Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Jimmy
The question took me by surprise. I’d prepared for so many possibilities—locked doors, chanting, men with horns and knives, the heat of hell breaking loose under my feet—but I hadn’t prepared to be looked at the way Lucien looked at me, like he was inviting me into a conversation instead of a trap.
Up close, he didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen in the tracts Daddy kept in the church vestibule.
No sulfur on his breath, no forked tongue.
Just dark eyes that caught the light of the candles and held it steady, and a face too calm for a man who, by all rights, ought to have been plotting my soul’s destruction.
My throat worked around an answer that didn’t come.
Behind us, the room had thinned into clusters of joyful noise: the soft clink of glasses, laughter rolling across the high ceiling, the whisper of shoes on old wood.
No screams or flames. No demons raking claws across the floor.
I realized I was staring. He must have seen it too, because a small smile tugged at his mouth, like he’d found something funny and didn’t want to embarrass me by saying so. He tipped his head, a prompt for me to say something, I guessed.
“I—” My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat. “I’m, uh… I’m doing graduate work. On alternative faiths.” The cover story Daddy gave me fit badly in my mouth. “I came tonight to learn more about the Temple of Satan.”
“Of course you did,” he said, and the warmth in it went straight under my skin. He clapped a hand on my shoulder.
I flinched. His palm was warm through the fabric of my shirt, heavy and present, then it was gone a second later.
“I’d love to talk,” he said easily. “Give you the tour. Tell you what we’re about.” He leaned back a fraction, studying me as if I were a question he enjoyed. “Sharing the truth is my favorite part.”
Before I could decide if I’d say yes or if my silence counted as consent, a woman materialized at his elbow—wild red hair, black dress, tattoos climbing her forearms like flowering vines.
Piercings winked in the light when she smiled.
“Lucien,” she said, breathless, “the Charlottesville folks are dying to meet you. Can you say a few words? They drove almost two hours.”
“Sure,” he said. “Sarah—this is Jimmy. He’s researching.”
Sarah turned that bright gaze on me. I felt myself stand up straighter without meaning to. “Welcome, Jimmy.” The way she said it carried no suspicion, only open curiosity. “You picked a good night for a first time.”
My cheeks warmed. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“We’ll be right over there,” she told Lucien, pointing toward a cluster of people in vintage band tees and black jackets. Then, to me, with a softer smile: “If anyone bothers you, find me. I bite back.”
It was meant as a joke, I think. I smiled like I understood it.
“Give me five minutes,” Lucien said to me, already stepping away. “Don’t leave. I’ll come find you.”
“I won’t,” I said, and hated how it sounded—like a promise I hadn’t decided to make.
They moved off together, and the space he’d occupied felt suddenly colder.
I drew in a breath and tasted candle smoke under something sugary and bright that made me think of a fairground at night.
The room had shifted while we talked; the ceremony’s hush had dissolved into the start of a party.
People were hugging in little bursts, heads tipped close, hands flying in animated talk.
Someone dragged a rolling rack against the wall; another person lit a small line of tea candles along the edge of a table.
A disco ball I hadn’t noticed before threw a scatter of fractured light across the ceiling, as if a handful of coins had been tossed up there and stuck.
I stood where I was because I didn’t know where to go. My instinct said to leave now. But that ran up against Daddy’s voice in my head, his voice curling through my thoughts: You’re the Lord’s soldier, son. Soldiers didn’t run. They held the line.
I tried to hold it. I pressed my back lightly against a mirrored column that showed me my reflection doubled—once straight on, once at a slant.
Camera lights at the studio always ironed me into someone better-looking than I was.
This light told the truth: lean, too pale, starched shirt wrinkling at the sleeves, a man who had stayed out of trouble by staying small.
You are here to find evil, I reminded myself.
But where was the evil? The woman nearest me was laughing so hard she wheezed, her friend rubbing circles between her shoulder blades until her breath came back. A cluster of men were arranging trays of food. The room felt kind, and the kindness made me more uneasy than cruelty would have.
Lucien’s laugh carried from across the room—low and easy and immediately answered by the group he’d joined.
He had the kind of presence Daddy had, only without the pushiness.
People leaned toward him like plants to a sunny window.
He looked over the heads of the crowd, and for a heartbeat our eyes caught.
He nodded and smiled at me, and I quickly turned away.
I needed a distraction. I found the nearest poster and pretended to read.
“The Chapel of Reason—Principles of Compassion, Autonomy, Inquiry.”
I mouthed the words to make them real. My thoughts kept slipping their rails, honest and ugly by turns.
Maybe these folks use kindness as a trick, and the Devil saves his claws for later. Then a seed of doubt sprouted in my head: Maybe there is no Devil here at all.
A sound—a short, surprised laugh—snapped my gaze to the right.
Two men stood near a pillar, talking close.
One was older, lean and fine-boned, his hair silver at the temples.
A face that would have fit in one of Daddy’s donor brochures: successful, upright, a man people trusted with money.
The other was younger by twenty years maybe, broad-shouldered, wearing a black T-shirt that had seen better days.
They talked, and then the older man leaned in and pressed his mouth to the younger one’s lips.
The younger man smiled when it ended—one of those shy, private smiles I’d only ever seen pass between parents and their babies in the hallway after church—and rested his forehead briefly against the older man’s like the contact steadied him.
Men didn’t do that where I came from. Not in public, not in private, not anywhere but in the nightmares Daddy preached about.
Heat climbed my neck, hot as shame, and spread across my scalp until my ears rang.
I couldn’t breathe right; every inhale came in wrong, a hiccup instead of a breath.
The column at my back pressed colder and harder, and the air smelled suddenly too sweet.
The entire room seemed to tilt a fraction, and all the faces blurred into a pattern I couldn’t read.
Don’t look at them.
I looked. The older man’s hand settled at the small of the younger man’s back. No one around them stared or pointed or hissed. The moment didn’t cause the ceiling to crack or the floor to open to a stairway leading down to hell.
My stomach flipped. A prayer I didn’t know how to finish started in my head—Lord, Lord, Lord—not a request, just a word to hold on to while the ground shifted.
I had to get out.
I moved without deciding, racing to the stairs. I kept my eyes on the exit sign like it was a star I could follow out of the wilderness. Someone said my name as I hurried away.
At the bottom of the stairs, an old bar stretched out like a shore I could reach. The air down there was cooler, and people streamed past me in threes and fours, laughing, bumping shoulders, saying excuse me when we brushed.
I pushed through the exit, the black glass reflecting my face—drawn, eyes wide open like I’d seen a ghost. Outside, the humid air wrapped around my head, thick and wet. I leaned my shoulder against the bricks and bowed my head. I tried to pray, my voice a hoarse whisper.
“Keep me pure. Keep me safe. Don’t let me fall.”
Behind my closed eyes, the kiss replayed—not the lips, not even the faces, but the quietness of it, the way the room had allowed it.
I drew in a breath, then another, and stared down the slick black of the street, the way the gutter caught the lamplight and turned it into a thin, trembling ribbon. Somewhere inside, Lucien had promised to find me.
“I can’t,” I whispered, then I took off running toward my truck.
* * *
The drive back to the Airbnb felt longer than it should’ve.
My headlights carved tunnels through the dark, but the world beyond them stayed black.
By the time I pulled into the gravel lot beside the rental house, the night had gone still—too still, except for the tick of my cooling engine.
I left the truck running a minute longer, hands resting on the steering wheel.
Nothing bad had happened, not really. No pentagrams drawn in blood, no howling demons, no fire raining from the ceiling. Just people. Kind people, mostly. Ordinary people. And those two men.
I swallowed, my pulse thudding in my ears. They weren’t barbecuing babies, for God’s sake. But the sight had done something to me—tilted something loose.
With a sigh, I climbed out of my truck. The little house stood hunched in the dark, one window glowing weakly yellow, like it didn’t want to wake the neighbors. The place was small—kitchenette, bathroom, a fold-out sofa—but Daddy said it was perfect for “a short mission trip.”
Inside, the air smelled faintly of pine cleaner and something stale. I tossed my keys on the counter, the jingle loud in the quiet. I’d barely sat down when my phone rang.
I hesitated, then swiped to answer. “Hey, Daddy.”
“You all right, son?” His voice came low and serious, that preacher’s cadence that could turn anything—weather reports, dinner plans—into a sermon.
“Sure,” I said, forcing lightness. “All good.”
“How’d it go tonight? What was it like? Describe the evil, son.”
The words froze me. I opened my mouth, then closed it again. What was I supposed to say? That I’d found people lighting candles and talking about compassion? Or that their leader—Lucien—looked me in the eye like he saw me, not through me? That it didn’t feel evil?
“I… uh,” I started, rubbing the back of my neck. “It was different than I expected.”
“Different?” Daddy’s voice sharpened. “How so?”
I exhaled. “They weren’t doing anything bad, Daddy. Just… talking. About kindness mostly. Freedom. I mean, yeah, there were a lot of tattoos, some piercings, but nothing like what the media says. Nobody was worshiping the devil, far as I could tell.”
Silence hummed on the line, dangerous as a fuse burning down. Then Daddy’s voice rose, tight with outrage. “You listen to me, Jimmy. That’s how the serpent works. He makes the apple look sweet! Don’t be fooled by the master trickster himself!”
“I’m not fooled,” I blurted. “It’s just—maybe it’s not what we thought.”
“Not what we thought? Boy, you sound just like them! Satan’s clever. He’ll dress himself in light if it gets him followers.”
“Maybe,” I muttered.
Daddy barreled on. “You’d better find the evil, son. You hear me? The people need to see it. This story could bring the ministry back into the black. God told me plain as day—you’d find the devil in Richmond, oh yes He did. And it’s your job to show him for what he is!”
I pressed my forehead into my palm. “Daddy, I…” The words came before I could stop them. “I think there’s nothing to find. Maybe I should just come on home.”
The line went silent. For a heartbeat, I thought he’d hung up. Then came the roar. “Don’t you dare, boy! You stay in Richmond until you have proof. Proof of sin, proof of corruption. You don’t come home until you bring it!”
“Daddy—”
“Don’t backslide on me now!” His voice cracked like a whip. “God’s watching, Jimmy. Don’t disappoint Him.”
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone slowly, staring at the black screen. My reflection blinked back—tired eyes, a mouth drawn too tight.
With a sigh, I set it on the counter and rubbed both hands down my face. The quiet rushed in again. I unfolded the sofa bed, turned out the light, and sank onto it, shoes still on.
The ceiling was low, the kind that made you feel boxed in. I shut my eyes, listening to my heartbeat settle.
Lucien’s face rose behind my eyelids. The memory of him—calm, amused, alive—sent a strange warmth through me. The most striking man I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t imagine calling him evil.
I rolled onto my side. The scene from earlier replayed again: the two men under the candlelight, leaning in, their lips touching. I waited for the wave of shame to hit, but it didn’t.
Folding my hands, I pressed them to my chest. “Lord,” I whispered, voice shaking, “am I really supposed to be here?”