“Gentlemen. Please.” Caspar rubs his temples as Edgar scrambles through his knapsack, and Aaron babbles prayer. “You already killed me once, and look where it got us.”

I spatially baffle Florin’s attempted flying tackle; the man goes flying through Caspar, as if the warlock were made of smoke. I stifle a laugh as he crashes into his own tent.

“Where is my damn gun?” Edgar empties his knapsack into the grass.

“Will you all shut up,” roars Sam. “Let the man speak.”

Finally, the men of Rogarth fall silent.

Caspar holds up his hands in solicitation. “First thing is, I’m saying sorry. You all know me. I hope you know it gave me no joy to do what I did.”

An awkward pause.

I raise a finger. “Is there anything you boys would like to say to Caspar?”

“Sorry we killed you, Cas.” Aaron wipes his nose on his wrist.

“I’m not,” Edgar says. “You were a warlock. Whole damn time. We kept you housed and fed and you were a warlock.”

A vein stands out on Caspar’s forehead. “I became a warlock after you hanged me. It was that or Heaven, which—”

“There is no Heaven for the sorcerer, says the Precepts.” Florian’s righted himself and his tent.

“The precepts are…” Caspar hesitates. “Out of date.”

“When can we go home?” Aaron asks.

I inch innocently up to Caspar’s ear. “We can do my little presentation whenever you’d like, Mr. Cartwright.”

He scratches the back of his neck. “Perhaps we’d better.”

I tap a foot on the dirt. A translucent bruise spreads from the point of my toe, flattening the grass into a stretched glass membrane.

The men of Rogarth look at the abyss below their feet, and witness Heaven.

Once I’ve restored their forest floor, and the screaming has stopped, Caspar has the space he needs to explain himself. His neighbors listen in pallid silence.

“The Adversary deceives the minds and eyes of mortal men.” Edgar’s voice is shaky and infirm.

“That’s as the Father tells us.” Caspar crouches before his huddled teacher. “And exactly what I said when Miss Irene showed me. But the Father is gone, Edgar.”

“Even if I am lying, there’s nothing to be done about it,” I say. “Not by you. We’re only here because my warlock maintains some perverse affection for his betrayers. Why he thinks you’ve ever deserved him is beyond me.”

“And we want to know if there’s anything that’d make you more comfortable,” Caspar says.

Florin shrugs miserably. “Maybe a pool table?”

Sam nods. “I’d take a pool table.”

“Pool table and a taphouse,” says the screamy one, whose name is apparently Kai.

“Only we’d need a calendar,” Aaron says. “So that we don’t end up drinking on Fridays. Fridays is temple days.”

Sam lays a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Reckon we’re well past that, Aaron.”

Caspar leaves the boys with the promise of a taphouse, a pool table, and their choice of darts or pinball (I have to draw the line somewhere). He doesn’t stick around for the resulting debate.

I linger by the door back into the darkness of my insides as he takes one last look at the pocket of autumn. He steps through the threshold. “I suppose I’d better get back to it.”

“Nope.” I fold my arms.

He gives me a quizzical look.

“You’ve been through a lot, Caspar, in a brief time,” I say. “If you keep this pace, you’ll burn out. I promised you anything you liked when you were with me. Whatever you’d have from me, I’ll grant it, remember? You haven’t been taking advantage.”

He shuffles his feet. “The tea’s nice.”

“Thank you, Cas. But surely there’s something you’d like besides tea and sandwiches, hmm?”

“If it’s all the same to you, ma’am, I’d just as soon get this all over with,” Caspar says.

“It’s not all the same to me,” I say. “I can’t just have you kill and maim and take hostages in my name without rewarding you. You are going to relax.”

“Okay. Okay.” He puts his hands up in surrender. “I’ll relax.”

“So what’s your pleasure, mister warlock?”

“I don’t rightly know,” he says, but he knows. I hear everything from him. Even the things he wants to hide. Wish granted, Caspar Cartwright.

I snap my fingers. A chunk of the wall to our right sloughs away like a scab. Beyond it, accompanied by a blast of cool air, is the twinkling night sky of a mountainside vista, seen from an old-growth deck. At its center is a broad enamel hot tub, the kind you could fit a dinner party in. It’s full of steaming water (and yes, dear reader, it’s just water. I’ve filtered out all the enzymes and impurities from what it was before).

“Voila!” I stride into my little vignette. “Come on through, warlock. Have yourself a dip.”

Caspar balks. He indicates his tweed suit. “In this?”

I toss him a swimsuit. He unfolds it. “In this?”

I sigh and manifest a somewhat longer one behind my back, so he can’t see the membrane and the lipid tallow its polyester emerges from. I underhand it to him. He hesitates. “All right.” He ducks round the corner, out of my Irene body’s sight.

“I’ll see you anyway, you know,” I call.

“Please stop.”

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen many times, in fact.”

Caspar emerges onto my mountain, his broad chest bare and flushing in the sudden chill. “Humans have a concept called privacy, Miss Irene.”

“I’m going to keep track of every time you’re scandalized by something that you happily accepted from the Father. And when we hit ten, you’re going to owe me a free tea latte.”

“I never met the Father. It’s different.”

“So a stranger peeping your business is different?”

“He’s not—” Caspar huffs out a laugh. “If you want me to relax, let me pretend, please?”

“As you wish. Now your goddess commands you to have a relaxing soak.”

Caspar slips into the hot tub and groans in relief as the water unknits his trammeled-up spirit. I give him a brief scratch on the head as I pass back toward the door. He cranes his neck.

A thought from him, a small and circumspect anxiety, stops me in my tracks. I grin. Well, well.

I do a half-turn, dress swishing around my ankles. “Would you like company, Mr. Cartwright?”

His attention snaps with contrite determination to the view of the mountain range. “It’s. Uh. It’s a big tub. I suppose I just… assumed. Apologies.”

“No apologies necessary. I could really use it, too.” I tug my dress up over my head. He doesn’t turn around, but he is listening very carefully to the sound the silk makes as it glides across me.

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I slip into the hot tub on the other end. He marshalls his gaze away from the horizon only once the water is up around my shoulders and most of my ink-black body is occluded by the steamy surface.

“I’m wearing a swimsuit, you know.” I raise my third eye’s brow. “This is all perfectly acceptable according to your little Precepts. The latest translation, anyway.”

He allows himself a glance and immediately snaps back up to my face. “I don’t know if the padres would see it like that.”

I giggle. “I don’t think I’d let the padres see it at all, Caspar. Anyway, there’s no proscribed square footage.”

He continues to studiously avoid my body. I make a show of turning away and gazing at the remnants of the day where they paint the peaks. I’m rewarded by a dare of a glance at the curve of my breasts where they meet the meniscus of the tub. I’ve reduced those just a touch since last we met, made them a bit more pert. I think they’re cuter this way. Caspar does, too.

Messing with my virtuous little mortal is far more fun than I’d care to admit. I probe around the edges of his restraint. Is there a little less here than last time? I settle back with a contented sigh, all three eyes shut, and let another half-inch of my neckline slip above the surface.

“May I ask you something, Miss Irene?”

I open one golden eye. “Of course.”

“What’s it like?” he asks. “To be a… to be you.”

“You ever see a stage play, Caspar?”

“I’m something of a coarse yokel,” Caspar says. “But I’ve seen a show or two. Mysteries and parables of the Father, traveling mummer sorts of things.”

“Have you ever had that moment midway through the first act,” I say, “when the flats and the threadbare costumes and stand-in props cohere into a shared illusion, and you believe that a sodium spotlight is the sun, and a flat painted set can be a forest or a palace?”

He nods.

“And then the show ends, and the doors open, and you walk blinking back into the light, and the true nature of the world reasserts itself in all its solidity and dimension?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Imagine another door. And another light and another world. A dimension more real again than the last. Imagine crossing the stage and seeing what’s behind it. Seeing all the trappings of your old reality for the insubstantialities and shadows they are, and beholding the true things they represent.”

“That sounds…” He searches for the word. “Terrifying.”

“Terrifying, yes. And exquisite.” I lower myself further into the water. My foot drifts across the tub, a scant inch from his leg. “When your self is no longer bound to its mortal flesh, I’ll show it to you.”

I give in and nudge his knee with my toe, half convinced that he’ll bolt like a scalded puppy, but he doesn’t. He just looks at me, his bright hazel eyes contemplative. I smile at my reflection within them. “I think you’ll love it, Caspar.”

₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪

“Throne One to Ophanim Blue.”

The radio crackles to life a few minutes past the final votive exit, after Jordan’s turned onto the Prudence route. She glances at Caspar. “Ophanim Blue is me, Abe.”

The radio chirps its hail again. Caspar shifts his attention from the slaloming treeline to his hostage. “Can you ignore it?”

“Not without attracting a lot of suspicion.”

“All right. Go ahead.” He rests the pistol on his thigh, pointed at her seat back. “Keep casual.”

Jordan unhooks her transmitter. “Ophanim Blue receiving, Throne One.”

“Rogarth post hasn’t checked you in, Jordy.”

Jordan fidgets with the call button. “What do I say?”

“Whatever you need to. Delay.”

She brings the transmitter back up to her lips. “Van full of pilgrims had a breakdown outside 12-votive. I got a little stuck helping them out. But we’re back on task now. Pass my apologies on to Rogarth post, yeah?”

A little burst of static. “Those damn temple wagons. What was it, a Morningstar?”

Jordan chuckles. “Yep. Rear axle. We got it sorted out.”

“Every time with the rear axle. All right, Ophanim Blue, good looking out. Father keep you.”

“And you, Throne One. Over and out.” Jordan holsters the transmitter.

Caspar has kept his cause steady by imagining the inspector in his sights as one of the fearsome inquisitorial automata that parents spook their wayward kids with. The reality of Inpsector Darius is a distracting difference. He hopes fervently she’ll keep cooperating. It used to be that he’d pray for it. But as strong as I’ve made him, I don’t have control over the inspectorate.

“Lemme put on some music, Abraham?”

“Fine,” he says. He’d like something to keep the thoughts quiet, anyway.

Jordan flips the AM/FM on and tracks around momentarily.

“…ing to the Wayback Playback, brothers and sisters. And we’re coming up on the Temple Tower Hour. That’s right. Park it here for sixty uninterrupted minutes of Double-T on Ninety-six nine.”

The crunchy introduction to Not Just Yet sizzles out of the sound system. “Ohhh, shit.” Jordan taps the steering wheel to the first drum fill. “Great timing. You know this one, right, Abe?”

Of course he does. Everyone knows Double-T.

“Not! Just! Yet! Ba da da bah da na na.” Jordan bobs her head to the chorus. “Come on, Abe. We’ll be above it all, but Not! Just! Yet!”

Caspar doesn’t join in, but a grin cracks through his carefully chiseled mask.

They’ve passed several checkpoints and gates along their journey, and cruised through with nary a stop. I have to admit, it’s helpful to have an inspector at the wheel. I still think Caspar could have just killed her and knuckled through, but Jordan’s cooperating for now, and it’s easing the journey.

Forty-five minutes into the Temple Tower Hour, when Jordan’s rolling through a backroad to get onto Prudence 55, they hit the checkpoint that fucks it all up.

Jordan turns the radio down and leans on the brake as they coast toward a prefab gate that’s been dragged across the road and locked. A uniformed templar, his scarlet-and-gold kevlar open and unzipped, beckons them forward.

Jordan rolls her window down. “Afternoon, brother.”

“Afternoon, Madame Inspector.” The templar peers into the cruiser. There’s two more of them about fifteen feet behind him, leaning on their squad car. Caspar lays the pistol under Jordan’s knapsack, grip tight on its stock. “Hate to ask for your ID.”

“Don’t even need to ask, man.” She fishes her badge from her jacket pocket. “I got you.”

He flips her leather fold open and checks her picture. “You heading to Chamchek?”

“Got it in one,” she says. “My friend Abe here’s a transferring acolyte.”

The templar examines Caspar. “Uh huh. Got ID, Abe?”

Come on, man. Think of something.

“Thing is,” Jordan cuts in. “His ID was outta date on account of it’s his old parish, plus he’s got a name and status change keyed in since he’s got him a new wife in Chamchek.”

“That’s right,” Caspar hastily adds. “We’re doing the hyphenate thing.”

“So we up and didn’t bring it since he’s bound for a new one, anyway.” Jordan shrugs. “Our bad, brother.”

The templar clicks his tongue. “Well, congrats to you, Abe. What’s that new name you’ve got.”

Caspar blinks. “Abraham Semfeld-Baker.”

“Semfeld? Like the guy from Temple Tower?” The templar chuckles. “Any relation?”

Caspar’s laugh is strained. “I wish.”

“Tell you what.” The templar leans out of the car. “Normally I’d let you just go right by, Madame Inspector. But we’ve got a bit of a situation here. Warlock sighting in the area.”

Caspar’s blood goes cold.

“Now the description isn’t anything like you two,” the templar says. “But they can be face-changers now and then. So I have my orders and a sword dangling over my commission if I don’t follow them.”

“Ah. I get it.” Jordan’s knuckles have gone white on the wheel. “Look—you give me the name of your superior and I’ll give them a call. Let them know you did an inspector a solid.”

He shakes his head. “Sorry, Madame Inspector.”

Caspar can hear Jordan’s breath pick up. “Thing is, we’re already late. There was a breakdown. Pilgrim Van.”

“I get it. Here’s what we’re gonna do, all right?” The templar gives her a smile. “No need to do a whole intake thing. I’m just gonna call ahead to Chamchek, run Abe’s name by the prelacy there, and as soon as they give me the go-ahead, you’re clear as crystal. How’s that sound?”

“That, uh.” Jordan makes eye contact with Caspar. He recognizes her look. She is out of ideas.

He thinks about the autumn evening, the taphouse. He thinks about his oath to me and my oath to him. He thinks about the mercy I have shown him and the mercilessness I expect from him.

It’s a forest backway, a lonely road. Only a matter of time before it gets less lonely. The time to move is now.

“Yes, Caspar,” I murmur. “Good boy.”

One hand clutches Jordan’s and closes the cuff around her wrist. The other emerges from under the knapsack full of fire.

A red circle blooms from just over the templar’s eye. His head snaps back as the bullet carries his forebrain with it out the other side, the ghost of his amiable smile just beginning its downturn.

Jordan screams in shock and anger. Caspar snaps the other end of her cuff to the headrest opposite her and bolts from the cruiser.

One of the templar’s fellows is already sprinting for the squad car. Caspar empties the revolver, sending the survivors reeling for cover, and drops it skittering to the ground as he pulls Jordan’s .45 from his waistband. He lays down another storm of bullets and hears a yelp of pain from the opposite side of the car.

He bull-rushes the noise. I feel his stern will, the tensing of his instinct, and my carapace armor bubbles forth from his face, spilling across his head and down his chest.

By the time his mark has raised up from behind the squad car, Caspar is coated in a helmet and cuirass of shining chitin. The templar’s service piece cracks through the dewy woodland air. But he’s been trained to aim at center mass, and I am protecting my warlock’s heart. The bullet kicks out a spark as it ricochets, and though Caspar’s step twists from the impact, he doesn’t slow.

He vaults the hood and spins into the templar on the other side, locks a forearm around the man's midsection and brings them both tumbling to the asphalt. He comes up with the templar locked in place between him and the third guy, who’s roaring “Drop him,” as if Caspar is some kind of disobedient dog.

Caspar shoves the templar forward, hard, forgetting his own strength, and the man’s legs clear the ground as he’s lawn-darted into his squadmate. Caspar sprints after him, my claw punching from his forearm.

It slices through the kevlar. It spears the heart of the thrown templar and hisses its exit like liquid silk.

The final templar, trapped beneath his dead friend, issues a piteous cry and manages two more shots, one of which passes clean through the meat of Caspar’s bicep.

Then ensorcelled black bone takes the place of his right eye and pins him to the street like a dried butterfly. He spasms once and dies.

Caspar’s arm fluxes and seals as he stands, leaving a ragged hole in his stolen shirt and a crusty iris of blood around it. He leans heavily on the hood of the squad car. Three evocations in quick succession. That nearly laid him out last time.

He straightens out and finds his footing. With a quick final swipe of his claw, he bisects the lock on the gate and shoulders it open. The claw slats back into him with a puckering slurp.

He walks back to the cruiser, stride surer with every step. I smile at the progress my warlock is so rapidly showing, and at the look of frozen, furious horror on the inspector’s face. Still feeling buddy-buddy with ol' Abe, Jordy?

Caspar picks up Edgar’s revolver, then peels the kevlar and uniform shirt from the templar he shot in the head. A lip of blood dries on the collar, but it’s the least damaged article of clothing he can find.

He slides into the back seat. Jordan’s right hand is still cuffed to the passenger headrest. “Drive,” Caspar says, as he slots six new bullets into the revolver.

No talking and no music. She lays her foot on the accelerator and the cruiser bumps over the bodies and through the gate.

The warlock and the inspector leave the dead men in the dust with the broken fragments of their fellowship.