“Gonna make it,” I said. “Hurt bad, though. Don’t know how mobile he’s going to be after this.”
Murphy fretted her lower lip. “What happens if he can’t…keep on with the Knight business?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea.”
“I just…I didn’t think that taking up one of the swords was the sort of job offer you could turn down.”
I blinked at Murphy. “No, Murph. There’s no mandatory martyrdom involved. You’ve got a choice. You’ve always got a choice. That’s…sort of the whole point of faith, the way I understand it.”
She digested that in silence for a time. Then she said, “It isn’t because I don’t believe.”
“I know that,” I said.
She nodded. “It isn’t for me, though, Harry. I’ve already chosen my ground. I’ve taken an oath. It meant more to me than accepting a job.”
“I know,” I said. “If you weren’t the way you are, Murph, the Sword of Faith wouldn’t have reacted to you as strongly as it did. If someone as thick as me understands it, I figure the Almighty probably gets it too.”
She snorted and gave me a faint smile, and drove the rest of the way to my car in silence.
When we got there she parked next to the Blue Beetle. “Harry,” she said, “do you ever feel like we’re going to wind up old and alone? That we’re…I don’t know…doomed never to have anyone? Anything that lasts?”
I flexed the fingers of my still-scarred left hand and my mildly tingling right hand. “I’m more worried about all the things I’ll never be rid of.” I eyed her. “What brings on this cheerful topic?”
She gave me a faint smile. “It’s just…the center cannot hold, Harry. I think things are starting to fall apart. I can’t see it, and I can’t prove it, but I know it.” She shook her head. “Maybe I’m just losing my mind.”
I looked intently at her, frowning. “No, Murph. You aren’t.”
“There are bad things happening,” she said.
“Yeah. And I haven’t been able to put many pieces together. Yet. But we shut down some of the bad guys last night. They were using the Denarians to get to the Archive.”
“What do they want?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “But it’s going to be big and bad.”
“I want in on this fight, Harry,” she said.
“Okay.”
“All the way. Promise me.”
“Done.” I offered her my hand.
She took it.
Father Forthill was already asleep, but Sanya answered the door when I dropped by St. Mary’s. He was rumpled and looked tired, but was smiling. “Michael woke and was talking.”
“That’s great,” I said, grinning. “What did he say?”
“Wanted to know if you made it out all right. Then he went back to sleep.”
I laughed, and Sanya and I traded a hug, a manly hug with a lot of back thumping, which he then ruined with one of those Russian kisses on both cheeks.
“Come in, come in,” he said. “I apologize for trying to rush you earlier. We wanted to be sure to collect the coins and get them safely stored as soon as possible.”
I exhaled. “I don’t have them.”
His smile vanished. “What?”
I told him about Thorned Namshiel.
Sanya swore and rubbed at his face. Then he said, “Come.”
I followed him through the halls in the back of the enormous church until we got to the staff ’s kitchen. He went to the fridge, opened it, and came out with a bottle of bourbon. He poured some into a coffee cup, drank it down, and poured some more. He offered me the bottle.
“No, thanks. Aren’t you supposed to drink vodka?”
“Aren’t you supposed to wear pointy hat and ride on flying broomstick?”
“Touché,” I said.
Sanya shook his head and flexed the fingers of his right hand. “Eleven. Plus six. Seventeen. It could be worse.”
“But we nailed Thorned Namshiel,” I said. “And Eldest Gruff laid out Magog like a sack of potatoes. I’ll get you his coin tomorrow.”
A flicker of satisfaction went through Sanya’s eyes. “Magog? Good. But Namshiel, no.”
“What do you mean, no? I saw Michael cut his hand off and drop it into his pouch.”
“Da,” Sanya said, “and the coin was under the skin of his right hand. But it was not in his pouch when he went to the hospital.”
“What?”
Sanya nodded. “We took off his armor and gear in helicopter, to stop the bleeding. Maybe it fell out into the lake.”