“They do?”
She shrugged and grinned. “What would I know? I'm just a witch.”
After picking herself up off the floor last night, Kat had sat on the couch and wept in Kelly's arms for two hours as Johnny served them tea and talked about the truth of the matter, as he put it. But he hadn't spo-ken much about religion.
But what did that make her? She couldn't be a witch, surely. Was she a Christian? She supposed so. She was most definitely a follower of Jesus, because in the world that her eyes had been opened to last night, there was no difference between Jesus and God. Together they'd ruthlessly and yet so lovingly ruined her to this old world, with its cars and boyfriends and designer jeans.
How could she express all of that without sounding like a complete fool?
Carla punched her arm. “You're not serious, right?” They reached the gazebo and ducked out of the sun's hot rays.
“I . . .”
As a heart attack, honey
. But could she just say that? “As a heart attack, honey.”
“Serious about what?” Carla asked. “Being a Muslim, or this bit about thinking God is real?”
“About God.”
“Two black crows alone in their nest, eh?” Carla and Kat faced the familiar voice, surprised to see that Asad had appeared out of nowhere with twenty or more of his friends.
“Who you calling a crow, towel-head?” Carla snapped.
A square white bandage covered Asad's cheek where Kat had cut him with her fingernails yesterday. He hopped over the wall, joined by the others, mostly Arabs.
“I am calling you a crow, you black witch. In my father's court you would be nothing more than a slave for mopping the floor.” His eyes moved to Kat. “And you, with your milky brown skin, might make for a good whore.”
Some of them had straddled the wall, others hung behind. All watched expectantly. And Kat didn't have a clue what should be done.
“This coming from the desert donkeys who have nothing better to do than to hack each other to pieces over women and oil.”
Had Carla lost her mind?
Asad's face darkened. “We are Muslims who follow the Koran and do only the will of Allah. If he commands us to kill the infidels, do you suggest we turn our backs on him? If he gives us the gift of a slave like you, do you suggest we throw his gift back in his face? You filthy crow.”
“My father's a Muslim, you fool!” Carla shouted. “He'd come down here and twist your creamy little neck if he heard your militant, fundamentalist garbage.”
The fact that Carla's father was a Muslim seemed to stall Asad.
“Not all Muslims follow the will of Allah,” one of the others said.
“No, only those who blow themselves up for the virgins, I suppose,” Carla shot back. “Your brand of extremism is dead!”
“What's going on here?” The black jocks had come up behind them. Seven of them, Kat saw. “You girls okay?” Charles asked, glancing at Carla. It didn't take Kat much to imagine that he could do as much damage off the football field as on.
“I don't know, are we?” Carla demanded, staring at Asad.
Asad was surrounded by his people, and he didn't back down easily. “From the beginning and in the end all your type will be good for is entertaining and serving the true followers of Allah.”
“You got a death wish, boy?” Charles snapped.
Kat finally found herself. “Stop it! Both of you!”
She inched away from Carla, putting herself between the boys. “This isn't right, it can't be. And I'm to blame. So I'm going to fix it.”
Carla stared at her as if she'd lost her marbles.
“That's where you're wrong,”Asad said. “We're going to fix it for you.”
“No, Asad, you can't, not like this. I'm sorry for cutting you. I'm sorry for hitting Leila.”No sign of the girl in this group. “It was wrong of me.”
No one seemed to know what to do with that, so Kat continued.
“This isn't what God would want.”
“What could a witch know about Allah?” the boy to Asad's right said.
So here it was, the moment of truth.
“I'm not a witch,” she said, looking at Carla.“Not anymore. I met God yesterday and learned of his world.”
“So now you expect us to believe that you're an expert on Allah's world?” Asad said. “What do you know about Allah? Christians and Hindus don't follow Allah!”
“
Allah
means
God
, right? I may not be familiar with who prays to which God yet, but I know that this isn't his way. If you were to see his world, you'd fall on your faces, crying out in fear and love!”
The words sounded idiotic here in the gazebo. Carla was still staring at her, dumbstruck. The jocks looked like they'd rather be slamming into a defensive line than facing off with a girl spouting Allah talk.
Johnny had introduced her to Jesus, so she dispensed with the God-Allah talk and spoke to the heart of the matter.
“You worship Jesus, right?”
“I worship no one but Allah.”
“Okay, whatever, you worship the ground Jesus walks on if I remember correctly. You think he'd go for this?”
“Since when are you into Jesus?” Carla asked.
“I'm just saying, Carla, we got witches facing off Muslims and Arabs facing off blacks.Where does this end? Where's the room for love in that way of thinking? We should be loving each other, not trying to figure out how to cut each other's throats.”
“Not if those throats refuse to pray to Allah,” Asad said.
Kat whipped her head back to the boy. “Come on, you really think that's what Jesus taught? Don't Muslims believe he's the sinless prophet? Shouldn't we all follow his teachings?”
She was hardly the expert on Islam or Jesus, and undoubtedly she was full of mistakes that Johnny would help correct, but her reasoning sounded decent to her. And she knew that the love she'd felt last night after her initial meltdown was available to Asad and Carla as well.
“As Allah wills it,” Asad said.
“And he does!”
They all just stared at her.
“Trust me, I saw him. Or myself as he sees me. My eyes were opened to the world the way God sees it, and it's changed me. I can't be the same ever again. I can't, because I believe in God.”
“Even the demons believe in God and tremble,” one of the Arabs said.
Now it was Kat's turn to be silenced.
“As to the infidels . . .” Asad said, regaining some confidence.
“Okay.” Kat nodded. “Fair enough. I have a challenge for you. Rather than cut each other up, let's call a truce. On Monday we'll reconvene for a debate on the true will of Allah. If I lose, you may beat me to a pulp off school grounds without any retaliation from any of my friends.”
When the idea had first presented itself to her it had sounded brilliant. But already she wondered just how brilliant. And all of this assumed that Johnny Drake could talk the judge out of a jail sentence for her.
Maybe the jail sentence was a better idea.
“A debate,” Asad said.
“Yes. On Monday, after school.”
Asad glanced at his line, seemed to receive no help either way. He evidently took this as a positive sign.
“Fine. On Monday.” And then he added for good measure. “Infidel.”
Day Four
“I'M TELLING you, Billy . . .” Darcy turned from their apartment window with the Capitol's dome framed in the backdrop, folded her arms, and drilled him with a hard stare. “I've never felt anything like it.”
“So you've told me,” he said. She had woken him early, unable to sleep, all wound up. He tilted his shades down, stared past her to the graying Washington sky, then replaced them. He was losing interest in the prospect of living in the perpetual shade of sunglasses.
“This was different. Are you even listening to me?”
“Of course I am. I'm out of bed at six in the morning listening to you.”
“Then
listen
to me. This was different. I had them in my hands.” She made a fist. “I mean . . . I felt it this time.”
“Okay, Darcy, I'm not being insensitive or anything, but both of us have had our worlds turned upside down this week. It's catching up to you, I get that. But it's not news.” He paused. “Coffee?”
She uncrossed her arms, then crossed them again. “Well, it's news to me. And yes, coffee would be nice.”
Billy left her standing by the window and retreated into the kitchen. She hadn't told him about her episode at Union Cemetery until they returned last night, and then she told him as if it should be a secret. It hardly sounded any different from her persuading Annie Ruling to slap the senator. But her perceptions of the cemetery event seemed to have shifted her understanding of her power. Maybe he should be more understanding.
“Look, I'm sorry if I sound impatient,” he said, pouring the coffee. “But I'm starting to feel like a rat trapped in a glass cage. They whisked us off to Kansas City yesterday and what? Nothing. What are we, their sniffing dogs?”
“That's my point!”
But she'd made no such point. “It is?”
He placed her cup in her hands, but she set it down on the coffee table so she could use her hands to speak.
“Okay, so maybe I'm trying to make sense of this . . . these powers of ours, but I'm telling you, we have more power than either of us realizes, Billy. This ad hoc council of theirs may be scrambling around trying to figure out how to use us for their personal gain, but I don't think even they understand what kind of power we have.”
“I think Kinnard knows exactly what we are capable of,” Billy said.“He's been dreaming of this ever since he met Johnny. I think the council is over there plotting right now while we sit here like two rats trapped in this cage.”
“Think of what we could do!”
“I have been. I've been thinking about it ever since I stood in the courtroom andâ”
“I think I could have killed them, Billy,” she said.
“Really?”
“I don't know. But I'm sure the power increases with my own emotion and forcefulness. No, I don't think I could have killed them, but I'll tell you what, this power is absolutely incredible.”
So that's what this was about. The implications of her ability were finally sinking in. The only thing that had really changed was Darcy's perception of her gift.
“So, tell me again, why are we doing this?” she asked.
“Last I checked, there are people out there who want us both dead.”
“And Kinnard and company can protect us?”
Billy arched an eyebrow. “They seem to be doing a decent job so far.”
“So you're okay with being their sniffing dogs then?”
Billy sat on the couch and put his cup beside hers. “No, but that's not going to last.”
“Oh?”
“They're just getting the feel of things themselves.”
“And just who put them in charge?” she demanded.
For a moment she looked exactly like the thirteen-year-old Darcy he remembered from the monastery. She was showing her true feelings. And honestly, Billy preferred her this way.
“You find this funny?” she asked. “I'm trying to make a point here!”
“I was just remembering how beautiful you are when you get aggressive.”
That stopped her.
“So tell me, Darcy, what exactly is your point?”
She thought about it, then turned to face the window and stared out at the rising sun.
“My point is that we should think about us, not them. We should use what we have for us. The gifts were given to us, not to them.”
A bell went off in Billy's head. They'd been here before, only then it had been him trying to convince her.
Reach out, take the forbidden fruit.
And they had done it together.
He stood and walked up behind her. Put his hands on her shoulders and looked at the majestic buildings that housed Washington's power.
“Does that make sense?” she asked without turning.
Billy rubbed her shoulders gently. “Maybe more than you know.”
“It's just that we should look out for ourselves, Billy. Not for the criminals in this town.”
“We could do a few things, couldn't we?”
“We could become filthy rich.”
He slid his hands around her belly and whispered into her ear, “Do you want to rule the world with me?”
She threw her head back and chuckled, exposing her neck to his lips. “Why not take over the universe while we're at it?”
Billy kissed the soft of her neck. “Become God.”
She turned into him and traced his cheek with her finger. “Now there's an idea.”Their lips met like two silk pillows, and Billy knew that he would follow Darcy to the grave for kisses like this.
The phone buzzed. Darcy bent for the receiver and spoke quietly into it, keeping her eyes on him.
“Hello?”
She listened for a moment, then hung up.
“What?”
“There's a car downstairs waiting for us.”
“What is it?”
“Two more bodies were found lynched in the Union Cemetery last night. They were white.”
“So they want their sniffing dogs in Kansas City again?”
“Kansas City is rioting.”
“LISTEN AND observe,”Kinnard said, marching Darcy and Billy through a sea of cubicles at FBI headquarters. They had taken a ride down the street, past the White House to the J. Edgar Hoover Building and been assigned visitors' passes upon arrival. “This is all seat of the pants, but Lawhead's eager to bring you inside.”
So you can poke and prod your sniffing dogs some more,
Darcy thought.
They passed a bank of computer stations manned by agents, most of them glued to their phones.
“Mind you, the others don't have a clue about you, and we'd like to keep it that way. Play along, be discrete. This way.” Kinnard led them up a flight of stairs where glass walls overlooked a large conference room lined with large screens. She could see Newt Lawhead inside, bent over a conference table with a dozen other suits, intent in discussion. It looked like a war room from a movie set.