But it didn’t matter. I’d done my job, as Kathleen had urged me to do, and I was finished.
I was headed home.
Home to Kathleen.
Part Two
The Cudgel
No mortal could cross the threshold of birth or death until Janus had wielded both the objects he held in his hands: both the key and the cudgel. Passages and transformations are never easy or cheap, and the price is often reckoned in pounds of flesh and buckets of tears.
And the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” Then Satan answered the LORD, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Hast thou not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to thy face.”
You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine.
Chapter 17
The black FBI SUV — the one that had whisked me from the press conference to the airport — screeched to the curb of San Diego International at 1:09. I was cutting it close; my flight was at 1:44, but I could see the Delta ticket counter just inside the glass doors, and the line was short. “Want me to wait?” asked the driver, another of Prescott’s seemingly infinite supply of young, well-groomed agents.
“Nah, I’ll be fine. Thanks for the lift.” I hopped out, scurried inside, and got in line with my bag and the plastic bin of teeth and bone shards. Only two people were ahead of me, and three ticket agents were working the counter. Piece of cake, I thought, hoping that the security screeners wouldn’t freak out and waylay me over the remains. One of the agents finished checking in a passenger, but then, instead of calling “next,” he turned and walked through a door, disappearing from view. I glanced at my watch; it was now 1:12. Suddenly nervous, I divided my attention between the two remaining ticket agents on duty, willing them to hurry. One of the agents was a sour-faced older woman who wasted no time on pleasantries; the other, a pretty twentysomething, chatted and laughed with her customer, a lanky young man whose British accent she seemed to find charming. Sour Face quickly dispensed with one of the two people ahead of me; incredibly, Pretty Girl continued chatting with the Brit as if she had the entire afternoon to devote to the conversation. “Oh, I love London,” she gushed. “It’s so much more continental than our American cities.” Oh, please, I thought, and then — checking my watch again—Oh, please hurry! Her colleague, Sour Face, sent another traveler on his way and took the next in line. There was no longer anyone ahead of me, but I was running out of time. I waved my arms to catch the girl’s attention; it took a while, but finally she looked at me, and I tapped my watch. “Sir, I’ll be with you in a moment,” she said, her voice less animated than when she was chatting with the Brit. The man looked around and seemed to have a clearer sense of my problem, or more compassion, for he took his boarding pass, thanked her, and then gestured me toward the counter.
“Sorry to rush you,” I said, handing her my itinerary, “but I’m cutting it pretty close here.”
She studied it, frowning. “Sir, that flight leaves at 1:44,” she said. “That’s less than thirty minutes from now. I’m sorry, but I can’t check you in.”
“My watch says 1:14,” I said. I was fibbing, but only by two minutes. “And I’m not checking baggage. All I have is this carry-on.”
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s 1:15. And the thirty-minute cutoff is a TSA rule. Homeland Security.”
“Come on. Sixty seconds. Besides, I was in line with time to spare. If you hadn’t been flirting with that guy ahead of me, I’d have been standing here two minutes ago.”
She flushed, but she didn’t budge; in fact, her expression hardened. “Look at me,” I pleaded. “Do I look like a terrorist? I’m a college professor.” Fumbling at my waist, I unclipped my TBI shield and laid it on the counter. “Look. I’m a consultant to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. I just came from helping the FBI. I’m one of the good guys.”
But she had stopped making eye contact. “Sir, I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules. The best I can do is book you on the next available flight.”
I sighed. “When is that?”
“Tomorrow morning at six-thirty.”
I stared, dumbfounded. “You’re kidding me, right?” The look she gave me indicated that she wasn’t. “It’s still lunchtime. You mean to tell me there’s no way to get to Knoxville — no way even to start toward Knoxville — until tomorrow?”
“That’s correct, sir. Do you want me to book you on that six-thirty A.M. flight?” Her fingers clattered rapidly over the keyboard. “That would get you into Knoxville at… 3:53 P.M.”
Unbelievable, I thought. The idea of hanging around, killing time, for the next sixteen hours seemed unbearable. There had to be a way to get home sooner. “What about Los Angeles?”
“What about it? What is it you’re asking, sir?”
“How far away is L.A.?”
She shrugged, looking as if she might be getting irritated. “Two, two and a half hours by car. Fifty minutes by air.”
“Surely LAX has more flights today. When’s the next plane to LAX? If I caught that, could I get home tonight?”
Her fingers clacked and clattered, with more force this time. “The next flight to Los Angeles is at 1:46.”
“I’ll take it. Get me on it.”
“Sir, it’s now 1:17. That flight leaves in twenty-nine minutes. I can’t put you on it.”
“But I was standing right here at 1:15. Thirty-one minutes before the flight.”
“But you weren’t booked on that flight, sir. You still aren’t. And you can’t be — it’s not possible. Those are the rules, sir.”
I wanted to scream. Instead, through clenched teeth, I said, “And when is the next flight to L.A. that I can be on?”
More furious keyboarding. “Four P.M. Arriving 4:48.”
“And when could I get the hell out of Los Angeles for Knoxville?”
By now she, too, had given up all pretense of cheery politeness. “There’s an eleven P.M. to Detroit, with connections to Atlanta.”
“Come on, there has to be something earlier than that.”
“Yes, sir. There’s a 1:45 flight from LAX to Atlanta. But obviously you can’t take that. Then there’s nothing eastbound until eleven o’clock tonight.”
“Christ,” I muttered. “And what time would I get to Knoxville? If nothing went wrong in Detroit?”
“At 10:31 tomorrow morning.”
I no longer wanted to scream. Now I wanted to weep. Feeling more defeated than I had in ages, I fished out my wallet and sighed, “I’ll take it.”