“Even I don’t know that. They come to me. I can’t find them. Who was he?”
“Don’t you know? I thought you were psychic.”
“He’s not a forthcoming presence.”
“Got that right. T.J. My best friend. I got him killed.”
“I don’t think he sees it that way.”
And I knew he was right. Somehow, that nagging little voice that I had mistaken for my conscience told me that it wasn’t my fault. It had been there the whole time, telling me I was okay, to stop being silly. I hadn’t believed it. T.J. had wanted that last fight with Carl, not just to defend me, but because the fight between them had been brewing for months. He’d wanted to win, but that hadn’t happened. Stop asking for forgiveness.
After that, I wasn’t sure I was ready to sit in that room for two hours, but the security guards were about to close the doors, and Jeffrey urged me inside.
Ben was already in place in the back row, his laptop open on his lap, typing away at something that may or may not have had anything to do with the hearings. I sat with him, and Jeffrey joined us.
“You okay?” Ben whispered. I nodded, waving him off.
Everyone looked back at a commotion brewing by the doors. The security guy seemed to be talking to someone who wanted in. After a moment, he opened the door and let in something of an entourage: a middle-aged man with short-cropped, steely hair, wearing a dark turtleneck and slacks, flanked by a couple of hefty bodyguard types.
All my hair stood on end and a shiver passed along my spine. Those two were werewolves, big and scary, and there was something about the way they followed the first one that was unnatural. Or un-supernatural. It was like they walked too close to him, or watched him too closely. Like Labrador retrievers with separation anxiety. Not wolf-like at all.
“Who’s he?” I murmured.
Jeffrey leaned over. “That’s Elijah Smith. He’s a self-styled faith healer to the supernatural.”
My blood chilled and the gooseflesh thickened. My shoulders stiffened, and I swallowed back a wolf-inspired growl. “I know him. I know of him. We had an encounter, sort of.”
“You didn’t try to join his church, did you?”
“No. This was indirectly. I met someone who tried to leave his church. It didn’t turn out well.” In the end, she’d killed herself. The vampire had staked herself to get away from him.
As exploitative celebrities went, Smith was in a class by himself. Jeffrey and I were little more than entertainers, to some extent. Our hearts may have been in the right places, wanting to help people, but we were also sort of freak shows. Smith, on the other hand, professed to save people.
He called his organization the Church of the Pure Faith. Preaching the motto “Pure faith will set you free,” he claimed to be able to cure vampires and lycanthropes of their conditions through his style of old-fashioned, laying-on of hands faith healing.
The so-called church had more in common with a cult. Once healed, his followers never left. They traveled with him in a caravan that crisscrossed the country, collecting true believers who were utterly loyal, like the two werewolves seemed to be. My informant had said he really could cure them: vampires could walk in sunlight, werewolves never suffered the Change. But only if they stayed with him forever. For some, the loss of freedom might not have been too high a price to pay. The trouble was, Smith didn’t tell them what the price was before they signed up.
What could he tell the committee? What was the point of having him here?
“How the hell did they manage to get him to testify?” As far as I knew, the few police who’d tried to investigate the church hadn’t been able to touch him. Nothing persuaded Smith to leave his compound, and his followers defended him like an army. Jeffrey shook his head.
Ben piped in. “Rumor has it Duke offered his church official recognition and tax-exempt status. Then he can start collecting monetary donations.”
“Can Duke do that?”
Ben said, “It really only takes an application with the IRS, but Smith may not know that. Maybe Duke can expedite the application.”
Didn’t that just beat all?
Jeffrey watched Smith distantly, lips pursed. After a moment he said, “I don’t like him. He’s dark. I don’t think he’s human.”
I looked sharply at him. “Vampire?”
“No, I don’t think so. This is different. Thicker. Would it be too melodramatic to say he looks evil?”
I was right there with him. My favorite theory about Smith at the moment was that he was some kind of spiritual vampire. Rather than feeding on blood, he consumed people’s devotion, awe, and worship. He didn’t cure his followers; rather, he had the power to suppress their weaknesses, the vulnerability to sunlight, the need to shape-shift. My acquaintance, a vampire named Estelle, thought she was cured, but when she left Smith’s caravan, the condition returned. She burned in sunlight again. He was powerful enough to control vampires and lycanthropes, and sinister enough to use them.
I didn’t know enough to guess what he was, especially if Jeffrey was right and he wasn’t human.