that, though she would have hated it. But she'd had no words for the look in his eyes when he watched her.
It had been like—like the time she'd seen a blacksnake eyeing a nest of baby birds. That snake knew he was going to get those birds, and eat up every one of them. The parent-birds that were dive-bombing him and trying to drive him off knew it too. He was perfectly patient, and perfectly controlled, and perfectly avid, as if he was already feeling those babies going down his throat. The parent-birds were hysterical, knowing they couldn't stop him. It had been unspeakably horrible.
Gabriel Horn was exactly like that snake. And she was a little baby bird.
She'd known better than to try to get help from her parents. What could she say other than that she didn't like him? And she already knew that both Daddy and Mama liked Gabriel Horn just fine, and more than fine.
And Daddy wouldn't let her stop singing with the choir, and using her Gift in that bad way, and somehow she'd known, now that Gabriel Horn had come, that there would be no escape. Ever.
So she'd run. She'd thought she was free. She'd hoped she was free. But now it didn't look like she was, and if she had to see Gabriel Horn one more time, she didn't know what would happen.
Just then Hosea came back, two key-envelopes in his hand. He opened the car door—the Cadillac was like a bank vault—and got in.
"Our rooms are around the back. Ah thought we'd get settled in, an' then Ah had a mind to do a bit o' explorin', while you rested up."
* * *
But Ace had absolutely no intention of staying behind, especially when she learned what his destination was, so less than an hour later, they were on the road again, heading toward the outskirts of the city.
With only a couple of wrong turns, they reached something called the Heavenly Grace Business Park. A brightly lit archway in bright primary colors proclaimed the entrance to the Heavenly Grace Cathedral and Casino of Prayer, but they drove past that. A few hundred yards farther down the main road there was a more conventional-looking entrance to the rest of the business park. A large sign at the entrance listed the names of various businesses located within the complex: Christian Family Intervention, Red Nails Music Publishing, Fairchild Ministries, Inc., and several others that were so utterly generic that they were completely meaningless. "Worldwide Fulfillment," for example. That could be almost anything.
"Miz Llewellyn says that the Reverend owns all this," Hosea commented noncommittally, as they drove through the secondary entrance.
Ace shifted uneasily on the wide bench seat of the Cadillac. "I never exactly knew everything that was going on," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, "but I wasn't stupid, either. There's a whole lot more money here now than there ever was in Tulsa." Or a lot more debt.
Neither of them voiced the obvious question: if Reverend Fairchild had suddenly become so wealthy, where had all the money come from, especially without Ace's presence to ensure the contributions of the faithful? If it had been from anything illegal, Ria would certainly have found out, and used the information to blackmail Billy into submission.
But . . . where?
They drove through the empty section of the grounds, past several obviously unoccupied buildings left over from the site's previous incarnation as a more traditional business park. Yellow sawhorses blocked the roads that led deeper into the complex, and parked in front of one of them was a car with a light-bar on the top and two uniformed security guards sitting inside.
"Touchy about their privacy, aren't they?" Hosea commented dryly.
Farther along the road that led back toward the casino, a couple of larg
e work-trailers were parked, and it was apparent that some sort of construction project was in the early stages. Hosea slowed down to take a closer look, but a car parked next to one of the trailers—obviously another security vehicle—flashed its headlights at them in an unspoken warning to move along.
Then they reached the front of the casino.
The cathedral and casino was obviously a new building, and unlike the other buildings in the complex, which were only two or three stories high, it was a true tower: at least ten stories of gold glass and white concrete crowned the casino itself, and like casinos everywhere, the decoration of its facade would put the pipe dreams of an Oriental potentate to shame.
But not even someone familiar with the cheerful excesses of Las Vegas could be prepared for the three-story light-up cross that surmounted the entryway to the Casino of Prayer, the bright facade of lambs, lilies, scourges, crowns of thorns, fish, baskets of bread, and other, less immediately recognizable symbols, that decorated the doorway and marquee of the building. Everything that didn't flash on and off glittered with tinsel, and from within the casino—the doors were open even on this cool March day—came the sounds of familiar Gospel hymns done to an insistent disco beat, intermixed with the ringing of slot machines.
Even at this time of day, the parking lot was filled with cars. There were several tour buses parked at the edge of the parking lot, and as they watched, a shuttle pulled up to the entrance to disgorge a load of passengers before heading on its way. The Reverend was obviously not missing a trick when it came to drawing in the marks.
* * *
If this was not Hell, Hosea Songmaker reflected to himself, it was probably as close an approximation as you could achieve without actual black hoodoo. He was not completely certain, but he suspected this entire production skated pretty close to the edge of blasphemy, provided he understood the word properly. At the very least, it was a bad thing in as much as it made a mockery of God and His good things, and kept people who needed them away from them by turning them into a venal sideshow.
This was not the work of any kind of preacher that he was familiar with. In fact, it made him begin to wonder just what kind of a preacher this Billy Fairchild was.
And it made him just as uneasy as the rest of the business park did Ace.
He wasn't quite certain why. Certainly it wasn't very tasteful, but that didn't make it either Guardian business, or something an Apprentice Bard needed to stick his nose into. And in plain fact, the better Billy Fairchild was doing for himself, the less reason he had to hang on to Ace and her Talent.
But where was the money for all this coming from?
Though the cathedral and casino resembled the casino hotels on the Boardwalk with its crowning tower, Hosea knew from what Miz Llewellyn had told him that there was no hotel here. The tower contained offices for the various components of the Fairchild empire, the broadcasting studio, and some private apartments for some of the senior staff. So there wasn't any hotel money, just whatever the casino brought in. There was money in gambling—Lord knew folks were both weak-willed and too hopeful, sometimes, and lost more money than they could fairly afford to. And even good God-fearing folks who would never have thought of gambling might be tempted and tried when gambling came in with the aura of false sanctity hanging about it.
But was there this much money?
Hosea's eyes narrowed as he watched the doors of the casino. This place was out in the middle of nowhere as far as the casinos went, even with the shuttles the Reverend was running. You wouldn't get any walk-in traffic from the Boardwalk casinos. And a goodly number of people would be put off by the hymns and the crosses, thinking that religion and gambling didn't mix any too well.
He reached into the back seat of the car and laid his hand on Jeanette's case.
The banjo was very old, handed down in Hosea's family for generations. It was the masterwork of a master craftsman, strung with silver. But what made it truly special was that it housed . . . a ghost. The spirit bound to it by Bardic power was a woman named Jeanette Campbell. She haunted the banjo by her own will, remaining tied to the world in order to make amends for all the wrongs she'd done when she was alive. Only Hosea could hear her and speak to her—and then, only when he was actually playing the banjo—but even dormant, Jeanette's presence lent extra power to his Bardic gifts.
He looked again at the garish facade of the cathedral and casino, trying to understand the feeling of wrongness that he felt so strongly, but no explanation came. Whatever the source of Billy Fairchild's newfound prosperity, it was nothing Jeanette could sense—and if it were something illegal, Miz Llewellyn would have found that out, used it against Billy in a New York minute. Hosea knew that perfectly well. Miz Llewellyn was a good woman, but she had the iron in her soul of a Good Book prophet when the need was on her. And like Jael, she used any and every weapon that came into her hand.
So the casino and cathedral, unsettling as it was, was not only mundane, but legitimate.
"Ah'm guessin' you don't want to go inside," he said to Ace, removing his hand from Jeanette's case.
Ace shuddered vehemently. "Even if I could go anywhere near the casino floor without being caught for being underage—" she said, "—no. I know it's been almost two years since any of Daddy's folks have seen me, and I look a lot different than I did then, but if any of them recognized me—if Gabriel Horn saw me . . ."
"Well, we won't let that happen," Hosea said comfortably, backing the enormous pink length of the Cadillac out of the parking place and turning in the direction of the main gate this time. "It's something to have seen the place. An' Ah'm not sure now whether Ah'm looking forward to the tour Ah'm likely to get of it myself—or not."
* * *
Earlier that same day, Billy Fairchild convened his regular Wednesday morning department meeting.
He'd learned early on—as soon as there was more to the Ministry than a broken-down bus and a box of mail-order Bibles—that while the right hand didn't always need to know what the left hand was doing, he needed to know what pockets both hands were in at all times.
Unlike the business meetings, the department meetings focused on information, not money: what was new, what was doing well, what might be introduced: new people, new faces, new ideas. They were held in a much larger conference room than the business meeting—one usually given over to "Praise Training" and "Abundance Orientation" for the new hires and junior staff. The department heads and their assistants who attended filled three big tables arranged in a horseshoe, and there was plenty of coffee and doughnuts.
Today Billy would be formally introducing Parker Wheatley to everyone. They'd be broadcasting the Praise Hour with his introduction tonight, and the rehearsals—without the audience present, of course—had gone very well. Wheatley was a good speaker, strong-voiced and convincing, and if he wasn't full of Gospel fire, that didn't matter too much once he got going. And if he could do what he said, and hand over a by-Jesus demon, then when you came down to it, Billy didn't really care if he sounded like an accountant reading a quarterly report.
But he didn't. He had a passion on him, and what was better, he had a message that would bring the Faithful bolt upright in their seats and make them pay attention, if Billy Fairchild was any judge at all of human nature. People liked signs and wonders and miracles, but even more than that, they loved horrors: they wanted to hear about the gates of Hell, the fiery pit opening wide to suck in sinners, and best of all, demons clothed in human flesh, walking among them, preying upon their innocent children. He'd learned that when he'd started running "Judgment Houses" every weekend in October up to Halloween. People'd pay good money, ten and even fifteen dollars apiece, to get scared in the name of the Lord and special effects.
And if he could do that every day of the year—
That should keep the donations rolling in.
He got to his feet and waited for the buzz of conversation to die down.
"Friends, I'd like to introduce you to the
newest member of our little fellowship. This here's Mr. Parker Wheatley. He used to work in Washington D.C., until they threw him out for witnessing to the truth. Now he's come to us to get his message out, and we're glad to have him. He'll be joining me on tonight's Praise Hour—as some of you already know, it's going to be a very special event, and I encourage all of you who can to attend. Of course, we'll be showing it on the big screens down on the casino floor, but it's going to be something you'll want to tell the grandkiddies that you were there for in person. Stand on up, Brother Wheatley, and tell these good folks a little something about your mission."
Parker Wheatley got to his feet amid polite applause. He nodded graciously and began to speak—an expanded and slightly modified version of the speech he had given in Fairchild's office the previous week. As he spoke, the room fell utterly silent.
* * *
At the far end of one of the tables, Toirealach O'Caomhain raised his head and gazed toward his master with barely concealed horror. Several of the others along the tables were doing the same thing—all of them Prince Gabrevys's liege-folk.
* * *
If he ever discovered who among their own had betrayed them so thoroughly, Gabriel vowed silently, that one would not live either long or happily. There was no hint of magic about the green garments Wheatley wore, but there did not have to be: Gabriel recognized the work of a Master Smith.
To mortals, Danu had given three great Gifts: Healing, Bardcraft, and Smithcraft. In the days of Gabrevys's youth, those with the Gift of Smithcraft were great forgers of weapons and cunning engines, for whatever they turned their hand to, that thing they could craft with greater skill than any other mortal, but the gift of Smithcraft extended to the making of all things that could be made with hands. In ancient times, those with that Gift had spun and woven as well, both for good and ill, and their work had passed into legend as God-touched and magickal. One with that Gift could surely weave cloth so strong and fine that it would turn any spell of Seleighe or Unseleighe casting.
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