Chapter Thirty-Four
Two days later…
“St. Jude’s,” Sterling says randomly. “It’s an abandoned chapel out past the county line thirty-two. We need to go.” He apparently is choosing violence over coffee this morning.
I lower my mug and squint at him. “Did you just skip good morning and go straight to, ’ Let’s take a fucking field trip to a horror movie set ?”
“Morning.” His mouth twitches. “And yeah. St. Jude’s.”
“Explain,” I say, taking another sip of caffeine. I’m apparently going to need it today. “Slowly. I haven’t had enough caffeine for cryptic church talk.”
Sterling leans back against the counter like we’re discussing the weather and not whatever trauma he’s about to unload. “It’s an old chapel my family owns,” he says nonchalantly. “ A Wraith property way out in the sticks.”
I blink, slowly, stunned. “Your family has a church…that feels aggressively off-brand.”
Sterling shrugs one shoulder. “Older generations bought the land, slapped a cross on it, and forgot it existed. My mother used to talk about going there when she needed to think.” He air-quotes the last word. “Which, in hindsight, should’ve been a red flag.”
“So this is one of her little nostalgia spots,” I groan. “Great. Love that for us.”
“Maybe, or maybe she just liked having somewhere no one else paid attention. Either way, I doubt anyone’s touched it since she disappeared.”
“And why do we care now?”
“Because when people like her say they need a place to think, what they really mean is a place to stash things they don’t want anyone to find,” he says. “If she kept anything off the record- notes, photos, a clue where she crawled off to next- it’ll be there.”
“So you’ve been sitting on a secret creepy chapel your mom used to escape to,” I say, “and decided now is the moment to go play in it?”
“I’ve been actively forgetting it existed,” he corrects. “Reyes jogged my memory. Congratulations to her, I guess.”
“In other words,” I say, “you want to take me to your family’s dark little church because it’s the only place she ever mentioned that isn’t in someone else’s files.”
“Pretty much,” he says. “Don’t make it weird.”
“Opening with St. Jude’s already made it weird,” I point out, arching a brow.
Sterling gives me a flat look that doesn’t quite hide the spark in his eyes. “Are you coming or are you scared of some ghosts?”
“Obviously, I’m coming.” I set my mug down. “I’m not letting you walk into a gothic nightmare alone. I’ve seen how that movie ends.”
“Ground rules,” he says. “If I say sit, you sit. If I say we leave, we leave.”
“Oh wow,” I fake a swoon, voice dripping in sarcasm. “Bossy and controlling before nine in the morning. Be still, my heart.”
“You’re barely able to stand for long periods,” he says. “I’m making sure you don’t fall apart out of spite while I’m reading Angelina’s old mail.”
“Spite holds stuff together well,” I argue. “Now grab the keys. We’ve got a church to haunt.”
The road to St. Jude’s is nothing but bad decisions and blind corners.
Trees lean over the cracked asphalt, bare branches knitting together overhead until the truck’s headlights carve a narrow tunnel of skeletal limbs.
Someone should have repaved this stretch a decade ago.
Sterling handles the wheel like it’s a dance—loose and precise.
The truck is almost like an extension of whatever storm is brewing inside him.
One hand rests on the steering wheel, the other on his thigh, fingers drumming out a silent rhythm only he can hear.
It’s been quiet for the last twenty minutes. “You’re brooding,” I finally say.
He doesn’t look over. “You’re projecting.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But your jaw is doing that clench thing. That seems to be either you’re about to do something reckless or thinking about murder.”
Sterling flashes that slow, melting grin, the one that should come with a warning label. “Newsflash,” he drawls, voice low and velvet rough. “I’m always thinking about murder.”
A blush creeps up my neck, heat stinging my cheeks. “Hot. Which one is it now?”
Sterling exhales a deep breath. “Little of both.”
“You ever think about therapy?”
“Nope,” he shakes his head. “I’d rather not be psychoanalyzed…unless you’re going to be my therapist.”
I smile slightly, “Only in your nightmares.”
Sterling takes the next curve a little too fast, gravel spitting from under the tires. My body slides toward him, the seatbelt cutting into the bruise high on my hip. I bite back a hiss. His hand is instantly off his thigh and on my knee, steadying. “You good?”
“Define good,” I say through my teeth. “I’m not dead. And I didn’t bleed on your seats.”
“High bar,” he mutters. He eases off the gas as the trees thin out. “Is this it?” I ask.
The truck crests a small rise, and there it is.
St. Jude’s sits just off the road on a low hill, hunched against a slate-colored sky.
The stone is dark with age and damp, ivy crawling up one side.
The stained glass is shattered in most of the windows, jagged edges of red and blue shards clinging to the frames.
The steeple leans just enough to look drunk.
The sign out front is half-rotted, one chain broken, so it hangs lopsided.
Whatever name was painted on it has been worn down, no longer legible.
“Subtle,” I say. Sterling pulls the truck onto the patch of weed-riddled gravel that might once have been a parking lot.
Killing the engine, silence rushes in. For a second, neither of us moves.
“This is where she used to come?” I ask quietly.
Sterling stares at the crooked cross on the steeple. “Yeah.”
“You sure you want to do this?”
“Nope,” the p popping as he draws it out.
“That’s why we’re doing it now before I talk myself out of it again.
” He gets out of the cab, cold air knifes into the cab, smelling like wet leaves and old stone.
I step down onto uneven gravel, my boots crunching loudly in the quiet.
The impact sends a pulse of warnings up my side.
I steady myself on the door frame until it passes.
Sterling comes around the front of the truck, eyes automatically searching— over me, the tree line, the chapel, then the road.
Nothing moves. “Last chance to call this a terrible idea and go back,” he says.
“I’ve done worse.” I shrug. “Lead the way, Ghost.”
The narrow path up to the chapel is half-eroded, weeds poking through old gravel.
A rusted railing runs along one side, no help at all.
Sterling walks just ahead of me, close enough that if I slip, I’ll hit him before I hit the ground.
At the top of the steps, he pauses. Up close, the doors are worse: heavy wood swollen with dampness, one hanging slightly ajar, dark splinters, and old graffiti scarring the surface.
Somebody carved a heart near the bottom and slashed through it.
“You sure raccoons and ghosts are the only things living here?” I murmur.
“If anyone else is inside, they picked the wrong squat,” he says. “Stay behind me.”
“Again, with the being bossy,” I whisper, but I do it anyway. He shoulders the door. It groans like something dying and swings inward.
The inside smells like mold and dust. Light spills through the broken windows in fracturing beams, painting the pews in spots of color.
The altar is a cracked slab draped in a filthy, half-rotted cloth.
A spray-painted pentagram where a cross once sat.
I step in after him. My boots echo on the cracked flooring.
There's a heaviness like we are walking into the ribs of something dead. Sterling’s eyes move slowly over everything.
The graffiti, the missing pews, the broken hymnals scattered on the floor.
Whatever nostalgia he might have had is gone. “Basement?” I ask.
Sterling nods toward a side door near the back of the altar. “The stairs are down there.”
The side door sticks; after a few kicks, it jerks open. A narrow staircase disappears into the dark. Dust motes hang in the beam of Sterling’s flashlight, thick and slow. “Watch your step,” he says.
“Watch yours,” I shoot back, my hand still brushing the wall for balance as we go down.
Each step is a muted ache through my stomach.
The basement ceiling is low enough that he has to duck.
A few bare bulbs hang from cords, but none of them turn on when he flips the switch.
Sterling sweeps the flashlight around. Shelves sag under the weight of boxes and old supplies.
There’s a metal desk against one wall, a filing cabinet, and a narrow cot with a stained mattress. “Cozy.”
“This is where she used to sit,” he says out loud, more to himself than to me.
I watch him for a second. His face in the flashlight beam looks harder here, carved in sharper angles. “You okay?” Regardless of who our parents are or were, they were still our parents. Some sins never wash off, and we carry that love and hatred with us for years.
“No idea,” Sterling answers honestly, a storm raging behind his words.
“What are we looking for?”
“Anything she wouldn’t want others seeing—paper, photos, a ledger. She once told me: Never leave your secrets where people can find them.”
We split up without really talking about it.
Sterling takes the shelves, immediately starting to pry open boxes as I head for the desk.
A thin layer of dust covers the top of the desk.
Choosing to go with the drawers first, the first one opens with a complaint—some pens, a dried-out bottle of white-out, a half-empty pack of cigarettes.
I slam the drawer shut and move to the next.
A folder with a list of names lies there; most of them are so water-damaged they’re barely legible.
Nothing jumps out as useful yet. “Find anything?” Sterling calls quietly.
“Just proof that your family fucking sucks at organization,” I say. “What about you?”