“Nine people die of sudden heart attacks downtown and you didn’t think anything of it?” Kevin asked Michaels, the officer investigating James’s case.

“You know how it is, Dunne. If all of them had crossed my desk, yeah, maybe. But I got one. Sikowski got one, Delaney got one, and cops I don’t even know got the others. Besides, nine people is not a statistically large number for everyone who works downtown.”

“I know,” Kevin said, “but still--one a day--doesn’t it feel wrong to you?” It twanged in his head, resonating throughout his bones. Whispering.

“It’s been hot. The victims have all been overweight. Subway stairs are steep. Prime candidates, prime situations for heart failures.”

“Subway,” Kevin said.

“Yeah,” Michaels said. “James came to town by train. So did Delaney’s vic. I asked her this morning, since I knew you were coming in. I could find Sikowski for you and ask.”
“Thanks,” Kevin said. “I’d appreciate that.” Appreciated it, was also a little unnerved by it. Professional courtesy to a man who’d paid his dues was one thing; dropping everything was another. This wasn’t the world as he knew it. Crazy, or other. He was going to have to pick one, soon.

“I still think you’re chasing ghosts. Guess it’s boring out there in the real world.” Michaels laughed, slapped Kevin’s shoulder and said. “I’ll call you.”

Kevin nodded, headed downstairs into the basement. Despite familiarity, the morgue still raised the hairs on the back of his neck, made him feel like he was stepping into a grave, maybe the one he’d avoided. Somehow. He tapped on the glass of the observation window. The coroner, Charlotte Evans, waved him in. “You’re the ex-cop, right, the one Michaels said might be coming by. The one who thinks I missed something.”

“Nine heart attacks in eleven days didn’t strike you as odd?” Kevin said.

“These people were obese. They abused their hearts until they gave out. And more and more people are obese, so the number goes up. It’s a simple story really. Mrs. James set you on?”

“Yeah,” Kevin said.

“She probably fed him bacon every morning, and steak every night. Cheesecake for dessert. Some people just don’t take care of themselves.” Evans drummed her pencil in a tattoo on her desk.

“You’re what? Five-ten? One-twenty-five?” Kevin said.

“Don’t tell me I’m unfair. I’ve heard that before. That kind of PC thinking leads to suing McDonald’s for making them fat.” Evans leaned back to glare up at him.

“Actually, I was thinking with your stress level, you might be a candidate for heart problems yourself,” Kevin said. “Do you have any of the bodies still?”

“No,” she said. “We knew who they were, how they died. They got claimed.”

“I'd like to see your records," Kevin said. She scowled at him, umbrage in every line of her body, and he wished he could make her understand that it might be important.

She slammed a file drawer open, started hauling out envelopes full of photographs, recordings, notes. “I don’t know why I’m bothering. I stand by my findings. Cardiac arrest followed by death. They didn’t need to be autopsied to find that out either.”

“Attacks can be induced,” Kevin said.

Evans yelped; he turned around. The sisters tapped the glass, grinning at him. The eldest mouthed, “Found you.”

Today they were all in grown-up Goth mode, wearing enough black leather to clothe a herd of angus cattle.

“They with you?” Evans asked, lips turning down, her face still flushed with shock. “Figures.”

Kevin gestured them in. They came in and spread out, studying the room, the steel drawers, the empty tables. “Lots of work to be done here,” Magdala said.

“It’s police work. We’re not here to interfere,” Kevin said.

“Photographs,” Evans said, slapping them up against his chest. She hesitated. “A heart attack?”

“Stress,” he said. “High blood pressure. Arterial deposits. Not just fat.”

“Huh,” she said, settled into her seat. Kevin spread the photos out along the autopsy table, peered over them.

Still nothing in their faces, nothing of that hurt awareness that someone else wanted them dead. He leaned closer, reached up to bring the lamp closer. A shadow on the woman’s side. Just over her hip. A splotch. A shadow from slack, overhanging skin? A bruise?
“What’s this?” he asked. Evans pushed the girls aside, squinted.

“Bruising,” she said. “She fell against a bench. Heart attacks aren’t the most peaceful way to go.”

Kevin flipped through the others. “Here’s another bruise. Almost the same spot.”

“Two out of nine, only. It’s consistent with staggering into objects and eventual collapse. There are bruises on their shins too, why not pick on those? You’re reaching. I did my job.”

Kevin looked at her. He’d always been good at reading the things people didn’t want to say, but of late, he’d gotten even better. Right now, her entire body pleaded, please no. I couldn’t have missed something. Denial, laced with apprehension. Awareness that these victims were heavy enough that only extremely detailed viewing would pick up a mark hidden by folds of skin.

“Uh-oh,” the youngest sister said. “Someone’s not sure anymore. Someone didn’t do her job.”

“I don’t have to take that crap from a Wednesday Addams wanna-be,” Evans said. “Get out of my lab.”

“She serves herself, not Justice,” Magdala said. “We should--”

“No. Go outside. Wait for me,” Kevin said.

“But--” the eldest said, her hand slipping into her pocket.

“Out,” Kevin said. Why had he hired these three? Had he hired them? They’d just been there when he walked in to an agency he didn’t remember starting.

“Nice associates you have,” Evans said. They stared at her through the glass, at Kevin, waiting.

“Just as a speculation,” Kevin said. “Could that bruising be caused by an injection?”

“You don’t quit, do you?” Evans said. “If they’d been stuck by a needle, don’t you think they’d have complained?”

“On the subway? They’d have to realize that it was more than a sudden pinch or poke, to figure out who jostled them, and who to complain to. They wouldn’t believe they’d been murdered for all intents and purposes. It’s doable.” Kevin sighed. Doable and hard to trace. Damn near impossible. For the police. His cell phone burred. He picked it up.
“Dunne? Found out Sikowski’s vic came off the subway too. North line. Same as Delaney’s vic, and as James. Maybe you’ve got something after all. But then, a quarter of the city rides that line.”

“Thanks,” Kevin said, disconnected. “Do me a favor,” he said to Evans. “If you get another one--call me?”

“So you can point out what I’m doing wrong?” she said. “I’m the one who did medical school, while you were off gallivanting through psych.”

“Yeah, but you forgot one thing. That the easy answer isn’t always the right one,” Kevin said. He hesitated, his words felt pointed at himself as well. “Call me.”

She nodded, reluctantly, almost against her will. He paused in the doorway to thank her. Politeness was important, now more than ever, when it seemed to him that people did as he commanded, whether they wanted to or not. Delusional, he told himself. The easy answer.

“Subway?” the eldest sister asked as he joined them. He looked at his watch. Nearly end of day for the vast majority of workers. They could ride the five-fifteen northline back, get a feel for the crowd.

“Good thought,” Kevin said. She smirked at her sisters, walked by his side. They picked up the line at the innermost station and Kevin watched the other passengers, tried to put a face and motive to a person who struck every morning. The sisters roamed the car and passengers turned their heads from the weight of their eyes. Looking for murderers, Kevin thought. For secrets. Twice the eldest sister’s hands strayed towards her sleeve and the stiletto. Finally he snapped, “Come.”

They responded at once, as one, returning to his side. The eldest crouched beside him. “So much work for you in this city.”

“So much wrong,” Magdala said.

“So much to make right,” the youngest said.

Kevin said, “I know.”

His eyes were drawn to three young men, rough-housing with each other, each move laced with real aggression, real potential for violence. His breath left him. Boys so much like this had mugged them. Kevin remembered the shock of unfairness, that after his years on the force, it was going to be three punks in an alley, shooting him with shaking fingers. He’d pushed Bran back, trying to get him away, get him safe, and the rare anger lighting Bran’s face as he fought Kevin, fought the boys.

Then the gunshots roaring out.

Absently, Kevin felt for the non-existent bullet scar. The flower petals between his teeth, bitterness, thin sap seeping into his throat, bubbling up from his chest. The wound reversing, the bullet shining in Bran’s fingers. And then the hall, white pillars against a blue sky. Nothing but the hall and the sky, no matter the direction he’d looked. White and blue, and golden nimbuses around the people.

“Who are you,” the voice said. “What are you that makes you worthy of this Hall.” Kevin met the wild-bearded man’s gaze without flinching, unconcerned with the lightning arcing around his thick arms. It was only a dream after all. What could happen to him, here?

“He’s mine,” Bran said, laying a hand on Kevin’s arm.

“You’ve returned to us?” the wild-bearded man said, his face softening.

Bran shrugged, that peculiarly liquid thing he did when pinned down to a question he preferred not to answer.

“Who are you,” the man asked a third time. Kevin had an answer by then, with dog-Magdala pressing up against his leg, her dog-sisters crouched before him. An impossible answer.

His eyes flew open on the train. He jerked back. All three sisters were staring at him from mere inches. That strange vibrating resonance shook his bones again. The easy answer wasn’t always right. But in his case--the easy answer was the only one. Delusion. A break-down.

“Back off,” he said.

They all sighed. “So close,” the eldest said. “You’re so slow at this.”

“Shh,” Magdala said. “You know what. . . Bran . . . said.”

Kevin turned his attention back to the commuters. The three young men got off at the first stop in the city, shouting and shoving their way from the car. Kevin rose to his feet and started walking car to car, at first trying to lose the sisters’ scrutiny, then searching, his entire body tuning to a frequency he didn’t understand. In the third car from the end, the static, confused feeling shifted, resolved into a warmth that buzzed against his skin, whispered to his heart and bones.

He leaned up against the door and watched, slowly narrowing his focus to a thin young man who shied away from contact.

Dressed in a mixture of suit and casual, white shirt, tie, jeans and boots, he held a coat, and a tattered briefcase. Plenty of space for a syringe, Kevin noted. The young man slumped in his seat, arms crossed over his chest, legs stretched out, glaring at any who approached. In the crowded car, he managed to have a pair of seats to himself.

At the final city stop, the train paused to let a few last minute commuters got on. They looked around for seats. Sighing, three of them grabbed poles and straps, resigned to waiting the train out. A heavy-set woman with swollen ankles over her sensible heels bee-lined in on the empty seat. The young man jumped up as if stung, and moved away, slapping her with his coat as he did so. Kevin stiffened, but the woman made no sound of complaint.

“Alekta,” Kevin said, inclined his head in the boy's direction.

The eldest sister slid over to the young man’s side. “Hey,” she said. “My sisters and I want to know what you do for a living.” Her voice, sweet and raspy, dropped to a whisper. Kevin could hear it across the car and could hear the man’s response. When he focused. The thrumming of his bones continued unabated, transmitting meaning. His mind started to clear.

“Advertising,” the young man said, looking away. “I sit on the phone and call people.”

“Oh, that’s not what we thought at all. . . .”

“So sorry,” he said, stepping away from her as she leaned in.

“We thought you killed fat people.”

Shock blurred his face. She snapped her teeth near his nose and grinned. He recoiled, slapping his back against the side of the car. “You’re fucking crazy.”

“Alekta,” Kevin said. He didn’t say it loudly, barely murmured it in his throat, but she turned at once and came back to him.

“I can smell it on him. And fouler things too,” she said, her voice rasping more, growing less sweet.

“We wait. We observe.” Kevin said. “We serve justice.”

“We serve Justice,” she said, glaring at him.

Kevin frowned. The hard answer. He shivered all over, badly wanting the mindless comfort of Bran’s arms around him. He settled for Bran memory, wrapped himself in it like a cashmere blanket.

“Love me?” Bran’s voice a whisper. “Trust me? I’m more than you know. Will you choose me? Over your poor, pinned god? Kevin, please. . . .”

“Yes.” One word, pushed out through tight-locked teeth, on a faltering breath. The soft petal pressed inward, pulping as his saliva touched it, changing things in its path.

“He’s getting off,” the youngest said, nudging him. She shimmied in place like an eager cat.

“Easy, Erinya, we’ll follow. But not so close we spook him more than we have,” Kevin said. “Not so close we cause comment.” Or witnesses. The thought made him shudder again. But the warm certainty and clarity was growing, like sunlight in his mind.

He made the sisters wait until the last moment, until the train doors were actually closing and had to jerk open to let them through, letting them out into a emptying terminal.
Kevin listened for the young man’s footsteps, each beat a pulsing chord in his heart, his mind, found them, and headed after the man into the dark streets outside. They kept back, ghosted after him. Kevin knew with a strange, impossible certainty that the man could never elude him. Not now that he'd laid his eyes on him.

Halfway down the block, a black and white cruised by, slowing at the sight of the three sisters. Kevin met the cop’s eyes; the cop nodded and drove on. Down the street, a door opened and closed with the snap of a drawn bolt, the sound echoing in the darkening sky.
“Here,” Erinya said, stopping at a narrow row house with a tiny, weed-choked yard. Lights flickered on in the main windows, traveled back through the house.

Alekta climbed the stoop, laid her hand on the latch. The door opened, ushering them inside.

A beaten-down living room greeted them, overwhelmed with sagging furniture. Kevin touched the broken springs in the flattened couch, took a photograph off an end table. A heavyset woman with bad color in her face smiled back from the photo.

“His mother,” Erinya said.

“Dead,” Magdala said.

“Matricide,” Alekta growled.

Kevin touched the woman’s image, the blue-grey lips pronounced. “A bad heart,” he said. “She must have had medicine for it.”

The young man came out of the kitchen, a sandwich in hand. It dropped when he saw them, hit the floor with a soft squelch. A frozen moment. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Let’s talk about you,” Kevin said, his skin warming. The room grew lighter, and the young man squinted. “You killed those people on the subway. Seven men, two women.” Kevin thought he might be glowing. At any rate, the shadows in the room leaned away from him.

“Three women, his mother,” Erinya whispered. “Her blood cries out to us.”

The young man’s face shifted, settled into lines of defiance and aggression. “You can’t prove anything. The cops couldn’t prove anything then. You won’t now. I didn’t do anything.”

“She had a bad heart. Did you use her medicine on them, to influence heart attacks? Withhold hers to give it to them?”

“Prove it,” the young man said. “You can’t. There’s nothing here to prove any of it. No one even thinks they’re murders. No one wants to.”

“We know. We care. We punish the unpunished.” The sisters spoke as one. The young man flinched.

“If there’s no evidence,” Kevin said. “If it’s unpunishable in the hands of the law, then it’s up to us.” Certainty rose in him, dwarfed what he thought of as his self, expanded it, stoked him with heat and awareness. The shadows in the room arched away, grew thin with the rising light emanating from his skin.

“Who are you,” the young man said, his hand flying up to shield his eyes.

“I hold the reins of Retribution,” Kevin said. “I am Justice.”

Get out,” the young man screamed. “I’m calling the police.” He dove for the phone.
Kevin held up his hand.

“Stop,” he said. The killer halted in his steps, his face contorted with strain.

“Sometimes my job is simpler than others,” Kevin said, still hearing himself from a distance. “Sometimes, to do my job, all I have to do is let go the reins.”

He raised his hands. “Sisters.”

Their heads swung round as one being, waiting for the words.

“He’s yours. Let Justice be done.”

They lunged forward, with garrote and knife, with claws and teeth, with strength of arm and hatred. They saved his heart for last.

When they were done, Kevin closed the door behind themselves, heard the latch flip over at Erinya’s touch. The sisters, sated, walked silently behind him, not playing games, not impatient now that they knew their master was able to act as needed.

The subways were silent. Silent because Kevin didn’t want to hear the chatter of voices, the tinny intrusion of iPods and radios. The people sat like marionettes, staring ahead. The sisters curled together like puppies and dozed on the seats. He left them there at his stop. They’d find him again. He was their master.

The door to the apartment swung ajar as he approached. Bran waited by it.
Kevin stumbled toward him, knelt, and pressed his face to Bran’s belly. “It’s not a dream. Or madness. You changed me. Eros.”

“I did," Bran said.

With Bran’s agreement, Kevin knew he’d had this realization before, had this moment of impossible lucidity after he acted as Justice. Forgot again, under the weight of his own disbelief.

“It’s always been at our discretion--the making of new gods,” Bran said, stroking Kevin’s hair back from his brow. “And the consent of the human. But it hasn’t been done for so long. It’s so hard now, to take a mortal. Back then, when we were everywhere, the mysteries were greater and more accepted. Your minds are closed now. They can break instead of opening. But you’re strong enough to accept it, I know you are.”

“Maybe,” Kevin said. “When I’m with you, it doesn’t seem to matter whether I know or not.”

“You’ll adapt, I’m sure you will,” Bran said, drawing Kevin to his feet. “We’ll live in the world until you do. We have time.” A smile curled his lips, not his usual sweet smile, but something more darkly amused. “It’s funny. All these years and we’ve not had a god of Justice. The sisters, yes, revenge and counter-vengeance. We’ve never had a policeman. It’s going to be interesting when you decide to turn your sights from the mortal realms to ours.”

If he could remember, Kevin thought. Even now the surety that had filled him was slipping away, leaving him stumbling for landmarks in a strange terrain. Dispensing Justice, he knew himself. And when he was with Bran, he didn’t care. But a man couldn’t live like that, careening from implacable Justice to enveloping Love, with only confusion between. A man couldn’t, Kevin thought, on a last clear moment.

But maybe a god could.