“Too late now,” Nim said with excessive cheer. “You going to make me walk home in this heat?”
Nanette chewed her lower lip pink, clashing even more with her dress and hair. Obviously, she liked to worry. No wonder she got along with Jonah. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. The angelic host I’m meeting to transport the haints, he’s at war with demons.”
“Of course, but which ones?”
“All of them.”
Nim rolled her eyes. “I’ll stay in the van and be quiet.”
“I could leave you here and come back for you,” Nanette muttered. “But what if Daniel finishes his sermon and comes to church early?”
“Daniel’s your husband? Don’t worry. I’ll keep him busy till you get back.” Nim smiled with lots of teeth.
“Oh, please. I don’t worry about him. I’m worried about you. Do you want to spend an hour as his sermon beta tester?”
Nim shook her head hard enough to make her dreads dance. “For God’s sake—no, really, for God’s sake—take me with you.”
Nanette folded her hands in front of her, upraised thumbs bumping a nervous rhythm. “Okay. My contact has a habit of ignoring anything he considers beneath him.”
“Gee, thanks,” Nim said.
“Which is pretty much everything,” Nanette added. “Just be good.” She thought about that, then revised to “Just don’t be evil.”
Nanette locked up the church and joined Nim in the van. In the close confines, the zombies smelled faintly of falling spring rain, and Nim took a deep breath. “You’d think they’d smell rotten, wouldn’t you?”
Nanette checked all her mirrors before starting the vehicle. “It’s odd,” she agreed. “That’s the scent of the solvo coming out through their skin.” She hesitated. “Sometimes I think it’s the perfume of peace.”
Nim swiveled her head toward the other woman in surprise. “Soullessness is peace? Is a preacher’s wife allowed to even think that?”
Nanette’s grip on the steering wheel blanched her knuckles. “I wouldn’t say that in front of the other angelic host, of course. But I thought you of all people would understand. They’ve escaped pain and fear and anger.”
You of all people? Nim bit back a sharp retort. But as she swallowed down the words, she thought she got a taste of Nanette’s meaning. “Trust me, escape doesn’t get you as far as you’d think. Avoiding life isn’t peace.”
“I realize that. It’s just . . . Did you know that some of the scattered soulflies make their way to the haints?”
“Jonah mentioned it. They just look like radioactive dust motes to me.”
Nanette grimaced. “They do glow, pure and beautiful. Because they are pure. You might not care for the difference because your teshuva can’t see it, but the angelic force in me knows only the goodness returned.”
Nim twisted in her seat to study the haints. Though one was a man and one a woman, they bore the same glassy stare that made them eerily alike. The woman looked ahead, her hands tucked in her lap, precisely as Nim had arranged her earlier. The man had been heavier and more awkward, and Nim had stuffed him haphazardly into his seat, leaving him crooked, so he appeared to gaze out his window. She doubted he saw the passing city.
She sat back in her seat. “Honestly? If that’s the alternative, I’d rather be part evil.”
“Of course an exotic dancer would say that,” Nanette murmured.
So, Jonah had left more with his message than “I was here,” apparently.
“Stripper,” Nim corrected archly. “Exotic dancers sometimes forget to take their clothes off. I never do.”
Nanette let out a breath that might have been a disdainful huff, but sounded a lot like a laugh. “You aren’t what I expected.”
Exactly how much had Jonah said in that message? “Well, I don’t expect you hang out at many strip clubs.”
“Not since the year Daniel and I spent ministering to sex workers.” Nanette nodded with satisfaction when Nim choked. “Daniel said they were some of the most sensitive, giving women he’d ever met.”
Nim flattened her palms over her thighs. Neither the reven nor her old scars were detectable through the thin cotton of her capris, but they burned in her memory. “Yeah, if that’s what he said, I can see how I’m not what you expected.”
“I noticed they also had the worst self-esteem problems.”
“Not an issue with me, I promise you.”
Nanette opened her mouth as if she would say something, then just shook her head.
As they crossed into the North Shore neighborhoods, the wider expanse of the estate-sized lots revealed the late sun, but the heavy overhang of old trees and lush green lawns cooled the road. Nim shifted in her seat. If the haints smelled of rain, the neighborhood smelled of old money. “Jonah said you moved the haints down south, where they wouldn’t raise awkward questions.”
“My warden here has a quiet lake property where he takes the haints.”
“Of course he does,” Nim muttered.
“Cyril Fane is a powerful man, with an even more powerful angelic force,” Nanette warned. “Don’t make trouble for yourself, or me, or the talyan.”
Nim clenched forefinger to thumb and ran them across her lips with a zipping sound. She slouched back in her seat as Nanette pulled into the driveway of a particularly Gothic mansion, half-hidden behind massive oaks. The windows were as narrow as pinched lips, and the gables arched like condemning eyebrows. Yeah, she could’ve guessed an angel lived here.
Nanette idled the van in front of the three extra-tall garage doors. “Wait here.”
“Happily,” Nim said. When Nanette gave her a sharp look, Nim lifted both hands innocently. “What? Me and the zombies’ll be right here.”
“I’ll have Mr. Fane open the garage. You pull the van inside and start moving the haints to the other vehicle. I’ll keep him occupied.”
“I thought I was staying in the van.”
Nanette gave her a look. “Were you actually going to stay where I told you?”
“Probably not.”
“Then just do this.” Nanette’s tone wavered between threatening and pleading. “I don’t want to have to call Jonah.”
“Well, I don’t want to see him either. At least not before I put his wallet back.” Nim huffed out a breath. “I said I’d be good. Okay, not evil.”
Nanette gave her one more look and slipped out of the van.
“You’d think somebody possessed by an angel would be kind and sweet and trusting,” Nim said to the haints as she shifted into the driver’s seat.
They didn’t answer.
Nanette knocked at the door and stood waiting a few heartbeats longer than Nim would have before the door opened. She disappeared inside without Nim getting a glimpse of the home’s master.
It was another long wait, and Nim was resting her palm on the horn in the middle of the steering wheel when the garage door rumbled upward. She growled something rude, thought about revving the van to give everybody—well, everybody but the haints—a little thrill, thought better of it, and sedately pulled into the garage.
A gleaming silver Lotus took up more than its fair share of the oversized garage. Even in her pique, Nim wouldn’t dream of scratching the little beauty, so she maneuvered the minivan carefully as the garage door came down, keeping neighborly nosiness out.
“How come the league doesn’t drive high-performance British sports cars? We’re fighting evil too.”
The only other vehicle in the garage was a compact motor home, shiny new but still dowdy compared to its sleek garage mate. She wished she could indulge the demon in her and stuff the zombies into the tiny Lotus, but her love of overpriced consumer goods—if not Nanette’s entreaty to be good—constrained her, so she turned off the van and went to the RV instead. The door was unlocked, and she ushered the haints into their new seats, moving them slowly so as not to dislodge their clinging soulflies. She buckled them in and then turned to poke through the drawers of the family mobile. Nothing. Not even a knife in the untouched cutlery organizer.