Overbite. Meg Cabot
don’t need him here,” Alaric said. “What’s he coming here for?”
“If you’d listened to a word I’d said, you’d have heard that Father Henrique hasn’t been assigned to work here, for our unit. He’s the new pastor at St. George’s, now that the reconstruction is nearing completion—”
“Right,” Alaric said sarcastically. “You honestly think I’m that stupid?” He was doing a poor job of restacking the files. “Hasn’t this city got any of its own priests? What’s wrong with the old priest from St. George’s?”
“Considering he had a massive coronary after he heard his parish was nearly burned to the ground by the prince of darkness, and died, quite a lot.” Holtzman regarded Alaric impatiently. “You were in the hospital at the time, so I suppose it’s only natural you might not have heard, but must you be so insensitive? Is it the leg that’s bothering you so much? My understanding is that you came through your physical therapy with flying colors and are as good as new. It’s the sessions with your Palatine-assigned psychiatrist that you haven’t quite completed, because you keep walking out of them—”
Alaric straightened up and glared at him. “Fiske is giving me a discharge due to my not passing my psych eval?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Alaric,” Holtzman said. “Dr. Fiske seems to be impressed with your progress … when you show up. You just need to show up more often.” He held out his hand for the files Alaric was holding. “One thing you might want to consider discussing with him is the hostility you feel toward Father Henrique. Have you ever considered that it might be rooted in jealousy?”
Alaric rolled his eyes, surrendering the files. “Yes, Abraham. That’s exactly it. I’m jealous of a pretentious blowhard who’s so in love with himself that it doesn’t bother him at all that one of the requirements for his job is that he’s not allowed to have sex.”
“The Church is expecting to get quite a lot of press—and some sizable donations—out of this show at the museum,” Holtzman said, ignoring Alaric’s crudeness as he neatly restacked the files. “That’s why they worked so hard to time it to coincide with the Feast of San Gennaro, which is one of the largest, longest-running, and most revered outdoor festivals in the United States. This opening tomorrow night at the Met is expected to be one of the premier social events in the city. Transferring Padre Cali—I mean, Father Henrique—here in time for it was a deliberate move on the part of our superiors—”
“I’m certain it was,” Alaric muttered. “The padre definitely isn’t camera shy.”
“You may consider him a preening prima donna,” Holtzman continued, “but I assure you, the rest of us have the utmost admiration and respect for him. And I’m going to expect you to treat him accordingly. I will no longer tolerate your complete lack of respect for proper procedure. If you have a problem with him, you’re to go through established channels. You will not mock or humiliate him. And that includes pranks and physical displays of aggression. Do you understand?”
Alaric ignored him. “Why do we have so many missing-persons files? No one’s mentioned them to me.”
“Oh.” Holtzman shrugged and set the files aside. “There’s always an uptick in missing people—especially in the Manhattan area—in the fall, I’m told.”
When Alaric continued to stare at him, Holtzman elaborated. “The fall is the beginning of the new school year and often students starting college in the city drop out and don’t tell their parents because they’re embarrassed over their poor grades or experimentation with drugs or their sexuality and whatnot. So there’s nothing nefarious behind it. Our contact with the NYPD sent the files over anyway because this year there’s a larger than usual number of reports, but I couldn’t find anything unusual, so I’m sending them back—”
Alaric leaned forward to take the stack away from his boss again, then began to shuffle through them.
“I said,” Holtzman repeated irritably, “I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.”
Alaric only grunted as he opened first one, then another file from the stack, then tossed them onto Holtzman’s desk.
“There’s nothing there, Wulf,” his supervisor said tiredly. “You know, Dr. Fiske’s quite positive about many areas of your recovery. You’re one of our finest guards—impressive number of kills, splendid record at interrogation, and all of that. But there’s one area in which the doctor says he’s yet to see any difference at all, and I must say, I’ve got to agree. Your interpersonal communication skills have always been sadly lacking.” Another file hit the top of Holtzman’s desk. “You still haven’t gotten over what happened to your partner in Berlin, even though he’s perfectly fine now—”
“Except for missing his face,” Alaric said, with a grunt. Another file hit Holtzman’s desk.
“This resentment you feel toward Father Henrique is another example,” Holtzman said. “What did the man ever do to you? Nothing. So he botched that exorcism. It was his first one. He was young. Do you know what I did at my first exorcism?”
“Ran,” Alaric said, at the same time as his boss.
“That’s exactly right,” Holtzman went on. “It’s extremely frightening to look into the face of evil for the first time.”
“Not,” Alaric said, “as frightening as looking into the face of a man who has willingly taken a vow of chastity.”
“That is a bad habit of yours,” Holtzman commented. “Expecting everyone to conform to your standards of behavior.”
Alaric stared at him. The man was clearly growing senile … or had he been hit over the head so many times by escaping yeti that he didn’t know what he was saying.
“I do not expect Henrique Mauricio to conform to my standards of behavior,” Alaric said. “I expect him not to do things that make me want to pound his face into a bloody pulp. Sadly, every time I meet him, he fails to live up to this expectation.”
“I understand,” Holtzman said kindly. “And given the circumstances of your upbringing, it sometimes surprises me that you don’t beat more people that you don’t like into bloody pulps. It took me quite some time to dissuade you from indulging in such behavior after I plucked you from the streets as a teenager, if you’ll recall. But there’s still a part of you that becomes quite angry when others don’t conform to your beliefs. I believe that’s why you’re so angry with Meena Harper.”
Alaric’s head came up with a snap. “I am not angry with Meena Harper.”
“That is a lie,” Holtzman said. “Why else are you so outraged about a theory she has that, for all we know, could be completely valid? Do you know what I was thinking the other day?”
“That this building still smells like vomit and school paste? Because it’s true.”
“If you like Meena so much, you should ask her out on a date.”
Alaric ducked his head back into the files. “I do not date. And besides, I did ask her over to dinner once. She said no, that it wouldn’t be pro—”
“What do you mean, you don’t date?” Holtzman looked annoyed. “All single people date. And of course she said no to dinner at your apartment. I wouldn’t come to dinner at your apartment if I was a woman. That’s like the spider asking the fly to step into his web. You truly are an imbe—” Another file landed on the older man’s desk. He snatched it up and said, “Would you stop? I told you, I’ve been through these. There’s nothing there. No commonality whatsoever.”
“There is,” Alaric said, laying down two more files. “All of them are from out of town.”
“What do you mean?” Holtzman looked more annoyed than ever.
“Each of the people in those files was a tourist on vacation in this city when