The Boy With the Healing Hands

Though among the youngest, Alexander Xanatos led the pack, a clutch of paper scraps in one hand. "This way! The next clue! It’s by the elevator!" he shouted.

"Good idea, this treasure hunt," Fox said approvingly to Brooklyn, pouring herself a second cup of coffee. "They’re loving it!"

"As long as they don’t get too carried away," Xanatos said. "None of your clues are going to lead them anyplace they shouldn’t be, are they?"

"Hey, I know what I’m doing," Brooklyn said.

Angela gave him a one-armed hug around the neck. "He’ll be such a wonderful father when our eggs hatch!"

"Yeah," said Lex, "a perfect eggs-ample to the rest of us!"

"The yolk’ll be --" Brooklyn started, but Gabriel’s alarmed outcry stopped him.

"No! Don’t start!"

"You don’t think," Ebon said smoothly, "omeletting that go unanswered?"

Gabriel winced. "Oh, no, now you’ve done it!"

"Done what?" Lex asked.

"Do not get him started punning! Trust me, friend, you will regret it!"

"Ebon?" Angela raised a brow ridge. "Punning? You?"

"Is there nothing else we can speak of?" Gabriel cast about desperately for a topic. "Sports, movies, the weather?"

Ebon smiled. "I’ve become very fond of a bar not far from our house, where punning is not only allowed, but encouraged. In fact, I won last week’s Tall Tales competition."

"Tall Tales?" Angela asked eagerly. "Tell us!"

"First, you must understand the rules," Ebon said. "They’re fairly simple. Each tale must be outrageous but not easily disproved, and must conclude in a ghastly pun."

"Maybe Gabriel’s right," Elisa said. "Maybe we should talk about something else."

"Aw, come on, Elisa!" Lex protested. "I wanna hear it!"

"How bad can it be?" Goliath said.

"Fire away," Brooklyn said. "We can take it."

"Very well." Ebon leaned back, crossing his arms. "This tale is set in Gold Rush days, when the place to be was the Yukon. Because wool and meat were so vital, sheep became very valuable. One of the wealthiest women in town was a tough old lady named Beatrice, who had moved there from Boston but had become so acclimated that everyone called her Yukoned Bea."

He paused to sip from his mug, looked momentarily startled as if he’d expected it to contain something else, and went on. "Bea owned 26 sheep, which she named for the letters of the alphabet. Ewe A, Ewe B, and so on. Bea ran the only hotel in town, but she was opposed to drinking, and wouldn’t rent rooms to any man who had a hint of alcohol on his breath. This didn’t sit well with the local saloon-keepers, Hiram Lovedaw and Hubert Loff, so they bet Bea that one of them could invent a drink that even her sharp nose couldn’t detect. The winner would get her best sheep, Ewe F. She agreed, and they went to work. Lovedaw’s drink was called Blue Lightning, and Loff called his Mountain Dew (this was long before the carbonated beverage of the same name). The day of the competition arrived, and Lovedaw went first. He took a long swig of Blue Lightning. Bea smelled his breath, and announced that she couldn’t detect a thing. The it was Loff’s turn, and Lovedaw was hoping that his friend would fail. Do you know why?"

Gabriel was still hunched over, his body tensed as if braced for impact. The rest of them looked at each other, and then Angela tentatively ventured, "No, why?"

"If Yukoned Bea whiffed Dew on Hugh Loff, Lovedaw won Ewe F."

"Oh ..." Elisa said.

"My ..." Fox continued.

"God!" Xanatos concluded, and nearly sprinted to the sideboard for a decanter of brandy in a convulsive effort to numb the pain.

"Appalling," Owen whispered, and proceeded to whip out a notepad and start scribbling it down.

"I tried," Gabriel moaned. "I tried to warn you, but nay, let’s not heed Gabriel!"

"You tricked me out of 20 million," Xanatos said, wiping his mouth after having swigged straight from the neck of the decanter, "chained me in the hold of an oil tanker primed to explode, helped found a rival corporation ... but I think I can safely say, this is the worst thing you have ever done to me."

"I dinna get it," Hudson complained.

"Lucky you!" Brooklyn retorted.

A four-year-old flawless Asian doll called Mulan (chosen after she’d become enamored of the film of the same name), brushed a quick but intense gaze across them all. Then, sensing nothing amiss, she grinned and waved. Her reaction assured the others, who had instinctively glanced to her to read the emotional weather of the room.

"Come on!" Alex cried. "The tapestry in the Grand Hall! That’s where it is!" Then the herd was off again.

"Guys," she said, "you know, you’ve really been doing a wonderful thing, taking care of all those kids, but they’re not going to be able to live like that forever. Sooner or later, they’re going to need to go to school."

"The scientists at the Institute must not get their hands on them again!" Gabriel said. "How can we be certain they’ll be safe anyplace but at Rocky Point with us?"

"The Sterling Academy is still an option," Xanatos said, pouring himself another drink -- a double -- in a glass this time. He offered the decanter around and Fox grabbed it fast.

"Yeah, right," Brooklyn scoffed. "Turn them over to the Illuminati; they were probably the ones running the Institute in the first place!"

Goliath slowly shook his head. "I believe that Miss St. John can be trusted. The Academy was of benefit to Aiden, remember."

"Where is Aiden?" Angela asked Lex. "I just thought she was going to stop by Birdie’s place for a few minutes, and then be back for dinner."

"Yeah, but once Birdie starts talking, you know how hard it is to get her to shut up," Brooklyn said.

Broadway, who had been sitting quietly on one of the loveseats with Elektra, the two of them gazing into each other’s eyes dreamily (and it was all right that he took up more than his half of the seat because she took up less than hers), now glanced up. "Hey!" he warned his rookery brother.

"He’s right," Lex said. "You know Birdie."

"The point, though," Xanatos said to Ebon and Gabriel, "is that no matter what you decide to do, the kids are going to need pasts that’ll stand up to inspection. If you planned to put them up for adoption, or enroll them in any school, they’ll need birth certificates, immunization records, Social Security Numbers, the works. For the ones that were kidnapped, that’s easy, a little fiddling here and there. But four of them were created in that lab. That’s a little more tricky."

"Are you offering your assistance?" Ebon asked.

"Would you accept it if I did?" He shrugged. "I know you’ve your reasons not to trust me, Ebon, and I can respect that ..." he winked at Goliath, "hell, I’m used to it. You probably want me involved in their lives as little as possible, for fear that I’ll mis-use their powers for my own gain."

"I wonder what on earth would give him that idea?" Fox batted her lashes at her husband.

"But I really only want what’s best for the kids," he said. Then grinned. "And if, someday, they’re inclined to be grateful, well, I’m always looking to recruit new talent."

"How could they be put up for adoption?" Angela asked. "They are sweet, but what happens when their new families realize what they really are?"

"What are they?" Gabriel’s voice held a hint of challenge.

"They’re ... different," she said. "How are you going to explain it to the adoptive parents that the child they’ve taken in can start fires, knock down walls, read minds, or things like that, by the power of their will alone?"

"They have lived with us for several months now," Ebon said. "They’ve known what it is to keep one’s very existence a secret from all but a few. More than anything else, they want to belong, and they understand that to do that, they’ll need to keep their abilities under control and well-hidden."

"They’re good kids," Broadway said.

Elektra looked appealingly at Xanatos. "Cannot some way be found to reunite those who were taken from their parents?"

"The Institute will be watching, gentle sister," Gabriel said. "The moment we tried, they’d just be stolen away again."

"The only way to do it would be to convince the entire family to relocate and take on new identities," Xanatos said. "They’d have to give up all contact with their friends and other relatives, change their jobs."

"Who wouldn’t be willing to do all that you said?" Angela’s fingers entwined with Brooklyn’s. "My God, they must have been frantic, they must have given up hope ... then to find out their children are alive and well ..."

Amber toddled over and tugged on the leg of Elisa’s jeans. She lifted the little girl into her lap. "I hate to say it, Angela, but the world can be ugly. Kids are beaten, abandoned, ignored ... they run away from home, they get hooked on drugs, they turn to crime, or kill themselves ... and sometimes the parents just don’t care. Some aren’t willing to change their ways for the sake of the kids they have."

Angela exhaled slowly. "I guess I know from personal experience how true that is."

The specter of Demona seemed to float above them, until Ebon spoke and broke the spell. "Above all, I want what’s best for the children. I want them safe and happy, and never to be in a situation where they think they were better off before we found them."

"I think we’re all agreed on that," Xanatos said. "I can help you, if you’ll let me."

"We’ll consider it," Ebon said after exchanging a look with Gabriel.

Julian, carefully holding a framed photo, approached Fox and offered it to her. She absently scooped him up, tilting her flame-colored head against his dark one. "That’s me, yes, and my father, and Alex."

The boy touched the image of Renard in his wheelchair. "Hurts."

"Yes, honey ... he can’t walk."

The boy’s lower lip pooched out and tears glimmered in his light blue eyes.

"Actually, I have an idea," Elisa said. "Ever since Mom and Dad moved out of their apartment --"

Elisa went on. "They’ve been having trouble finding a place they like. But just last month, they lucked into a big brownstone practically on top of the Labyrinth. Got the whole building for a song. The previous owners had to sell because they just couldn’t keep tenants. Too many complaints of winged monsters."

Brooklyn grinned. "Gee, I wonder why."

"So Mom’s been talking about starting a little home-schooling enterprise. She was going to start with Dee and Tom and some of the other kids from the Labyrinth." She ruffled Amber’s hair. "Maybe this one, too, huh, Amber? Going to go play with Grandma?"

"I bet she’d be willing to take on a few more," Elisa finished. "It’s not like your bunch would freak out over the twins."

"That’s a wonderful idea," Fox said. She glanced pointedly at her husband. "Don’t you agree, David?"

"A wise husband always agrees with his wife," he said.

"We found it!" Alex cried triumphantly.

Brittany, at eleven the oldest of them, was carrying a small piñata in the shape of a treasure chest, twisting and turning to keep it out of the reach of eager grasping little hands. Skinny as a rail, with hair straight out of ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ she nonetheless had a forceful presence of personality that belied her scant size.

"Settle down!" she ordered. "We have to get a stick or something!"

"No we don’t!" Gilberto protested, tossing too-long black hair out of his deep brown eyes. "Let me at it, I can crack it open just by looking at it!"

"That’th no fun!" Neesha said, lisping between the two front teeth that hadn’t finished growing in yet. "We thould all get turnth!"

"Okay, okay," the laughing Brooklyn said, taking the piñata from Brittany. "Let me hang it up, and then you can all have a whack at it, what do you say?"

Bronx couldn’t wait. He jumped up on Brooklyn from behind, bowling him over. The piñata sailed through the air, making half the adults duck to avoid a faceful of crinkled tissue and solid papier-mâché. Brooklyn crashed to the carpet and Bronx charged right over him, intent on the piñata.

"Bronx! Down, lad!" Hudson bellowed.

The piñata bounced on the carpet and one corner crunched in, spilling out three or four Hershey’s Kisses. At the sight of the candy, the kids all squealed and jostled each other as they ran for the loot. Bronx got there first, hoovered up the candy foil and all, and opened his jaws wide over the papier-mâché shell keeping him from the rest.

"Manners," Owen said, scooping up the piñata and swatting Bronx on the nose with a rolled-up copy of V.I.P. Magazine.

Bronx yipped abashedly and slunk over to his spot beside Hudson’s chair.

"Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea," Xanatos said with a sidelong glance at Brooklyn.

"Oof," Brooklyn replied.

"It’s late," Angela said. "They’re all overexcited."

"So let’s give them more sugar?" Elisa said, trying to contain the rambunctious Amber who wanted to go join the big kids as they pranced around Owen. "Great plan."

"I’m first!" Alexander jumped up and down. "I’m first! Me! Me!"

"Your son, all right," Goliath remarked to Xanatos.

Amber threw off Elisa’s hands with an outflung burst of her wings and roared petitely, eyes blazing.

"Your daughter," Xanatos shot back.

"The guests should go first, Alexander," Owen gently reminded. He hooked the wire loop sticking out of the top of the piñata on a nail leftover from a Christmas wreath.

"I can’t reach!" Neesha complained. The other kids clamored for their turn, while Alex grudgingly conceded Owen’s point.

Brooklyn laboriously rose from the floor. "I’ve got a stick and a blindfold."

While an attempt was made to bring organization to the piñata-bashing festivities, Ebon turned to Xanatos. "If Mrs. Maza is agreeable, the children will still need documented identities."

"I’ll start looking into it right away. It won’t be cheap --"

"That’s fine; I was able to retrieve much of my ... investment capital ... when Nightstone’s computers crashed. And there are still royalty checks from the Scarlet Angel albums."

"How? Aren’t you legally dead, or at least missing?"

"I created a dummy trust fund." He sighed. "Some day, I should like to set that matter straight. At the very least, Julianna’s parents deserve to know. Once the children’s future is settled and secure, I intend to devote more thought to it."

"Having a gargoyle rock star -- God, that sounds bad," Elisa winced, " -- really did help bring you guys into a positive public light. Have you considered, oh, I don’t know ..."

"A comeback tour?" Fox suggested.

"It would not be the same."

"A solo album, then?"

"When I do announce myself to the world," Ebon said, "I’ll have to face some very serious questions about what happened to the rest of Scarlet Angel. The fact that they were killed by gargoyles won’t do much to help our image. And my suspicious absence, my long silence, won’t look very good either."

"Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could resume your career?" Angela said. "Your music was so beautiful! Anything that can touch the souls of both humans and gargoyles can only do good. It’d be so nice to have more people admire us for a change, instead of fear us."

Ebon shook his head. "I have written some songs ... but without a partner to sing them with, it’s an empty effort."

"How about Nikki Taylor?" Xanatos suggested with a wink.

Fox rolled her eyes at the mention of Elisa’s sexy, fast-rising movie star cousin. "You’re a dog, David darling, do you know that?"

"If only Deborah were here," Gabriel said, smiling at Angela. "She has the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard."

"And Laertes is a great musician, too," Angela said. "Could you imagine? An all-gargoyle band?"

"I play the synthesizer," Lex piped up, grinning.

"All right!" Brooklyn clapped sharply. "We’re ready to go. Blaze, give it a whack!"

"But don’t melt the chocolate!" Brittany added.

The boy put his back into it. The stick, part of a broomhandle, whipped through the air, missed the piñata by half a foot, and hit Owen square in the mouth.

Blaze yanked off the blindfold and his whole face became a gape of horror when he saw what he’d done. He swiftly tried to hide the stick behind his back.

"Owie," Amber said clearly.

Fox sprang from her seat. "I’ll get the first aid kit."

"Hurts," Julian said.

"Owie," Amber repeated, agreeing.

"I hep." He slid off the chair and toddled over to Owen, raising his arms. "Up. I hep."

"Let him," Gabriel said.

With a very sour expression, Owen lifted the boy. Julian peered at him closely, not seeming upset at all by the sight of the blood. He put his small chubby hands on Owen’s cheeks. "All gone, bye-bye."

Owen’s eyes widened. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. The split in his lip was gone.

"There’s no need for that, Mrs. Xanatos," Owen said.

"What was it like?" Xanatos asked.

"Like a light in my head, sir." Owen thoughtfully pressed the tip of his tongue against his teeth. "One of my teeth had been loosened ... now it is firmly in place."

"Fascinating! Gabriel, you told us of his power, but to see it in action --"

"Or feel it," Owen added.

"Fascinating!" Xanatos said again, softly.

"I didn’t mean to!" Blaze cried.

"Better?" Julian inquired.

"All better." Owen handed him to Gabriel. "He should wash up; there is a bathroom just down the hall. It’s all right, son, no harm done."

It connected glancingly. The piñata jerked and spun crazily at the end of the rope, spraying candy from a small rent in the side.

Then Gilberto lost his patience and shoved his hands at the piñata. It split in two, dumping a shower of silver and gold Kisses mixed with the gaudy sugar-jewels of Ring Pops, foil-wrapped coins, and other goodies.

Goliath observed these demonstrations and turned to Elisa. "Perhaps you should allow your mother to meet the children before any absolute decisions are reached."

"Yeah," she said slowly. "Yeah, good idea."

Alexander’s spacious bedroom was littered with children, sleeping on mats and covered with blankets that were drawn right up to their chocolate-smeared chins. When they’d crashed, they’d crashed hard, and none of them had so much as stirred when the adults carried them to their makeshift beds.

Fox smiled. It was nice that Alex got a chance to play with other kids every now and then. She worried sometimes that he was being pressured to grow up too fast. His waking hours were heavily scheduled, preschool and French lessons and karate lessons and swimming lessons ... and of course magic lessons. He didn’t have very many chances to just be a regular kid.

They’d never gotten around to taking the old toddler bed out of his room after he’d graduated to his deluxe racecar model. It fit Julian perfectly. She looked down at him, shaking her head slightly in remembered awe.

It took their minds off of the Ventura problem, which was the real reason for this weekend visit. In the months since she’d been freed from the Institute and attacked the castle (damages finally paid up, and the city was breathing down David’s neck about the number of times chunks of masonry had plummeted to the street since 1994), there had been no sign of the ruby-eyed clone. Angela insisted she felt nothing, sensed nothing. That as far as she could tell, Ventura was most likely dead.

Oh, yes, Ventura was out there somewhere. And Fox would have bet any amount of money that she certainly hadn’t forgotten about what she felt was her real life, stolen and usurped.

But it was beginning to look like they wouldn’t be able to track her down. Not until she came back for a rematch. That, combined with the fact that they also hadn’t located the Godiva robot, had left David in a grouchy mood for weeks.

So it was good that he had a new project to take his mind off of it. Though Fox suspected that in the long run, it wouldn’t do any good. Even with names, Social Security numbers, birth certificates ... not one of these children would ever truly be a regular kid.

How could they be? They were different, and they knew it. She herself had lived a fairly normal childhood, never aware that she’d inherited something from her mother besides the color of her eyes and the tilt of her nose. These kids would never have even that illusion of normality.

At least he wasn’t taking it out on T.J. Quite the contrary. Quite the honestly-a-bit-worrying contrary ... Halcyon Renard’s devotion to Alexander was utter, but always tinged with the bitterness that his grandson was a Xanatos. But T.J. was no Xanatos. Not the son of Renard’s longtime rival and occasional enemy.

Fox grimaced uncomfortably, recalling Renard’s perfectly reasonable question: Who’s his father? and her truthful but shameful response: I don’t know.

Thank God T.J. himself took that part in stride! He’d never made a big stink about her past, the circumstances of his conception. He still didn’t fully trust her; she could see that in his eyes. You abandoned me once, those eyes said, so how do I know you won’t do it again?

Fox herself wondered if it would go even further. As it stood right now, her father’s will passed over her and left the bulk of his estate to Alexander, except for various bequests. But suppose Renard decided to make T.J. his heir? What then?

And why did that prospect make her feel so cheated and guilty? Shouldn’t she be glad for T.J. if that was the case? Proud of him? It certainly wasn’t as if Alexander would need the money!

She could almost hear her father’s voice, and it was saying practically the same things she imagined she saw in T.J.’s eyes.

You abandoned me once ... you defied me, tried to steal from me ... how do I know you won’t do it again? How can I trust you? Even when you gave me a grandson, you did it with the help of a man I despise.

"Oh, Dad ..." she sighed, picking up the picture that Julian had insisted on carrying to bed with him. "I never did anything just for you, did I? But it goes both ways; we never did anything just for each other. You always wanted to control my life, said it was for my own good. I resented that. I still do. But I wish ... just once, it’d be nice if I could do something for you that really had meaning."

Aiden clumped down the stairs, threw her tote bag on the table, threw herself on the couch, and announced, "I never want to see another naked male as long as I live!"

"Bad news, bro," Brooklyn said commiseratingly, punching Lex in the arm.

"Why?" Angela asked. "Where have you been?"

"First the clones and Godiva, now this." Aiden slouched down and put her hand over her eyes. Then she remembered something, and lowered it long enough to glare at Brooklyn. "And you, let’s not forget that!"

"What happened?" Lex demanded. "Who’d you see naked now, and should I be jealous?"

"It’s a long, long story," Aiden said, a dark blush creeping to cover her face. "MacBeth and Jericho."

Angela gasped. "No! You mean ... together?"

Aiden shot off the couch as if a spring had erupted beneath her. "Gross! Angela! No! Eew! Not like that!"

Lex frowned. "Maybe you better tell us."

"I don’t want to. I just want to forget about it. Why’d I get involved? That was stupid, stupid! So Jericho got captured, it’s none of our business!"

"Captured?" Brooklyn perked up. "Good riddance ... was it Quarrymen?"

"Hey, wait a minute," Lex said. "You left saying you were going to Birdie’s ... is that where you saw MacBeth? You mean she was telling the truth?"

"I thought she was pulling my leg!" Aiden wailed. "You know, one part pure lie and two parts wishful thinking! But then I get there, all I wanted was to pick up those videos I loaned her, and ... and ..."

"You walked in on them?" Angela asked.

"Not really ... he was in the shower ... hot fudge is sticky ... came out in a robe ... it fell open when he was fighting with Jericho."

"Go back to the Jericho bit," Brooklyn urged. "Captured?"

"Birdie squirted him in the face with whipped cream, and MacBeth kicked him out the window. Then there was this hovercraft, right out of nowhere, snared him in a net and carried him away."

"Why were they fighting naked?"

"Angela! They weren’t! Only MacBeth! Jericho was later!"

"Whose hovercraft?" Brooklyn said. "Quarrymen, am I right?"

"No ... it belonged to a woman, this horrible, horrible woman! She ... uh ... had the hots for Jericho, I guess. By the time we got there, she was going to ... or maybe she already did ... I don’t know, I don’t want to think about it."

"Back up a second." Brooklyn made a T for time-out. "You and MacBeth went after them? Why? Like to rescue him?"

"Um ... well ... it wasn’t me and MacBeth ... it was me and Demona ..."

She braced herself for uproar and wasn’t disappointed. Over the din of the three of them exclaiming at once, she tried to explain. "I know, I know, he’s a skunk, he’s a bad guy, he’s the enemy ... but he’s still a gargoyle and we kind of have to stick together, right? I didn’t know who those people were in the hovercraft, whether they were the greater or lesser of two evils, so I went to the Nightstone Building and told Demona what I saw."

"Why didn’t you come get us?" Lex demanded.

"There wasn’t time, there really wasn’t ... and I didn’t think anyone would help me, and Goliath would tell me to let Demona fend for herself --"

"Yeah, and he would’ve been right!" Brooklyn said.

"-- and she wasn’t all that mean to me personally, even after I wrecked her plans by not being a ... um, you know ... that time with the unicorns. So I had to help her."

Angela groaned. "Aiden, I thought I was too nice!"

"And by the time we got there, that horrible woman had Jericho undressed," Aiden said, now maroon from the base of her neck to the tip of her crest. "He was all drugged ... messed up ... I really felt sorry for him. Demona and that woman had a huge fight and in the middle of it I got him out of there. Then the hovercraft went into the ocean, and Jericho went back and saved Demona, and it’s been a really long night and I want a shower and I am going to scrub myself raw with a loofah because I just feel filthy!"

"Are we going to tell Goliath about this?"

"No way!" came Lex’s emphatic reply.

"You don’t have to do this," Elisa said.

"I want to do this," Fox replied.

"We were just going to drop by the Labyrinth for lunch, introduce the kids Mom and my brother’s family. I can handle it."

"Really, Elisa, I want to come along. So does Alex."

"Yeah!" Alex chimed in. "See Tom and Dee!"

Elisa ran her hand through her hair. "Well, okay. I was planning on piling them all into Brooklyn’s van; is that jake with you or do we need to round up one of the chauffeurs?"

"I didn’t always ride in limos," Fox said, grinning. "You should have seen the junker I had when I lived in L.A. the first few years. Made Birdie’s car look like a showpiece."

The rest of the children came down the stairs, Brittany carrying Julian, Neesha and Mulan holding hands, Blaze and Gilberto arguing about video games. Amber had protested, said she wanted to go too, but she’d had far too tiring a night and when the dawn came, she corked off into stone slumber with nary a peep.

"All right!" Elisa clapped briskly. "Got your coats? Hats? Gloves?"

"I lost my gloves," Blaze said. "But that’s okay ... I can keep warm."

She eyed him with faint unease. "Uh-huh ... oh, Fox and Alex are going to tag along."

"Yes, we are." Fox beamed at them. "And on the way back, who’s up for a stop at FAO Schwartz?"

"The toy thtore?" Neesha squealed. "Really?"

"Fox --"

"The biggest, best toy store in the whole world!" Fox affirmed. "Alex loves it, don’t you, buddy?"

He nodded vigorously. "You should see the Legos!"

"Fox!" Elisa elbowed her. "What are you doing?"

"Running up David’s charge cards a little more."

"I got ten bucks," Gilberto said.

"I have a quarter," Mulan said shyly, then tucked her thumb in her mouth.

"No, no, no!" Fox took Julian from Brittany and balanced him on her hip in practiced mommy-fashion. "My treat, up to a hundred dollars each."

"Fox!" she said over the instant uproar.

"Live a little, Elisa!"

"A hundred dollars?" Brittany gasped. "For anything we want?"

"You bet. See, Elisa, Ebon and Gabriel take wonderful care of them, feed them, clothe them ... but they don’t know the first thing about spoiling them."

"Which is exactly what you’re going to do."

"Don’t you think they deserve it?" Fox asked.

Elisa flung her hands in the air. "I give up. Fine. Labyrinth, then toy store."

"Yay!" they all shouted.

In the rear of the van, the main topic of conversation was what each of the kids planned to buy with their unexpected largess, while Alexander regaled them with descriptions of what they’d have to choose from. To listen to him, FAO Schwartz was even more amazing than the cave in which Ali-Baba had found the treasure of the Forty Thieves.

"Cool!" Blaze opined.

"Disgusting," Brittany said.

"Do people live down here?" Neesha asked.

"Bums," Gilberto said. "Winos. Junkies."

"There are other people down here too," Elisa said. "Good, decent people down on their luck. It’s a hard city. Eats them up and spits them out."

"But most of them are scumbuckets," Gilberto insisted. "I know."

"Oh, how do you know?" Brittany asked archly.

"Because my folks are. Scumbuckets. Druggies."

"Ebon told us you wanted to go back to your family," Fox said.

"Yeah," he snarled, "so I can bust them up for selling me!"

"They thold you?" Neesha looked ready to burst into tears.

"For drug money. Sold me to the doctors, told me it was so I’d have a place to live and plenty of food. They didn’t say nothing about the needles!"

"Jeez," Brittany breathed.

"At least you had a family," Blaze said.

"Fu --" Gilberto caught himself and Elisa saw him flush guiltily in the mirror. "Phooey on them, I would’ve been better off an orphan! But sure, I wanna see them again. I wanna go right up to them and tell them what I think, and then crack their heads open."

"They’re not worth it," Elisa said firmly. "They did a horrible, rotten thing, but you know what the best way to get back at them would be?"

"What?" His dark eyes narrowed.

"Make yourself a ten-times better person than they could ever be."

He mulled that one over. "I’d rather crack their heads open."

They had arrived, no more time to debate. Elisa parked the van alongside the world’s oldest camper-cap pickup trucks, and got out as some of Talon’s volunteer sentries approached.

"Miss Elisa!" he called jovially. "Weckome back!"

"Hey, LeRoy, hi there, Gus."

He raised a hand that looked like a latex glove stuffed with cottage cheese, then turned and began his slow course back to the table. Watching him move was like watching an amoeba work its way across a microscope slide. He didn’t walk, he didn’t jiggle, he just sort of flowed.

Their guard post was a card table and a couple of chairs (Gus’ was a massive easy chair with reinforced frame and a sheet of 3/4" steel under the cushion to prevent sagging), with a space heater, a portable TV, a mini-fridge, and a microwave.

"Who’s all this?" LeRoy asked as the kids came pouring out of the van and looked around with varying degrees of interest and/or squeamishness.

"You remember Mrs. Xanatos and her boy Alexander," Elisa said.

"Why sho I do!" Flash of the teeth again.

She introduced the rest, finishing with, "They’ve come down to meet Dee and Tom."

He smiled down at Neesha, who returned it through drying tears. "A right pleasure to meet you!"

"Why’s that guy so --" Blaze began, gawking at Gus as Gus settled back into his chair.

"Don’t be mean," Mulan said.

"Lemme just call ahead, tell your brother you’re here."

"Thanks, LeRoy. Everything been okay lately?"

"Well, ain’t been easy with the cold and all," he admitted. "Had some flooding in the lower levels too with that last big storm; now they’re sayin’ another system’s movin’ in. An’ it’s looking like poor ol’ Claw won’t last much longer."

"Aww, dammit," Elisa murmured.

"It’s got Miss Maggie pretty upset, too," he confided. "Feelin’ like she and Mr. Talon and the twins are all alone in the world, bein’ like they are. But I tell her that don’t matter; she got friends and loved ones so that she never be alone."

"You’ve got the right attitude, LeRoy."

"Look, it’s got a cord on it, how funny!" Alex laughed.

-- and set it down a few moments later. "You can go on in, Miss Elisa. They be waiting for you."

Now the Labyrinth, rather than being a shanty town of tents and shacks, was on par with a decent-quality homeless shelter. They got modest funding, government commodities, and every year around the holidays a local women’s group got together and provided a full turkey dinner.

Best of all, from Elisa’s personal point of view, was that everyone involved knew that the Labyrinth wasn’t just a human interest story. The Time cover photo of Samson and Delilah, plus follow-up articles on how humans and gargoyles living in peace, had taken a few crucial steps toward public awareness and acceptance (no one had gone into detail explaining the difference; for now it was probably okay that the world believed the mutates to be furry gargoyles instead of having to deal with the ugly truth of science run amok).

And then there was former Senator William J. Harmond, whose staunch advocacy for gargoyles had begun turning some wheels in Washington. Although retired, he was still a man with a great deal of influence. When he said there would one day be an amendment granting citizenship rights to gargoyles, Elisa believed him. She just hoped she’d still be around to see it happen.

"Whoa!" Blaze said. "Chewbacca!"

"This is Samson," Elisa said, throwing him an apologetic look.

"He’s not scary," Mulan said surely. "He’s nice."

"Yes, he is." Elisa offered to take a case, but Samson declined, shaking his large shaggy head.

"I got it," he said, his voice a low and pleasing rumble with an undercurrent of eerie woodland howl. "Your mom’s here."

"Great, thanks!" She clapped him on the shoulder -- reaching way up -- and he passed through the crowd of children, meeting their stares with a gentle smile.

Talon, Maggie, and the twins lived in a seven-room dwelling that went to great lengths to seem as if it wasn’t underground. Fake windows, complete with drapes, framed photos of landscapes in the convincing illusion that gardens and beaches really were on the other side of the walls. The furnishings were homey, if somewhat tattered by claw marks left by two rambunctious youngsters.

Diane Maza, quite a bit more grey now than she’d been back before she found out that her son had been turned into a bat-winged panther-man and her daughter was in love with a gargoyle, was in the front room trying to coax her grandson down from the top of a high bookcase.

"Thomas Reed Maza, you come down here right this instant and wash up for -- oh, Elisa!"

"Hi, Mom."

"Elisa’s here already?" Maggie rushed out from the kitchen, drying her hands on a dishtowel. They hugged like sisters; in the absolute dearth of tolerance from her own relatives, Maggie had become more and more dependent on her in-laws for familial affection.

Talon came in from the bedroom, holding Dee upside-down and tickling her. "Hey, Elisa!"

They had been staring in fascination at the twins; thus far, Amber was the only physically unusual child they’d seen, and she was mostly human-looking. But Tom, with a pelt only a shade or two lighter than his father’s, and Dee with her rosette-spotted tawny fur, were strikingly different.

"Wash up before you come back!" Diane Maza called after them. "All of you!"

In the comparative quiet, Elisa and Fox unfolded the whole story. Maggie in particular was horrified at the idea of children being used for experimentation. It had happened to her, but she’d been in her twenties; it had happened to Samson when he was only seventeen ... but this was even worse.

"So, Mom, what do you think?" Elisa said.

"I don’t know, honey ... with these powers of theirs ... can they control them?"

Talon chuckled. "No worse than our two with their electric blasts."

"Only two of them really have ..." She floundered, looking for the right word.

"Property-damage capabilities?" Fox suggested.

"Yeah ... but they don’t break more than any other kid. Remember Grandma’s crystal bowl? Or the time Beth set the drapes on fire?" Elisa reminded her mother.

A timer went off in the kitchen. Maggie cupped her hands around her mouth. "Lunch!"

"Hope fish sticks and animal crackers are all right," Talon said. "That’s all they’ll eat."

"But you cook the fish sticks," Fox said. "I’m still not over Aiden crunching them frozen back during the breeding season."

"I hope we have enough," Maggie looked worried. "If I’d known everyone was coming over today, I would have done something fancier."

"We’ll survive, honest," Elisa said. "You don’t have to trot out the fancy china for us."

While they ate, Elisa watched her mother closely while trying not to seem as if she were watching at all. She couldn’t fool Diane, had rarely been able to. But it didn’t matter; before they got to the animal crackers, she was charmed.

Maggie’s worries proved needless; there was more than enough for everyone. Several times, Elisa noticed her sister-in-law wearing a perplexed frown as she went to and from the kitchen, and resolved to ask her about it later.

"How traditional," Fox said as she helped clear the table. "Women’s work."

"They are lovely children, Elisa," Diane said. "I’d be happy to have them. I’m sure your father will feel the same way."

"Mom, I’m so glad! These kids really need a place. Ebon and Gabriel mean well, they really do, but that’s a hard life out there on the Point. I know you and Dad will do a great job with them ... your own kids turned out mostly okay! ... and you’ll have all the help you need. I swear."

"They don’t seem strange at all," Maggie said.

"Was everything okay out there?" Elisa asked. "I noticed you looked a little ... off, somehow."

Maggie laughed, sounding embarrassed. "You’ll think I’m nuts."

"Hey, you married my brother!" Elisa teased. "Like I don’t already!"

"Well ... look at this package." She held up a red box with a colorful pattern of clowns and balloons on it. ‘Circus Fun Cookies,’ it read in blindingly yellow lettering. "It was half, maybe two-thirds full."

"Now it’s empty." Elisa shrugged.

"But there shouldn’t have been more than four or five cookies apiece," Maggie said in the voice of one who knew she was inviting ridicule. "And the fish sticks ... how many did you have?"

"Uh ... seven, eight. I didn’t know I was supposed to count."

"I had six. Talon had ten at least. Mama Di? Fox?"

"Four," Fox said, patting her waist. "I had a big breakfast."

"Five or six," Diane said.

"Maggie, what are you getting at?" Elisa said.

"I cooked a whole box ... a box of forty. And no way all the kids only ate one each."

They all looked at her like she was losing it. She couldn’t visibly blush, not beneath her savannah-gold pelt, but her fur bristled abashedly.

Before any of them could come up with something to say, Alexander appeared in the doorway. "I told him not to," he announced self-importantly. "But he didn’t listen."

"Who, Alex?" Fox asked.

"Julian. I said you can’t go in there, but he did anyway." He bobbed his head wisely.

"Where?"

"The bedroom where the tiger-man is sleeping."

"Claw’s room, oh, I’ll go get him," Maggie said. "It’s okay, there’s nothing in there that can hurt him. Whole place is childproofed. With my two, it has to be!"

"I thought you were playing on the jungle gym," Fox said, picking up her son.

"We were. Neesha’s a good climber but not as good as Tom. Can I have more chocolate milk?"

"We’ve just got plain milk, sweetie; let me get you a clean cup," Diane said, going to the cabinet.

"I want chocolate," Alex said.

"Alex." Fox’s tone was warning. "Don’t --"

"But we had chocolate before!" he insisted, jutting his chin stubbornly.

"Look," Elisa said, picking up one of the plastic cups that had been stacked on the counter awaiting their turn in the sink. "There’s still some milk in this one, and he’s right ... it’s chocolate!"

Maggie’s scream took them all straight back to the night of her baby shower. Elisa dropped the cup, spraying the contents on her jeans, and ran.

The door to Claw’s room was standing open, the darkness beyond lit only by a single reading lamp and the glow from the machines that monitored his condition. But now those machines were going crazy, green blips spiking across the screens.

"Down!" he demanded. "I hep!"

"Let him go," Elisa said through lips that felt suddenly numb.

"But he --"

"Maggie, it’s okay, let him go."

She did so with extreme reluctance. The moment his feet hit the floor, Julian trotted over to the bed, climbed up, and reached for Claw’s head.

"What’s he doing?" Maggie whispered. "I found him like that, on the bed, what’s he doing?"

So they’d made their goodbyes, made their plans to see each other again soon, and then left the Labyrinth while the doctor who did charity work in the subterranean ward used heavy medical jargon to tell Talon and the woozily-revived Maggie that he had no clue, but was sure there had to be some reasonable explanation.

But Fox didn’t request it. She rarely did. Thriving on the attention, she ushered the crown prince Alexander and his friends into kiddie paradise. Six years and a prison term after "The Pack" had gone off the air, she was still mobbed by people wanting her to sign the cardboard backing on her action figure.

Neesha went straight for the dolls. Gilberto and Blaze found that even a hundred dollars wouldn’t go far in the video game aisle; they maturely elected to pool their loot and buy a game system and as many cartridges as they could afford. Brittany, for all she’d been conceived in a test tube and raised in a controlled environment, was the complete pre-teen crowd animal, glomming onto the trendy merchandise. Little Mulan stocked up on books and videotapes.

"Looks like it’s up to me to help you choose," Elisa said to Julian.

Elisa laughed at the sight of it. "Oh, did Derrek and I ever get in some fights playing that one! Junior crime-solvers."

Just when she thought they were done and ready to go home, Fox threw her arms wide and asked, "Who wants ice cream?"

"It’s snowing!" Elisa pointed out, but too late; no kid in history has ever said not me when asked that question.

"Fox?" she asked as the kids squashed their noses to the glass cases trying to decide what they wanted. "What ... what do you think happened back there?"

"At the toy store?" Deliberate pretense.

"What do I think happened? He healed Claw. Just like he healed Owen."

"Owen had a split lip and a loose tooth. Claw’s been in a damn coma for two years! The best docs around swore he’d never come out of it. But now he’s awake. Awake and -- well, not talking, but ..."

"Well again."

"Yeah."

"Gabriel told us what Julian could do. He was badly hurt. Compound fracture, wasn’t it? But Julian healed it right up. It’s not that much stranger than what Gilberto did to the piñata last night, or Mulan knowing what someone’s feeling."

"I guess," Elisa said. "But what about ... oh, never mind." She chose butterscotch ripple and then had to defend it from Neesha, who’d made it her mission in life to sample what everyone else was having before deciding on her own.

Anton Sevarius pinned it to her lab coat, muttering blackly to himself as he fumbled to make her one good hand maneuver the pin through the fabric. "It took you long enough."

"I had to revise your entire personnel file," David Xanatos said with a mild shrug. "It wasn’t easy explaining a transfer from our Investigative Planning Department to the science team."

"So good of you to give me back my job," Sevarius said sourly. "Now that I’m once more a valued employee, I trust I will be permitted certain freedoms?"

"Which freedoms?"

"Any freedoms!" She swept her good arm to include the suite ... bedroom, kitchenette, office, small lab. "My own off-site apartment?"

"Anton, Anton ... I’m letting you go back to work, that’s a start, but I’m still a long way from trusting you. Once bitten and all that. More than once, in your case."

"I’m a changed man."

"Obviously."

"Aside from that. What you’re doing is illegal, unethical, and immoral."

"Coming from you, that’s almost a compliment."

"You’re holding me prisoner here, forcing me to work. I’m as much a slave now as I was when I was trapped in your computer."

"No, this time you’re on the payroll."

"But still a prisoner. Denied my rights. As far as the rest of the world knows, I’m not mastermind geneticist Anton Sevarius, wanted for questioning in a variety of touchy matters."

"I’m afraid you don’t understand my position here, Anton. We are in the same boat. Either of us has enough sensitive information to blow the other out of the water."

"Sabra Indrani is an innocent woman ... an innocent disabled minority woman, no less. You’d have so many civil rights groups on your neck that you’d need a cervical collar."

"A move that would put you instantly in the public spotlight. You might be able to keep up the ruse, despite your tendency to overact, I’ll give you that. Sabra Indrani has no family, no close friends. No one to wonder at a change in personality. But you’d still be trapped. You’ve expressed interest in gaining access to the medical technology to repair or remake your body. Take me to court, and ..." He hooked his thumbs together and flapped his hands, miming a birdie just flying away. "But be patient, do as you’re told, and we can come to an agreement."

"Maybe it’d be worth it to bring you down." Her grin widened ghoulishly. "Or maybe we could keep this all internal, strictly internal."

Xanatos frowned suspiciously. "By which you mean ...?"

"The gargoyles. Detective Maza. The mutates. The trust they have in you is not built on firm foundations. If they found out you were harboring me ..."

"You’re off the mark with that one. They knew about Godiva. Lexington dug into your memory to find out about Ventura. I already had that discussion with Goliath. Of course, he wasn’t thrilled, but considering the reaction he might have had, it went fairly well."

"That was when you all believed me confined to a computer. Have you told them about this latest development? Have you told them you’re putting me back to work, letting me use my skills?"

"Frankly, Anton, I didn’t think it was worth the mention."

"I’ll take that as a ‘no.’ You know that Goliath would be furious."

"Nonsense. What was I supposed to do, kill you? You’re inhabiting someone else’s body. The real Sabra may have done some questionable things, but her motivations were at least understandable. When she’s found, the plan is to reverse the process --"

Sevarius laughed like a yelping seal. "She’ll never submit to that."

"She doesn’t have to agree. But she will need an intact body to come back to. You’re currently in there. To wrest you out would put a lot of strain on that body, leave it in a vegetative state. Until we’re ready to make the transfer, we can’t risk that. So we’re stuck with you for the time being. None of us may like it, but we’re being realistic."

"And letting me back in a lab?"

"I’m beginning to think you’re trying to talk me out of that decision. That’s fine with me. There are other geneticists out there."

"None of my caliber!"

"And at the moment," Xanatos continued with another shrug, "none of our projects have a particularly pressing need for another one. I was doing you a favor."

"You make me sick," Sevarius declared. "A favor indeed! You want to milk the fruits of my genius while you can, and then thank me by shoving me back in a computer!"

"Milk the fruits of your genius?" he echoed.

"You know what I meant," Sevarius sulked.

"I also know you were a temperamental diva even in your original body and things haven’t improved. All this bluster and posturing is your way of trying to establish your place in the pecking order. Give it a rest. Go back to work."

"Maybe I don’t want to."

"That’s up to you. But personally, I think you’re right. Even if we do find Godiva, she won’t go back willingly. We might have to destroy her. That would leave you right where you are for the rest of your life. So shouldn’t you make the best of it?"

Sevarius sighed and looked down at her withered legs beneath the light cotton blanket draped over her lap. "You’ve made your point, Xanatos. As usual."

"Good. Here are some file names and passwords that you might find helpful."

"Xanatos!" rang Elisa Maza’s voice from down the hall. "I need to talk to you now!"

"Now, if you’ll excuse me," he added, "Detective Maza sounds upset. I’d better see what she wants."

He stepped into the hall and closed the door. The moment it latched behind him, Sevarius wheeled over there and tilted her head to the wood. With her good hand, she clumsily rolled the piece of paper he’d given her into a tube, and placed one end of the makeshift stethoscope against the door.

"Trouble, Elisa?"

"You tell me ... where’d she take him? What’s she up to?"

"Slow down, back up --"

"Don’t give me that, Xanatos! You’re lucky I found you first; Ebon and Gabriel are just about climbing the walls! Is this one of your plots?"

"Wait. Start at the beginning. I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Where did Fox take Julian?"

"What?"

"Fox. Your wife. Julian. The little boy. Where did she take him?"

"I ... isn’t she here?"

A pause, in which Sevarius surmised that Detective Maza recognized the sincere confusion in Xanatos’ words. When she spoke again, she was calmer and less accusatory.

"Fox took Julian out. Just him. None of the others. Not even Alex. After what happened today --"

"Something happened?"

"Julian healed Claw. Brought him out of his coma. There was some other stuff too ... no. Forget that part. But he did heal him. A gift like that is so valuable ..."

"And knowing how mercenary Fox and I have always been, you suspected foul play," Xanatos said scornfully. "I suppose it’s all an Illuminati scheme. Oh, yes, we can’t let a talent like that be wasted, hidden away! It’s got to be utilized! Made the most of!" He made a disgusted noise very close to a raspberry.

"I’m sorry," Maza said, so low that Sevarius could barely hear. "But she didn’t say a word to anyone, even Owen. Ebon is ready to tear the castle apart looking for answers."

"There’s no need. I think I know where she’s gone."

"Hello, Daddy."

"You could use the main entrance," Halcyon Renard said, glancing up at the acid-melted lock of the roof access hatch. "But I suppose this is more fun."

"That wasn’t my reason this time."

He rotated his chair to face her, and his brows knit together. "Another child of yours you’ve neglected to mention?"

The small figure in Janine’s arms returned Renard’s gaze evenly, without the fear that his age-raddled visage and shrunken body seemed to inspire in children that young. This one was bundled up in one of Alexander’s old snowsuits, hardly anything visible but a pair of shy blue eyes, a button nose, and a cherub’s bow of a mouth.

"No," Janine said. "This is Julian. He was named after a singer."

"Mm-hm," Renard said. "What’s this about? Why did you come in through the roof? We’ve installed security measures, you know ... if I hadn’t recognized you and deactivated them, you could have been seriously hurt."

"I didn’t want anyone to see me bringing Julian in here. They might’ve mistook him for Alex, but even so, I wouldn’t want anyone to think he was responsible for it either."

"Responsible for what?"

"Daddy ... Julian can help you. Right, kiddo?"

"I hep," the boy said to Renard, trying to pull off his mittens and looking comically surprised when the cord -- what Renard’s own mother had always called an ‘idiot-string’ -- left them dangling at his wrists.

"Explain yourself, Janine."

She flicked the tip of her tongue nervously against her upper lip, a mannerism he hadn’t seen since she was a teenager. "He’s a ... special child. A very special child."

"Aren’t they all?" Despite himself, he smiled at the boy.

"He has a gift ... it’s easier to show you than to explain. Please, Daddy, let him help you. He wants to. I should have realized it last night when he brought me the picture, but it didn’t click until this afternoon."

"Up," Julian said, raising his arms to Renard.

"But it has to be a secret," Janine said. "You can’t tell anyone."

Renard looked at the boy, standing patiently with his little arms in the air. "What is this? Some sort of a silly prank?"

Janine picked up Julian and deposited him in Renard’s lap. "You’ll see."

Julian was smaller and lighter than Alexander, who’d done his share of riding around as a second passenger in the motorized chair.

He slowly brought his smooth, pink hands to Renard’s face. Renard nearly recoiled from the touch, not accustomed to such and not wanting the boy to be repulsed by the leathery feel of his skin.

"I hep," Julian whispered, closing his eyes.

Over the boy’s shoulder, Renard saw Janine watching with frightening, hopeful intensity. Then she vanished, everything vanished, as a clean white glow suffused his vision. A clean white glow that seemed to be coming from inside of himself, blazing bright as a star, as the sun.

The palsy was gone from his fingers, the pain vanished from his knotlike arthritic knuckles. He couldn’t feel the ulcer that gnawed at the tender inner wall of his stomach. Couldn’t feel the dull cramp in his lower back and pelvis that came from sitting up too long.

With a tremulous cry of disbelief, Renard stared at the boy on his lap. Julian smiled, weary but happy, not proud of what he’d done but pleased at the effects.

"It worked," Janine said, very near tears. "It really worked!"

"All better?" Julian asked.

"My God," Renard gasped. "I’m ..."

"Oh, Daddy! Oh, Julian!" She embraced them both, smacked a kiss atop each of their heads, and picked up the boy for another hug. "Thank you, Julian!"

"This boy healed me?"

"I told you I couldn’t explain. But yes, he did. He did. You’re not the first. He’s got a gift, the most precious gift in the world."

Renard shifted his other leg. Already, just those few movements were leaving him shaky and weak. "It has its limits. I’m still old. Disease and injury, yes, but not the ravages of time. What’s the price?"

"No price," she said, startled.

"The catch? What is it, Janine? A drug? How soon will it wear off? What are you going to demand of me in return?"

Comprehension was followed swiftly by deep hurt. "It’s not like that. All I wanted was to share this with you. I’m not trying to get anything out of you."

"I wish I could believe that. Tell me the truth, Janine."

"I am. You’re well again. You’ll be able to walk, once your legs have built up their strength. You just can’t tell anyone how it happened. Promise me that, please."

"This isn’t like you."

"I’ve made a lot of mistakes," she said. "I’ve never lived up to the kind of daughter you wanted, never took responsibility for my actions. Is that what you want to hear? I’ve never cared about honor or integrity. But this time I am being honest. I saw a way to help you and I went for it. Maybe it’ll make up for all the other rotten things I’ve done to you all my life."

"Sincerity," he marveled. "For the first time, I hear sincerity from you."

"Please, Daddy!"

He flexed his fingers, smoothly and without flares of agony. "We’ve both made our share of mistakes. But it could be that it’s not too late to start over."

"Elisa, got a minute?"

She turned as Xanatos poked his head out of his office and waved. "Something wrong?"

"No ... just something I think I’d better fill you in on."

"Why does that make my skin crawl?" She had been on her way down to the main kitchen to rustle up a late-afternoon breakfast, since the gargoyles’ suite was a case of Mother Hubbard’s cupboards again, but diverted into the office and sat down. "What’d you do this time?"

He raised both hands innocently. "I saved someone’s life. But when I tell you the whole story, you’re liable to object."

Her eyes narrowed. "Okay ..."

"I’ve been thinking about it for the past couple of days, figured it was time to come clean. I wanted to explain to you first, alone, because you’re slightly less likely than Goliath to put me in the hospital."

"You’re making me nervous."

She was too incredulous to be pissed. "You brought Sevarius back. After all the stuff he’s pulled. And you’re putting him back to work? Why?"

"Because up until the next time he betrays me, he’ll be worth millions --"

"Do you need more millions?"

"It’s not only the money. It’s what he might discover."

"Doomsday viruses. New and improved mutagenic agents."

"He’s ... she’s ... more interested in regeneratives now. If Sevarius can come up with something that can do what Julian can do, imagine the benefits to humanity. We were up all night back-and-forthing the issue, after Fox took him to heal Renard. A valuable gift, the most valuable one in the world, you said so yourself. But as Ebon so stridently pointed out, Julian is only a child, young and very fragile."

She nodded. "Talk about a dilemma. Should his power be made available? Who decides how it should be used? Is the benefit worth the risk? What if he fell into the wrong hands -- and are we even the right hands anyway? Yeah, Xanatos, we went around that block until past dawn and still didn’t get anywhere."

"A small taste of what it’s like to be Illuminati," he said dryly.

"Then you and Matt can keep it. Or maybe we’d all be better off without the Illuminati. What gives this secret society the right to make these kind of decisions?"

"No one gives us that right ... the Society takes it upon itself."

"Fine, whatever, we’re getting off the point here. So you’re saying that if Sevarius can whip up some sort of genetic cure-all, it eliminates the whole Julian question. No need to put him at risk if there are other ways to get the same results."

"Exactly."

"Though it still puts you in the position of being able to pick and choose who gets access and who doesn’t. Make it available to your allies, withhold it from your enemies, use it as a lever to make people do what you want."

"Well ..."

"Don’t sit there and look at me like you never thought of that. It’s just one more scheme to you. How can you come out of this on top? It was that kind of thinking that brought us the Matrix, remember? A brave new world personally designed by you and Fox, with your own best interests in mind."

"We’ve been over this familiar ground before. You don’t think I’m qualified to make decisions of that magnitude. I’m aware of that."

"Damn right I don’t! Look at your judgment! You’re willing to take Sevarius back under your wing!"

"Closely monitored, yes."

"When you know there are no other geneticists his equal, so who’s going to monitor him? Who’s good enough to make sure he doesn’t slip in a few optional extras? Things that might not crop up for a few years down the line? Sure, he comes up with something, you test it, it looks like it works, no side effects right away, so you start administering it where you want ... and then ten, twenty years later all of your elite wind up undergoing cellular meltdown. Wake up, Xanatos!"

"I am awake, and I have considered every point you’ve brought up. Yes, I know it’s a gamble."

"A gamble! He designed a virus for Demona that would have wiped out all human life! Did he ever stop to think that might include himself?"

"Actually, yes ... he’d introduced an undetectable component into the virus that would have interacted with his own DNA and that of his relatives, leaving them immune."

"What would you have me do, Elisa? Kill him? Weren’t you just saying something about how none of us should have the right to dictate life and death?"

"No, you can’t kill him! He should be brought to justice --"

"As Anton himself pointed out, he’s Sabra Indrani now. If we reveal the proof of how he got to be what he is, what do you think would happen? People have no idea how far cloning and braintaping science have progressed. It’d shake their trust in the whole system, just like it would if they found out the truth about extraterrestrial contact."

"So you mean that he’s legally a different person now, with a clean record, and the law can’t touch him."

"That’s precisely what I mean."

She slumped back in her chair and rubbed her temples. "How do you live like this?"

"How do you? There are some things that just have to be kept under wraps. If we brought everything into the open, next thing you know you’d be a guest on Elaine! telling the studio audience about your troubles with Goliath’s ex-mate."

"Hell freezes over, film at eleven," she said hollowly.

"So do you understand why I’m doing this?"

"I understand that part, but I still think trusting Sevarius and putting him back in the lab is just plain stupid."

"What would you suggest as the best way to broach the subject with the gargoyles?"

She sat up straight. "Unh-uh, no way, count me out, Xanatos. I am not getting involved in that one."

"You mean you think it’s best if they don’t find out? You don’t plan to tell Goliath yourself this evening?"

"I don’t know what I mean. Why did you even tell me? You’ve kept your dirty little secret since December, so why come clean now?"

"Because Anton’s being difficult, and if I don’t give him ... her ... what she wants, she threatened to tell all. I knew the only way to handle this with a modicum of gracefulness was to tell you myself."

"What does he ... she ... damn, that’s just too weird!"

"What does she want? Certain freedoms, as she put it. At the moment, I’ve got her confined to the science and medical units and her own suite, basically a prisoner."

"Freedoms as in a company car, expense account? Or do you mean something more along the lines of freedom to conduct questionable experiments?" A chill raced through her as if she’d been injected with liquid nitrogen. "Oh, my God ... you were talking about developing healing drugs ... you are not going to let Sevarius get his hands on Julian!"

"Elisa, I never said --"

"Is that where this was leading? Take a few samples, isolate the gene that gives him his gift? That is the lowest thing I have ever heard."

"You’re getting way ahead of me here --"

"And you ask me how to broach the subject with the gargoyles? You broach that subject to Ebon and Gabriel, and you’ll be in pieces before the last word is out of your mouth."

"I have no intention of giving Julian to Sevarius," he said sharply. "Sevarius doesn’t even know about him. Maybe once I would have considered it, but that was a long time ago."

"It wouldn’t work anyway," she said. "He’s not like the other kids. I can feel it. So can Fox. Can’t you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"There’s more to him than that. It’s crazy, I know it is. But there’s more."

"He’s a little boy with a remarkable ability."

"It’s more than that," she insisted.

"What is it, then?"

"The ..." she broke off and shook her head. "You’d send for the guys with the butterfly nets."

"Dr. Masters gave all the kids extensive physicals," Xanatos said. "Julian’s just as human as the rest of them. Not one of Avalon’s own, if that’s what you were thinking. Owen would have picked up on that anyway."

"No, that’s not it."

"Something’s on your mind, though."

"Like I said, it’s crazy. Totally nuts. So far out there they don’t even have 7-11’s."

"I promise not to laugh. Or call the psych techs."

"Shouldn’t you be figuring out what you’re going to tell the gargoyles?" she asked. "Dusk in less than an hour, and if you haven’t ‘fessed up by suppertime, I’m going to spill it all to Goliath and you can bet he’ll come looking for an explanation."

"I’ll talk to him. I’m just glad Ebon took the kids back to Rocky Point. I don’t think I could stand a repeat of the other night. I don’t envy Fox having to face that music, but she stuck to her guns admirably."

"I have to agree with you on that one. She did a dumb thing, taking Julian out without telling anyone, but she did it to help her father. I couldn’t really argue with that."

"Tsk, tsk," Anton Sevarius chuckled to herself, as she tapped in a password and watched all of the protected medical files come up.

It was a joy to be back at work. She’d spent the past couple of days accustoming herself to the labs, making polite chit-chat with her new colleagues (though most of them were sufficiently freaked out by her witchlike appearance to cut that sort of social blather to a minimum).

Her new password gave her access to several current projects. Xanatos had told her to prowl around, decide what inspired her. He’d been right in his claim that they weren’t currently doing much that was interesting. Kid stuff, to Anton Sevarius.

But she’d offered up her talents to the leader of the team in charge of growing replacement organs engineered to be compatible with anyone’s body, a plan which might one day bring about organ banks with no need for donor-match searches.

She leaned closer, reading with increasing amusement Dr. Masters’ detailed notes on the gestation and birth of one Amber Maza. That hardly came as a surprise; the part that boggled Sevarius was that they’d accomplished it without a little boost from science.

She moved on, scrolling idly through the "royal family’s" records of check-ups. Not much of interest there.

Going back to the main list, she spotted the name ‘Julian’ and this time a bell rang as insistent as if a really gung-ho salesman were on the stoop.

The anticipated blowout hadn’t been nearly as bad as they’d feared, but Xanatos still seemed very glad when it was over.

Maybe Goliath had worn himself out backing up Ebon’s tirade at Fox the other night. Maybe he realized the futility of debate, something that would probably never happen with Elisa herself; she would probably be arguing pointlessly with Xanatos for the next fifty years.

"On the brighter side," he said, "we’ve successfully set up the credentials for Ebon’s wards. It’s all nice and legal on paper now. They officially exist. I arranged a transfer between fictitious foster homes, and we’re set to enroll them in a private home-school."

Elisa smiled. "That’s great."

Owen opened the door. "Mr. Xanatos?"

"Yes, Owen?"

"Dr. Indrani is asking to speak with you."

Xanatos looked from Goliath to Elisa, then back to Owen. "By all means, send her in."

Owen’s face was unreadable as he held the door wide to admit the wheelchair.

"Hello, Anton," Xanatos said deliberately.

Goliath’s lip curled back from his teeth. "Sevarius."

"Well, I see you’ve taken this out of my hands," Sevarius said. "I was coming to bargain with you."

"Blackmail me, you mean."

"Call it what you will. Goliath. Detective." A ghost of the smugness returned as Sevarius asked, "How’s your daughter?"

"You’ve been snooping, Anton."

"Yes, and I am appalled at this Dr. Masters of yours. He’s the least thorough, most addle-brained excuse for a scientist I’ve ever encountered."

"So you came to blackmail me. Was this to be my last warning before you went to Elisa and the gargoyles with my deception? My last chance to agree to give you those freedoms?"

"Oh, I’d moved on from seeking my own apartment," Sevarius said. "I just want this body back in perfect working order. I’d contemplated loosing a new strain of biological contaminants --"

"-- but in the end I decided merely to ask nicely," she finished.

"I’ve told you, Anton, that’s out of my hands --" Xanatos began.

"But not out of the boy’s hands."

Elisa and Goliath both lurched in their seats as if about to spring up and start breaking things, beginning with Sevarius. They subsided reluctantly, but no one in the room missed how Goliath’s claws were digging channels in the wooden arm of his chair.

"You really have been snooping," Xanatos said mildly.

"I’m prepared to offer you my complete loyalty --" Sevarius began, and Elisa uttered a short, sharp sound somewhere between a snarl and a laugh.

"In exchange for what?" Xanatos asked in a tone which said, as was the case, that he already knew.

"To be healed, of course."

"And to have access to the boy, try and duplicate his ability?"

Sevarius snorted. "No, of course not."

Taken aback, Xanatos floundered. "What?"

"Even I couldn’t isolate any one particular gene responsible for that. And none of you are remotely prepared to deal with him, if what I suspect is true."

"... that Sneetches are Sneetches," he read, "and no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches. That day, all the Sneetches forgot about stars, and whether they had one, or not, upon thars."

"Breakfast time. We’ll read about the Zax later."

Behind them, the small house was busy with light and noise. In a moment, they’d go in, be swallowed up in the activity, but for now, Ebon was content to sit here with the boy beside him, the boy whose coloring, delicate features, and sweet nature could have made him Julianna’s own son.

But he’d lived two full lives in the short time he’d been around. The first a life of deceit and villainy, the second of music and love. Now he was well-embarked on his third one, loss and remembrance.

Gabriel would probably be leaving soon after, Ebon realized. It wouldn’t be enough for the young male to stay out here in isolation. He’d been raised with dozens of siblings, and Ebon alone would not be enough to satisfy that need for clan now that the wounds of the soul that had brought him here had been mended by solace and solitude.

Julian snuggled closer and rested his head on Ebon’s arm. "Don’ wanna go skool," he murmured. "Don’ wanna go ‘way."

Ebon’s throat tightened.

"Wanna stay here, wif you."

"You’ll like the --" He stopped, unable to bring himself to say all the right things. How could he sound positive and upbeat about it when the thought of losing this child was like a knife going into his heart? "I’m sorry, Julian."

"Don’ make me go, Daddy." It wasn’t a whine, only a soft plea that already knew there was no hope.

Ebon shut his eyes briefly. "I wish you could be my son. I look at Goliath with his family and I envy him ... I think of Julianna ..."

"We go see?"

"Go see ...? Oh. No. Not tonight."

"Please? I not hungwy yet."

He glanced toward the house. Through the well-lit windows, he could see Mrs. Goodall and Brittany by the stove, Gabriel rough-housing with the older boys, the girls giggling as Neesha clumsily clipped barrettes in Mulan’s hair.

"Well, just for a little while." He took Julian’s hand and they walked down the beach, to a rise where a narrow path climbed through a split in an immense boulder. Up and up, and when the going got too hard for the boy, Ebon balanced him on his shoulders.

At the top, a small sheltered nook was cradled in the shell of the boulder. The wind whistled relentlessly around the opening that gave a sweeping view of the Point, but inside, it was barely a whisper. The floor was grassy, the nook’s walls mossy.

"The more I thought about it," Ebon said, setting the boy down and approaching the headstone at one end of a mound, "the more I knew she wouldn’t be happy so far away, in California. After ..." he trailed off, having never spoke of what had happened his first night in the bar, the night he had contacted her for that aching but too-short moment. "I brought her here, so that she would never be far from me."

"Tell me?"

"She was ... sad and beautiful ... with a voice like an angel ... she needed me in a way that no one had ever needed me before. From loving her, I learned what it meant to protect, what it meant to be part of a clan. She was my hope." He hung his head. "And then it was too late. She was gone before I could tell her what she meant to me, gone before we dared to see if we had the courage to acknowledge our love."

"I hep."

Ebon sighed. "It’s too late for that, Julian. Even a healer can’t help her now."

"If you know what’s good for you, Sevarius, you’d better cut the crap and tell us what you’re talking about," Elisa said.

"There really is no need for this animosity."

"If I had proof on half the stuff you’ve done, and proof that you were who you really are, I’d have your butt behind bars so fast you’d think you were in a time warp!"

"I’m well aware of all of that, Detective." She folded her good hand across her bad one. "Have you noticed anything else unusual about him? Beyond his gift for healing?"

"Been entertaining speculations that seem crazy?" Sevarius prompted. "That seem more than crazy, that seem downright impossible in this day and age?"

"Get to the point," Goliath growled.

"Let me tell you a story. Before I met my untimely end --"

"Which time?" Elisa interrupted coldly.

Sevarius rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "The last time, when your brother killed me."

"When you abducted his wife."

"And safely delivered their children. For which I never received any thanks, might I add. No, my reward was to be confined to a life of electronic purgatory. A lesser mind might have gone insane."

"At any rate," Sevarius went on, "the point that I’m trying to make, unless you’d rather argue about water long under the bridge ...?"

"Go on," she said.

"Ahem. Yes. I was involved in a rather remarkable project that may have some bearing on this matter."

"You were part of the Institute," Xanatos said. "Of course. Your own brother was one of the founding scientists."

"Peripherally," Sevarius agreed. "But my participation was cut short by the circumstances we’ve already addressed, and I was unable to see my research ... bear fruit, as it were. The financiers of the project had some highly specific, not to mention unscientific, demands. But you know how it is -- humor the money-men."

"Get on with it, Sevarius," Elisa said. "What kind of project? What are you talking about?"

She gave her a condescending look. "Cloning, naturally. My assignment was to extract DNA from a rather unique source, form an embryo, and implant it into a specially-chosen host. I completed the job not quite four years ago. The resultant child would now be ..."

"Julian’s age," she said with rising horror.

Goliath leaned forward, tensed to rise. "Are you saying that he is one of your --"

"Not necessarily. I’m only saying the timing is right, and given his unusual talents, it’s worthy of consideration."

Elisa fought down an urge to pummel the crap out of Sevarius; she couldn’t bring herself to hit a woman in a wheelchair no matter the provocation. "Quit playing with us and tell us what you did. What unique source did you use for DNA?"

Sevarius let them hang a moment longer. "Haven’t you guessed?"

"The Shroud of Turin."

Then only four of them stood; the smallest of the group keeled over and would have gone head-first into the driftwood if her mate hadn’t caught her.

"Ooh," Aiden said, pressing her fingertips to her brow ridges.

"Owen told you that spell would take a lot out of you," Lex said.

Goliath assured himself that Aiden was all right, then looked around for Gabriel. He didn’t have to look long; Gabriel was already on his way down the rocky slabs that served as steps leading from the house. The kids were close on his tail, and waiting on the porch was a grey-haired woman.

"We came as soon as we could," Angela said, greeting her rookery brother with a hug. "Has there been any news?"

Gabriel’s face was drawn with worry. "Nothing. I even went to his bar, nothing."

"We’ll find him," Brooklyn told Gabriel, then glanced at Goliath. "A search, see if we turn up anything Gabriel might’ve missed?"

"You, Angela, and Lexington begin with that," Goliath agreed.

"Gimme a minute to get my strength back and I’ll try a seeking spell," Aiden gasped, though if the pallor of her skin was any indication, she’d need a bit more than a minute. "If you have something of theirs, that’d help."

"I’ll get something!" Blaze volunteered. That was the cue for the rest of the kids to all start talking at once.

"Can you really find them?" Brittany asked.

"It’s those scumbags from the Institute, I know it!" Gilberto said. "They’re gonna get it so bad!"

"They left my book on the swing," Mulan said.

"I thaw a helicopter," Neesha added.

"Mrs. Goodall," Gabriel turned beseechingly to the grey-haired woman, "could you take them inside, please?"

"Tell me what happened," he said to Gabriel when the two of them were alone except for the recuperating Aiden.

"There’s not much more to tell than what I said on the phone. They were out here, on the swing, and didn’t come in for breakfast. Didn’t come in at all. Ebon would never get caught away from home at sunrise if he had Julian with him. This evening, when I woke up, I glided down to the bar. No one there had heard from him either."

"Was there a helicopter?"

Gabriel nodded. "Coast Guard, late last night, but it didn’t come close to shore. If it was the Institute, wouldn’t they have come for all of the children? And why would they take Ebon?" He tossed his hands helplessly.

"What do you know about Anton Sevarius?"

"A little ... he was the scientist who created the clones and the mutates."

"But he also worked for the Institute, and he is now once more in Xanatos’ employ. He ... or rather, she, now ... may be involved."

"But Goliath," Aiden said, getting up from the rock she’d been sitting on, "do you really believe all that stuff? I mean, it can’t really be real ... can it?"

"What matters is that Sevarius seems to believe it, and so did the ones who hired his services."

"It can’t be Sevarius, though ... why would he ... uh, she ... uh ... gosh, that’s confusing ... why would Sevarius ask Xanatos to have Julian heal Sevarius if Sevarius already had Julian? It sounds like they vanished right around the same time Sevarius was telling you all of that."

"All of what?" Gabriel asked.

Goliath set the entire story before him. The failed evangelist, the museum robbery, the cloning project, the fanatic insistence on the part of the evangelist to do everything ‘by the Book,’ the specially-chosen girl, all of the details that Sevarius had known either first-hand or from later investigations.

Stunned, Gabriel said, "You mean ... you can’t mean ..."

"We don’t know," Goliath said. "Sevarius wanted to do tests, to see if Julian was the result of that experiment. And get healed into the bargain. But Aiden’s right. The timing of it doesn’t work."

"I’ll try my spell now." Aiden picked up the book, smiled nostalgically. "Stars upon thars, I remember this one."

"Who else could it be?" Gabriel spoke in a low voice so as not to disturb Aiden as she began to intone words in Latin.

"Ebon has other enemies," Goliath said. "Demona, Ventura, even the Quarrymen."

"I would have heard sounds of a fight. He can’t have been taken by force."

"I sense something," Aiden said after a few moments. "Very distant, just a flicker, can’t pinpoint it. Far, Goliath. Almost out of my range."

"Both of them?" Gabriel said.

"I think so."

Relief filled Gabriel’s expression. "So they’re alive, they’re together?"

"Goliath!" Angela swooped down on them fast, eyes wide. "You have to see this!"

"This is creepy," Brooklyn said as the rest landed.

"What is this place?" Goliath asked Gabriel.

"He ... he re-buried her here." Gabriel was pale. "Julianna."

Aiden swallowed and her throat clicked. "You don’t think ..."

"N-nah," Brooklyn said unsteadily.

"That was years ago!" Lex squeaked. "There wouldn’t have been --"

Angela bumped him to shut him up before he could say the unspeakable. "Goliath?"

"Ring," he said. "Gold, sapphire and two diamonds. I can’t tell if there’s an inscription."

"This can’t be happening," Aiden moaned. "This can’t be real!"

Lex put his arms around her. "Hey, you shouldn’t be saying things like that, sorceress-turned-gargoyle."

"That’s magic, Lexington!" Her voice was spiraling high and faint, as if she’d inhaled half a tank of helium. "Magic, I can cope with! This ... this ..."

"We don’t know what happened, though!" Brooklyn looked at the ring and hastily dropped it, as if it had only then occurred to him where it had most likely come from. "Maybe it didn’t work, and he decided to get rid of the body somewhere else." He pointed to the sea. "Maybe it almost worked and he had a total Cryptkeeper moment and had to destroy it." He pointed again to the sea.

Goliath realized that his second-in-command was perilously close to cracking. "Brooklyn --"

"Maybe he went looney-tunes and jumped in after!" Brooklyn went on, the words coming faster. "Suicide pact, him and the kid, into the drink, eeeeeee! splash! hasta la vista!"

"Brooklyn!" Angela tried shaking him.

"Maybe it worked," Lex said loudly.

Lex lowered the volume. "Think about it. Say that it did, it really fully did work. What would that mean for all of them?"

"But we don’t know," Angela finally said.

"No." Gabriel brushed his knuckles against her chin. "That’s why they call it faith, and it’s good enough for me."