City of Night

told him the truth, and did not hesitate to reveal even the possible cost of his sister’s courage.
    This was a bright boy, imprisoned by his disorder vet acutely aware of the world, a boy who saw more deeply into things than did many people who were not shackled by his inhibitions. The quantum travel from New Orleans to Tibet had not alarmed him, had instead electrified him. Upon arrival, he looked directly into Deucalion’s eyes and said, less with astonishment than with understanding, “Oh.” And then, “Yes.”
    Arnie tracked the coins with uncommon alertness, but he listened intently, too, and he did not seem to shrink from the dark potential of pending events half a world away. Quite the contrary: The more that he understood of the confrontation growing in New Orleans, and understood his sister’s commitment to the resistance of evil, the calmer he became.
    Upon their arrival, when he heard that Arnie had not yet eaten dinner back on the dark side of the globe, Nebo ordered a suitable meal for this morning-bathed hemisphere. Now a young monk arrived with a capacious basket, from which he began to lay out generous fare on a trestle table by the only window.
    In place of the Lego castle on which the boy worked much of every day, Deucalion had suggested to Nebo that jigsaw puzzles be brought from the monastery’s collection of simple amusements, and in particular a one-thousand-piece picture of a Rhineland castle that he himself had worked more than once, as a form of meditation.
    Now, as the boy stood beside the table, gazing at the appealing spread from which he could make his breakfast—including some orange cheese but nothing green—another monk arrived with four puzzles. When Deucalion reviewed these with Arnie, explaining that a jigsaw picture could be considered a two-dimensional version of a Lego project, the boy brightened at the sight of the castle photograph.
    Kneeling in front of Arnie to bring them as eye-to-eye as possible, Deucalion took him by the shoulders and said, “I can’t stay with you any longer. But I will return. Meanwhile you will be safe with Nebo and his brothers, who know that even the outcasts among God’s children are still His children, and therefore love them as they do themselves. Your sister must be my paladin because I can’t raise my own hand against my maker, but I will do all in my power to protect her. Nevertheless, what will come will come, and each of us must face it in his own way, with as much courage as he can—as she always has, and as she always will.”
    Deucalion was not surprised when the boy hugged him, and he returned the embrace.
     
     
     

Chapter 69
     
    Vicky’s sister, Liane, whom Carson had spared from prison on a false murder charge, lived in an apartment in Faubourg Marigny, not far outside the Quarter.
    She answered the door with a cat in a hat. She held the cat, and the cat wore the hat. The cat was black, and the hat was a knitted blue beret with a red pompom.
    Liane looked lovely, and the cat looked embarrassed, and Michael said, “This explains the mouse we just saw laughing itself to death.”
    Having regained consciousness in the car, Vicky could stand on her own, but she didn’t look good. To her sister, as she patted the cat and stepped inside, she said, “Hi, sweetie. I think I’m gonna puke.”
    “Carson doesn’t allow that sort of thing at her house,” Michael said, “so here we are. As soon as Vicky pukes, we’ll take her home.”
    “He never changes,” Liane said to Carson.
    “Never. He’s a rock.”
    Vicky decided she needed a beer to settle her stomach, and she led everyone to the kitchen.
    When Liane put down the cat, it shook off the beret in disgust and ran out of the room to call the ACLU.
    She offered drinks all around, and Carson said, “Something with enough caffeine to induce a heart attack.”
    When Michael seconded that suggestion, Liane fetched two Red Bulls from the refrigerator.
    “We’ll drink from the can,” Michael said. “We’re not girly men.”
    Having already chugged half a bottle of beer, Vicky said, “What happened back there? Who was Randal? Who were those two that switched off my lights? You said Arnie’s safe, but where is he?”
    “It’s a long story,” Carson said.
    “They were such a cute couple,” Vicky said. “You don’t expect such a cute couple to squirt you with chloroform.”
    Sensing that Carson’s It’s a long story , though containing a wealth of