“For the record,” Davidson said, “I’m not sure.” Connor’s question had thrown him. For once, something worked to our advantage. I was sure that Faisal Bane would love to know all about us, but until Davidson figured out the boundaries, he wouldn’t disclose anything further.

Davidson smoothed the lapels on his jacket and slowly backed toward the door, but I was still blocking the way. Connor nodded and so I reluctantly stepped aside.

“I’ll be in touch with both of your organizations as soon as I’ve had a chance to confer with both parties separately,” Davidson said, and slipped out of the doors before anyone could say another word.

A moment of silence followed in the reception area.

“So,” I said, raising the bat again. “Is there anyone I should slug?”

Connor smiled appreciatively, but shook his head no. “That’s all right, kid. Stand down. We’ll be leaving here peaceably.”

Relieved that I didn’t have to smack anyone’s bitch up, I waited for Connor to join me at the door. Not a single office employee attempted to bar our way. We were leaving in the nick of time as far as I was concerned. My nerves were shot. I had never been in a situation where I felt so outnumbered so quickly. I wondered if the bulk of D.E.A. operations went like this. With only a few months under my belt, it was hard to determine what was run of the mill and what was not.

“I’m going to make this easy on you, Bane,” Connor said, turning around. “This is the moment when you insert your ‘parting threat,’ but let’s just skip it, okay? I’ll save you the trouble and we can just quake in our boots in the elevator.”

Faisal stared at us for a moment and then held out his hand to his assistant.

“Jane,” he said through clenched teeth, “clipboard.”

The contempt was thick in his voice, and Jane handed it over as fast as she could. She flinched as he snatched it from her, raised it over his head, wound up, and threw it toward us. It flipped end over end before smashing into the glass of the door, sending a ripple of cracks out from its point of impact.

The clipboard and a small shower of frosted glass fell to the floor. Most of Bane’s workers were doing a terrible job of pretending to work. None of them wanted to draw his attention.

Having held our ground (although I was actually quaking in my boots), Connor and I threw the doors open and left.

“Have that door replaced,” I heard Faisal shout to Jane as he stalked off, “and bill it to the Mayor’s Office.”

13

We called in our incident at the Sectarian Defense League to the Inspectre, and after a quick rundown of what had happened, he dispensed a Shadower team to keep an eye on their Empire State Building offices. Connor and I headed back down to the D.E.A. but I wasn’t happy about it. Filing the paperwork on our encounter was going to be a nightmare.

When we arrived back at the Lovecraft Cafй, I had hoped for the comfort of my office chair, but I had no such luck. There was already a buzz of activity concerning our discovery. Assistants were placing calls and scrambling hurriedly off into the bowels of the D.E.A. while the Enchancellors summoned the two of us to a private council. Once Connor and I stood before them, it was clear that I had misjudged the magnitude of our agency. The crowd consisted mostly of unfamiliar faces, faces that scrutinized Connor and me as we gave our account of our run-in with the Sectarian Defense League.

Afterward, we were dismissed from the assembly, but told to wait. Eventually Inspectre Quimbley emerged from the room with a serious look on his face and whispered something to Connor that I couldn’t hear. I had been on the verge of falling asleep with all that had happened already so I was surprised when, without any explanation, my partner grabbed my arm, led me out through the coffee shop, and hurried us toward the subway stop at Astor Place. That had been hours ago.

Connor was being tight lipped about just what we were doing, but if I were to guess, it had something to do with experimenting on how long it took my ass to fall asleep on the hard, orange plastic seats of the R train. While designed for commuting, they were clearly not meant for extended journeys. The blur of moonlit buildings and urban graffiti sped along outside the window as I stretched my back and shifted in my seat. We had covered the entire length of the R line several times over. The entire time, Connor had sat next to me, calmly doing crossword puzzles. Occasionally he would ask me for a three-letter word for “feline” or a twenty-letter word starting with “X” and having the clue “Ancient mythic cult from the Lower East Side.” Other than that, he seemed quite content to sit in silence all along the rails of the subway.

“Are we supposed to ride this train all night or what?” I finally asked.

“We ride until we get what we came for,” he said and erased one of his answers from the crossword.

“You sure we’re on the right train?”

“Yeah, kid, I’m sure,” Connor said, starting to sound annoyed. He folded the paper and set it down. “Look, Simon, consider this a lesson in patience. We’re waiting for a sign. We’re dealing with things on a cosmic and spiritual level. There is a whole subset of rules that we have to play by. Riding and waiting on the R train is just one of them.”

I had experienced enough exercises in patience for one day.

The train was just heading back underground on its return trip from Queens when the door at the far end of the car slid open. Theclick clack of the tracks filled our ears, and an elderly gentleman shuffled into the car. He was dressed in a brown workman’s jumpsuit and wore a tattered wool hat with earflaps, even though it was much too warm. His face was a mass of wrinkles, and I watched as his wild blue eyes darted around the empty car before settling on us. In his hand he carried a blue and gold paper coffee cup, and as he shook it, the sound of coins jingled rhythmically.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. I looked around, but there were only Connor and me. The man’s voice was thick with an accent similar to Faisal Bane’s, and once again, I couldn’t quite place it. Serbian, Croatian, something that smacked of the former Soviet Republic.

“Please pardon the interruption of your commute to wherever your destination lies,” he continued. “I’d like to perform a little number for you and if you can find it in your hearts to give…a nickel, a dime, whatever…it would be greatly appreciated.”

Since the subway car was empty, it was obvious that his impromptu “number” was meant only for the two of us. With great enthusiasm, he shook his cup of change and it jingled in a faster rhythm as he hopped around the subway car with superhuman agility. He pranced across the empty seats one second and swung from the bars overhead the next. What he was, I didn’t know. I threw open my coat and eased my hand toward my bat, but Connor’s grip stopped me. I turned to him and he shook his head.

The old man’s raspy voice belted out a song. I recognized the words as vaguely familiar, but couldn’t place them.

“At first, I was afraid, I was petrified.

“Kept thinkin’ I could never live without you by my side…”

“What the hell is he?” I whispered underneath the singing. The crazed man was now hanging upside down from the bars in the middle of the car. He flipped deftly down to the floor and swayed to his own rhythm. The sound of the coins wentclink clink clink as his frantic pace increased, but not a single coin fell from the cup, no matter how fevered the rhythm or his dancing became.

I wasn’t sure how to react. I wanted to smile at the clear enjoyment this man-creature was getting from singing, but at the same time, with Connor and me the sole objects of his focus, I began to feel intensely uncomfortable. The smell of garbage washed down the length of the car and I had to fight back the urge to cough. “Isthis who we’ve been waiting for?”