"Does she only ever appear to one person?"
Gerard shook his head. "No, Mary has been seen by more than one person at once, or different people in the same spot, but it's usually children. There was this one case in Egypt where she was reportedly seen by millions of people over like three years, but, uh, well. It was the sixties, so."
Bob tapped his pen against his teeth. "Is our girl even Catholic?"
"That doesn't really matter," Gerard told him. "Typically visions of her are reported by Christians, but we have to remember that Mary has a place in lots of other faiths too."
Frank cleared his throat. "How do we even know she's really seeing Mary?" he asked, ignoring Mikey when he wrote 'JEALOUS' in long skinny letters on his pad, and pushed it over for Frank to see. "Sometimes people just see a lady, and everyone assumes it's Mary, right?"
"Yes!" Gerard nodded happily. He loved it when Frank let slip he'd been reading up. It was kind of adorable. "Especially kids. And of course, there's always the possibility that she's seeing something that's only claiming to be Mary."
"Or," Brian said heavily, "She's up to her eyeballs in drugs."
Ray shook his head. "Mikey says she's not."
Brian made a face. "He said that about that kid with the blue hair, too."
Mikey rolled his eyes. "Man, I make one shitty call and you never let me live it down, Schechter. What about that time you gave Ray the brimstone instead of the limestone and the whole place stank like eggs for a week?"
Brian scowled. "It was labeled wrong."
"It was labeled perfectly!" Ray corrected him, affronted. "You can't fucking read!"
"Anyway!" Gerard said loudly, over the top of them. "There are different types of Marian apparition, depending on whether she speaks, whether she gives specific instructions. If it seems like it's the real deal, then we'll have to pass it off to the Church and the bishop can assess it himself."
"The real deal?" Bob raised an eyebrow. "Like this actually happens?"
"The Vatican have officially approved Marian apparitions as recently as last year," Frank nodded.
Bob rolled his eyes. "Since when do you believe anything the Vatican says?"
Gerard made a long-suffering face. "Bob, you can't still be skeptical about this shit, after everything we've seen!"
"You would be amazed at what I can be skeptical about," Bob said darkly.
Brian nodded. "It's true. He doesn't believe in the moon landing."
Ray sputtered. "What's not to believe?"
"It looks like it was filmed in someone's garage!"
"Oh please, like that many people could keep that big a secret for this long? You and your conspiracy theories, Christ. I'm gonna start calling you Doubting Bob."
Bob crumpled up a sheet of paper and threw it at Ray's head; Ray squawked and threw it back, but before they could get into a repeat of The Great Stationery Fight of Last Month, Mikey slapped the table, sat up straight and said, "She's here."
They all turned around, and sure enough, thirty seconds later, the doors opened, and the skinny red-haired chick from the park walked in, looking freaked out and like she pretty much thought they were going to try to kill her.
"Hi," said Brian, moving forward to take her hand. "I'm Brian Schechter. You must be Ruth."
She nodded, darting skittish glances at the rest of them. "I'm not, I mean," she looked at Mikey, then at the floor, scratching her elbow. "Mikey said you could help me."
"I'm sure that we can," said Gerard, coming around the table. He pulled out a chair. "You want to sit down?"
She looked like she wanted to run, but Gerard made that face, that face that you couldn't help trusting no matter how freaked out you were. Frank knew from experience that nobody could resist it, and Ruth was no exception, moving slowly forward and sinking into the chair.
"I know it's weird," she said, huddling further into her sweater. "I don't expect you guys to believe me."
"You'd be surprised how often we hear that," Frank told her, giving her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
"And we almost always do," Ray said kindly. "Hey, you want a coffee or something?"
"I do," Gerard said immediately, then frowned. "I don't have the right books - Frankie, come help me?"
"Sure," said Frank, pushing his chair back and following Gerard into the back room.
He held his arms out while Gerard sifted slowly through the pile on his desk, muttering to himself and occasionally passing a book to Frank.
"I'm really not jealous," Frank told him.
"Uh huh," Gerard said absently.
"I'm not," Frank insisted.
Gerard just dumped another book in his arms. "I am, kind of. I always wanted to have a vision."
"The closest I ever came was dreaming that me and the Cardinal went to the beach."
"What?" Gerard laughed, startled, his face splitting into a huge grin and his eyes crinkled at the corners. "You never told me about that!"
Frank grinned back, shifting the books in his arms. "Yeah, it was when he came to visit me in the hospital, you know? I fell asleep while he was there, and I guess my subconscious decided to carry on the conversation. You were there, too. You had a bucket and spade."
Gerard laughed again, but his eyebrows creased. "The Cardinal came to visit you in the hospital?"
Frank nodded. "Before I came to see you at the airport. I don't know when it was, exactly. I was pretty out of it. I didn't tell you about it?"
Gerard was frowning for real, now, the book in his hands forgotten. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," Frank said impatiently. "Why?"
"I just - he never told me."
Frank shrugged. "Like he's usually so free and easy with the info?"
Gerard ducked his head, allowing that, but he said, "I just don't know when he would have had time. I mean, I was all," he waved a hand around his face, which Frank guess was meant to mean 'recently recovered from demonic possession'. "And there were kind of a lot of confused people in hooded robes for him to take care of, too."
"But we had this whole conversation," Frank started, then he remembered the way he'd felt, how everything had been floaty and painless and not like when he woke up to Ray and Bob at all. "I guess the whole thing was a dream," he said reluctantly.
"I guess." Gerard was looking at Frank intently, like he wanted to ask more questions about it, but then Mikey stuck his head around the door.
"She's ready to talk, guys," he said.
"All right." Frank took the last book in Gerard's hands, and jerked his head for Gerard to lead the way. "Let's get to work."
