22. Deacon #3
She glances over her shoulder. “Weren’t you?”
The room tightens around the question.
“That goes without saying.”
“Fifteen years ago, I gave you an order.”
My pulse stays steady through sheer force of will.
“Why are we doing this? I just rehashed everything—”
“Humor me and repeat that order.”
“Why?”
Her expression barely changes, but the temperature in the room does.
She leaves the decanter and walks toward me. No hurry. No anger. Just certainty. When she stops in front of me, she is close enough that I can see the fine lines at the corners of her mouth, the pearl sheen of her earrings, the absolute absence of doubt in her eyes.
“Repeat. It.”
I hold her stare for two seconds longer than I should. Then I lower my eyes. Not far. But enough. She sees the concession and accepts it.
“Kill her,” I say.
“Who?”
“The younger girl.”
“Her name, Deacon.”
I taste blood where I bite the inside of my cheek.
“Reva Leigh Hart.” I force myself to think of her as white ink on paper, not the Reva I know now.
Isabel—no, Mother Superior—smiles, a small, devastating, knowing smile.
“There. It is good to remember the shape of unfinished work.”
I lift my gaze back to hers, and when I speak it’s through dry lips. “Reva Hart was declared dead.”
“By police who wanted a solved tragedy. By men who believed sheets over bodies meant the room was counted. By people who see what they are told to see.” She reaches up and straightens my lapel, then pats it, as if I am a boy she is sending to church. “You and I know better.”
Her touch lasts one second too long, but I don’t move away. Moving away reveals too much.
She drops her hand.
“You kept a story quiet,” she says. “That was either disloyalty or vanity. I haven’t decided which.”
“You think I knew she lived.”
“I think you know many things you do not report.”
“Then you trained me well.”
“You are still valuable when you remember that training.”
The words are praise. They are also a hook.
She has not cut me loose. That is the point. She wants me aware of the string, aware that it still exists, aware that she can tighten it whenever she chooses.
I let my shoulders settle. Soldier. Asset. Trusted knife.
Not protector.
Not traitor.
Not yet, anyway.
She walks past me toward the foyer, and I follow because that’s what she expects.
At the archway, she stops and looks up the stairs. Delia is not visible, but the house holds her like a secret kept in an upstairs room.
“Delia will remain home until she remembers how to behave. She is a Rosario, and it’s time she recalled that.”
“She had reason.”
Isabel’s chin lifts. “There are no reasons, only lessons.”
“She may not be cold enough for this.”
“No.” Isabel’s mouth flattens. “We’ll have to work on that.”
I don’t like the sound of that.
“Don’t punish her for being shocked.”
She turns her head toward me, tilted in warning.
I bow mine by a fraction. “I only mean she’s more useful steady.”
That’s the language she accepts. Not mercy. Utility.
Isabel studies me, then looks back up the stairs. “Perhaps.”
The front door waits beyond us, tall and dark and carved with old saints who have watched worse men than me pretend they are righteous.
“I assume you want me to handle the…complication,” I say.
“You assume correctly. She walked into my city wearing my dead business on her face.”
“She won’t leave quietly,” I say.
“I would be disappointed if she did.” Isabel turns toward me fully. “But then…she won’t be leaving at all…will she?”
My fingers curl once at my side, and her eyes drop to the movement. I relax my hand but it’s too late.
“It’s late, and you’re tired,” she says. “Go home and consider the best way to clean up this mess.”
I nod once. Quiet. Obediently shaped. “Yes, Mother Superior.”
The door opens by someone on the other side before I touch the knob, and the night air comes in, warm and wet. I step outside.
Behind me, Mother Superior says, “Do not confuse old affection with current protection, Deacon.”
I pause, but only for a second. Then I continue down the steps.
The gates open when my car reaches them. They always do. The house recedes in the rearview mirror, bright and elegant and rotten through every brick and beam.
I keep both hands on the wheel.
Ruben.
Chicago.
Delia, wet and shaking.
Reva’s name in Mother Superior’s mouth.
She knows enough to be dangerous. Maybe not all of it. Maybe not the exact moment I chose a child behind a closet door over the order I had been given.
But she knows a ghost is breathing.
She knows the ghost has walked back into New Orleans.
And she has reminded me, with every soft word and every polished smile, that unfinished work does not remain unfinished forever.
Nash is right. I have to get this under control. Fast. Whatever lines I drew before were insufficient.
I drive back toward Blackwood House with whiskey in my blood, chlorine drying on my clothes, and Reva’s hurt eyes fixed behind my ribs.
The thing is…if Mother Superior wants my little ghost buried again, she will have to go through me first.
This time, I will not be quiet about it.