There came a soft swishing of steps on the carpet behind her.
She turned, expecting the worst. When it was only a grey-templed man in jeans and black long-sleeved shirt with hands folded before him, she almost cursed herself — she didn’t really though because this was a church, after all — for being so jumpy. Her time spent with Dent was beginning to affect her.
“Our patron saint,” the man said, eyes crinkling with the warm smile he gave her. Or maybe he was smiling at the statue.
“Saint Nicholas,” she said, showing the man that she knew her stuff.
“Indeed. Father Lance,” he introduced himself.
Father? A priest? But he looked so … normal. “Hi. I’m Kasumi.” She gave him a good look. “Where’s your …?” She wiggled her fingers at the front of her neck.
He laughed. “It’s called a Clerical collar. And I must have left it in my other robes.”
And he makes jokes, too? Not like any priest she’d ever met. Although, come to think of it, he would be the first priest she’d met. She chuckled for his benefit.
“We have an afternoon service today,” he gently put out there. “You’re more than welcome to join us. I won’t be wearing my,” he copied her finger wiggle at his neck, “collar, but the service will not suffer for it. I promise.”
“Thank you. But I don’t think I’ll be around later on today. I have plans with my … dad.”
He caught on to her slight hesitation at the end. But, as polite as a priest, he didn’t press her. “Good thing about our church is that we’re open twenty-four-seven.” Another eye-crinkling smile that had her giving one in return.
Nice guy, she thought. And she could use that as her way in. She let her feelings of being nice and a willingness to be open flow out from her. “We’re passing through town and I heard about your parish.”
He stepped closer now that she had initiated a real conversation. Plus, her forced emotions on him didn’t hurt.
“Oh?” he asked in a respectably hushed voice.
“Yep. You run an orphanage here, right?”
He looked at her, a curious look in his eyes. His brows raised as he came to some internal conclusion. “Oh, I see. It’s just you and your dad, isn’t it? Perhaps your mother and he have separated?”
He was drawing from her earlier hesitation on what to call Dent, and she let him go with it. “You could say that, yeah. My dad, well, honestly Dent’s not my dad. Never met my dad. Dent’s more like my guardian.”
“Bless his soul.”
“Yeah.” She leaned in closer to him and whispered, “Though I think it’s me who takes care of him most of the time.”
“And I don’t doubt that you do.” He paused, looked around the expansive sanctuary. “Is that what drew you here to Saint Nicholas? Our work with the children?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. If you’d like, I could introduce you to some our children. A few are even around your age. They could answer any questions you might have and, if it wouldn’t be too presumptuous of me to assume, you could talk to them about how you are part of a guardianship. It would certainly buoy some of their faith in the system.”
She was hoping to ask details about the system from someone who worked behind the scenes, someone like Father Lance himself, but it couldn’t hurt trying to get information out of a few kids here. She might actually have a better chance of manipulating the kids with her forced emotions than she would with an adult like Father Lance.
She nodded and let the man lead her through a series of doors near the rear of the sanctuary, up a short flight of stairs, down a hall, and back down a similarly short flight of stairs. They ended up in a section that looked like an expensive hotel or maybe a boarding school for rich kids. And through a set of wide wooden doors, he led her into a small cafeteria. The buzz from the six kids sitting around a table and eating lunch was, by comparison to the main section of the church, practically a party.
“Our older children and a few of their friends,” Father Lance said. “If you’d like, they’d happily set a place for you. I think,” he took a dramatic sniff of the air, “today may be lasagna for lunch. Vegetarian, I believe.”
Her nose concurred, with the lasagna part, at least.
Their presence at the doors finally drew notice of the kids at the table and her heart took a wild beat before lodging in her throat.
“Kasumi!” Jason called out with a wild wave. “What’re you doing here?”
Father Lance looked at her and winked. “New in town and already making friends? And Jason, no doubt. A fine choice of character you are, then.”
Jason stood, gesturing her over, and she obliged, making sure to thank Father Lance before going.
As she made her way through the warren of tables to where the six kids were, she wiped her hands on her jeans and calmed her racing heart. She was glad to see Jason here, but the other five kids, obviously friends of his, made her suddenly nervous.
Jason scooted over a chair next to his and she nodded to the three boys and two girls as she sat down next to him.
“Didn’t expect to see you so soon,” Jason said, his eyes darting around, occasionally settling on hers.
“Same here,” she managed to get out.
“It’s funny. I was just telling these guys about you.”
She tried not to blush and looked down at her fingernails. “What? Why?”
“Not every day I get to meet a pretty girl.”
She failed on the whole trying not to blush thing.
“Hey,” one of the girls said. “What are you trying to say, huh?”
Jason laughed a bit uncomfortably. “Not what I meant Becka, and you know it.”
Becka harrumphed, but there was a slight tilt to her lips. She looked Kasumi’s way. “So you’re Kasumi? Nice to meet you. I’m Rebecka. Or Becka. Whatever floats your boat.”
Jason took the hint and made introductions all around. He pointed to the redheaded twins, calling one Chutes and the other Ladders. “Don’t ask,” he said when she gave him a confused look at their names. “It’s a long story.” Continuing around the table, he said, “Becka, you know. And there’s Theresa, and that’s Dixon.”
She nodded to each in turn. The twins she’d never be able to tell apart, Becka had a sly but friendly look to her face, Theresa looked almost jealous at Kasumi’s interruption, and Dixon looked to be the dimmest of the group with an empty gaze but honest smile.
“So, why are you here?” Jason asked. “Not that I’m complaining or anything.”
None of this was going as she’d expected. She planned on tricking secret information out of whoever was in charge, but found herself trying her hardest to ignore the fact that Jason was sitting next to her again.
Her brain came up with, “I just wanted to meet some kids my age.”
“Mary is a bit boring, isn’t he?”
As the other kids shared looks and laughs about a man named Mary, Kasumi was quick to say, “He’s not boring. Just special, in his own way.”
Jason raised his palms. “I didn’t mean it that way. Just, you know, all adults can get boring sometimes.”
She had to give him that. “Yeah, you’re right.”
Becka butted in with, “You want something to eat, Kasumi?”
“Oh, no, thank you. I had a late breakfast.”
“Next time then, okay?”
“Of course.”
That was when the table went quiet.
Kasumi’s nerves began to get the best of her and she twirled her fingers in her lap, fought the urge to bite her nails. The twins were hitting each other under the table, Becka was looking expectantly between Kasumi and Jason, Theresa looked like the half-empty plate of lasagna in front of her wasn’t agreeing with her stomach, and Dixon traced shapes on the table.
She heard Jason take a breath to say something but he failed to do so. Twice.
Thankfully, Becka broke the forced silence. “Why don’t you show Kasumi the gardens, Jason?”
Kasumi made a mental note to buy Becka a car for her help. At her side, Jason said something that could have been “yeah” and stood. He suddenly gave Kasumi a formal bow and spread one arm wide.
“After you, my lady.”
She tittered, caught Becka roll her eyes at Jason before she winked at Kasumi, then walked side by side with Jason as he led her outside. As they got further from the table, the voices from the five kids started up again, but too low for Kasumi to make out. She prayed they weren’t talking about her.
Wide expanses of roses in beds of predominantly yellow flowers with specks of purple here and there and cool, crisp air surrounded the pair as they strolled the grounds.
She broke the silence first. “Your friends are … nice.”
“They’re alright.”
“Becka’s sweet.”
“She is.”
“And Theresa’s, um ….”
“Don’t mind her. She’s always like that. Even my charm can’t always get through to her.”
His charm? “Oh.”
He must have misread her comment and said, “It’s not like that, Kasumi. You have to understand, Theresa’s the oldest of us.”
She almost tripped. “Us?”
“Yeah. And she’s almost seventeen now. It’s hard enough getting adopted when you’re older than seven. Imagine what it’s like for her. She knows she’s going to be living here for two more years until she can start working, make a life of her own. On her own.”
It took Kasumi a moment to gather what he was saying. She asked softly, carefully, “So you’re saying that you’re one of them? Adopted, I mean?”
“Yep. The six of us were some of the original kids here. Me, Dixon, then Becka got lucky. Found nice parents.”
“I … didn’t know.”
“You sound so apologetic! Nothing wrong with how things worked out. My mom’s great. Couldn’t have asked for better.” He cast a sidelong glance her way. “I kind of figured that’s what was up with you and Mary.”
Nothing to say, she shrugged.
Jason laughed, probably imagining Dent giving him the same response.
“So you guys,” she said, “the kids that go through the orphanage, you were pretty lucky the place was here, huh?”
“I guess. Father Lance and the others were great. Sent us all to school. Helped with groceries for the families that took kids in. And there has to have been close to fifty kids over the years.”
“That many?”
“Yep. Chutes and Ladders and Theresa are officially the big brothers and sisters of the group. It’s good for them, being able to give back to the community. Chutes and Ladders don’t mind not having a family, seeing as how they’re a family all on their own. And Theresa, when nobody’s looking, is super nice to the other kids, the younger ones. I think she realizes this place,” he waved his hand at the huge building, “is her home. Her family.”
That triggered something in the back of her mind. “So it’s all about giving back.”
“What?”
“Oh, just what you said. How you guys try to give back to the community.”
He teetered his head back and forth. “I guess, yeah. Not just us, though. Almost everyone in town does. This place gets packed quite often, and not just because of Father Lance’s services. It’s like a meeting place for half the town. One person shows up, brings another with them, and then that person brings a friend … like dominos.”
“And Father Lance is in charge of it all?”
“Don’t know if I’d say he’s in charge, but he is the driving force here.”
“So he would be a very generous person, wouldn’t he?”
He gave her another sideways glance and she realized how weird a question it must have sounded. “If you say so,” he said. Then, “Hey, there’s a small creek that runs through those trees over there. Want to go exploring with me?”
Of course! her brain yelled out, but her mouth was wise enough to say normally, “Sure.”
He flicked his eyebrows up and down at her and smiled mischievously as his hand reached out for hers. Suddenly her wise mouth became not so wise because it turned into a stupid grin without her consent.
XVIII
With Fifth off doing her version of investigating and hopefully staying out of trouble, Dent was free to set out to do his own after he’d gotten back from the library. A Glock tucked in his waistband at the small of his back, a knife in pocket, and clothes suitably dark enough for his nocturnal excursion, Dent made his way to the northern section of Herristown once the sun began to fully set.
His curiosity about ‘Project Elevation’ had led him to more contradictory reports. He found multiple stories about how those people of Herristown, who suddenly had the urge to give away all of their possessions, had congregated together away from the rest of society. It was an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ situation that Dent wondered how the people of Herristown let grow to this proportion.
A twenty-five minute taxi ride from The Wine & Vine dropped him off on Seventeenth Street, along with warnings from the driver that this wasn’t a place to be out and about after dark. He paid the taxi driver his fare, paid his words of warning no heed, and headed into the industrial neighborhood.
He waited for the glow of the taxi’s taillights to fade away before heading down Seventeenth. Street lights here were sparse, and the deeper he walked into the gloom, the more numerous the abandoned buildings became. Where he’d been dropped off, only one of three buildings looked rundown, decrepit, and quiet. The further he walked though, the more broken windows he saw, the more refuse began to stack up at the bases of rusted and cut chain link fences, increasing the ratio of derelict buildings to two to one.
Here, in the middle of the night, in the middle of what he was coming to think of as hostile territory, Dent was in his element. No talking or smiling, no misreading vocal cues or body language, no unreadable looks from those around him. Just shadows, stones, and the stench of squalor.
To know one’s enemy, one must know all facets of that enemy. These industrial-turned-pseudo-residential buildings housed what Dent believed was a byproduct of this particular enemy’s actions in Herristown. He may not recognize the immediate effects of eTech, but he sure as hell could recognize the aftereffects on the people manipulated by the illegal technology.
As Fifth had once put it regarding her own talent, different people reacted differently to the same emotion. In the case of The Ranch back in Utah, forced devotion on people had led to anything ranging from donating money to murdering people in cold blood.
One thing he had come to learn, there was always a downside when forcing people’s emotions. And those in charge often opted to sweep the dust they created under the proverbial rug. Or in this case, across the proverbial train tracks.
A dog barked in the distance, back the way he’d come, a late call-to-arms for the denizens in the area ahead. And he knew they were there. A board hitting concrete, a bottle knocked down and sent spinning. The flickering of lights in the busted windows around him and the shadows that crossed those same windows.
This place was alive.
Dent had once witnessed Fifth jump onto a chair when they’d spent the night at a cheap roadside motel when he’d turned on the lights to their room. Scores of cockroaches scurried under the bed and dresser, hiding from the light. Dent wondered what the girl would do when nature turned its morning light on in this place, wondered what creatures would scurry back into the shadows.
Which is why she wasn’t here with him.
Up ahead, where the street ended in a wide cul de sac, an unsteady orange glow bathed the exteriors of a few buildings. The wind picked up momentarily, carrying with it foul odors and words. From the right, the sounds of an argument broke out, the actual participants hidden by a concrete retaining wall, their raised voices echoing off the surrounding buildings.
Dent veered that way.
“They’ll work it out if you leave them to it,” a ra
spy voice called out from the left.
Dent stopped in the middle of the street and turned. He could make out a silhouette standing in a doorway, backlit by the steady glow of an electric bulb. The person, and the light, had not been there minutes ago. Back on the other side of the street, the argument had escalated from purely vocal to full-on physical.
Dent reasoned the silhouetted man would offer a better chance of getting some answers. He crossed the street, clambered over a fallen chain-link fence, and stepped into a sea of shadows in deeper shadows. Filth, plastic, metal. Each step produced a different sensation and sound. He stopped a good eight feet from the building’s entrance and the silhouette.
Arms folded as he leaned against the door frame, the silhouette said, “Doesn’t look like you brought anything with you, friend.”
“Nothing you’d want,” Dent replied.
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure. Beggars and choosers and all that.” A raspy cough followed, though it hadn’t been loud enough to cover the sounds of filth, plastic, and metal being stepped on out in the shadowy sea around Dent.
Dent showed no reaction to the men gathering around him.
The man in the entryway stirred. “What brings you here, friend?”
“Questions,” said Dent.
The man’s hands spread. “Well this isn’t a place of answers, I’m sorry to inform you.”
Dent started with the basics. “What is this place?”
“Haven. Refuge. Purgatory. Doesn’t really matter.”
“What led to you being here?”
“Oh, a little of this, a little of that. You know how it is.”
Actually, Dent didn’t know how it was. Why people would opt to live in squalor was beyond his breadth of understanding.
The silhouette was silent. The men around Dent — he determined there were at least three — attempted to be silent as well.
After a moment, the silhouette shifted his weight. “You know why I’m here. Why are you here? Don’t recognize you as one of the regulars.”
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