by SM Reine
He got into the driver’s seat.
“Hi,” she said.
Lincoln almost jumped out of his skin. “I thought you had left.”
“I felt like going to church,” Elise said.
Dubious as he seemed to be about that response, Lincoln put the car in gear and pulled out. “You said you only work in the evenings, too. I assumed that meant…”
“That I’m a vampire?”
“Well, yeah,” he said.
It was better if nobody knew the limitations of Elise’s demon form. She shrugged. “I’m not a vampire.” End of explanation.
“Buckle your seatbelt,” he said, casting a sideways glance at her. Elise lifted her eyebrows. He halted the car before leaving the dirt for the main road. “You heard me. Buckle your seatbelt.”
“I can’t die in a car accident.”
“It’s the law,” Lincoln said with the conviction of a man used to having people obey him.
Cute. Very cute. Elise jammed the box of cigarettes into her pocket again, then buckled. “Happy?”
“Not really.” He pulled onto the road. “You can’t show up at my house and break into my car. You’ll have my neighbors talking.”
“Gossip is probably the only entertainment around here. I’m the most interesting thing to happen to Northgate in months, short of murder. Consider it a favor.”
“What if your presence gets back to the sheriff?”
“I don’t care.”
The highway turned, letting the sun spill over the driver’s seat. Lincoln pulled sunglasses off his visor and slipped them on. Aviators. Nice. “You should care. You could get arrested for interference.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. She couldn’t help it. He was so earnest. “I’m not easy to arrest.” She casually leaned against the door, squeezing her knees together so that none of her touched the sun beam. “Fill me in on the investigation. Tell me about your suspects.”
“No names yet. The rest of the department still thinks it’s a string of animal killings, even though we caught someone on security footage.”
“Security footage?”
“Two of the bodies were found in empty fields on the south end of town—not the same field, mind, but across the road from one another. The convenience store caught footage of one body being inspected by a civilian.” Lincoln’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “Inspected, but not dumped. Near as we can tell, the tapes of the actual times the murders occurred were wiped.”
“Magnetic or magic?” Elise asked. At his incredulous look, she said, “Never mind.” Lincoln wouldn’t know the difference between spells, charms, and enchantments, much less mundane interference versus magical.
Of course, she wouldn’t have expected the sheriff’s office to be warded, either.
“Which coven do you have here?” she asked.
“Coven?”
“It’s a group of witches, often twelve or thirteen of them. They organize on pagan holidays to cast spells together.”
“There are no witches in Northgate,” Lincoln said. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. She had hit a nerve.
Northgate appeared slowly, peeking out from between the patchy trees. She glimpsed decades-old antique shops nestled beside brand new convenience stores. All of the houses on the main road had been converted into offices—real estate agents, accountants, lawyers. The sidewalks were filled with people traveling on foot.
“The guy filmed inspecting the body,” Elise said, tucking her hands under her arms so that the sunlight didn’t catch them. “Was he black?”
“Yes,” Lincoln said. “Approximately six feet, three inches, two hundred pounds.”
It didn’t seem likely that there would be many men that fit that description in such a small town. It had to be Scarface, the werewolf she had seen at the sheriff’s department the night before.
“Why would he visit the body again after dumping it?”
“Serial killers behave in strange ways, Miss Kavanagh.”
“Elise,” she corrected.
His jaw tightened. “Maybe he was relishing his handiwork.”
She highly doubted it, but she wasn’t going to argue the point with Lincoln. A rogue werewolf’s psychology wouldn’t be like a serial killer’s. If one werewolf had killed six people, then it had less to do with trophies and more to do with uncontrollable hunger.
The mind of the wolf and the mind of the man were totally disconnected. If the wolf had been killing, the man might only realize long after the deed was done. Maybe the wolf had dragged the carcass into town, and the man came back to find out why he had woken up drenched in blood.
“How much of the bodies remained intact?” she asked.
“Not much. I have photos.”
“I want to see the cadavers,” Elise said. “The coroner’s report won’t be enough. He won’t have been looking for the right things.”
“I’ll see what I can arrange.”
Their slow tour through Northgate finally escaped the forest. The center of town was decorated with a huge statue: a man with his eyes uplifted, a hand extended toward the sky, and feet spread in an unmistakably aggressive stance. His lowered hand was clutching a cross.
It was the kind of statue an emperor might commission for himself. It didn’t match the rest of the town square, which was decorated with wrought iron fences, old boardwalks, and tidy flowerbeds. Children played in the fallen leaves around the feet of the statue, unimpressed by his grandeur.
Lincoln noticed where Elise was looking. Discomfort buzzed over his mind, leaving a sour aftertaste in her mouth. “Don’t ask.”
“Don’t ask what?”
“The statue. Don’t ask,” he said.
She hadn’t planned on it, but she was curious now that he brought it up. Elise leaned close to the window as they circled around it, squinting at the sign on the base.
Bain Marshall.
When she turned to Lincoln, she found confirmation of their relation etched in the annoyance on his face.
Elise didn’t ask.
He turned off the road into a parking lot. Pedestrians streamed off the road toward a sign that said St. Philomene’s Cathedral, although the trees concealed the building itself.
“Park in the shade over there,” Elise said.
The fact that she was avoiding direct sunlight hadn’t escaped Lincoln’s notice. He parked deep in the shade, then leaned around the back of his car to grab a hooded sweater. “The cathedral’s set back on a trail,” he said. “Lots of sun between here and there. And the leather won’t go over well in church.”
She gave a short nod, swapping out her jacket. The logo on the breast must have belonged to Lincoln’s alma mater. She jerked the hood over her head.
Even with the shelter of the sweater, stepping out of the car made Elise begin to sweat immediately. She gripped the door of the car, knuckles tight, and took deep breaths. Lincoln rounded the car to join her.
“You can stay here,” he said.
Elise tugged the aviators off of Lincoln’s face. “I’ll be fine,” she said, putting on his sunglasses.
“Help yourself,” he said with a grunt. He looked annoyed, but arousal made his heart speed. There were fireworks in his mind, exploding over his brain with a wash of adrenaline. He liked seeing her wearing his clothing.
She lifted an eyebrow at him, but he turned away and started walking.
As promised, they had to walk a short distance to reach the church. They had a lot of company from the other parishioners in town. They soon passed a sign listing the priests in attendance: Father Night, and Father Armstrong.
St. Philomene’s Cathedral sounded much grander than it looked. The recent whitewashing did nothing to conceal its age. Old shutters were stacked on the lawn, waiting to be replaced by new ones in a pickup parked by the front doors. A new cross was being installed on its steeple, although the crane was currently motionless; nobody was working on Sunday.
“And on the seven
th day, He rested,” Elise muttered, back pressed to the wall beside the front door, enjoying the few inches of shade it gave her. She wiped pink-tinted sweat off of her cheek.
A witch’s wards could keep Elise out of the police station, but there was nothing about holy ground in particular that repelled her. Her jobs with Anthony and McIntyre often required visits to churches, graveyards, and consecrated drive-thru wedding chapels. St. Philomene’s had nothing to keep her out.
But she didn’t immediately enter, even when Lincoln sidled through the doors. Elise watched the faces of the passing parishioners. More importantly, she watched their minds. All of them reacted to her presence—some with mild confusion, and others with outright disapproval at her eyebrow piercing, her unnaturally dark hair. Elise didn’t need to read minds to understand the combination of signals and facial expressions. They were wondering if she was mixed race, a punk, maybe a slut.
Between the bemusement and hostility, she sensed no recognition. If any of them had received the email with her picture, they didn’t connect the dots.
One woman didn’t react to Elise at all. Her head hung as she shuffled into the church, mind drenched with grief, clutching her purse to her chest. One of the victims’ loving family members, most likely.
Elise waited for another opening in the line of parishioners entering the church, then followed.
Despite the crowd, St. Philomene’s was filled with reverent silence. The pews were already completely occupied, leaving only standing room at the back. Lincoln was talking to someone near the wall, and Elise moved forward, tipping her head back to gaze at the rafters. The sun through the stained glass windows tinted the wood red, gold, green. Her skin ached with it.
Elise dipped her fingers in the font of holy water. It was cold enough to send a chill shocking up her bones, but it didn’t burn. It was blessed by man, not God.
She shut her eyes, remembering the cold waters of Heaven’s river. It had scalded. Stripped the flesh from her bones. Consumed her.
When her eyes opened, she realized that Lincoln was staring from across the room.
Elise dotted her forehead, her heart, her shoulders, and then flicked her fingers dry. Crossing herself was meaningless, but it gave her great satisfaction to watch Lincoln’s reaction. He was stunned.
She almost joined him under the windows, curious to see what kind of mass Father Night would deliver, but a figure walking through the back hallway caught her eye. He wore a black cassock with a white collar and a large wooden cross around his neck. She had seen that cross before. It was stamped with St. Benedict’s sigil—the patron saint of exorcisms.
Elise slipped into the hall.
Two priests spoke in front of an ornate door. The younger of them was dressed more casually than the one with the wooden cross.
“Crux sacra sit mihi lux,” Elise said. Her voice echoed in the hall. “Non draco sit mihi dux.”
The priests turned to watch her approach.
“Excuse me?” asked the younger, who had to be Father Armstrong.
“Vade retro, Satana. Nunquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas…”
“Ipse venena bibas,” Father Night finished with a deep frown.
If Lincoln Marshall was a good sheep of the flock, then Father Night was a shepherd armed with a flaming sword, braced to confront evil. His hair was a tangle of brown curls cut short, with a prominent nose balanced by thin lips and large eyes.
He was one of only two exorcists that Elise had ever known, and he was all too aware of how much that distinguished him from other priests. Where many of his peers regarded him as strange, extreme, and antiquated, he believed himself to be “special.” Father Night was a proud traditionalist, passionate in his faith and unforgiving in his judgments.
“Father,” she greeted. “Long time.”
The younger priest glanced between them, unsettled. “Do you know her?” he whispered to Father Night, quietly enough that she probably wasn’t meant to hear. Father Night didn’t respond. After a moment of chilly silence, Father Armstrong said, “All right, then. I’ll be back in a moment.”
Father Night inclined his head in acknowledgment, and his counterpart left.
Elise jerked her thumb at him. “Green, huh? Teaching him to be an exorcist, too?”
His hand looped around the wooden cross at his neck. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ve met. You’re not one of my usual parishioners.”
Elise removed the sunglasses and tucked one of the arms into the neck of her shirt. Father Night hadn’t changed one bit in eleven years. There were a few more lines on his face, and a little more weight to his belly, but he was still every inch the uptight priest she remembered. The fact that he didn’t recognize her probably meant that he hadn’t been the one circulating her image.
“Eleven years ago,” she said, flipping her hair over one shoulder to bare the hilt of her falchion. “The haunting in the Cascades. You got pissed at me for performing exorcisms without getting permission from a cardinal first. I told you that I was a freelancer, and you said—what was it?” She drew the falchion and held it between them, not threateningly. Just to let him see the flat of the blade.
“Even freelancers can burn in Hell,” Father Night finished for her. Recognition sparked in his eyes. “Elise.” He took a second look at her, and a third. His gaze was incredulous. “How?”
“Long story. I need to talk to you.”
“Father?” asked the young priest, poking his head through the door.
Elise dropped the sword to her side. Father Night moved to conceal her with his body. “I’m sorry. This is important. Can you…?”
“Sure,” Father Armstrong said. “I’ll do the mass.”
The new priest ducked out again, and Father Night turned back to Elise.
“My office,” he said. “Now.”
Elise used to be a traveling exorcist. In many ways, Father Night had been her church-ordained counterpart. But while her nomadic ways had given her a habit of keeping no personal possessions, the priest had many keepsakes from his wandering youth. They decorated his office like an athlete might decorate his study with trophies: the horn of a chisav in a glass case, a basket gifted to him by the Washoe tribe on the bookshelf, and even the relic that had caused the haunting in the Cascades.
She picked up the relic with a faint smile. It was a bundle of twigs wrapped with twine, which had petrified into something resembling bone. Hard to believe that it could have harbored such an angry spirit. It felt powerless now.
“Don’t touch that,” Father Night said.
“Why? Worried about the spirit coming back?”
“No. I just don’t want you interfering with my personal effects.”
“Do I need to remind you who exorcised this thing?” Elise asked, fingering a gouge in the sticks. In the heat of the exorcism ritual, she had almost chopped the bundle in half. Her ears had been ringing from the explosion for weeks.
“Officially speaking, as far as the church is aware, I did the exorcism,” Father Night said. “And I went back to recover it, not you. Please.”
Elise set it back on his shelf.
Father Night’s windows were stained glass, too; they depicted stories from the Old Testament, like the great flood, Moses, and—much to Elise’s irritation—the Tree from Eden. The window behind his desk showed only a glossy red apple dangling from a leafy branch.
“How did you end up here?” she asked, edging around a beam of colored sunlight to perch on the edge of his desk. She meant Northgate in general, not the church in specific, although the building was definitely impressive. His office had been built into the bottom of the tower. An open spiral staircase led to the bell, presumably, but she couldn’t see it from the floor.
“I could ask the same of you,” he said.
“I’m here to investigate the murders.”
Father Night tensed, nostrils flaring. “The animal attacks?”
“Some people believe it’s a serial killer.
” She lifted a hand to prevent him from making further protests. “It’s probably a werewolf, not demonic. It’s not in your wheelhouse. I’ll be gone again as soon as the threat is neutralized.”
“A werewolf?” he said. “Lord in Heaven.”
Annoyance prickled in her belly. “I take it you don’t have any information that could help me.”
He sank into his desk chair. “All of the funerals have been here. I have held the grieving families in my arms. Beyond that, I only know what information the police have released on the news.”
“Were all of the victims members of your church?”
“Yes. Everyone who lives in Northgate attends.”
“Everyone?” She lifted her eyebrows. You couldn’t throw a dagger in Las Vegas without hitting someone that worked at a casino, but finding regular churchgoers was like panning for gold in the sewer.
“These are good, God-fearing people,” Father Night said. “None of them deserve to die.”
“Even bad people don’t deserve to get eaten by werewolves, Father. It’s a hell of a way to go.” Elise knew that from personal experience—she had been mortally wounded by a werewolf attack when she was eight. Fortunately, witches had healed her, and she was immune to the werewolf curse. She walked away from the experience with nothing but unpleasant memories.
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
The last time that Elise had met Father Night, he had threatened to have her excommunicated—an act that would have made it impossible for her to exorcise an entire class of demons. This new, helpful Father Night was refreshing. Guess all it took for him to stop being an obstructionist asshole was threatening his flock.
“You should interview the families,” she said. “See if they know anything.”
“Out of the question.”
So much for helpful.
“What if they’ve seen something crucial?” Elise asked. “What if someone has the information I need to save Lucinde Ramirez?”
He frowned. “Who?”
Elise’s heart skipped a beat. There wasn’t even a spark of recognition in his eyes—which meant no Lucinde Ramirez had been attending his church.
She didn’t try to elaborate. “The families may be willing to tell you things that they won’t tell the sheriff’s department—things that they think other people won’t believe. It could save lives.”
