“I know that guy. I saw him fishing when I was hiking into town before Mr Henderson picked me up. That’s Brother Something – Armigent?”
“Armitage. I didn’t see him come in.”
“He’s probably been here all along.”
“Maybe,” Nikki said doubtfully. “Maybe.” Brother Armitage popped a chunk of semi-sweet chocolate into his mouth and closed his eyes in ecstasy. “What’s he doing here?”
“Eating candy, it looks like.”
“But why now?”
“Because he felt like it? It’s just a co-incidence, Nikki.”
But Nikki shook her head. “There’s no such thing as co-incidence where Brother Armitage is concerned. If he’s here, he’s here for a reason. He might not know himself what the reason is, not for days, but there’s always a reason. Come on,” she said, sliding off her stool. “You want to meet him, don’t you?”
“Shouldn’t we wait until the meeting’s over?”
She looked at him in surprise. “It is,” she said, and when he looked around he saw she was right. Some people had already left and others were preparing to leave. Juliette Rose was sitting in conference with Roger and a few others at a booth while clutches of people around them were deep in discussion. DJ was sitting a little ways from them being stared at and apparently unaware of it.
“I’ll be damned,” he said to himself, and joined Nikki as she made her way through what was left of the crowd.
“Brother Armitage,” Nikki said with a big smile when they reached the candy counter. “So good to see you.”
“Sister Nikki,” he grinned, and hugged her. “Devastating as always. You seem to have grown more beautiful since the last time I saw you. How is that possible?”
“It isn’t,” she said, “and you’re full of it.”
Close to, Brother Armitage was a small, round man of indeterminate age barely taller than Nikki. He was bald except for a slight but unruly fringe of hair that went around the back of his head from ear to ear, had no chin to speak of and eyes as mild as goat’s milk. His robe, made of a rough, mud-brown cloth that might have been wool or burlap, was beginning to fray around the collar and cuffs. The belt that Cas had thought resembled electrical cord turned out to be just that – a doubled-up hunk of it tied in a sailor’s knot at his side. A sort of cross hung from one of the ends – a cross with a loop at the top.
“An ankh?” Cas said, surprised. “I assumed you were a Christian monk.”
“There is only one God, my son, but he comes in many forms,” Brother Armitage replied. “This observant young man is a…friend…of yours?” he asked Nikki rather delicately.
“We went to high school together.”
Brother Armitage raised an eyebrow. “Ah?”
Nikki laughed and surrendered. “Alright. This is Cas Girard. I might be in love with him. I’m trying to decide. So is he.”
Brother Armitage lowered the eyebrow. “Ah,” he said.
Cas might have been irritated. It was hard to tell. “Do you always blurt out personal information like that?”
“You don’t lie to Brother Armitage,” Nikki said.
“Of course you do,” Brother Armitage corrected. “People do it all the time.”
“But it never works. Go ahead,” she told Cas, “try it. Tell him a lie.”
“I’m in love with a Calendar Girl.”
“Ah, but that’s not a lie, is it?” Brother Armitage said, and then laughed, a high-pitched roll of sound that wasn’t nearly as annoying as it should have been. “Don’t take what she says too seriously, Brother Cas. Nikki is a love but she has a tendency to exaggerate second only to my own. And don’t be angry about what she told me. We have a long history, Nikki and I. We tell each other everything, don’t we, darling?”
“Baloney. I tell you everything, you only tell me what you think I need to know.”
“Which is exactly as God intended it.”
“Which god would that be?” Cas asked with just a little more sarcasm than was strictly speaking necessary.
“Which one would you like it to be?” Brother Armitage asked quite seriously.
