apply to Carl Joplin, who was going to be busy setting up his workshop and getting ready to make silver bullets and it didn't apply to Annabelle, who was going to be busy screaming at movers and temporary servants, at least during the day, but everyone else could play.
And they did. Jack and Cat and Adam and Davette did Dallas in a big way for the next couple of weeks. The others joined them at night for dinner, but during the day they got silly on their own. They went to movies and amusement parks and go-cart tracks. They bowled. They golfed. They played tennis, hard, every day to stay in shape. They lunched, huge lunches lasting three hours and costing as many hundreds of dollars. They ran up an enormous tab at the hotel (everyone still slept there), paid it, ran up another, paid that.
In the meantime the house was getting ready; the vehicles arrived from California in time for Jack to get a DWI. He stood there, furious, while a twenty-year-old policeman dressed him down, quite rightly, for driving across a cemetery at three o'clock in the morning scouting picnic spots for the next afternoon. Jack was forced to renew his old acquaintances downtown before he really wanted to think about such things. The lieutenant he spoke to knew (unofficially) who he was and what he did and got him off but lectured him some more.
Jack shut up and took it and leased a limo the next morning.
In the meantime, all had their-own little chores. Davette went shopping with Annabelle once it was discovered she had only what she had been wearing. Cat chased and caught several women, at least two of whom had a sense of humor. Adam went to mass every morning.
And Jack made his phone call to the nation's capital.
They were surprised to hear from him but not entirely distant. They said they would see what they could do. Two weeks later they called him back and gave him an address. He thanked them, hung up, checked the address in the yellow pages, nodded to himself.
During the whole two weeks they never once mentioned their jobs. Nobody said the word: vampire. Jack even stopped jumping whenever the phone rang.
He shouldn't have.
The silver had arrived from Rome through the local see. The bishop was a new man who knew nothing about Team Crow or, for that matter, his parishioners. Persuaded by his aide that anyone with enough clout to receive a package from the Vatican through diplomatic channels was worth knowing, he grudgingly consented to share his sumptuous evening feast with Crow & Co.
It took less than fifteen minutes in his presence for Team Crow to know all the important facts about this man. He was cold. He was haughty. He was better than his flock, more cultured, more intelligently pious, more... how shall one put it? More aristocratic.
The bishop was an idiot.
He was also Carl Joplin's meat. Carl's and Cat's. The two of them took rich delight in infuriating the man, pretending all the while to be unaware at how offended he was by their every gesture and semicrude remark. They had descended to triple entendres when the bishop had absolutely had enough.
He rose curtly and left the room, gesturing for the uniformed Father Adam to follow.
Adam loved the Church. He loved it deeply and fully, without reservation, both as an institution and as a vehicle for Almighty God. He loved priests also, knowing them to be as fine a collection of human beings as existed on the planet. Many times in even a career as short as his he had felt... no, he had known he had seen, in the shining eyes of some simple servant of Rome, the hand of Christ.
But this bishop was an ass and he ignored the man's clipped demands for explanation and instead laid before him on his desk the pouch he had brought with him from the Vatican.
With a snort and a sneer, the older man reluctantly began to read. When he was finished, his face was pale.
It was worth seeing.
Suddenly (almost miraculously, thought Adam wryly), all was well. Anything the bishop or his office could do for them would be done without question. Why, he'd be glad to.
Right. Great. They all shook hands and left.
As much fun as Cat had been having, he hadn't been neglecting his job, which was to fret over Jack Crow. Everybody had his own relationship with their leader and each relationship was