Christmas was always subdued at St John of God House. Prawn had been around for two years, off and on, and he usually tried to find somewhere else to be during the holidays. He had a few friends in the city who would let him couch-surf for limited periods so long as he fixed their broken electronics and didn't bring the cops around. Getting dragged in to safety under an S3 designation had put him right out of a partying mood, though, and nobody was enthusiastic about having him under their roof.
St John's was nostalgic at Christmastime, if nothing else. At four that afternoon Joel had produced a rather spectacular pudding slathered in rum sauce, which his great-aunt had Fed-Ex'd over from Ottawa. They ate it in front of a DVD of It's a Wonderful Life, at least until Paul emerged from the kitchen. "I need mushrooms and I need them now. It's a mushroom emergency. Prawn, I'm entrusting you with this task and I want you to take it very seriously. Can I count on you to remember the kind and number of mushrooms I want you to get? Will you go with all due speed and waste no time in this matter?"
"Can it wait until Jimmy Stewart tries to top himself?"
"No, Prawn, it can't. You're off the mushroom project and demoted to chauffeur. You get to drive fast and play the radio, so it's ideal for you. Jeanne-Marie, you look like you appreciate good mushrooms. And baking powder. You understand the time-sensitive nature of getting the baking powder in place? Good. Step into the kitchen as I tell you about my mushroom needs."
Unfortunately, the Christmas Eve traffic was thick and Prawn didn't get to drive nearly as fast as he wanted to. Jeanne-Marie was uncharacteristically giggly and flirtatious, making him think she wasn't quite a useless pair of tits after all.
"What's this band? I love them."
"You've never heard the fucking Clash?"
"Not allowed in the nunnery."
"Yeah, but you knew about Madonna, and she's on the Index too, isn't she?"
"Madonna," said Jeanne-Marie with dignity, "is played to death in clubs. This isn't."
"Ahh, that's right, you're a bad Catholic schoolgirl. Running away to dance in the clubs." Prawn wanted to roll down the windows, even though it was twenty below outside. He'd never driven around with a hot French brunette before, and hoped someone he knew would see him. "Well then, I'm honoured to introduce the Clash, Mam'zelle Beaubier."
"I like it. You can call me Aurora, you know."
"What's that?"
"Just a nickname." She smiled and leaned over to nudge him. "What do they call you King Prawn for?"
"I hated my name and in fourth form I was a nerd and obsessed with The Invisibles, so I tried to have all my mates call me King Mob. And they took the piss by calling me King Prawn instead, which is this crap band from London. And lots of other things, but Prawn stuck for some reason. A tale of tragic tardery all around."
She giggled. "And what's your real name?"
"Engelbert Humperdinck."
"Oh, that is bad."
"You're right there." The traffic ahead cleared a bit, and Prawn revved the engine, passing a slow Chrysler with Ontario plates and making the rosary on the rearview mirror swing. A dark blue sedan appeared behind him. "That fucking guy's been behind me all the way from Sainte Famille."
Prawn hated having people close behind him, so he sped up to 80, hoping to make the light before it changed and leave the tailgater behind. The light hit red just before he burned through.
He thought he'd got away with it until they got out at Provigo. Jeanne-Marie was rooting around in her purse for Paul's list while Prawn was bent over the seat as he strained to reach a New York Times that some thoughtful soul had left in the back. He had the papers in hand when he spotted a large blond man in a cheap suit paired with a red flannel shirt, headed straight for them—the tailgater.
"Christ," Prawn muttered, not wanting to deal with some cunt's road rage on Christmas Eve. He hadn't even flipped the guy off.
The man knocked on the window, and Prawn rolled it down. "Look, mate, I didn't—"
"You Francis Dudley?"
Shit shit shit a cop oh shit "Yeah."
"Can I see your CRIM card, please?" The man held up ID. Prawn glimpsed the RCMP crest. Fuck. "Yours too, Miss Beaubier."
"Wait a minute here, I ran a red light, that's not a federal...thing, is it?" Red lights were provincial, because in Ontario you could turn right on one. Yeah. Solid legal ground, by God.
"Come on, Dudley, I don't want to have to bring you to Mile End. Again."
Prawn gave a very put-upon sigh, as if that would convince anyone of anything, and got out his card. "My friend doesn't have one yet."
"Does she have preliminary papers?"
"At home."
"Get out of the car, please."
Prawn got out. The car was still running, and pouring from the stereo was, "I fought the law and, uh / The law won." He couldn't decide if that was ironic or not. "We're going to Mile End anyway, aren't we?"
"No, Dudley, not necessarily. We're going to Starbucks for a chat. That okay with you?"
"We have to buy mushrooms and baking powder."
"You can do that after. Nobody wants to drag this out. Hell, it's Christmas Eve, right?" The big man grinned and led Prawn around the back of the car, one heavy hand on his back. "Miss Beaubier, please join us. Coffee's on the taxpayer."
Starbucks was closed, but they drove around in the blue sedan until they found a café that was open. The cop ordered a decaf latte, to Prawn's disgust.
Sitting down, Prawn said, "So the Mounties are doing traffic violations now?"
The man slid his ID across the table to Prawn and Jeanne-Marie. "Take a close look at that, okay? Walter Langkowski, Special Division. We're affiliated with the RCMP for now, but I'm not an officer. I'm a physicist. Couldn't give you a ticket if I wanted to."
"But you could toss us in Mile End, couldn't you?"
"That's not hard, Dudley. S3 detainee breaking the law in broad daylight, in the company of a mutant without papers? Mr Dressup could throw your ass in safety. I don't want to do that, but just keep the possibility at the back of your mind. Now, I don't want to spoil Paul Laliberté's faaaabulous Christmas dinner, so I'll be quick. You're a talented pair, the two of you, and the government is willing to pay very handsomely for your services."
Neither Prawn nor Jeanne-Marie said anything. They'd theorised about stuff like this, at the house, and Prawn had thought it was all paranoia and wishful thinking in one crazy package.
"If you want hard numbers, it's ninety-six thou a year. And instant citizenship for our crustacean friend here, as a bonus."
"And how long am I stuck here?" Prawn asked.
"The true north strong and free not good enough for you? Three-year contract, my dear dendrobranchiate. This is the real land of opportunity and you'll have a chance to get a very painless high school diploma and a gold-plated nest egg in that time. Criminal records sealed if you serve out your contract with no difficulties. Satisfaction guaranteed or we ship you back to Mother England. Better than sleeping in a convenience store, right? Are we interested yet?" He opened a briefcase and handed them each a thick document in a red plastic binder. "You can read as much of that as you want while you're here, but for security reasons you can't take a copy with you. We want you for our special operations team, which we're calling Department H for now..."
Prawn half-listened and half-read, quickly becoming lost in the legal jargon. It couldn't possibly be as James Bond as it sounded, he thought—if Langkowski was any indication, the job consisted of driving around in a rubbish car and drinking fairy-piss Starbucks coffee, much like other people in government jobs. "I don't have to be bilingual, right?"
"Nope."
"Is there a good dental plan? My teeth are a fucking nightmare."
"Yeah? I chipped my front two playing football in high school. Check it out. You'd never know."
Prawn looked at Jeanne-Marie. "What do you think?"
Langkowski turned to her, ignoring Prawn's question. "Jim Hudson himself spoke to your twin brother a couple of days ago."
"I'd be with Jean-Paul?"
"Absolutely. You're a matched set, the two of you."
"Well...I don't like the idea of a contract," she said, but she sounded like she was wavering.
"You would sign after training, which you're paid for. Six weeks."
"Here in Montreal?"
"Ottawa. All moving and housing expenses paid."
She bit her lip for a moment, then said, "I want in."
The money had already convinced Prawn. "Me too."
"Welcome to the team," said Langkowski.
Paul was fuming. "Prawn had better be dead or in safety, I swear to God."
"Is your next line 'dinner is ruined'? Relax." Joel was setting the third table in the west sitting room. "They're fine."
"What are you basing that on?"
"I'm basing it on shut up and stop ruining Christmas, Paul."
"Now who's uptight? Take your dinner meds. So who wants to succeed where Prawn has failed?" Paul addressed the kids on the couch. "Steph? Faithful, dependable Steph?"
She groaned and got up. "I'm not going all the way up to the Plateau. You're getting IGA mushrooms."
"I don't care about the mushrooms anymore. They're dead to me. I just want my baking powder. I want to make my biscuits and serve you bastards."
Paul had brought this on himself, Joel thought—there were thirty kids in the house, between the dining room and the sitting room, and they'd been cooking for two days straight. But Paul insisted on roasting the three geese himself, claiming some special expertise in the matter that he wasn't willing to share. Having a massive feast on Christmas Eve at all felt strange to Joel, who was used to light dinners of fishcakes and peas before Midnight Mass, but since other shelters in the city were doing dinners on Christmas Day they thought it might be good to diversify.
"There's not going to be enough," Joel said from the kitchen doorway. "What do you want to do?"
"Will you leave me alone? There's plenty of food, just not enough meat. Everyone take a bit less, it'll be fine."
"That's not very hospitable. People expect a main dish at Christmas dinner. Why don't I order something in?"
Paul glared at him, and then said, "Yeah, all right. I didn't think they'd cook down so much. They always looked huge when mémère did them."
"They smell great."
Paul grunted, as a lid on the stove started to chitter, and Joel went back to the east sitting room to collect opinions on Chinese vs. Indian. He was on his way to the dining room when the front door opened and Prawn and Jeanne-Marie appeared, stamping snow off their boots and looking guilty.
"Where were you?" Joel demanded. "Does it take two hours to go to Provigo?"
"We need to talk to you," said Prawn, far too seriously for Joel's liking.
"Uh...all right, come on." They went into the office and closed the door. Jeanne-Marie sat next to Prawn on the Naugahyde couch, rather close.
Prawn started. "This car was following us..."
"Following you."
"I think so. It could have been a coincidence, maybe. But it looked like he was following us."
"From where?"
"From here. Sainte Famille Street. I ran a red light..."
Joel didn't know whether to believe the story or not, since it sounded like Prawn's usual bullshit. But he hadn't come home with a ticket, and Jeanne-Marie wouldn't lie for someone else—he had a feeling about that. When he heard about Department H, he knew. "Jesus Mary and Joseph. What did you tell them?"
Prawn and Jeanne-Marie looked at each other; she answered. "We were interested."
Stupid for it to feel like such a betrayal. No one else in the house was very serious about the Catholic Worker philosophy, and Vicky was the only other one with a passing interest in isms of any sort. Even Paul cared more for politics as a soap opera and horse race than as the stage for a morality play. So while no one argued against Joel's pacifist personalism, such as it was, they weren't in unanimous agreement with it either.
Evidently Prawn sensed Joel's disapproval. "It's ninety-six thou a year, Joel. And free housing."
"I can't offer you ninety-six thou a year," said Joel, "but you already have free housing. Whatever else you want..."
"I want a job and a place of my own, man. I know I've fucked up a lot of the jobs you found me, but I'm not daft. A government job is too good to pass up."
"And what do you think this job is going to entail?"
They looked at each other. Jeanne-Marie said, "It's special forces work, associated with the RCMP. What did Walter say? 'Neutralising threats against the public order.'"
"So they're using mutants to take down other mutants. You honestly like the sound of that, Prawn?"
"It doesn't sound so different from the X-Men."
It didn't, and the only difference Joel could think of was that the X-Men were independent of the government—the very fact that had made the Prime Minister so cautious about trusting them to rescue Joel's father. The X-Men weren't accountable to anyone, but a team controlled by a hostile government had to be worse, didn't it? When had Joel started thinking of his own government as hostile?
"Anyway," said Prawn, sounding surly, "who says the threats have to be mutants? What's wrong with the idea of using our powers to protect people from other things? Hurricanes, earthquakes, terrorism? I might have got some gratitude for warning people about the explosion on Victoria Avenue if I'd been someone official and not some random mutant chav sleeping in a dépanneur."
"The Mounties don't do disaster relief," Joel said. He was running out of ammunition and Prawn knew it.
"It's not the Mounties. They'll be their own department when everything gets sorted, Langkowski said."
Joel opened his desk drawer and took out his chequebook. "Prawn, name a number high enough to make you stay away from this."
He'd succeeded in rattling Jeanne-Marie, who was biting her lip. Prawn's eyes widened, but he remained unmoved. "Ninety-six thou plus housing and dental coverage."
"I can get you to a dentist."
"That's a start. Keep going."
What do they want from me? Joel thought, and then he glanced up at the far wall, on which hung a poster from Assisi of St Clare in her poor grey robes, the scenes of her conversion, life, and death arrayed around her. The answer to his question was suddenly clear as the punchline to an old joke. Prawn wanted what he had a right to have. Prawn was Christ. And Christ deserved everything. The excitement of understanding was so heady that Joel almost laughed. He found an ATM slip on the desk. "All right, Prawn. I have...let me see...fourteen five twenty-six in my bank account right now. That's our operating budget until the spring. It's yours."
He made the cheque out to Francis Dudley, $14,526 from the Royal Bank of Canada, and signed it with a flourish. Prawn did not react until Joel tore the cheque off and handed it to him. "You're not fucking serious."
"Yes, I am."
"What are you going to use to run the house?"
"I don't know. Get a loan, probably. Take it."
"You're bluffing," Prawn said, but he took the cheque, read it carefully as if he suspected fraud. "I'm cashing this, you know. I'm not giving it back to you out of shame."
"You don't have to. Fourteen thousand, it's yours. Get an apartment and a new wardrobe, whatever you want. Just don't go with these people." Joel knew he was walking a fine line between benefactor and lunatic, and there was a chance Prawn would tear up the cheque and declare that he'd work for Ottawa just to get away from the asylum. But Joel didn't think so. The immediate lure of free money would outweigh the delayed gratification of working a potentially dangerous job in another city.
"You're mad," said Prawn in a curiously slack voice. He did not look up from the cheque. "I've never held this much money in my hands before."
Joel saw that he was wrong, it wasn't the money that had convinced Prawn. And Prawn was indeed convinced. "I couldn't be happier to give it to you."
"Uh. Thanks. Thank you." Prawn stuffed the cheque in his pocket and stood up awkwardly, smoothing the front of his pants down with his hands. "Excuse me."
He bolted. Jeanne-Marie winced sympathetically as Prawn went out, and said to Joel, "So what are you going to offer me? Blood?"
"If that'd make a difference, I've got a letter opener right here. No, I was hoping you'd listen to reason."
"Oh, don't worry, English boy. You're being too hard on these government people. Anyway, they won't talk me into doing anything wrong. I'm a lover, not a fighter."
Something in her tone reminded Joel of the first time they'd met in Santropol, and suddenly her whole erratic personality leaped into a sharper focus. "Aurora," he said, almost to himself.
"You'll keep that to yourself, won't you? Jeanne-Marie thinks it's her secret. But you can call me Aurora, when it's just the two of us. I like you." She smiled at him as she was leaving. "I'll go help serve. I'm glad we ironed this out, aren't you? I've never been to Ottawa."
When she was gone, Joel replayed the conversation in his head a few times, wondering if he could have won them both somehow. If there was a way, he didn't see it—Aurora didn't want money, he didn't think.
There was a chance, he thought, that Aurora was right about Department H. Or maybe he was paranoid. For a moment, Joel played with the notion, searching his memory for other troubling incidents. Lags and space-outs from the epilepsy, yes. He'd snapped at Paul a couple of times, but it was Christmas and they were stressed out. When he was alone and undistracted, the bad feelings would break over him in waves, each a few seconds long, powerful enough to make him clench his teeth and wish for nonexistence, but they didn't touch him when Paul was there, when he had a book to read, when he was before the Sacrament at Saint-Sulpice. Nine hours a night of sleep, meals were regular. Maybe his judgement was off, but Joel didn't think he could blame that on his brain chemistry.
He needed more information. Looking over the scurf on his desk, he found Corporal McKenzie's card and dialled the number. Yes, it was Christmas Eve, but she would have voicemail.
There was a distant buzz on the other end of the line, but no recording or human voice. He was about to hang up and try again when he heard a click and a bored switchboard operator's voice. "Government of Canada, Special Operations," she announced in English and French. "Please give your name and the name of the person you are attempting to reach."
"Um, Joel McCree, calling for—" oh Christ this was going to hurt— "Snowbird, please."
A pause, during which Joel imagined the switchboard operator laughing herself into an early grave, but not before taking out a bilingual ad in the Citizen to tell the nation about the dumbest kid ever to waste the government's— "One moment, please."
Your call is being forwarded.
Two rings. "Hello?"
He hung up in a sudden panic. No, he needed to think about this. Niko, Prawn and Jeanne-Marie needed something more than paranoid raving or fumbling, tactful confrontations that ended in compromise. They needed an advocate.
Impulsively, he picked up the phone again and dialled Dr Xavier's office number, again intending to leave a message. He wasn't expecting the Professor to pick up at six o'clock on Christmas Eve, but after three rings he did. "Charles Xavier here."
Didn't anyone take the holidays off anymore? Joel was thrown. "Oh—um, hello, sir. It's Joel, I didn't know if—"
"Joel! Merry Christmas!"
"Merry Christmas, sir. Uh...I don't want to take up too much of your time. I'll call back."
"No, no." A creak in the background as if the Professor were settling back in his chair. "We're waiting to have a late supper when Jean gets off her shift at nine. I just came in here to put something away and the phone was ringing. I meant to call last week when I heard that there was mutant involvement in the explosion up there. I hope no one you know was hurt?"
"Not hurt, no."
"I'm glad to hear that. Is anything known about the child who caused it? In fact, perhaps if you're not too busy you could send word to him about the school? Or her?"
"I think you're too late, Professor." Joel told him about Department H, and reluctantly mentioned that he'd spied on the girl.
"Ah," said Dr Xavier, no judgement in his voice.
"I've never done it before. Not deliberately."
"I believe you."
"I wouldn't do it if I weren't worried about what these Department H guys are doing."
The Professor took a moment to consider that. "Do you think they'll be exploitative, or are you just upset by the idea of their using physical force at all?"
"You don't think there's something wrong about this?"
"I'm asking what you think. Ottawa to me is a bit like the German language, you know, full of things that seem familiar but don't have the same meaning. Your understanding of law and order is rather different from ours."
"Like I said. I'm worried. I don't know what exactly I think they're doing, but it...we don't do that kind of thing here. It sounds bizarre."
"Perhaps, at first. There are organisations of mutants who work for governments around the world. Some are secretive, some aren't. Not all of them are sinister or cruel. Until you know the leadership of this group, it's hard to say what they might do."
The leadership was the government of Canada, but Joel knew that wasn't much of an answer. The official policy towards mutants might mean very little when dealing with an internal mutant security force. The government was not a monolith with only one opinion. "Maybe."
"You remember we talked about fortune-telling and mind-reading, the ways a depressed mind convinces itself that the world is dangerous, pointless, unwelcoming? What would it be like if you weren't so sure that Department H was a threat?"
Joel was embarrassed. "You don't need to...you know, start therapy procedures like that. I just called for, um, advice, I guess. I know therapists don't give advice."
"But friends do," the Professor said quietly. "I only wish I had something more to offer. If you're right and Department H does mean you harm, perhaps all you can do is be prepared. You might lay in some emergency supplies and make some contacts in other provinces. Or here in the U.S. Your children are welcome at the mansion if they make it that far."
"Thank you," said Joel, gratitude making the words seem small and insignificant. He hadn't considered fleeing the country; his scenarios usually ended in the Gulag, starvation on the Prime Minister's doorstep, decapitation in Rome, crucifixion upside-down. Leaving was probably wiser.
"Once you are prepared, try to relax. I doubt that things are as bleak as you think. Only five years ago your country was well ahead of ours in recognition of the basic humanity of mutants, and I don't believe that a mere change of ruling parties and a constitutional amendment can change the hearts and minds of millions of people. Not in that length of time."
"You really think it might be all right?"
"'Might be' is a good phrase. Yes. I'll admit I don't like their tactics so far—they ought to have some respect for your privacy and not go accosting you in hospital and on the street. But they are a new organisation, and you mentioned that Langkowski is not a police officer by training. Besides," he admitted ruefully, "I'm afraid we have recruited students and X-Men using tactics that you might find invasive or inappropriate. Sometimes it is the only way. The inexperienced might not realise when there are other options."
Joel hummed noncommittally, and the Professor added, "How is your health, speaking of the hospital? I'm sorry I didn't ask earlier."
"Lots of seizures. Lots of benzos. My neurologist got me to see this mutant brain specialist she knows, Mark Gervais."
"Of Neurocherche? That's wonderful. Gervais is supposed to be quite brilliant. The studies of his that I read in the journals were impressive."
"He's okay?"
"More than okay. I'm not a medical doctor, as you know, so it's difficult for me to judge his science, but what impressed me was the way he wrote about his mutant patients. He has a healthy curiosity and a human compassion for them, rather than fear or pity."
"And the surgery itself? An implant inside the skull..."
The Professor chuckled. "The human mind is a bit harder to control than movies would have you believe. The implant is a glorified pacemaker, Joel. Infection is a concern, but that's all."
Joel felt stupid. "Of course. You're right. I should let you go. Paul will kill me if I hold up dinner any longer."
"Give everyone my regards. And good luck."
"Merry Christmas, sir," said Joel again, and hung up.
In the kitchen, Paul was carving the first goose, Steph making a hash of the second one's wing. Joel didn't like to bother a cook in his kitchen, but he said, "If you carve at the table people will have a better chance of getting it before it's cold."
"You know how to carve a goose?" Steph was in his male form, but he wore a woman's apron dusted with flour.
"Yeah."
"Okay, then." He stepped aside. Paul hoisted his bird onto a platter, and they brought the geese into the dining room, to a round of ironic applause.
The room was crowded to the corners, the extra leaves set in the table to seat ten. More were in the sitting room, at card tables, and they came into the dining room to stand around the big table. He recognised a couple of kids who he knew had homes and families to go to; holidays were difficult for too many of them. Vicky was keeping charge of the wine bottles, but several of the younger kids already looked a bit too merry.
"In the name of the Father..."
Joel made a point of not subjecting the kids to too much prayer, as he thought it would have the opposite of the desired effect. Most of them distrusted religion, and a handful hated it, although generally the ones with strong opinions stayed away from the house. Joel sometimes felt like a fraud, especially when he read about Dorothy Day and the other famous Catholic Workers, who sustained themselves with faith as much as with work and donations. But he didn't dare push the kids. They tolerated grace, but perhaps not much more than that.
He cleared his throat. "The blessing of the five loaves and two fishes that God shared with the five thousand, and the bounty of the King who made the sharing come upon our food and all who share it; and if there be any poor creature hungry or thirsty walking along the road, send them into us that we can share the food with them, just as you share your gifts with all of us. Amen."
The grace was his father's invented prayer, merged from two traditional Irish blessings, which used to irritate Joel's grandmother, a folklorist and a perfectionist. In the days when Joel was very young and had had friends to bring home from school for dinner, the grace seemed to both impress and embarrass them. Joel used to ask his father not to say it, with no success.
They ate, and it was good. Roast goose, scalloped potatoes, mashed turnip, four steaming tourtières, baby carrots, cranberry sauce, rice and chickpeas with the promised mushrooms, hot biscuits with butter, and chicken tikka masala with its accompanying arrays of Indian side dishes. None of it really went together, but it was right even so. To Joel's surprise, the kids didn't go back to the sitting room to eat, instead leaning on the sideboard with their plates in their hands, talking. Others sat on the floor by the radiator, wine glasses on the floor beside them, and somewhere in his head Joel heard Aunt Carmel talking about an accident waiting to happen. Aurora, at the other end of the table, was talking animatedly to Ox and Zizi, who looked confused but hung on her words. Sabine had turned on the stereo, and the first notes of "Tangled up in Blue" were rattling out of the speakers.
Paul, of course, was eating his usual evening meal of fried red locusts on a bed of silkworm pupae with a honey-garlic sauce. "Is the goose good?"
"It's perfect." Joel wasn't actually hungry, as he could never eat well when he was worried, but he enjoyed the look of the piles of food on his plate anyway, and the goose smelled rich and savoury. "You're an artist."
"I thought so," he said with satisfaction, crunching a locust in two with his fork. "I wanted to be a great chef when I was seven, so mémère taught me how to cook. Wine?"
"I'm on meds, idiot."
"Come on, there's nothing sadder than a sober Irishman at Christmas. A little won't hurt."
He gave in and drank, and as usual was feeling it by the time half the glass was gone. He put it aside, not wanting to overdo it for fear of seizures. Being tipsy made him quieter than usual, and Paul turned his attention to Steph and Sabine. Conversation unfolded around him, nobody pushing him for talk but nobody excluding him either. Joel felt like a family ghost, or Elijah at a seder, present and welcome but still unnoticed. The hours passed in a pleasantly buttery haze until ten, when Joel and Paul collected the other few practicing Catholics in the house for Midnight Mass.
Freezing rain was falling, and the warm air was thick with fog. They walked with their hands on the limestone wall around the house, and then they leaned on each other, stepping carefully over the ice. Paul and Joel, Jeanne-Marie and Sabine, Mars and Zizi. The plastic nativity scene outside Saint Sulpice was lit up from within, the kings in garish pink and green, a fringe of icicles hanging from the outstretched arms of the infant.
The church was crowded, but they managed to squeeze into Joel's usual pew under the tenth station of the cross at the side, moments before the congregation rustled to its feet and the organ sounded the first notes of Adeste Fideles.
Joel had never been the most prayerful candidate for the Dominican novitiate, and lately he'd been letting even his lax standards fall slack. Advent had passed in a flurry of exams, doctor's appointments, and crises in the house; Christmas had fallen on them too swiftly. But now he felt a swell of joy, of welcome, a brim-full peace in his chest and his fingertips, something that quivered to overflowing. He crossed himself, fingers still wet from the font, and wondered if he would be able to stay standing in such a flood of happiness.
And then: bees.
Paul knew where to look for Joel when he was missing: basements, spare bedrooms, pantries and storerooms, public washrooms. Disused and ugly places that rarely merited a second glance from most people. The trick in searching him out was that you couldn't just look with your eyes. As Paul went through the church basement's many little rooms, he looked and listened and smelled, but mostly he imagined—would Joel have taken refuge here?
It had to be a seizure; disappearing during Mass was so out of character that it could have no other explanation. Paul suspected that Joel wasn't taking his meds, or was taking less of them. He'd struggled with lithium long enough to know it was easy to convince yourself that effects didn't follow causes, that skipping one dose might not mean disaster, that the disease might dissipate like clouds. The Klonopin made Joel sleepy and laid-back, and even allowing for developing tolerance, he'd been too jittery lately.
Or maybe he just had a lot on his mind.
The washroom door was locked, naturally, but Paul had a feeling. He had to jimmy it open with his Swiss army knife, glancing around to make sure the priest or the janitor didn't catch him. When he got it open, he had a moment of dumb terror as he saw Joel sprawled on the floor. But his head was pillowed on his coat, and there was blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, so Paul knew what had happened.
There were only rough paper towels to wipe away the blood, and Joel woke up when Paul touched him. "Oh, Christ," was all he said, as usual.
"Can you walk home?"
"No. Give me a minute." Then: "What time is it?"
"A little after twelve."
"And we're...we're not at Bonaventure, are we?"
Public bathrooms all looked the same, so Paul could understand some disorientation. "Saint-Sulpice. Mass ended about twenty minutes ago."
"We're missing the Pope," Joel murmured. Missing the Pope's Mass or the Queen's Christmas Message meant a ruined Christmas in the McCree household, and Paul had learned to put up with these non-negotiables.
"Nah, the Pope goes for a long time. We'll still see some of it."
"What time is it?" he asked again.
"Twelve-fifteen."
Joel levered himself up and went to the mirror to check his tongue. He spat into the sink and sluiced his mouth out with water. "Where are the others?"
"They went home without me. It's fine."
"Sorry to disappear on you."
"Nah."
"I mean it."
Paul ventured, "Maybe you ought to disappear more often. Like Dr Stein told you to."
Joel was visibly bracing himself against the edge of the sink. In the mirror, Paul saw a spot of scarlet in Joel's left eye where some capillaries had burst. "I don't have time for that."
Paul knew the lie immediately. "That's not why."
"It's true."
"But it's not why."
Joel half-smiled, and faded slightly into the Aphanes, taking on the queasy partial transparency of a figure in a bad television reception, when the shapes from other channels are almost visible on the screen. He went to the door, moving just a little too quickly as he did in this state, with not quite enough friction. "I don't want to go home yet. Who'd be open at this hour? Tim's?"
"Maybe." Paul picked up Joel's coat and held the doors open for appearance's sake as they went out. It was warm, and Paul found himself unbuttoning his own coat as they walked. The ice was melting to slush underfoot.
"I'm worried about you," Paul said after they had walked for several blocks in silence. "You already knew that."
"Yeah."
"Am I right to be?"
Joel didn't answer for a few moments. "You're right to be worried, I guess. Stuff's going on."
"Like?"
"I found out where Niko is. Who she's working for. Some new government department is using mutant agents."
"Are you fucking serious?" said Paul, and then, "How long have you known that?"
"Since the hospital."
"Câlisse de Crisse. Who told you?"
"You think I couldn't just ferret it out on my own?" Joel asked with a small smile.
"You wouldn't. Don't waste my time."
"Some Mountie woman. Anne McKenzie. Trying to recruit me, of all people, and Jeanne-Marie. And Prawn."
Prawn. That didn't surprise Paul, but it did make his innards go cold. Prawn could be very dangerous if anyone figured out how to control him. "Good holy fuck, Joel. We're in fucking trouble. Or—what did you tell them?"
"What d'you mean?"
"You know what I mean."
"Fuck's sake, Paul, I'm not a hypocrite. And I'm not dumb, either. I'm not going to spy for the mutant secret police."
It was a strangely sweet moment; Paul liked Joel best when he was being ethical and stupid. "What is wrong with you? Have you ever even watched a movie? Don't you know an opportunity when you see one?"
"Oh, this should be good. I should have said yes? I should be the mutant double agent against my own country? Movies, hell. You don't know the first thing about this shit, Paul, and neither do I. Best to stay the fuck away from it. Far as we can get."
They had stopped at a light. Paul said quietly, "So what, you're going to keep mum and be an innocent Dominican novice instead of trying to bring down some force that could put mutants all over Canada in the gulag?"
"No. Wait. No." Joel held up a hand, and became physical again. He almost immediately started shivering, and Paul handed over the coat. "No. I misspoke when I called it a secret police. I have no idea what this lot are going to be like. If I thought there was really a threat, one I could prove, I'd do something. You know I would. Second—" He paused, fumbling with his zipper. "I won't be with the Dominicans."
Paul took a few moments to let that settle. The light had changed, and they crossed the street. Joel faded back to partial invisibility. "How come?"
"They don't want me," he said shortly.
"Joel, come on. Don't be emo."
Rather unnecessarily, Joel put his hands in his pockets. They weren't heading towards a Tim Horton's at all—at some point past the Main they'd started wandering towards the Carré St-Louis, the park in the pretty Victorian neighbourhood scratchy with bare tree branches. Joel lifted his chin out of his collar and said, "You were right all along. You know me too well, I guess. No, don't interrupt me, okay? I don't like being interrogated, like you're my therapist. Here's your answer: I am rejected. Unless and until I can stop living in abject fear and get resilient. Resilient is the word they used."
"I'm sorry," said Paul, and he meant it. He'd never understood Joel's weird desire to be a friar, and suspected that Joel just wanted to be the kind of person who would join the Dominicans.
"Yeah. It's all right."
"What're you going to do, then?" He wouldn't have asked if the wound had still been fresh, but Joel had obviously had a few days to think about the news.
Joel shrugged. "I dunno. What I've been doing, I guess. At least until I get my experimental surgery and end up with irreparable brain damage."
"Morbid. I mean, are you staying on at l'Institut Pastorale?"
"Taking a semester off, I think."
"Oh. Good." It would be nice to have more help in the house.
"You never liked the whole business, I know."
Paul didn't like lying. "No. I didn't understand it."
"I don't think I did either," said Joel, almost to himself. "It's hard to explain. I felt safe, being in discernment. Other guys didn't, at all—whenever we went on retreats I was the only one not tearing my hair out with stress about family and sex with girls and, and everything. I felt bulletproof. I felt sacrosanct."
Joel was weird about family and sex, but Paul didn't say so. He wanted to believe it was otherwise for a little while, that Joel had (however briefly) found contentment. "You don't have to explain to me."
"I do, though. I don't want you thinking...I don't know. I want you to get why I did it."
Paul wanted to ask if this meant the experiment was over, or if there would be other orders, other applications, trips to chapterhouses and friaries until the question was settled. But he sensed that Joel didn't know the answers yet. Everything was past tense, and there was no energy in his voice. So Paul just nodded and said, "I still don't get it. But I will."
They walked on in silence up Sherbrooke, past the half-darkened shop windows with their blinking Christmas displays. The busy thoroughfare was quiet, taxis plashing through the deep puddles of slush as they prowled by. A sparse stream of night people were going home from the first late shift, but the sidewalk wasn't full enough that Joel's intangibility would be noticed. Even Paul's skin drew no second glances, late at night on a holiday.
"Is this what it was like for Quebec mutants before?" Joel asked. He'd switched to French. "Before the referendum?"
He said "before the referendum" but Paul knew he meant before the CFH had killed his father. The X-Men's bungling of the rescue had done far more to convince people that mutants were a destabilising force in the country than any of the constitutional bullshit that followed. "I think if all mutants were like us, it wouldn't have changed. Harmless and different. We like harmless and different, in this city. Shawarmas and gay pride are one thing, that's okay. But people started getting hurt. Like Victoria Avenue."
"People have a right not to get the street ripped out from under them," Joel observed.
"Accidents happen. Putting people in safety centres doesn't stop that."
"I know." He faded a bit more. "It can't be too late. Even now. We can get back to how things used to be."
"You really believe that?"
"I do," he said firmly, as firmly as he spoke the Creed in church.
As to how that would be accomplished, Joel didn't say. He still acted like democratic royalty, like his father, secure in the belief that a human being could pull back on the reins of a nation, and that some people were born to such a duty. Small time Trudeaus and Kennedys. Paul didn't think Joel had any conscious plans of doing that, but it was possible—being good-looking could probably get you elected even if you were a mutant with social anxiety.
But they had a more pressing question at the moment, and when they turned back up Rue Sainte Famille and headed for home, Paul said, "So Prawn and Jeanne-Marie are leaving?"
Joel suddenly snorted with laughter. It had a touch of hysteria in it. "Not Prawn."
"Okay—"
"I should have mentioned this. I don't have enough time to talk with you anymore." He was still laughing, trying to stifle it. "You're going to be so mad..."
"What?"
"Prawn's not going because I bought him out. I gave him—" Another burst of laughter. "I gave him fourteen thousand dollars not to join."
Paul tried to visualise those words as numbers, but his mind stubbornly refused to believe it. "You gave him what?"
"Everything. I gave him everything."
They had reached the gate in the limestone wall that stood around St-Jean-de-Dieu, and Paul leaned against the gate to steady himself. "Until March?"
Joel nodded, a hand over his mouth. "God, what's wrong with me? I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Paul. I'd do it again, but I'm sorry. We'll have two thousand from the mutual fund in March. My mother will probably give us a loan before then, or we can go to the bank. I'll make it all right, I promise. But I had to do something."
"You're psychotic. Or you're a saint. I'm not sure which." Paul believed him, somehow, that everything would be all right. The house and car were paid for, their credit was good, and Mrs McCree would give them an earful but she wouldn't let the house fold. And more than that, Paul could smell something on Joel like the scent of a bog in summer, green and flowering and moist. It was crazy, but Joel knew what he was doing, and Paul believed in his friend's reckless gestures.
"I didn't get Jeanne-Marie, though." Joel had got his breath back. "Not yet. I think she wants...she thinks it'll be exciting. I can't just throw money at her to make Department H less alluring. And I can't protect her once she's gone."
"Can't you?" said Paul. "What if you went with her?"
"I told you—"
"No, I don't mean sign a contract with them. I mean...use your powers. Watch them."
Joel digested that in silence. Paul was half-afraid that he'd get an lecture about ethics and privacy, to say nothing of treason and national security. But Joel sounded tempted. "What happens if, if I see something that's seriously wrong? Or if they're in danger? What do I do then?"
"Tell the Prime Minister?" Paul joked, knowing it sounded weak. "I don't know. But knowing is half the battle, like GI Joe says."
"No, you're right. I have to go with them. But it'll be..." He became fully present again with a shudder. "It'll be weird."
"I know," Paul said quietly. "It's easiest to pretend we're normal. But we're not. They won't let us be."
Joel nodded, plainly exhausted, and they went inside. The Pope's Mass was over, but they found the highlights on CNN and watched for a few minutes. It wasn't the same as John Paul II, since the new Pope was hale and hearty by comparison. No heart-in-mouth moments watching the old pontiff grip the lectern or shake as he elevated the Host. Only smooth competence, very European, very foreign.
Paul reached for the remote and realised that Joel had fallen asleep on the couch, mouth open, his breath making a sound like wind through a crack in the door. Fine. Paul muted the TV and lay back in the recliner, watching surgery on TLC and the fresh snow falling outside the window.
Notes: "The Darkest Midnight" is an Irish carol that appears, notably, on the Monks of Glenstal's Biscantorat, sung by Sinéad O'Connor.