The Book of Joby (48 page)

“What about Mrs. Farley’s garden?” asked the second voice at length.

“If she doesn’t stop fussing at those flowers,” said the first, “they’ll uproot themselves and run away. Mr. Farley’s been dead for years. It’s time she found a new husband. That would give her something better to work on.”

“Mr. Templer’s single,” giggled the second girl.

“Bellindi! He’s got nose hair!”

“I know,” the second girl laughed. “But—”

“Shhh!”

A sudden silence fell, punctuated by scuffling noises, then thrashing about on the thicket’s far side. Before Joby realized what was happening, the girls were peering wide-eyed at him around the thicket’s edge. They seemed in their early teens. One had startling blue eyes in a pale, freckled face framed by long, wavy strawberry hair. The other had dark eyes in a heart-shaped face, and straight dark hair tied back with ribbons. They wore jeans and
T-shirts, and had chains of pansy flowers woven through their tresses. In startled disbelief, they stepped out from behind the trees to stare at Joby.

“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling deeply embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

They turned to look at each other, then burst out laughing and ran off, hand in hand, into the field, their flower chains scattering on the breeze behind them.

“Of course you can follow him,” the Creator said pleasantly. “Didn’t I say so last time?”

Gabriel watched a series of confused expressions struggle across Lucifer’s face as the confrontation he’d clearly been expecting didn’t occur.

“Well . . . how am I to find it, then?” Lucifer sputtered.

“I’ll draw you a map.” The Creator smiled, producing, as he spoke, a sheet of paper with several simple features already drawn upon it, and handing this to Lucifer.

“This is all?” Lucifer asked, perusing the map suspiciously. “Just follow this little highway? That seems awfully simple.”

“The best hiding places are,” said the Creator, “or
were.
”

“You’re so smug.” Lucifer frowned. “But we both know it was some creature of Yours who pulled Joby from the fire just as I had won.”

“If you had won, we wouldn’t be here debating the outcome, would we?”

“I
had
won, and You know it!” Lucifer snapped.

“Gabe,” the Creator asked, “under oath as the wager’s official witness, have I broken any least term of our agreement?”

“No, Lord,” Gabriel answered, trying not to look ashamed. “Under oath as witness,
You
have not.”

“There you have it, Lucifer. My servant does not lie any more than I do. If you’ve some proof to the contrary, present it. Otherwise, I’ve things to attend to.”

Day’s end found Joby back on Main Street, wandering wearily past shops decked in gold and silver, scarlet and evergreen. Cheerful conversation and occasional carols wafted from every doorway. Everyone had been very friendly, but none had been hiring. Next time, Joby chided himself glumly, he’d have to run away earlier in the season.

Outside a candy shop, he was arrested by the scents of peppermint, cinnamon, and chocolate, but the smell was all he could afford. Sunset was not
far off, and the clear evening was quickly growing chill. He’d still found nowhere to stay that night. It was Christmas Eve. Shouldn’t there at least be room for him in a barn somewhere?

At the thought, he realized what any more-veteran bum would have known from the start, and turned back to head up Shea Street toward Taubolt’s only church. Like everything else here, it was just a short walk away, on a hilltop at the north end of town, next to the cemetery. Where better to seek food and shelter on Christmas Eve?

The sign out front read
ST. LUKE’S.
Joby found the door unlocked, and walked inside to find candles burning unattended on the altar.

“Hello?” he called.

Silence.

A huge mural of waves out on the luminous night sea covered the entire wall behind the altar. In front of this hung a crucifix. On a stand below that rested a modest gold tabernacle.
Catholic then,
Joby thought. The other walls were paneled in darkly gleaming redwood, the high ceiling supported by heavy crossbeams. The air smelled of wood polish, candle wax, and age. Stained-glass windows lined either side of the building: abstract designs radiant with the last fiery light of day. Evergreen garlands and wide velvet ribbons in crimson and white festooned the walls. Small white lights twinkled on Christmas trees to either side of the altar. Joby had not been inside a church since before Lindwald’s death. It felt both comfortingly familiar and vaguely incriminating, as he walked forward and stepped into a pew.

It was impossible to gaze at anything but the mural, and to gaze at that without coming again and again to the crucifix at its center. Across the many years, fragments of his conversation with the old priest, Father Crombie, returned.

They long for another chance. . . . It was far too late to help his Son . . . he helped him anyway. . . . Hope, even for the hopeless. . . . You may be glad . . . someday.

With welling eyes, Joby dropped his head onto his hands atop the pew back. “God.” The whisper left his constricted throat almost of its own volition. “If you’re ever going to help me . . .”

The only answer he received was the sound of his own breathing in the gathering gloom. Then a soft shuffling sound brought his eyes up to find an ancient man in black clerical suit and collar tottering with obvious difficulty through a door to one side of the altar. With an oversize prayer book gripped in both hands, he went slowly onto one knee, rose even more slowly
to place the book upon the altar, then stepped back and looked around the apse, as if to check the decorations.

The longer Joby looked, the more familiar the old man seemed. Knowing it could only be wishful thinking, Joby murmured, “Father Crombie?”

Clearly startled, the old priest turned and peered into the unlit church. “Who is that?” he asked in a kindly, still strong voice that Joby remembered with shocking clarity, even after so much time.

The wretched traitor’s trail wasn’t hard to follow. Most of a day later, the wraith’s fear still hung on everything he’d passed, like a long sulfuric fart through the countryside.

“Let’s hope the boy is with him still,” Kallaystra said, wrinkling her pretty nose.

“Security camera,” Malcephalon growled. “I’ll make him wish to die over and over again before I’m finished.”

It rankled him that Kallaystra spared not even a glance in response. Clearly, Lucifer had only sent her along to humiliate him further. Someone “trustworthy” he’d said, to guard against “further incompetence.” Who was Lucifer to talk of incompetence? Malcephalon suspected that, if their glorious leader had ever risked doing anything himself, he’d long ago have proven the most incompetent wretch in Hell. Why couldn’t Kallaystra see that? It was well past time for a change of leadership. If Lucifer lost this wager, his position would certainly be weakened; not an unsatisfying thought.

“This place is noxious,” Kallaystra said crossly. “It’s beginning to distract me.”

Wrapped in his own resentment, Malcephalon hadn’t noticed. But she was right. Some offensive quality was growing stronger all around them as they moved farther into the Creator’s newly revealed preserve.

“Yes. I’ve felt it for some time,” Malcephalon lied, not wanting to seem less observant than his chaperone. “Hardly surprising given the nature of this place.”

“Let’s find that little worm, and get out of here,” Kallaystra complained.

As they pressed farther into Taubolt, the sun fell beneath the treetops, and the unpleasant sensation grew steadily stronger until it threatened to eclipse Williamson’s trail altogether. Malcephalon thought the smell of it familiar. It tugged almost savagely at his memory. But of what?

“This is unendurable!” Kallaystra fumed. “If it gets any worse—”

“There he is!” Malcephalon snarled, pointing at a smudge of vapor hanging motionless against a thorny clump of foliage ahead of them.

What was left of Williamson simply stared with dull resignation as they approached. His form was pale and ragged, as if the torture he so richly deserved was already well along without them.

“The air,” Williamson slurred as they arrived. “Burns . . . burns . . . I was tricked. . . . Cheating. . . . Angels cheating.”

“Fucking flake of dung! You’ve betrayed us all!”
Malcephalon shouted, raising both hands to strike.

Williamson shrieked as Malcephalon’s blazing stream of blue fire hit him, but Kallaystra swiftly deflected the killing blow.

“Fool!” she snapped at Malcephalon. “You would destroy him before learning what he knows of the boy? Lucifer was right. You have lost your mind.”

Malcephalon barely kept himself from launching another stream of fire at her. The impudent whore! When she had proven the little rat knew nothing worth saving, not Lucifer himself would prevent his revenge.

“Where is the boy?” Kallaystra demanded of Williamson.

“Took him . . .,” he panted, “to . . . to Taubolt.”

“Who took him?” Kallaystra pressed. “Why didn’t you alert us?”

“Tricked,” Williamson gasped. “I know things . . . things Lucifer must hear. . . . They tricked . . . tricked us all.”

“Who tricked you?” Kallaystra demanded.

“Only Lucifer’s ears,” Williamson moaned. “No one can be trusted.”

“He’s lying!” Malcephalon sneered. “Can’t you see he’s just trying to buy time?”

“Spit it out,” Kallaystra snapped at Williamson, “or I’ll let this fool do what he likes with you.
I
can be trusted with anything your master needs to know.”

“He . . .,” Williamson breathed, raising a limp hand toward Malcephalon, with the tattered shreds of pure contempt in his eyes. “He . . . cannot . . . be trusted.”

“You worthless, lying piece of—”
Malcephalon’s hands flew up to hurl fire again.

“Stop!”
Kallaystra shouted, whirling to confront Malcephalon, her own hands raised to strike. “Why are you so eager to destroy him? . . . Why
was
he left alone all night to guard the boy? I am beginning to wonder.
Was
it just stupidity?”

“He thinks to spare himself by implicating me!” Malcephalon yelled. “Isn’t it obvious what he’s—”

“Stop!” Kallaystra shouted, whirling to where Williamson had been.

Only then did Malcephalon realize that Williamson had slipped off while they were arguing. The pathetic wraith was already several hundred feet away, struggling farther into Taubolt as if against some fierce, invisible current.