Sinners and Saints

by Jennifer Roberson

  “And me?” Mary Jane asked. She looked to Remi, still seated at the computer. “Do I come with you, too?”

  I checked in with him via a questioning glance. I deferred to Remi because he and Kelly seemed to have something going. Or at least something starting.

  He considered it a moment, then shook his head. “I think you’d do better to stay here. The Zoo is warded against demons.”

  Kelly nodded, then said, “But you’re taking her.”

  “She doesn’t have a demon after her,” I pointed out. “Well, I think.”

  Her tone was dry. “No, she’s got a god after her. A little higher on the food chain.”

  Well, true. “At any rate, we’ve been formally instructed—”

  “By a machine,” she put in.

  “—to go and to take her with us,” I emphasized, “—so that’s what we’ll do. Grandaddy knows what he’s doing. He’s the man with the plan.” I rolled my head, raised shoulders, tried to loosen the rusted parts as I continued. “Ganji’s here. He’ll keep an eye on you.”

  She shook her head. “He left a while back. Wanted to go up the mountain, he said, and sing to her. He said the earthquake had disturbed her. The world—life—is out of balance. The Hopi call it—”

  “—koyaanisqatsi,” I finished, nodding. “And I would say that’s exactly what’s happening.”

  And for some reason that reminded me of Shemyazaz, who was himself markedly out of balance. He’d paid a two-hour visit to the Zoo earlier in the evening, so he couldn’t return tonight. At least, not in the guise of a handsome human who liked to spin around on bartops and dance with a pretty girl.

  “Well, you’ve got Remi’s number in your phone,” I told her, then snapped my fingers. “That reminds me. Did the bug guy call you? The guy at NAU?”

  Kelly shook her head. “No, but I’ll call him first thing in the morning.”

  Curiosity made me ask it. “How did he lose his leg?”

  She was baffled. “What?”

  “His missing leg. How did he lose it?”

  Her frown deepened. “Dr. Hickman’s not missing a leg. Why would you think he is?”

  “Because he wasn’t wearing it in the office,” I explained. “He said his stump gets sore after standing on it in class, so he removes the prosthesis in the office. We saw it.”

  Kelly shook her head very slowly. “I’ve seen him in hiking shorts. He has two perfectly normal legs.”

  “Then why—ohhh, shit!” I turned to Remi. “We left the majority of demon remains behind on the mountain, and they were gone when we went back. But we had Mary Jane’s smaller portion. We took that baggie to Hickman, and he was missing a leg.”

  Remi leaned back hard against the task chair, head tipped as he stared roofward and rubbed a hand across his eyes. His tone was resigned. “Molly.”

  “What?”

  “Molly. I felt her. I sensed her. With my super power. I didn’t sense him because I sensed her.”

  And there it was, tied up in a bow. Deliberate distraction. I swore. “And she led us a merry chase across campus while the surrogate in Hickman grabbed the missing part of his body and disappeared.”

  Kelly’s mouth was open. “But what happened to Dr. Hickman? The real Dr. Hickman.”

  Remi and I exchanged a concerned look. “Well, it’s possible he only borrowed Hickman’s body,” I told her, hoping like hell that was the case. We hadn’t seen fake Hickman’s legs as he sat behind the desk. “He might well wake up with a really bad, really weird hangover, but be fine.”

  “We don’t know,” Remi told her. “We don’t know much at all.”

  Her eyes were distant as she sat in silence next to the foreign woman. Finally Kelly rubbed her face, stretched it out of shape as she murmured that she’d call him first thing in the morning, see if he was okay.

  For her sake, I hoped he’d answer.

  For his sake, I hoped he could.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The intended seating arrangement in the truck took an unexpected turn. I’d expected we’d let our visitor ride in the passenger seat while I sat in the back so that she wasn’t isolated behind us in the dark. She certainly climbed in willingly, but when I stepped up into the back seat she slid out of the passenger seat across the console from Remi, swung the door closed, and grabbed my door hastily to keep me from shutting it.

  Um, okay. “No shotgun,” I told Remi as he closed his own door.

  He turned over the ignition. “Wherever she feels safest.”

  She climbed up into the back seat, pulled on the door awkwardly but did manage to close it. She did not sit close to me, but settled right beside the door.

  I looked at her. She looked at me. It was odd seeing only one eye open in her face, and made her hard to read. But I saw no fear, no concern. Only purpose, which apparently was to share a seat with me.

  As we backed out, I leaned down and rescued the manila envelope and photo from the floorboards. “Do you mind the interior light?” I asked Remi. “I want to take a look at the photo.”

  “Go ahead. Won’t bother me.”

  I pressed the light panel, and the woman startled in her place on the bench seat. She stared at me a moment, as if waiting for an explanation. When I said nothing, she reached up slowly, placed fingers on the light’s surface to explore it.

  I raised my voice over engine noise. “Yeah, pretty sure she is not from our time. My phone with the flashlight app turned on seemed to represent something like a talismanic protection, and she’s got no clue about the truck’s interior lights.”

  “See if she’ll tell you her name now.”

  I asked her. Once again she refused. So I gave up on that and turned my attention to the photograph but angled it away from her. Seeing the words wouldn’t matter—if she could read English—but she did not need to see a woman killed very messily.

  I read the two sentences on the back again. Before, he had used letters cut out from magazines and newspapers taped to the paper to convey his message, mimicking kidnap notes in movies, but with the From Hell letter he started writing long-hand.

  I raised my voice again. “You know what we need to do? Compare the writing on this photo to the writing in the letter he gave us.”

  “Probably he can forge anyone’s handwriting.”

  “Maybe so, but we should check it regardless. He’s the type to hide Easter eggs in stuff. Could well be a code, for all we know, or might even prove that he was Jack the Ripper. I figure we shouldn’t dismiss any—oh, holy fuck.” I’d turned the photo over, viewed the image. My belly rolled. “This is . . . this is worse. Much fucking worse.” I swallowed heavily. “He’s escalating.”

  Remi was silent a moment. The truck thumped over uneven asphalt. “Have you ever seen the police photo of Mary Jane Kelly’s body?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Particularly bad. The worst by far. I’ll need to look at this one later on, when we get a chance.”

  “Why? It’s horrific. Do you need to know more than that?”

  “Because I have seen the photo of Mary Jane Kelly—it’s online; you can just pull it up—and it may be important. He’s been either mimicking what the Ripper did, or, if he was Jack, recreating what he did in the 1880s. We have our modern-day Mary Jane Kelly in protective custody, so to speak. So did he do to the woman in this current photo as he did to the Ripper’s Kelly? Or go another way? If it’s the latter, he may be saving that specific method of death for our Mary Jane. Trust me, I’m not interested in seein’ it again, but probably I need to. Especially since he personally delivered this to us.”

  “I didn’t see how it was delivered, or by whom, but Molly may have done it. She was here, after all.”

  “She makes a hornet look cuddly,” Remi said in disgust.

  When we’d begun searching for Mary Jane Kelly, I k
new it was important that we find her, but the photo underscored exactly what was at risk. Not just death, but butchery.

  I rode in silence for long minutes, trying to sort out my emotions. And couldn’t.

  The 8x10 was in my hand, image up. The woman reached out, placed a fingertip on the photo.

  I hastily pulled the photo out from under her finger, flipped it over and pressed it face-down against my thigh. She didn’t need to see that. Not after what she’d been through. Hell, not ever, for any reason.

  I looked to her to see her reaction, but there was no horror. No disgust. No shock at all.

  “The god,” she said quietly.

  And I realized that what I read in her face was none of those other emotions because this kind of killing was not new to her. She’d seen this, or something like this, before.

  “Hey, Remi?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Remember Mossman, the cowboy at the ravine? How he was corporeal despite being a ghost?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think she’s a ghost. I think she’s a ghost and saw Jack the Ripper at his work. I think she may be a ghost because she saw the Ripper at his work, and he killed her.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Remi said blankly.

  The woman looked at me out of one clear eye. I pressed the light off and threw the truck cab into darkness, save for the panel on the dashboard.

  “Ask her,” I suggested. “Ask her if she’s a ghost—or, well, a shade, since it’s Roman and Greek mythology. Do you have the Latin and Greek for that?”

  After a moment, Remi cleared his throat. He turned his head just enough so that his words would carry to the back while he kept an eye on the road. “In umbra es? Eísai skiá?”

  Her single eye glinted with every street light passed. “Ego mulier tantum. Eímai móno gynaíka.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “She says she is only a woman.”

  * * *

  —

  The highway led out of Flagstaff into vast miles of mostly treed but unpopulated high desert, and in the middle of the night was absent of traffic. Pine forest on both sides of the winding road created something akin to a maze. I couldn’t see much outside because of the dash illumination, and the brilliance of headlights stretching before us, flashing off asphalt curves, white and yellow lines, and trees.

  I told Remi he should turn on the radio, just to break the silence. I also wondered how she would react to music without visible humans playing instruments and singing.

  He turned it on, but kept it low. She listened avidly, the one eye wide. I saw her lips soften, part in a very faint smile.

  “Oldies station,” Remi said. “And yes, it’s country. Get over it.”

  I watched the woman and listened as if I was hearing a radio for the first time, as she was. Then I scowled. “Oh, for God’s sake. We’re doing the red-eyed cows again? With black and shiny horns?”

  “‘Ghost Riders in the Sky,’” Remi said. “Appropriate, don’t you think, in view of the circumstances? And don’t you criticize the Man In Black.”

  “Who?”

  “Johnny Cash.” And then of course he sang the yippie yi yays again.

  “I’m not sure she approves of the music,” I said. “Or your singing. Or both.”

  “Why? What’s she doing?”

  Actually she was smiling. She looked—happy. But I didn’t want to encourage him. “Possibly preparing to barf.”

  Remi ignored that and began to slow the truck. “Well, we’re coming up on the chapel anyway. That’ll salve your wounded ears.”

  Tires crunched across cinders and gravel as he eased the pickup to a stop, pulling in front of the small shake-shingled A-frame building. He turned off the radio, let silence settle. As he opened his door the chime went off alerting him to the key in the ignition. He pulled it out, pocketed the remote, and peace reigned again. The woman looked puzzled, which made me contemplate what she was familiar with if not trucks.

  “Chariots, maybe,” I said. “You think?”

  “What?” Remi asked.

  “She doesn’t know motorized vehicles, and is speaking Latin and ancient Greek. Probably she’s familiar with chariots.”

  “Might could be, I reckon.” Remi rounded the truck, opened her door and helped her step out. Even when not jacked up via lift kit, trucks sit high anyway, and if you’re not used to a big step down it’s easy to misjudge the landing. She clearly had no clue how to navigate lock, door, or step-down, so his help was warranted beyond good manners. Though he had them in abundance.

  I slid out the other side, shut the door. The interior light went off as Remi, out of the truck, closed his and hit the remote. I walked a few steps away, looked beyond the modest chapel to the huddled peaks, and let myself go, let myself reach out, to sense what there was to sense.

  Beneath the full moon, in the quiet of the night, I felt the colors come. Like a tide across the sand, they washed in, clung briefly, washed out only to be replaced by others. I closed my eyes, tipped my head back, and opened myself to the world.

  It began with brown. The richness of the earth, of stability, of home. Comfort was here. Then came green, for nature, for health. Here there was no disruption, no koyaanisqatsi—and it wasn’t because a reconsecrated chapel stood guardian. The San Francisco Peaks were sacred to Native Americans. Here is where the ga’an, the mountain spirits, walked. No solitary religion took precedence here.

  Blue seeped in, easing green aside. Sky and water, harmony and unity. Tranquility.

  I heard her voice. I heard her ask Remi something. I sensed her coming toward me.

  I put up a hand and stopped her. She stood beneath the moon, graced by its light. I sensed purple, rich and royal. A potent amalgam of nobility, mystery, transformation. And lastly of mourning.

  I opened my eyes. She waited for me to speak. I couldn’t find diplomacy, couldn’t call on empathy. My words were weapons, and I could not find the means to turn away the blade. “Someone has died.”

  Moonlight glinted on the tear welling in one pale eye. “My brother. It was a hard death. No honor in it. Only dishonor. A hero thrown down. I did tell them. I did warn them. Believe, I begged. But none of them would. None of them. To die in battle is a great thing. To be dishonored so after death . . .” But she trailed off and did not, or could not, finish.

  And was her brother now a shade, too? A skía. An umbra.

  I walked away from her, closer to the chapel. Had to, to collect myself, to think for myself. And then my hip hitched, I stumbled, but caught myself with a couple of one-legged hops.

  “That was graceful,” Remi observed.

  “Well, keep in mind my specialty was books, not athletics.” Actually, I generally moved well, had good flexibility, but not since getting dumped off my bike.

  At least it broke the tension. I reached for lightness, for levity, before the colors turned dark and took me down. “I can feel it,” I said. “What we did, and where, when we reconsecrated. If I stand here, it’s just the mortal world. But two strides this way—” I took them, “—and I am elsewhere. We leave behind the mundane world and stand on holy ground.”

  Remi took three strides, halted, gestured to the ground. “Am I good here? On consecrated ground?”

  “You are good.”

  “I don’t feel anything.”

  “Since your super power is sensing demons, and we’re on holy ground, that’s probably a good thing.” I put out a hand toward the woman, gestured. “Come in with us. It’s safe. I promise.”

  The chapel was an A-frame, built narrow and low at the entrance, then broadened and rose skyward on the diagonal similar to a triangle until it ended at tall floor to ceiling windows. The entry door with its small cross-shaped window was not wide enough for us to walk in side-by-side. Remi went first. The woman followed, as I wanted
, and I came in behind her, quietly closing the door.

  No electricity, thus no artificial lights. We had phones and flashlight apps, but the moon was enough. It lit up the huge windows and flooded the interior.

  Before us, the doubled rows of garden bench ‘pews’ on either side of the modest aisle ran from door to windows. Hundreds of stapled notes and written prayers from visitors hung like pale butterflies from the roof, covered the wooden walls. And at the broad end of the chapel, above the altar, the hanging cross was black against the glass, save for moonshine and stars.

  The draw was obvious. As one, we three walked the aisle and stopped before the altar side-by-side, gazing not at the cross but to the pine-flanked mountains beyond, crowded black against the stars.

  Finally I broke the silence, shed the weight of lunar light and looked at Remi on the other side of the woman. “So, we’re just supposed to hang out here until Grandaddy decides to show his face?”

  But someone other than Remi answered, an unfamiliar female voice. “He wasn’t invited.”

  Remi and I whipped around and by the time we faced her, guns were in our hands.

  I couldn’t help it. My reflex was to yell at the angel. “Stop doing that, Greg! Stop appearing without warning!” I spread my arms wide. “I already shot you once, and that was five shots center mass; want me to do it again?”

  Three times. Three times she’d done this, dammit. I shoved the gun back into its holster.

  But the young woman between us, whom we’d placed in our care, took a single step back toward the altar. She said one word, barely above a whisper, “Angeliafóros.”

  The new arrival halted just inside the door, let it close behind her. Black hair was cut straight at her chin, an equally sharp line ran across her brow. Black clothing. Black Asian eyes. Wingless at the moment, but that could change.

  I glared at her. “You brought us here?”

  “My name is Ambriel,” Greg the Grigori corrected, annoyed. “And yes. I did.”