The next morning Jody said, “There really isn’t much more I can teach you. Sure, we can continue to practice, and there’s value in that, and I’d be happy to continue working with you- I mean, the money has been really good, and it’s helped me out a lot, you know? But I kinda feel that we’d just be going over old territory, you know?”

“Jody,” I said, wiping myself down with my gym towel. “How is your career going as a professional fighter? I’m asking because maybe I can offer you a job that might pay well enough that you can do what you want, and not have to worry about your next rent payment.”

He looked me in the eyes for a long moment. Eventually, he said in a low voice, “I’ve never asked what you do, and I’m not asking now, but if the answer has anything to do with drugs, I’m out.”

“No, no drugs. Mostly I’m a real estate investor, but I also own a string of restaurants, nightclubs and hotels. All completely aboveboard and legit,” I replied.

“Somehow this seems… Well, I can’t see how it squares with what we’ve been doing here,” Jody said, still keeping the conversation low. Eddie was the only one in the gym besides the two of us and he was keeping himself occupied in the office, so he wouldn’t have been able to hear anyway, but this seemed like a conversation best kept to a hushed tone.

“It’s a long story, but it is sometimes necessary- not for business reasons, exactly, but more like, um, a personal project of mine, to make an impression on people who may wish to resort to violence. I have a crew of guys working on this project for me, and we could use an experienced operator like yourself,” I said.

“This isn’t giving me warm fuzzies in my tummy,” Jody said, doubtfully.

“You may think you understand my need to be circumspect, but you don’t, really,” I told him.

“The image that’s forming in my mind is some kind of mercenary work, probably criminal,” Jody said, crossing his arms in the classic ‘I’m not buying it’ pose.

“I appreciate your reluctance, I really do,” I told him. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that I, personally, wouldn’t do. I’m not going to say it’s without risk, and I’m also not going to say that it’s, well, completely legal, for that matter. But it is moral, if you understand the distinction I’m trying to make.”

“Moral according to who?”

“Most everybody but the bad guys,” I said. “To oversimplify, there are some bad guys out there doing nasty shit to some innocent people, and they need to be shown the error of their ways. The innocent people caught in the middle certainly think we’re doing the right thing, and I sleep easily at night in the belief that it’s true.”

“And you’re dancing around the subject because?” Jody asked.

“Because I’d be asking you to intimidate and potentially hurt, perhaps terminally, some real pieces of shit, and that’s not very acceptable to most authorities.”

“You say you have a crew,” he finally said. “How many, and where do you imagine I’d fit in the organization?”

“I have over two dozen in the field right now, but we’re recruiting more as we go from those that we’ve helped. The thing is, most have no training at all. Will and desire, but no training. I have another ex-operator doing all the training, but he is spread pretty thin. Mostly you’d be doing that, but sometimes, when needed, you’d be running operations either with me or with the other guy, or maybe on your own, with your own team.”

“This sounds like a shit show,” Jody said. “A real good way to get killed.”

“Our losses have been greater than zero, but not by much,” I conceded. “I would expect someone with your training and experience will find most encounters… easy to resolve,” I said.

“So, let me get this straight. You want to hire me to teach a bunch of dumb kids how to play soldier, and go out, what, bounty hunting?”

“That’s a way to describe it that is almost completely inaccurate,” I said. “More like, I want to hire you to train and lead a highly-motivated team to track down and suppress, um, insurrectionists of a sort.”

“I have zero fucking desire to go back to the sandbox,” Jody said.

“You wouldn’t have to leave this continent,” I said. “At this point, all the action is happening in the Eastern US.”

“You have no idea how sketch this all sounds,” Jody said, shaking his head.

“Tell you what,” I replied. “If you think you might be interested, let me know. If you’re completely uninterested, just forget I ever said anything at all, and we just continue on as if we never had this conversation. Sound fair?”

“You said you have another ex-operator on your crew?” Jody asked. “Could I talk to him?”

“I can call him right now,” I said.

Jody took a deep breath, then let his shoulders sag. “I’d like to talk to him,” he finally said, and that was when I knew he’d be on my team.

I grabbed my phone from my bag and called Grant, who answered on the second ring.

“Hey,” I said into the phone. “I’ve got a guy here I’ve been training with. Ex Green Beret. I’m thinking of bringing him in. He wants to talk to you.”

“How old is he?” Grant asked.

“Maybe thirty, thirty-two, something like that,” I said, eyeing Jody.

“Alright, put him on,” Grant said, so I handed the phone over.

I could only hear Jody’s side of the conversation, but it started out with him spelling out his bona fides to Grant, and then a series of what sounded like a verbal pissing match as the two questioned each other’s resumés. Finally satisfied that they were who they both claimed to be, Jody asked the pertinent question.

“So, uh, this job that Leah is offering. Is it legit?” Jody listened to what Grant had to say for a minute, then asked, “What kind of support would I get?” After a little bit, Jody asked one final question. “If you were in my place, would you take the job?”

I thought that was a bit ridiculous, since Grant obviously had taken the job, but I didn’t interrupt.

“O.K., thanks. Yeah, you too,” he said, then ended the call and handed the phone to me. “Tell me about the pay and the benefits,” he said.

Over dinner that evening I brought up the subject of me bringing Jody on board. “Em, I hired somebody for our special troubleshooting crew today. Jody, the guy I’ve been training with? He’s agreed to become a full-time employee.”

“Trouble-shooting crew?” Angela asked.

Emmy gave me a look that said that I should be honest with Angela, so I said, “Remember how you asked if I’d ever had anybody killed? Well, my ‘troubleshooting crew’ are the guys that would do that if necessary.”

“Your paramilitares?”

“Yeah, sort of, but like I told you, that’s not their main job. This new guy, Jody, he was in the Army’s special forces, so he’s mostly going to be a trainer and group leader. My hope is that we will need to resort to violence less and less as word of our leadership spreads among the Night Children in the new areas we move into.”

“Remember: no torturing. I’m serious,” Angela said.

“Torturing was never on our agenda, believe me. Like you said, only evil people do that, and we’re not evil.”

“I did not realize that you two had spoken of these things,” Emmy said, amazed.

“Em, honesty makes for strong relationships. I never want to keep anything from Angela, just like I never keep anything from you.”

“That is admirable,” Emmy said. “I am very glad that these things are not secrets from you, Angela. I was worried that your love for us would suffer if you knew all that we have been doing.”

“Leah explained to me that you two are queens of the Night Children, and trying to make things better. She also told me that you don’t hurt those who only want to be left alone.”

“This is true,” Emmy said. “I think that it might be time for you to meet more of our people. Leah, we should have Angela meet Michael and Jassie.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” I agreed. “He’s back in Palo Alto right now, so we can visit with them when we go up to San Jose next week. You’ll be able to come, right?”

“I would like to,” Emmy hedged. “I should be able to break away from the production work for the weekend.”

Of course, that meant that Emmy couldn’t actually break away when the time came, so Angela and I went to San Jose without her.

Angela and I went to dinner that Friday evening at Michael and Jassie’s place (our old townhouse by campus) instead of eating at the club. Emmy and I had told Michael about Angela, so he knew who she was, but we hadn’t really told Angela anything about Michael and Jassie. We wanted his story to come from his mouth directly to Angela’s ears, without either Emmy or me filtering it in any way.

It was my first visit to the old townhouse since Emmy and I had left Palo Alto, and merely entering the home we’d lived in together for years brought a certain nostalgia, but Michael had redecorated some since then. He’d had the walls painted a different shade, and the old leather couch we’d left was gone and a sleek new patterned fabric sectional had replaced it.

I was glad to see that the two of them were making it their own, since in all honesty, Emmy and I never really did that. Emmy bought the place designer-furnished, and that’s how it stayed in our four years there.

“Leah!” Jassie yelled when I walked in the front door, running up and hugging me. “It’s great to see you! It sucks Emmy couldn’t come, but I’m glad you did! This must be Angela, right? Welcome to our home,” she said, waving us in.

Michael led us to the kitchen counter, saying, “Dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes. Can I get you two anything to drink?”

I think the complete normality of the greeting must have shaken Angela out of her surprise at their unusual looks, because she loosened up and asked, “Do you have anything to drink that’s sugar and caffeine-free?”

“We have La Croix seltzers,” Michael said. “Would you like grapefruit or lemon?” and just like that, the ice was broken.

The conversation was light at first, mostly talking about Jassie’s junior year in high school, and how she’d just gone camping with her friend Addison and her family up in the redwoods. I asked if she’s seeing any boys, and she got really shy all of a sudden.

“His name is Booster,” Michael announced.

“Buster!” Jassie countered. Turning to me, she said, “He knows it’s Buster. He just says that to make me mad.”

“Honestly,” I told her, “Buster isn’t much better than Booster.”

“It’s not his real name,” she confided. “His real name is Ronaldo Bustamante.”

“And that’s where the ‘Booster’ comes from?” I guessed.

Jassie’s only reply was to give me a ‘not you, too’ look.

Once we sat at the dinner table to eat the lasagna Michael had made, the conversation turned more serious. “Angela,” Michael began. “Emmy asked me to tell you about the Night Children. She said that you know a little, but that I should explain things as if you didn’t know a thing about us. Is this right?”

“Uh, I guess so,” Angela said. “Emmy told me that the Night Children have always been around, but keep hidden, and her family is the first to try to change things.”

“This is true, but it is only a very small part of our story,” he said, indicating himself and his daughter.

Michael went on to describe the way that the two had been living when he first spotted Emmy on that Berkeley street four years before. “This is the way almost all of us live here in the New World,” he said, describing their homelessness and fear, as well as the way they blend in with other people. He went on to tell about how he’d confronted Emmy and she convinced him to accept her shadow, and what that meant. Michael’s version was a whole lot less confrontational than it had actually been, but I didn’t correct his account. He described how Emmy had put him and Hasan to work, seeking out others, and how that effort has expanded all across the continent.

“We have teams in the Rust Belt and in the Southeast right now,” he said.

Angela gave me a questioning look at the mention of the ‘teams’, so I asked Michael to tell Angela what those teams were doing.

“When we enter a new area, we put up signs in our old language in the kind of places that others of our kind might be hiding. We make ourselves very visible, hoping that they see us and come out to speak with us. We explain who we are and who we represent- that’s Queen Emmy and Queen Leah. We show them the benefits of choosing to accept Emmy and Leah’s shadow, and ask them to join us.”

“What if they don’t want to?” Angela asked.

“We tell them how to contact us if they wish to do so in the future and ask that they tell any others they may know about us, then move on.”

“Leah said that sometimes there’s, well, violence,” Angela said, clearly wanting corroboration of my description of our activities.

“Regrettably, there have been some incidents where a local boss has set up his own domain, and sometimes these people try to prevent their followers from leaving to join us.”

“But you don’t force anybody to join you, right?” Angela asked.

“No, but we will not allow any of these local thugs to prevent others from joining us if they wish,” Michael said, his voice turning firm. “Individuals must be allowed their own agency. If they wish to join us, they must be allowed to do so. If they don’t, well, that’s their right, too.”

The conversation had long since become boring to Jassie, so as soon as dinner was over she excused herself to go to her room.

“She’ll be on her phone for the next three hours,” Michael said, rolling his eyes.

“That reminds me- Grace is coming to visit us for Thanksgiving. Do you guys have any plans?” I asked.

“We’ve been invited to dinner by a friend of mine,” he said, turning a bit shy. “It’ll be our first holiday dinner over at her house.”

“A lady friend?” I asked. “What does Jassie think of that?”

“They get along quite nicely,” he said. “Liz has a three-year-old son that Jassie adores.”

“Do you think the two of you might have a future together?” I asked, pleased for the man.

“We’re taking it slow,” he said. “Neither of us wants to rush into things too quickly, but yes, we have talked about the possibility.”

“Michael,” I said, putting my hand on his arm. “This is the best thing I’ve heard in a while. Seriously- this is really good news. Emmy’ll be over the moon to hear it.”

On our way back to the condo to dress for the club, Angela asked, “Why is it such a big deal that Michael has a girlfriend?”

“Two reasons,” I said. “First, we consider him a friend, and he’s been through such a rough time since jassie’s mom died that it’s good to see him maybe opening up to another relationship. Second, a huge part of trying to bring the Night Children into the light means integrating them with the rest of society, and him dating a non-Night Child woman is a very powerful sign that it’s working.”

“But didn’t you say that your friend Donnie married a Night Child?”

“Yeah, and they have a little son. Donnie’s parents absolutely adore their grandkid, too. But just because it’s happened once doesn’t mean that it happening again isn’t a big deal. Michael is also the highest-ranked person in our organization outside of Emmy and me, so a lot of Night Children look up to him as an example of what’s possible.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Angela admitted.

The next night at the club it became obvious to me that Angela was becoming as recognizable to the regulars as I was. As we made our pass around upon entering, she greeted quite a few of the clients, too.

“You really like this place,” I said as Theo brought our drinks, his eyes lingering on Angela a bit longer than was entirely necessary.

“I do,” she admitted. “Being here, like this with you, makes me feel like… like a queen of this little kingdom, you know what I mean? All these people, they know you and love the fact that you’re the big boss. Me, they know I’m the big boss’ girlfriend, so they treat me with respect and… admiration, too.”

“They also admire how smoking hot you are in that dress,” I joked, but I understood what she meant.

“You think I look hot in this dress?” Angela asked.

“Everybody does,” I said, and it was true.

“You’re the only one who gets to see me out of it,” Angela said, her voice sultry.

“Their loss, my win,” I agreed.

Since the garage was finished at the Wonderland house, I relocated the Aston to leave an empty space in the condo large enough for Grace’s Toyota four-by when she drove in from Flagstaff.

Of course, it couldn’t go off without a hitch, could it? The valet called me from the garage when Grace tried to drive into the underground parking garage. Apparently he was willing to hand her the temporary parking permit, but she didn’t want to let him drive her car to the designated spot, which left the two of them at an impasse.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I grumbled as I put on my shoes to go down and straighten things out.

I got to the garage entry and found Grace glaring at the valet, who was equally as set in his determination that he was not simply going to let her in without guidance.

“Look, Grace,” I said. “It’s his job to make sure the garage parking rules are followed. Yes, I can see there are two of you in the car, and it only has two seats, but you need to know where to park, so here’s what we’re all going to do. You drive the car, Manny here will ride in the passenger seat, and the two of us,” I said, indicating myself and Grace’s girlfriend, whose name I couldn’t remember, “Will meet you at the parking spot.”

“But-” Grace started to object.

“Nope,” I said, holding my hand up, palm towards her.

“Leah-” she tried again.

“Nope. The other choice is that you get out of that driver’s seat and Manny here parks it for you.”

“Fine,” Grace grumbled as her girlfriend got out of the car and Manny climbed in.

“You and me, we take the elevator,” I said to the well-tanned girl now standing next to me.

Waiting for the elevator, I introduced myself, and she said her name was Rosalie.

“Grace said you were really tall, but she didn’t, like, say you’re six and a half feet tall,” Rosalie said, looking up at me in the elevator as we rode down two floors.

“I’m not. At most, I’m six and a quarter feet tall,” I said. Changing the subject, I asked “You go to NAU also?”

“Yeah, I’m just taking my general requirements now. I’m a bio major- I’m gonna go to veterinary school after I get my bachelor’s. I really love animals,” she explained.

“Veterinary school is pretty tough, from what I understand,” I said.

“Is- is Emmy home?” Rosalie asked, changing the subject. “I couldn’t believe it when Grace said Emmy is like her mom.”

“Yeah, she’s upstairs,” I replied as the doors opened.

We got to the blue and white FJ as Manny finished explaining the parking rules to Grace, who looked impatient.

“C’mere, kid,” I said, wrapping Grace in a big hug. “It’s been a while.” She was stiff and a bit resistant at first, but after a moment loosened up and returned the hug.

“God damn,” Grace said. “I’d forgotten how fucking strong you are!”

“Language,” I said, giving her a light swat on the back of the head.

“O.K., Mom,” Grace said, jokingly.

“Leah, this is Rosalie Morales. Rosalie, this is Leah Farmer. Leah’s the one that came all the way up to Arcata to get me when my parents kicked me out when I was a kid. In her Aston Martin.” Looking around, it suddenly occurred to her that my Aston was nowhere in sight. “You didn’t sell that car, did you? I loved that car!”

“Nah,” I replied. “It’s parked over at the new house so you could have this space.”

While we were talking I helped Grace and Rosalie grab their bags from the back of the car. “C’mon, Emmy’s waiting.”

After a brief stop at the front desk to get the two girls visitor passes so they could use the building’s facilities, we headed up to the seventeenth floor.

“So, what’s Angela like?” Grace asked. “Emmy said she’s really nice, but that’s kinda vague.”

“She is really nice,” I agreed. “She’s home, too- you’ll get to meet her in just a minute.”

“This is, like, surreal,” Rosalie said.

“How so?” I asked as we stepped into the hallway.

“Like, Grace told me her adopted parents were lesbians, and I thought that was cool, you know? But then I found out who you guys were, and I was like, ‘no way!’ but she was all, like, ‘yes way’.”