Page 26 of Antihero

Evan said, “Take a settling sip, and—”

Devine gulped down a fourth of the bottle. Rawlings’s hand had raised itself to grind the blond bristles at the flare of his crew cut. He seemed to realize he was literally palm-smacking his forehead and dropped the pose quickly.

Devine leaned closer to Evan, his forehead bulging with terrifying power, his breath fumes. “We have to reverse the Tower of Babel.” He was pleading now, eyes bloodshot, cartoonishly bulging. Evan had forgotten how those probing eyes could feel, violating and potent. Devine’s loose fist hovered before him, as if he could barely restrain it from snarling into Evan’s shirt. “We’re all gibbering past each other.”

“Devine,” Evan said, “if you want my help, you have to cede operational control to me here at the house.”

Devine’s head retracted on his neck. “Cede control to you? Some street operator?” He spit the words. “You don’t have an inkling of what I have to do to keep myself on the rails. And you, all of you, should be grateful I’m willing to do it.” Now with menace: “Because you have no idea what I’d be like if I didn’t.”

Evan put twenty-five percent testiness into his voice: “Cede.”

“You want to give me orders? A control freak with OCD roar-roar-roaring in your brain? Fuck off.”

Evan said, “Okay.”

He jerked his head at Joey, plucked his gun out of Rawlings’s hand, and started out.

Rawlings said, “Let’s just hang on,” but Evan ignored him.

“That’s it, is it?” Luke bellowed after him. “The great Nowhere Man, afraid to speak his real name, scuttling out with his tail tucked?”

Joey hustled to catch up, moving at Evan’s side, breathing hard. They walked out of the master suite and down the hall.

“Can’t take a little heat?” Devine drifted after them, twenty feet behind, words sharp with disdain. “Scared to play in the chaos, sit at the big-stakes table?”

Unrushed, Evan crossed the landing, started down the grand curve of the staircase. Joey’s legs blurred, her carriage stiff, her stare fixed ahead.

“Go on, then! Get out! Back to your squalid little missions, your gutter games, shooting marbles in an alley.”

Devine had his hands on the rail of the banister above, screaming down at them over the rush of the waterfall. Below, Keshishian and the guards waited in a loose cluster, a command without a commander.

Evan kept on. Down the stairs. Onto the vast marble plain of the foyer.

Past the waterfall feature, toward the towering front door, Kesh and the guards already parting to make way for his and Joey’s egress, pleading in their eyes: Don’t leave us here with him.

And then Devine shouted, “Wait!”

The word rang off the hard floors, doubled back off the high, high ceiling.

Evan halted. He did not turn around. Joey was two steps ahead now. She pivoted and looked back at him. He could see she was rattled, that she could practically taste the freedom of the porch. The silence drew out, broken only by the white-noise rush of tumbling water.

Devine’s words wafted down: “I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry.”

From the quaver in his voice, Evan knew he meant it.

“Just … come back. Come back a moment.”

Still Evan faced the door, and Joey’s eyes were on him and so were the guards’, everyone statue-garden suspended, stunned by Devine’s concession.

Evan turned around.

He looked up at Devine floating above, a crazed Juliet. Devine cleared his throat. His mouth bunched and bunched again, as if trying to clear a logjam, the words for once not ejecting with manic dexterity. “Please.”

Evan’s chin gave the slightest dip. Calmly, he started back upstairs.

By the time he and Joey reached the landing, Devine had receded into the master suite.

Evan entered the bedroom, Joey resuming her place by the hearth. At their return, Rawlings heaved a sigh of relief. On the floor at his feet was an old-fashioned black doctor’s bag.