“Cures, spells, the advice of angels and demons.” Whitman nodded. “I knew that would make you smile.” He put his head against the seatback. “Then there was the kind of help I asked him for. He can see across the divide, from life to death, or, as he refers to it, from this life to the next.” His head bobbed. “Yeah, I don’t think I believed it either, although I have to admit that from the moment I met him some part of me knew he wasn’t full of shit. That was the part he recognized, the part that came to connect us, the part he chose to nurture, teach, allow to grow in strength and knowledge.”

“I imagine the other Alchemists were frightened of your power. Did they kick you out?”

“No. I left them.”

“Why?”

When no answer was forthcoming, Charlie changed direction. “Did Preach tell you what happened to your mother and sister?”

“They told him, he said, from the other side.”

“And you believed him?”

He could read the skepticism on her face. “The people I had been targeting in Iraq were very powerful. They had ties all across the globe, more than I or anyone in Special Forces knew. But Preach knew because my family told him. Sympathizers here in the States, acting on orders from Iraq, abducted my mother and sister, took them into the countryside, and slit their throats.”

“Retribution.”

“That. And a warning.”

“What did you do after you found out?”

“Before I could do anything I got a call from King Cutler. I joined Universal Security Associates, assembled Red Rover, and took the team to Iraq.”

“USA is a military contractor. Cutler allowed you to do that on your own?”

“It was part of our initial negotiation. I wouldn’t have come aboard without that assurance.”

“And what happened over there?”

“We stayed there for six weeks. In that time, we killed twenty-seven members of the cadre that had ordered my family slaughtered. The twenty-eighth—the leader—I saved for myself.”

The plane had started its descent, and they both buckled up. They were almost home.

“You used your dark arts on him,” Charlie said.

Whitman’s eyes cleared as he looked at her, but there was no point in him answering her; she knew.