UnWholly

She smiles at him warmly. “Just your presence, Mr. Calder. Your presence and your wi

And although he can’t think of anything that his personality has won, he says, “Sure, why not?” Because he realizes he has absolutely nothing left to lose. He thinks back to the days after he left CyFi, and before he arrived at the Graveyard. Dark days, to be sure, but punctuated by a bit of light when he found himself on a reservation, taken in by People of Chance. The Chance folk had taught him that when you have nothing to lose, there’s no such thing as a bad roll of the dice. And then something occurs to him. Something that has been in the back of his mind for a while, but today has risen to the forefront.

“One thing, though,” Lev says.

“Yes?”

“I want to have my last name legally changed. Can you do that?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Of course, if that’s what you want. May I ask what you would like to change it to?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he tells her. “Just as long as it’s not Calder.”

22 • Trust

There’s a home on a street in northern Detroit. It is now the official legal residence of one Levi Jedediah Garrity. It’s a small home, but adequate, and comes through the generosity of the Cavenaugh trust, dedicated to helping wayward youth. There is a full-time valet to take care of Lev’s needs, and a new tutor to take care of his lessons. The trust has even planted a permanent rent-a-cop out front to deter any unwanted guests and suspicious solicitors. No clappers are getting anywhere near the front door here.

It would be a perfect situation for Lev, except for the fact that he doesn’t actually live there. True, there’s that subcutaneous tracking chip embedded in his neck that swears he does, but the chip was easily compromised. Now the chip can ping out a signal from wherever they want Lev to appear to be.

No one knows he’s being brought to the Cavenaugh mansion, almost forty miles away.

The Cavenaugh mansion is a behemoth of a building resting on seventy-five secluded acres in Lake Orion, Michigan. It was designed to look like Versailles and was built with motor money in the days before the American automotive industry had done its own version of clapping and applauded itself into nonexistence.

Most people don’t know the mansion is still there. They’re mostly right, because it’s barely there at all. Exposure to the elements all these years has left it one storm short of surrender.

The mansion served as the Midwest headquarters for the Choice Brigade during the Heartland War, until it was captured and became headquarters for the Life Army. Apparently both the Lifers and Choicers saw great value in having their own personal Versailles.

The place was under attack constantly until the day the Unwind Accord ended all battles, putting forth the worst possible compromise and yet the only one both sides could agree to: sanctity of life from conception to thirteen, with the option of unwinding teenagers whose lives were deemed to have been a mistake.

For many years after the war, the Cavenaugh mansion lay crumbling, too expensive to repair yet too large to tear down, until Charles Cavenaugh Jr., to assuage his guilt at still having old money in new times, donated the mansion to a trust fund, which was owned by another trust fund, which was laundered through yet another trust fund, which was owned by the Anti-Divisional Resistance.

23 • Lev

Charles Cavenaugh Jr. meets Lev personally at the entrance of the crumbling mansion. He’s dressed like he’s too rich to worry about how he’s dressed. Even with the Cavenaugh family fortune long gone, Lev figures there must be enough residual wealth to keep at least his generation living elite. The only thing that betrays his allegiance to the resistance is his thi

“Lev, it’s an honor to meet you!” He grasps Lev’s hand with both of his, shaking it firmly and maintaining a steady eye contact that Lev finds awkward.

“Thanks. Same here.” Lev isn’t sure what else to say.

“I was so sorry to hear about the loss of your friend and your brother’s injuries. I can’t help but think if we had approached you earlier, the tragedy never would have happened.”

Lev looks up at the mansion. Barely a window is intact. Birds fly through the jagged, broken panes.

“Don’t let it fool you,” Cavenaugh says. “She still has some life in her—and the way she appears is actually an asset. It’s camouflage for anyone who tries to look too closely.”

Lev can’t imagine anyone looking too closely. The place is on seventy-five fenced-in acres, in the middle of a weedy field that was once a lawn, which is surrounded on all sides by dense woods. The only way to even see the mansion would be from above.

Cavenaugh pushes open a rotted door and leads Lev into what was once a grand foyer. Now the foyer has no roof. Two sets of stairs climb to the second floor, but most of the wood on the stairs has caved in, and weeds grow through cracks in the floor, pushing up the marble tiles, making it randomly uneven.

“This way.” Cavenaugh leads him deeper into the ruined building, down a dim hallway in equally awful condition. The smell of mildew makes the air feel gelatinous. Lev is about to conclude that Cavenaugh is a madman and run in the other direction when the man unlocks a heavy door in front of them, swinging it open to reveal a grand dining hall.

“We’ve restored the north wing. For now it’s all we need. Of course, we’ve had to board all the windows—lights at night in an abandoned ruin would be way too conspicuous.”

The place is nowhere near in the condition it must have once been in. There’s still peeling paint, and water stains on the roof, but it’s far more livable than the rest of the sprawling estate. The dining hall has two mismatched chandeliers that were probably salvaged from other areas of the mansion. Three long tables and benches suggest that a lot of people are served their meals here.

At the far end of the room is a huge fireplace, and above it a full-length portrait, larger than life. At first Lev takes it to be a painting of one of the Cavenaughs as a boy, until he looks more closely.

“Wait—is that . . . me?”

Cavenaugh smiles. “A good likeness, isn’t it?”

As he crosses toward it, Lev can see how good a likeness it really is. Or at least a fine rendering of how he looked a year ago. In the portrait, he’s wearing a yellow shirt that seems to glow like gold. In fact, the portrait is painted so that his skin gives off a sort of divine radiance. The expression on his painted face speaks of wisdom and peace—the kind of peace Lev has yet to find in life—and at the base of the portrait are tithing whites metaphorically trampled beneath his feet.

His first reaction is to laugh. “What’s this all about?”

“It’s about the cause you fought for, Lev. I’m pleased to say we’ve picked up where you left off.”

On the mantel just below the portrait are everything from flowers to handwritten notes, to bits of jewelry and other trinkets.

“These things spontaneously began to appear after we put up the portrait,” Cavenaugh explains. “We didn’t expect it, but maybe we should have.”

Lev still struggles to process this. Again, all he can do is giggle. “You’re joking, right?”

Then off to his right, at a doorway to an adjacent hallway, a woman calls out to them. “Mr. Cavenaugh, the natives are getting restless. Can I let them in?”

Lev can see kids craning to see around the rather heavyset woman.

“Give us a moment, please,” Cavenaugh tells her, then smiles at Lev. “As you can imagine, they’re very excited to meet you.”

“Who?”

“The tithes, of course. We held a contest, and seven were chosen to personally greet you.”

Cavenaugh talks like these are all things Lev should already know. It’s all too much for him to wrap his mind around. “Tithes?”