Jack wanted to shove him back into his chair and duct-tape him there till he'd told the whole story. Instead he settled for grabbing his arm.
"Wait. So you think the Adversary's got a hand in this Kicker thing?"
"The Adversary or the Otherness itself. That image—the Kicker Man—on the cover of his book and graffiti'd all over town makes me suspect the Otherness. This Thompson couldn't have discovered it on his own. It must have been implanted."
"What's it mean?"
"No time. But I can tell you it's a lure of sorts. Taints respond to it. They see it on the cover of his book and the Otherness within them reaches for it. They can't get it out of their heads, so they tattoo it on their skin and paint it on walls. And they are drawn to others who feel the same way. This Thompson has no idea what he's tapped into."
He slipped his arm free and started for the door.
"Just one more thing," Jack said. "What would be the purpose of creating a super-tainted child?"
Veilleur stopped and turned. "Super tainted?"
"Yeah. Back in the seventies a guy went to a lot of trouble to father heavily tainted children to mate and produce a super-tainted child."
"Did he succeed?"
"Don't know. The child hasn't been born yet and I don't know where its mother is. But I'm sure you've seen her picture."
He frowned. "She wouldn't be the one on those ubiquitous flyers, would she?"
"You got it."
"And she's carrying a super-tainted fetus?"
"Could be—no one knows what the child's made of yet."
"Do you know the name of the man who did this?"
"Started it all? That would be her grandfather—Jonah Stevens. Or so I've been told."
Jack wasn't sure what to believe anymore.
Veilleur's eyes widened. "Really. Jonah Stevens. That's very… interesting."
Then he turned and left Julio's.
"The katana! It is near! It awaits!"
Toru Akechi started at the high-pitched wail. He hadn't been expecting it so soon.
Through the eyeholes of his silk mask he watched the legless monk, naked but for his mask and fundoshi, writhing on the rumpled futon in the Sighting room. He had drunk the Sighting elixir twenty minutes ago and it was starting to take effect.
The windows to the Sighting room had been sealed during the old building's renovation. The darkness was virtually complete but for the glow of the four candles placed at the corners of the futon, wanly limning the dozen figures, robed and hooded in dark blue, encircling the Seer. Some of those figures stood, some sat, and the ones without limbs lay on the floor.
Toru knew them all by the designs on their silk masks and the shapes of their bodies. Some were missing limbs, showed empty sockets through their masks. Those lacking ears and tongues and noses were less obvious.
With his arms jerking back and forth, his torso twisting, the Seer appeared to be suffering an agony of sorts. His empty eye sockets could offer no sign of pain or distress, but his body gave full testament. Suddenly he lay still. All present held their breath, listening.
And then the Seer sat up and swiveled his masked, eyeless face back and forth. Toru knew he wasn't seeing the Sighting room. He was seeing somewhere, somewhen else.
"The katana!" he wailed. "It is near! It awaits!"
We know all about the missing sword, Toru wanted to scream. You told us during the last sighting and the sighting before that. Say something new.
"It waits where, my brother?" he said in an even tone.
"Here! In this city! I see it!"
"Where do you see it?"
"In a dark place!"
"And where is this dark place?"
"Here! In this city!"
Toru ground his teeth as the Seer went on, presenting nothing new.
"The sacred scrolls! They have returned to our Order! But that is not enough! The katana! The Order must possess the katana that once sealed its doom! When the Order controls the katana, it will control its future, and its future will be assured for a thousand years!"
"Will we succeed?" Toru asked, as he always did.
"Only if we persevere!"
All eyes in the room turned toward him. He had been assigned the task of finding the sacred scrolls, stolen from their Order—the Kakureta Kao—in the last days of World II, plus the katana that had destroyed the Order by fulfilling a prophecy of doom.
He had succeeded in finding the scrolls, but the katana eluded him, slipping through his fingers. He now had a plan in motion to secure it.
"If the Order does not control the katana," the Seer screamed, "it will again destroy us! It will slay the last surviving member!"
Toru swallowed. The last surviving member… the Seer was talking about the death of everyone in this room, in this building. No equivocation there. They were all going to die if they didn't find and hold that benighted blade.
"The Order came to this place to destroy this city! And the sacred scrolls will provide the Order with the means to do so!"
Yes, they would. Toru had his students scouring the city for the ingredients to create a Kuroikaze—a Black Wind.
"But the Order will itself be destroyed if it does not possess the katana!" He turned his sightless sockets on Toru and pounded the futon. "The katana! The katana!"
Toru's fellow monks, all still staring at him, took up the chant.
"THE KATANA! THE KATANA! THE KATANA!…"
Jack watched the door swing closed behind Veilleur. He could follow him, but to what end? Force his way into his home and quiz him while he tended to his sick wife—assuming he really had a sick wife.