by J. R. Mabry
“Wait, hundreds of years later?”
“Serah bat Asher is immortal, remember?”
“Uh…right. Okay, go on.”
“So she said, ‘I give these wonders no credence.’”
“Wow. Did she later become the book agent that passed up To Kill a Mockingbird, too?”
Chava ignored the joke. “So then the elders told her, ‘The man called Moses said something odd.’ Serah asked them, ‘What did he say?’ ‘He said, “I have taken note of you.”’ At which point Serah told them, ‘That is the man who will rescue Israel.’”
“That’s a great story,” Brian said. “But I don’t understand why you’re telling it to me.”
“Because, you idiot,” she put her hand on his knee and squeezed it. “You are the man who will save the Tree of Life. I have taken note of you. I believe in you. You can do this.”
Brian grasped her hand and held it tightly. “I’m unconvinced, but…thank you,” he said.
“What do you need?”
“I need to lie around with as few distractions as possible. I’ll need a clear path to the bathroom and plenty of fluids.”
“I think we can manage that.”
“I need someone to run interference for me here in Melkuth—someone to answer the door, my phone, get text messages, etc.”
“You need a spotter,” Chava said.
“Exactly.”
Chava squeezed his hand again. “I’ll clear my calendar. When do you want to launch?”
56
“They are not coming out,” Kat said. She leaned into him and hugged herself for warmth. She had already donned her cassock again, but it wasn’t her winter cassock and its light fabric did little to block out the chill.
Mikael looked at his phone. “It’s nearly eleven. I think you might be right.”
“He’s got to be there.”
“Are your teeth chattering?” Mikael asked.
“This bus stop bench is metal. And it’s fucking freezing. Don’t touch your tongue to it.”
“Ew. I don’t even want to think about that.”
“You’ve had your tongue is some pretty nasty places,” Kat reminded him.
“Now you’re just teasing me.”
“I’m just trying to stay warm.”
Mikael stood up and stretched. “So…how do you want to do this?”
“I’m thinking that just ringing the doorbell and saying, ‘Hey, we’re Blackfriars. Can we come in?’ isn’t going to cut it.”
“I’m thinking you’re right.” Mikael stroked his chin as he thought.
Kat admired his angular jaw. The fog was getting thick now, and it gathered around his feet. “I wish I had a camera,” Kat said, making a square with her fingers, and looking through it at him. “This is like, the best noir romance cover.”
“Punk noir romance?”
Kat rolled her eyes. “Oh, all right. Leave it to you to throw us into a genre that doesn’t actually exist and can’t possibly sell.”
“Why do you have to put me in a box?”
“I’m not putting you in a box, you ninny. I’m teasing you.”
“Felt like an accusation,” Mikael said.
“That’s just the…spheres talking, remember? If this thing turns us into people who can’t make fun of each other, we’re in real trouble.”
Mikael nodded. Then he turned and crossed the street to examine the building more closely. Like most San Francisco buildings, it stood impossibly close to its neighbor. Mikael could not even fit his hand in between them. Kat crossed and laid a hand on his belt.
“Sorry I called you a ninny,” she said.
“I’m not even sure what a ninny is,” he said. “But thank you.” He pointed to the apartment building’s facade. “This is straight up—no trellis, no balcony. And no access to the back yard from here,” he said.
“We’re only three buildings from the edge of the block, though,” Kat pointed out. “You could hop some fences.”
Mikael started walking toward the corner.
“Hey, slow down,” Kat said. “Your legs are like, twice as long as mine.”
“Sorry. Just…on the case.”
“That’s my…friar.”
At the corner, Mikael turned right and strode to the middle point of the block. A fence blocked his way, but he was tall enough to see over it.
“What?” Kat asked. “Can you make it?”
“Yeah. The next fence is scalable. I can’t see the one beyond that, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“So to speak. Am I not coming with you?”
“I’ll let you in at the front door. Why don’t you wait there?”
“Like a good girl, you mean?”
Mikael blinked. “I didn’t mean—”
“This is man business, is that it?”
“Kat, it’s a simple case of…I’m taller, and these are high fences—”
“Are you seriously going to mansplain complementarianism to me right now?”
“Is that what I was doing?”
“Never mind.” Kat looked away. She chewed on her lip as she got a handle on her anger. She turned back to him but didn’t meet his eyes. “You want a hand up, Mr. Feminist Icon?”
“No, I got it.” Mikael put his cassock under his shirt at the small of his back, then tucked the shirt in. “I’ll put this on once I get there. We’ll want to be in full Blackfriar’s mode, after all.” Then he fished a mask out of his front pocket and put that on.
“Oh, Lord,” Kat said, her face falling into her hands. “Couldn’t you be into the Furry scene or something?”
“This is a job for the Confessor,” he said.
“I fuck you in spite of this—you know that, right?”
He leaned down and kissed her. She hesitated, then kissed him back with a passion largely displaced from her irritation. Then in a single fluid motion, he swung one leg to the top of the fence, tipped himself over, and was gone.
“…And, he’s a gymnast, too,” Kat breathed out loud to no one. “That makes me hornier than I want to admit.” She sighed and walked back to the front of the apartment building. The quiet descended on her like a blanket. She exhaled and a dozen tightly coiled places in her body relaxed. Now that he wasn’t with her, she didn’t feel nearly as edgy or angry.
She wondered at this as she walked back to the front of the apartment building. The fog was so thick she could barely see the corner she had just returned from. No cars were on the street—not moving ones anyway. It was as if the world had just…stopped: quiet, holy, shrouded in the smoke of incense.
The buzzer sounded and Kat nearly jumped out of her skin. She snatched at the steel gate handle and yanked on it. She felt the catch give and it swung open toward her. She stepped up onto the tiny porch and clutched at the doorknob. It turned, and she went in.
The landing was completely dark. She let the door close quietly behind her and waited for her eyes to adjust. She heard music playing and the sound of male voices. Occasionally uproarious laughter punctuated the din, and every now and then the sound of a small dog barking.
“Shhh…Kat. Up here.” She looked up the stairs, squinting, and saw Mikael crouched at the top, almost invisible in his cassock and mask.
Kat hiked up her cassock and crept silently up the stairs. At the top he started to rise, but she grabbed his cassock and pulled him back down, kissing him long and deep. “Don’t talk. You’ll just piss me off and it’ll ruin everything.”
“Okay.”
“That’s talking.”
“Sorry. I’ll stop?”
“Do you know what I’m thinking?”
He shook his head.
“I’m thinking danger sex.”
“Uh…when?”
“How about now?”
“Um…where?”
“I don’t see anyone.” She reached through the fold in his cassock and yanked at his belt.
57
“Boss, I’m heading out.” Milo stuck
his head in the door.
“Did Amanda head home?” Betts looked up from his computer. He took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. They were watering and they hurt. He was sure they were red.
“Yeah, about fifteen minutes ago.”
“I’m sorry about this.”
“About what?” Milo entered the room fully.
“The late hours, the…craziness.”
“It’s not your fault, Tom,” Milo said. “It’s the hand we were dealt. We have to see it through. I’m sure as hell not blaming you.”
“I know that,” he said, throwing his glasses down onto his desk. “I still feel responsible.”
“Let it go.” Milo walked over to the desk. “You need to get some sleep.”
“Yeah,” Betts looked up and gave him a forced smile. “Just as soon as I…oh, Jesus. Do a million fucking things first.”
“They’ll still be there in the morning.”
“They sure as shit will.”
“And Tom…” Betts cocked his head. Milo hesitated. “Look, it’s not my place to give you advice.”
“I beg to differ, you’re my chief advisor.”
“I mean personal advice.”
“Again…Milo, I want you to speak freely.”
Milo looked away, as if a thought had just struck him. A troubling thought.
“What?” Betts asked.
“To finish the one conversation,” Milo said. “Everything you’ve got to do will seem less overwhelming once you’ve had some sleep.”
Betts picked up his glasses. “You’re probably right about that. I’m just…compulsive.”
“You care.”
“I do care.” He nodded and put his glasses back on. The cartilage over his ears ached from the weight of them. “Now, what was the other thing?”
“I’m not sure it’s…anything, but…”
“But what?”
Milo sat in the chair in front of Betts’ desk. Betts sat down, too, putting his elbows on his desk and leaning his head on his hands. It suddenly seemed incredibly heavy.
“What if those people we saved last night, that Japanese priest and that fat woman…”
“Yeah?”
“What if they’re telling the truth?”
“That demons are destroying the East Bay?”
Milo looked from left to right quickly, as if realizing for the first time how ridiculous he sounded. “Yeeeaaah.”
Betts shrugged. “It’s the first explanation I’ve heard that actually accounts for all the weird shit that’s been going down.”
“Right,” Milo looked encouraged.
“Are you thinking we should go along with the priest’s plan?”
Milo nodded but didn’t answer at first. “In the foreground, yeah.”
Betts straightened up, suddenly not feeling so tired. “And in the background?”
Milo chewed on a finger and sat back, thinking, pretty hard and fast it seemed to Betts. “If they’re right about those magickians… If demons can be…controlled…”
“That’s a lot of power,” Betts breathed.
“That’s a lot of fucking power,” Milo agreed.
58
“This is madness,” Herrer said, after Cain had explained everything.
“No. That is madness,” Richard said, pointing to the outside. “This is real.”
“I saw it with my own eyes, Captain,” Cain said. “And you can go down and see Perry’s body for yourself. The claw marks on her face and neck…there is nothing in this building that could have made those.”
Herrer turned to Marco. “Whatever you did down there, was it worth it?”
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Marco said. He shrugged. “We got some very useful information.”
“Is it going to stop…all this?” Herrer waved her arm, which Richard took to mean the whole apocalypse that was the East Bay at the moment.
“No,” Marco said. “It was about…something else.”
Herrer sputtered, unable to even form her next words.
Richard touched her elbow. “This,” he indicated everything, just as she had done. “Is small potatoes compared to what we found out.”
Herrer’s eyes grew big, and she stopped trying to form words. She dropped her hands and looked out the window. “That true, Cain?” she asked, finally.
“Yeah. I’m sorry to say that it is. I don’t understand a word of it, but something else is going on, something bigger.”
“I…I don’t know how to handle this.”
“Fortunately, we do,” Richard said.
“And who the hell are you?” Herrer asked, shaking her head with pained impatience.
“We’re the Order of St. Raphael—”
“He’s the Order of St. Raphael,” Marco corrected. “I’m just a friend of the family.”
“And just what the hell is that?”
“You haven’t heard of us?” Richard asked, genuinely surprised.
“No, should I have?”
“We’re also known as the Berkeley Blackfriars.”
Herrer shook her head.
Richard dropped his gaze, momentarily crestfallen.
“Um…they’re world famous demon-fighters,” Marco added, apparently trying to be helpful.
“Really? World-famous?” Herrer raised an eyebrow.
“Not really, no,” Marco said. “They’re more like local celebrities…in small…subcultural, cir—” he trailed off. “Look, they know their shit, okay? He knows his shit.”
Herrer looked unconvinced but turned to Richard. “Do you have a plan?”
“We do.” Richard looked back up, resolute.
“We do?” Marco asked.
“The whole Tree of Life thing is out of our hands—”
“What ‘Tree of Life thing’?” Herrer scowled. “What are you talking about?”
“Everything that’s happening here is a ruse. To distract us—”
“To distract who?”
“Us. The Blackfriars.”
“The apocalypse of the East Bay was orchestrated for your benefit?” Herrer crossed her arms. “Does the word megalomania mean anything to you?”
Richard shook his head. “I know how it sounds. Let me back up. There’s a lodge of black magickians.”
“Er…he means evil magickians,” Marco interjected. “I’m black. They’re evil.”
“Fine,” Richard said. “Anyway—”
“We’re gonna have to have a talk about intersectionality.”
“Do you mind?” Richard snapped.
Marco held his hands up.
“Are they both crazy, or just the white one?” Herrer asked Cain.
“What I’m trying to say is that there is a Lodge of evil magickians in San Francisco. The Lodge of the Hawk and Serpent. We’ve successfully thwarted them in the past.”
“Not all magickians are evil,” Marco said.
Richard gave him a look that could turn a beagle to stone. Marco held his hands up again. Richard kept watching him but continued, “They caused all of this. They did it to keep us busy so that we wouldn’t notice what they were really up to.”
“Okay, I’ll play along. And what are they really up to?” Herrer put her hands on her hips.
“They…or at least one of them, probably Larch…” He stroked his chin, thinking.
“Focus,” Herrer commanded.
“They are going up to the higher sephirot.”
“What is a sephirot?” Herrer asked.
“It’s a…a higher plane of existence.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“In medieval Jewish mysticism—you might have heard of the Kabbalah?”
“Oh yeah, Madonna is into it,” Cain nodded.
Richard rolled his eyes. “Yes, well it’s much older than Madonna. The Kabbalists describe ten spheres, or worlds. They call them sephirot, which means ‘emanations,’ because they radiate out from God. They are manifestations of divine attributes.”
&n
bsp; “That sounds pretty abstract.”
“From what I understand, things get more abstract the further up the Tree you go,” Richard agreed. “We live in Malkuth, the lowest emanation.”
“No, that would be Oakland,” Herrer said.
“Our whole universe is in Malkuth,” Richard said. “Every sephirah is a universe.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Herrer said.
“It’s hard to give an elevator description of a several-hundred-year-old mystical tradition,” Richard said. “There are these worlds, up there,” he said, pointing to the sky. “Our is the lowest, but it’s fed with higher qualities from the spheres above us.”
“And what’s at the top of the spheres?” Herrer asked, one eyebrow raised.
Richard blinked. “Why…God, of course.”
Herrer turned to Cain. “God. Of course.”
“And all of this…abstraction is important why?”
“Because the evil magickian,” Richard said, speaking slowly, as if to a child, “is going up to the other spheres intending to destroy them.”
“So what?”
“So…we’re dependent on them. If they die…we die.”
Herrer turned to Cain. “I don’t have time for nut jobs.”
“Look, Captain, I don’t know anything about…spheres. But I do know I just saw a demon kill Perry with my own eyes. They’re onto something that’s real.”
Herrer turned back to Richard. “How do you plan to stop this evil magickian.”
“I don’t. Brian is on it.”
“Who is Brian?”
“He’s a Talmudic scholar. He’s an expert on the Kabbalah. He’s the person I’d trust most with this, anyway, so I’m going to do just that—trust him.”
“Is he one of your monks?”
“We’re friars, not monks,” Richard corrected her. “He’s the husband of one of our friars. But he’s…yes, he’s one of us.”
“So Brian—whoever he is—is going to take care of the evil magickian. What are you planning to do?”
Richard stood up to his full height and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “First, I’m going to take my dog out to use the yard.”
