by Paul Neuhaus
Truitt was the first one to speak. “You’ve… got Tīvara invading your home. That’s bad. That’s very, very bad.”
“I’m aware,” Henaghan said testily.
“It’s because of what you did in San Francisco, isn’t it? At their temple. I don’t know how I feel about all of this. Maybe I shouldn’t be involved. I’ve got patients to worry about.”
Quinn didn’t want to have that conversation right then, but she understood. “Look, doctor, do whatever you feel is right. I won’t hold it against you.” She turned to David, started to speak then stopped. She forgot what she was going to say.
Olkin stepped in to fill the space. “Look, go in there where you’re needed. I’ll take Dr. Terry home then I’ll come back. But I’ll be in the living room. I’m going to make some calls and we’re going to get your window and door fixed this afternoon. I can also get food into the house or whatever else you guys need. I won’t need any help, and I don’t want you coming out. But, when you do come out, I’ve got something for you.”
Quinn’s eyes filled with tears. Before she turned to go to Josie’s bedroom, she gave her former boss a firm embrace.
5
Absent Mothers
Molly and Quinn laid with Josie in her bed until nightfall. The girl slept but she was restless and fitful. Whenever she woke, she cried, and the two women held her until she exhausted herself again and went back to sleep. Finally, Quinn reached over and grabbed Molly’s arm. “Do you need anything?” she whispered, and Blank shook her head.
Henaghan exited Josie’s bedroom and went to the living room. All afternoon, she’d heard the sounds of hammers and saws and now she could see the progress for herself. The workmen had already hung a new door. It was unpainted but looked secure. The front window had a new frame but still awaited glass. On the lawn, Quinn could see half a dozen men with sawhorses and power tools. “They’re gonna stay until the work is done,” Olkin said.
Quinn looked over at the agent. He was sitting on one of the barstools, smoking a cigarette. That was odd. “Since when are you a smoker?”
“Since this afternoon. This is my first smoke in nearly thirty years. I went to Seven Eleven to buy a frozen burrito and there they were. Marlboros. They called to me. ‘David,’ they said. ‘We miss you, David.’”
The redhead went around him into the kitchen. She filled a glass from the dispenser on the front of the refrigerator. “Well, don’t get lung cancer on my account.”
“I don’t need your help. I can get lung cancer all on my own.” The two of them watched the men work for a moment until David said, “How’s she doing?”
Quinn took a long drink. “She’s alternating between manic and catatonic. Pretty much what you’d expect.”
Olkin spun on his stool. “I don’t know the first thing about custody in California. I’ll find you a lawyer.”
“That,” Henaghan said. “Might be a little premature. Which makes me think… Gimme a minute.”
David shrugged. “Do what you gotta do.”
Quinn went back to Josie’s bedroom and found Josie awake and Molly asleep. She knelt down next to Josie and said, “Honey? Honey, I’m sorry, but I need something from you. Do you have your grandparents’ telephone number in Canada? I’m gonna try and reach your mother.” Taft thought for a moment then nodded. She picked up her phone from the nightstand, found the number and gave it to Henaghan. Quinn crept back into the living room, past Olkin a second time and entered the workroom. After she shut the door behind herself she dialed the number in Saskatchewan. Finally, a woman answered, and Quinn asked to speak to Tanya. Following a long pause, a younger voice picked up. “Tanya? Is this Tanya?”
“Yes, this is Tanya.”
The redhead took a deep breath. “Tanya, this is Quinn Henaghan. You might’ve heard the name. I’m a friend of Glen’s.”
Tanya’s voice rose with excitement. “Quinn Henaghan. You’re the Aja. You’re the most powerful Channeler in the world.”
Quinn knew right away what was happening. Tonya’s groupie side was fast emerging. Right away, Henaghan got a sense of the woman. Lonely childhood. Obsessive. Unhealthy interest and attachment to all things magical. The Atlantan nipped that in the bud before it could dominate the conversation. “Look, Tanya, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Glen’s dead. He was… He was killed.”
Silence from the other end of the line.
“Did you hear me? I said Glen has passed away.”
The voice returned, more quietly this time. “I heard you,” it said. Again, Henaghan could read volumes into those three words. They said, Glen is gone and so is my safety net. This woman’s going to try and get me to face up to my responsibilities.
Henaghan ignored her intuition. “Tanya, Josie’s here with me. Josie your daughter.”
“I know who Josie is,” Tanya snapped. “I don’t need you telling me who Josie is.”
Quinn shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay. But she’s here with me and I was just thinking she might need her mother. Can you come? I can send you a plane ticket. It’s just maybe you should be with your daughter now.”
Tanya stammered. “I think— I mean maybe— I don’t know if—”
Then the line went silent. Quinn waited, thinking at first that Tanya had hung up on her. Finally, another voice spoke. The first voice, the one that had answered the call. It said, “My daughter’s very fragile. Very troubled. She made one bad mistake in her life. Don’t make her keep paying for it over and over.”
The line clicked and went dead. Henaghan tried talking over the dial tone. She wanted to tell Tanya’s mother that Glen was dead and that the situation was dire, but that wasn’t going to happen. She looked at her phone for a moment before blacking the screen.
Quinn reentered the kitchen and put her phone down on the counter. “Yeah, I’m gonna need that lawyer referral after all.”
Olkin nodded. “Soon as I’m back in the office. It’ll be a snap. Do you have any idea how many agents are divorced on my floor alone?”
Quinn shook her head.
“It was a trick question. The answer is ‘all of them’.” David lit another cigarette. “I’m sorry. Can I even smoke in here?”
Henaghan nodded. “I’m granting you a temporary waiver on the no smoking rule.”
“Thank God,” the agent said. He looked at the cigarette with unabashed affection. “Smoking this is actually better than making love to your sister.”
Quinn took the cigarette away from David and put it out on the saucer he’d been using as an ashtray. “First of all,” she said. “Privileges rescinded. Second of all: Ew! Fucking ew! You need to fucking stop doing that!”
“Sorry,” Olkin said, looking down at the snubbed-out cigarette sadly. “Guess I didn’t think it through. Are you hungry?”
The redhead opened the pantry and pulled out a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. “Yes, but only peanut butter hungry, not burrito hungry. Do you want a sandwich?”
David shook his head and folded his hands in front of him. “By the way, I wanna apologize for what Mia did to you the other day. Blindsiding you with your parents.”
Quinn smiled. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“I know but allow me a little guilt by association. I would’ve talked her out of it if she’d told me she was gonna do it.”
“That’s why she didn’t tell you she was gonna do it.”
“True. Also, I wanna apologize to you, once again, for giving you the tincture, awakening your powers and pulling you into this whole shit-storm. You can draw a straight line from me stabbing you to Cam Blank dying. Every time I think about it I wanna throw up.”
Peanut butter sandwich in hand, Quinn sat down at the dining room table. Olkin got up off his stool, grabbed his briefcase from the kitchen counter and joined her. “Easy there,” Quinn said. “We’ve talked about how it’s not cool to stab your friends with ancient ceremonial daggers. I’m always gonna have mixed feelings about that,
but from there, I’m not so certain the line’s as straight as you think. In fact, the line’s wavy as fuck. You didn’t make me go to San Francisco. You didn’t make me attack the Resolute in their own headquarters. You didn’t make me kill their leader.” In the wake of the battle inside of the Transamerica Pyramid it came to light that Nate Kibbee, the man who had lured Quinn into the building under false pretenses, had been the Grand Poobah of the Resolute on the West Coast. His death had left a power vacuum and dangerous extremists filled that vacuum.
“I got lost there for a minute. I wasn’t sure if you meant your original attack on Resolute headquarters or the one from today.”
“The original. I wouldn’t call the one from today an honest-to-god attack since I didn’t get anywhere near the pyramid. Speaking of which, I wanted to ask you about something. I know you’re not a lore-head like Darren or Glen, but I ran into something up there I’ve never seen before. It was with the men guarding the building. It was big. And mean. Made from thorns and fire.”
Olkin put his briefcase aside. “That sounds familiar,” he said. “There were stories. From long ago. Of other creatures from the Astral Plane. Free agents. ‘Demons’ for lack of a better word. In fact, a ‘Demon’ is what I think you ran into. Although, the correct pronunciation is ‘down’. Spelled d-e-a-m-h-a-n. It’s Gaelic. Or Gaelic’s prehistoric forerunner. Anyway, a deamhan features prominently in the story of Aisling. The name comes from her people. You probably guessed, but Aisling was from what’s now Scotland or Ireland. Her countries don’t map precisely onto ours since her world was different. Pre-cataclysmic.”
“Okay,” Quinn said.
“According to legend, Aisling had many adventures between her homeland and what’s now North Africa. She was pursued the whole way by a deamhan. Apparently, the creature took a heavy toll. Killed several of her people.”
“Wait. I thought you said these things were free agents. Was this one working for the Asura?”
“Yeah, that’s kind of the definition of a free agent. You go where the money is. Anyway, I think that’s what you saw in Northern California. A deamhan. Nasty critters, for sure. And rare.”
“Lucky me,” Henaghan replied. “One other question before you open up your little case there. And this one just occurred to me. The stuff the Tīvara had on their darts. A serum that makes people explode. Isn’t that a game changer? If the Resolute have it and the Tilted don’t, the Tilted have already lost.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that. I know a little about Tīvara history. They’re like ninjas. Stealth and sneakiness. They use whatever tool is best for the job. There are tons of stories of them using poisons and magic concoctions. Here’s why I’m not particularly worried about it: I bet the substance they used was even harder to make and more expensive than the accelerant the Guild used on you. And that shit was expensive as hell. Anyway, I don’t think it’s something the Tīvara’re gonna have the wherewithal to mass produce. But let’s table that for now. Are you ready to meet Eleanor Wasowska?”
Quinn took a bite of her sandwich. Around bread and peanut butter, she said, “Who the hell is Eleanor Wasowska?”
Olkin opened his briefcase and pulled out a manila file. He opened it and slid it across the table so that Henaghan could see the first page. The first page consisted of several smaller documents pasted together. “My new assistant found all this and put it together in the course of an afternoon. Best assistant I ever had.”
Quinn scowled at her former boss. She’d done the very job David was describing. She picked up the piece of paper and held it closer to her face. On it was a driver’s license with a photo, a Social Security card, along with an USO identification card. Henaghan homed in on the driver’s license. The girl in the picture was bright-eyed and beautiful. The photo radiated personality. She read off the details. “Twenty-three years old, five foot one inches tall, one hundred and ten pounds, eyes green, hair red.”
“Yes, I thought those details were interesting, too.”
“So… This is ‘Gladys’.”
“Not anymore,” David said. “Now it’s Eleanor.”
Quinn nodded, taking the agent’s point. “What else have you got here?”
“Personnel records from Siesta del Mar. What little biographical information we could gather. I’m afraid it’s all a little dry. Eleanor was from Phoenix. She went back there shortly after she was liberated from Reginald Verbic’s house. Things seem to have been okay after she got back. Husband. Two kids. She died in two thousand. Eighty years old. A good run.”
Henaghan replaced the top page, shut the file and put it aside for later reading. “I’m assuming there’s nothing in here that points to why.”
“Why Verbic did what he did?”
“Yeah. Why then? Why this particular girl?”
“Yeah, no. None of that’s there.”
Quinn took another bite of her sandwich. “Still. I wanna show this to Sam. She deserves to know more about where she came from.”
Olkin tsked. “Careful. Where she came from’s not a very nice place.”
Not long after Quinn put aside the folder, there was a knock on the new, unpainted door. Leaving her to finish her sandwich, David Olkin got up to answer. Before she saw who it was, Henaghan heard the agent say, “Oh. Hey.” David got out of the way and Quinn saw that her visitor was Ferley.
Ferley had been pals with Nate Kibbee and the two of them had surveilled her before the business in San Francisco. Unlike Nate, Ferley was Tilted. “Heya, red. Can we talk?”
“Sure. Of course. We can talk.” She motioned him into the house and indicated he should sit. David closed the front door and lingered over the dining room table. “Is this a private conversation?” he asked.
“You tell me,” Henaghan said to Ferley.
“No, not particularly private,” he said. David sat down and remained quiet. Looking around, he said, “What the hell happened here?”
“The Tīvara happened here,” Quinn relied.
Ferley looked exactly as he had when Quinn last saw him. He was bald and wore a trench coat. “Fuck,” he said. “So that’s why you lit up the skies over San Fran this morning.”
“‘Fraid so,” Henaghan replied. “I was ungodly pissed. Still am.”
“You had casualties?”
“Two.”
“God, I’m sorry. I really am.” Quinn could tell from his eyes that he really was. She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Look,” he said. “I’m gonna cut right to the chase even though this is a little embarrassing— Turns out me and Nate weren’t entirely straight with you. We weren’t just blasé schmucks on a stake-out. We were blasé Commander in Chiefs on a stake-out.”
Quinn’s eyes flicked to David. “I’m gonna go ahead and say a ‘No shit, Sherlock’.”
“You knew?”
“No, I didn’t know. Not until I killed Nate and a crazy whack job took his place. I just assumed you were the Tilted leader. Why would Nate hang around with some nobody?”
“Okay. Yeah. I guess that math wasn’t hard. Can you believe I trusted Nate? He and I had an agreement. Whichever one of us laid hands on the statue of Set and the statue of Horus would work with the other to keep the statues apart. As in forever. And, sure enough, as soon as he gets you alone, he pulls a Benedict Arnold.”
“I didn’t know either of you particularly well. The fact I let Nate pull a fast one is on me as much as it is you.”
“Yeah, well, Resolute have a long history of double-dealing. I should’ve known better.” He turned to David. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Olkin said. “I’m well aware of Resolute double dealing. And Tilted double dealing.”
“Touché,” Ferley said. He became more sober. “So, yeah. Me and Nate lied to you. We were both gopati. It means ‘chief’. Although, if you wanna get technical, it translates to ‘lord of cowherds’ which I think sums up the position nicely. Can I ask you… What happened to Horus?”
Quin
n and David’s eyes met. “Do you remember the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark?” Henaghan said to Ferley.
“Yeah…” the man from San Francisco said.
“That was my way of saying none of your business,” the redhead replied without hesitation.
“Oh. Right. That’s too bad. We could really use it now. Things are getting bad. Fighting in different parts of the world. I’m afraid some jackass—Resolute or Tilted—is gonna do something stupid and out us to the mundanes. That’s the last thing I need. We’d not only be fighting one another, we’d be fighting the mundanes too.”
“Sure, but I don’t see how having Horus would help you with that. The last time I saw Set, the Hexenjäger had him.”
Ferley shook his head. “Uh uh. He’s safely back with the Resolute.”
“Okay,” Quinn said. “That’s weird, but still. Set’s no good without Horus.”
“Right. But I can dream, can’t I? Which brings us to why I’m here. Since I’m not gonna get crazy, unlimited statue power, I’m gonna just have to beg. I’m here to beg and I have nothing to offer. Will you, Quinn Henaghan, Aja, fight on the side of what’s right? Will you throw down with the Jihma in their war against the Dharmin?”
The girl took a deep breath. “Well… gopati, two things… Number one: despite what happened in San Francisco this morning, I’m under doctor’s orders. I’ve been told I’m an Overchanneler. If I go heavy on the magic, there’s a chance I could pop like a zit. Number two: What is this war of yours really about? Convince me it’s not completely ideological. I understand that the new Resolute guy— What’s his name?”
