from Michael, tossing him up into the air and catching him, much to the child’s protesting laughter. “Come on, squirt. Time for a bath.”
“Leech!” Harry shouted, and immediately started climbing on his sister’s shoulders, babbling about something to do with robots.
Michael smiled as he watched them exit. “I asked Harry to dinner tonight,” he told Charity, kissing her on the cheek.
“Did you?” she said, in the exact same tone she’d used on me at the door.
Michael looked at her and sighed. Then he said, “My office.”
We went into the study Michael used as his office—more cluttered than it had been before, now that he was actually using it all the time—and closed the door behind us. Without a word, I took out the photos I’d received and showed them to Charity.
Michael’s wife was no dummy. She looked at them one at a time, in rapid succession, her eyes blazing brighter with every new image. When she spoke, her voice was cold. “Who took these?”
“I don’t know yet,” I told her. “Though Nicodemus’s name does sort of leap to mind.”
“No,” Michael said quietly. “He can’t harm me or my family anymore. We’re protected.”
“By what?” I asked.
“Faith,” he said simply.
That would be a maddening answer under most circumstances—but I’d seen the power of faith in action around my friend, and it was every bit as real as the forces I could manage. Former presidents get a detail of Secret Service to protect them. Maybe former Knights of the Cross had a similar retirement package, only with more seraphim. “Oh.”
“You’re going to get to the bottom of this?” Charity asked.
“That’s the idea,” I said. “It might mean I intrude on you all a little.”
“Harry,” Michael said, “there’s no need for that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Charity replied, turning to Michael. She took his hand, very gently, though her tone stayed firm. “And don’t be proud.”
He smiled at her. “It isn’t a question of pride.”
“I’m not so sure,” she said quietly. “Father Forthill said we were only protected against supernatural dangers. If there’s something else afoot . . . You’ve made so many enemies. We have to know what’s happening.”
“I often don’t know what’s happening,” Michael said. “If I spent all my time trying to find out, there wouldn’t be enough left to live in. This is more than likely being done for the sole purpose of making us worried and miserable.”
“Michael,” I said quietly, “one of the best ways I know to counter fear is with knowledge.”
He tilted his head, frowning gently at me.
“You say you won’t live in fear. Fine. Let me poke around and shine a light on things, so we know what’s going on. If it turns out to be nothing, no harm done.”
“And if it isn’t?” Charity asked.
I kept a surge of quiet anger out of my voice and expression as I looked at her levelly. “No harm gets done to you and yours.”
Her eyes flashed, and she nodded her chin once.
“Honey.” Michael sighed.
Charity stared at him.
Michael might have slain a dragon, but he knew his limits. He lifted a hand in acceptance and said, “Why don’t you make up the guest bedroom.”
BY A LITTLE after nine, the Carpenter household was almost entirely silent. I had been shown into the little guest room kept at the end of an upstairs hallway. It was really Charity’s sewing room, and was all but filled with colorful stacks of folded fabric, some of them in clear plastic containers, some of them loose. There was room around a little table with a sewing machine on it, and just barely enough space to get to the bed. I’d recuperated from injuries there before.
One thing was new—there was a very fine layer of dust on the sewing machine.
Huh.
I sat down on the bed and looked around. It was a quiet, warm, cheerful little room—almost manically so, now that I thought about it. Everything was soft and pleasant and ordered, and it took me maybe six or seven whole seconds to realize that this room had been Charity’s haven. How many days and nights must she have been worried about Michael, off doing literally God only knew what, against foes so terrible that no one but he could have been trusted to deal with them? How many times had she wondered if it would be a solemn Father Forthill who came to the door, instead of the man she loved? How many hours had she spent in this well-lit room, working on making warm, soft things for her