At five on the dot, Eliza and Cassie got into Eliza’s car and she drove them to the Red Onion Cafe in Boone. When they arrived, Eliza looked around and saw that Brother Greg was already seated at a table for two near a window. No one else she recognized from church was anywhere in sight.

“Signal me if you need help,” Cassie said.

Eliza sighed. “It’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.” She walked over and sat down across from Brother Greg while Cassie waited for a waitress to seat her.

“Hey,” Brother Greg said. “How are you doing? We haven’t talked much in several weeks, and it seems like you’ve had a lot going on.”

“Tell me about it,” Eliza said. “Well, my fiancee came to visit, we had a bad argument, and she broke up with me. Then my employer for my summer internship came out to me, which led to me doing some reading about trans people, which led to me figuring out I’m trans as well. That’s the short version.”

“I can’t say I fully understand,” Brother Greg said, “but I’ve done some research. If I understand correctly, you feel like you are a woman on the inside and you’re working on changing your body to match?”

“Pretty much, yeah. There were various clues that I didn’t realize the meaning of until I read some resources that Cassie sent me after I asked her some questions. The way I felt about my body, and particularly about facial and body hair, and… some other stuff I’d rather not talk about.” She was thinking especially of the “Miss Hudnall” in the introduction of the spellbook. “But the big thing was how jealous I felt when I found out Cassie was trans.”

“I see,” Brother Greg said, and Eliza had a momentary flashback to the day before and the cop’s repeated ‘I see.’ “And how long ago did you start to realize?”

“Start to realize? Probably Tuesday evening. But I didn’t fully make the connection until Thursday.”

Brother Greg nodded and didn’t say anything for a moment. Just as he seemed about to speak, their waiter came and asked Eliza what she wanted to drink. She asked for a sweet tea and said she was ready to order, having eaten there a number of times before and already knowing the menu.

After the waiter left, Brother Greg said, “Not long before you joined Crossway, my extended family went through a crisis. My niece tried to commit suicide; her mother found her just in time, and she spent several touch-and-go days in intensive care… It was a hard time. I spent several days with my brother and sister-in-law, and at the hospital with Annie, letting Brother Allen handle the Sunday and Wednesday services in my absence.”

Eliza wondered what this out of the blue story was about. She’d expected Greg to ask questions about how she figured out she was trans, or maybe to try to talk her out of it, more gently than Jacob Glynn but just as firmly. Where was this going?

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Is your niece okay now?”

“Much better,” he said. “She eventually made a full recovery.

“Well, when I first went to visit, I had no idea why Annie had done it. Tim and Laura, that’s my older brother and sister-in-law, told me they had no idea, and Annie wasn’t talking. Couldn’t talk for the first few days, with a respirator in. But one night when we’d gone home from the hospital, and Tim and I were still staying up after Laura went to bed, Tim admitted to me that he thought it was his fault that Annie had tried to kill herself. She’d come out to them as a lesbian, and they’d reacted harshly – Tim especially. They forbade her to see the girl she’d admitted she had a crush on, and started controlling every aspect of her life more than is healthy for a teenager. Not wanting her to spend any time alone with other girls they didn’t trust, not letting her visit with her friends except under their supervision, and so on. And over the next few months her grades got worse and worse, and he told me in retrospect it was obvious she was depressed, but he didn’t see it at the time, not until she tried to kill herself.”

Their waiter brought their food just then, and after Brother Greg asked the blessing, Eliza started eating while Brother Greg continued his story.

"Well, we prayed together, and I gave him the best advice, I could, which wasn’t great. Not at the time. I did a lot of research over the next few months, though, and went back to visit several times as Annie got out of the hospital and continued recovering at home. Tim and Laura let up on the restrictions and made sure she knew they loved her and cared about her happiness. And what with the research I was doing, and talking with Annie once her voice recovered enough to have a conversation, I started to doubt whether our denomination has it right about gay and lesbian people. I’ve been wrestling with that for most of the time since, not sure whether I should stay and try to change the denomination from within, or leave and go to a denomination that is more accepting of gay people, like Tim and Laura did a few months ago.

“But more to the point, in the process of reading about what other Christians of different denominations think about gay and lesbian relationships, I’ve also run across some stuff about transgender people as well. It hasn’t been my main focus, and I’m sure there’s a lot more I don’t know, but I think I can sort of vaguely begin to understand some of what you’re going through.”

Eliza considered that for a moment. “Thank you for telling me that,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about the same thing, for obvious reasons. I haven’t made up my mind, but… after the way Jacob and Brother Allen treated me yesterday, I’m leaning pretty strongly toward looking for another church in another denomination.” She thought for a moment. “Did you get any pushback when you took up a collection to fix my car?”

Brother Greg frowned. “No, but I had a couple of people suggest to me that we deal with the vandal privately, if we find out who they are, rather than turning them in to the police. They said it’s probably a child or teenager who did it and we shouldn’t ruin their life by giving them a police record.”

Eliza was angry at whoever had done it, but she could see some sense in that. If they could get the vandal to make restitution by giving up their lawn-mowing or burger-flipping money until Eliza’s paint job was paid for, it would probably be better than getting the police involved. “Yeah, I can see that. As long as they show they’re sorry and do their best to pay for my car getting repainted, I’ll be okay with that.”

“Good. To be honest, the police told me it’s not likely they’ll find the vandal, but we can pray that God will work on their heart to repent, confess, and make it right.”

“Yeah.”

They ate quietly for a few moments, and then Eliza said: “You said you’d been rethinking your ideas about, um, LGBT people. Deciding whether to leave the denomination or try to change it. Have you talked to anyone else about that, besides your brother’s family?”

“Jennifer and I have talked about it,” he said. “No one else, until you. I stopped preaching about this kind of issue when I first started having doubts about it, around a year ago – maybe around the time you joined Crossway, I don’t remember exactly.”

“I joined about four or five weeks into the school year, I think,” Eliza said.

“Yeah, around then. Anyway, I stopped preaching about it and I don’t think anyone noticed because I preach about so many different topics in the course of a year.”

“Do you think… Are you anywhere close to ready to tell people other than your family and me? To, I don’t know, preach a sermon about acceptance of LGBT people?”

“I should,” Brother Greg said with a frown. “I really should. But… I wouldn’t blame you if you thought less of me for this, but I have a family to support, and medical bills to pay off, and there’s like a 95% chance that I’ll be out of a job not long after preaching that sermon.” He and Jennifer’s younger child was disabled and Jennifer was a stay-at-home mom, since their daughter’s treatments were so time-consuming. “So Jennifer and I wanted to have a fallback option before I take that risk.”

“I understand,” Eliza said. “I would want to be cautious in your position, too. But if you’re not ready or close to ready, then… I think I’d better go elsewhere. If you were close to ready, I’d consider staying until the business meeting after you preach that sermon so I can vote to keep you around, but…”

“Yeah, I get it,” Brother Greg said.

They ate in silence for a few minutes, then conversation resumed on lighter topics until the end of the meal. Eliza occasionally caught Cassie’s eye and nodded reassuringly to her. When they were done eating, Eliza introduced Brother Greg to Cassie.

“Pleased to meet you,” Cassie said warily.

“Hello,” said Brother Greg. “Eliza tells me you’ve helped her a lot.”

“All I did was clear up her misconceptions about trans people,” Cassie said. “She figured out she was trans on her own about five minutes after that, and didn’t stubbornly hold onto her misconceptions like some people.”

“I wish I could say I don’t know anybody like that,” Brother Greg said ruefully. “It was good to talk with you, Eliza. I’ll keep you posted about the collection for your car, and… and what I decide and when.”

“I’ll be praying for you and Jennifer,” Eliza said. She wanted to hug him, but wasn’t sure it was appropriate. The moment passed and they parted to go to their cars.

Once Eliza and Cassie were in the car, Cassie said, “You want to go cast that scrying spell at the church parking lot now?”

“I don’t know,” Eliza said. “It’s not like knowing who did it will do any good. The spell won’t be admissible evidence.”

“You could talk to whoever did it and tell them you know, and they’d better make a big contribution to the offering for your car paint job or you’ll turn them in. It’s a bluff, but they’d have no way of knowing that.”

“Yeah, I guess…”

“Is there anything going on there on Monday nights?”

“Nothing major. I’ll check the church calendar real quick.” She went to the church website on her phone and found the calendar. “Apparently the building and grounds committee is meeting in half an hour.”

“Then let’s get it done before they start arriving.”

“Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”

A couple of minutes later, they were pulling into the church parking lot. Eliza parked near where she remembered parking the day before, facing toward the space she’d been in. Then she picked up the spellbook, turned to chapter five, and started trying to cast the scrying spell; she focused on Sunday afternoon just after church let out.

On the fifth try, she suddenly saw phantom cars parked in most of the spaces around her. There was another car superimposed on her own, too, something with blue upholstery and a Bugs Bunny figurine on the dashboard. She saw a phantom version of her own car across the lane. A handful of shadowy people were walking from the front doors of the church to their cars, a trickle that became a flood a minute later.

Eliza watched people go to their cars, get in, and drive off. Nobody seemed to touch or pay attention to her car. A few minutes later the lot was mostly deserted and the phantom cars faded.

“No dice,” she said. “I could focus on an earlier time, like the last ten minutes of the service, to see if the vandal left church a little early, or pick up where it left off.”

“Which do you think is more likely?”

“No idea.” She cast the spell, focusing on 11:50am Sunday morning. Two tries later, she saw the phantom cars appear again, but no people. A few minutes later, she saw a teen boy approach from the front door of the church and stand waiting next to a minivan parked beside Eliza’s car, glancing back impatiently at the church. Then he seemed to notice Eliza’s car, and took his key out to scratch at the hood. Engrossed in his work, he didn’t notice his parents approaching. His dad, whom Eliza recognized as Douglas Glockner, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from Eliza’s car, presumably causing the long trailing-off scratch she’d seen. His mom, Holly, was glancing around nervously. They hustled their son, whose name Eliza couldn’t remember, into the van and drove off in a hurry.

“I can’t believe those people!” Eliza exclaimed. The phantom cars remained for a couple of minutes longer as a few more phantom people started walking out into the parking lot.

“You saw what happened?”

“Yeah.” Eliza described what she’d seen. “They saw their kid vandalizing a car and they just take him home and punish him privately? What were they thinking?”

“You want to call them now?”

“I want to head back to the house as soon as the phantom cars disappear and I can drive safely; I’ll decide later what I want to do about this. Don’t want to be here when the building and grounds committee arrives.”

“Sure.”

On the way back to Cassie’s house, Eliza told Cassie some of what Brother Greg had told her. She didn’t mention Annie’s suicide attempt, but she made it clear that Brother Greg was no longer in agreement with his denomination about LGBT issues, and was worried about saying so publicly until he had another job lined up.

“Who would be firing him in that situation?” Cassie asked. “Some denominational manager, or the board of directors of your local church, or what?”

“The business meeting – whatever adult members of the church show up to the next meeting. There’s a regular meeting the first Wednesday of each month, and the pastor and deacons handle routine business in between meetings. And I think the deacons can vote to call an emergency meeting?”

“I want to say he’s a coward and a useless ally,” Cassie said, “but I don’t know if I’d have the guts to speak up if it would mean losing my job, either. I still haven’t told my family and I’m terrified of doing even that.”

“Yeah, me too.”

---

When they got back to the house, Eliza called Sarah and told her the gist of what Brother Greg had said. She didn’t mention the scrying spell yet.

“Man, I’d like to be there when he tells them what he really thinks. But I don’t know if it’d really be a good idea to stick around indefinitely for that. We still up for checking out the Episcopal church next Sunday?”

“Yeah, let’s see what it’s like.”

After hanging up, she started thinking again about what to do about what she’d discovered. Douglas and Holly’s son, whatever his name was, probably didn’t have enough money to pay for getting her car repainted, but his parents probably did. She didn’t know them well, but they dressed well and their van looked fairly new. Her options were basically to call the police with a tip, which… how would she say she knew who did it, when she had told the police on Sunday that she had no idea who would do such a thing? And a similar problem arose if she looked Douglas or Holly up in the church directory and called them. She had no proof. But maybe she didn’t need any?

She put off thinking about it any more for the moment, turning to the spellbook to review chapter five. She was eager to start practicing the other spells, but the hormone balance spell and possibly the muscle control spell would require research to be able to use safely. She went to the living room, where she remembered seeing an anatomy textbook, and looked around until she found it, then started looking at the table of contents and the index to see what it said about the muscles used in speaking and what levels of different hormones a healthy woman of her age should have.

She found plenty of information about the names and functions of all the different muscles in the body, including the ones in and around the larynx. But although the book discussed the functions of each hormone and which gland or glands they were produced by, the crucial information about how much of each hormone she needed was missing. Did Mr. Taggart have an endocrinology textbook? She didn’t remember seeing one, but she could buy one online. Or just try to look up typical hormone levels online.

She did, however, find enough information about the muscles in her throat and chest to start voice training. She pulled up one of the videos Cassie had sent her, then after watching it once, she started practicing the muscle control spell. She got it right on the fifth try, and practiced voice training until the spell wore off.