24. Malachi
MALACHI
I sit in the big, black, leather chair in the corner of my room and strum my guitar, gently humming to myself.
My fingers are calloused from playing. I’m mentally composing a song about a white-haired girl running wild through the woods, and the anguish of the man who is chasing her, though deep down he knows she’ll never be his.
She’s wild, like the trees and the wind, and cannot be owned.
It’s still early. I haven’t bothered with breakfast yet, content to drink coffee and spend time lost in my own space.
I have classes later, but I’m not sure I’ll bother attending.
I’m not focused enough to concentrate. All I keep thinking about is the girl who kissed me in the bar then ran away from me like I was the Devil incarnate.
Maybe I am.
I don’t need to question why she ran. After she’d left, I’d checked the water tower and discovered the door to our altar room slightly ajar.
I’d kicked myself. I should have shown her exactly where the bathroom was instead of giving her a vague direction.
The room was clearly what scared her off, and how can I blame her?
It does look like we’re into some dark and freaky shit.
I don’t know the full story of her background, but I know enough to understand this would have frightened her away.
It was stupid of me to even invite her back to the water tower.
What had I been thinking? I could have asked her to come back to my room.
Maybe I’d suggested the water tower because I’d told myself she’d have said no to coming to my room, and perhaps the possibility of Cain also being at the water tower would have made it more likely for her to agree?
Or perhaps I’d just been trying to impress her?
I can’t even speak to the other Preachers about it because I know they won’t be happy. Roman will say I’m breaking my vows of celibacy, even though it was only a kiss, and Cain will knock me out for kissing his childhood best friend.
A knock comes at my door, and I put down my guitar and go to answer it.
It’s as though my thoughts have conjured them. Ophelia and Cain are standing there, looking at me expectantly.
“What are you two doing here?” I ask with a frown.
Cain doesn’t wait to be invited in. He muscles his way into my room, and Ophelia follows, her beautiful hair falling around her face and cascading over her shoulders.
Why are they together so early in the day?
Could Cain have spent last night with Ophelia?
I discover I hate the thought. Why him and not me?
Of course, they have history, but I’d genuinely believed Ophelia and I had a connection.
Ophelia lightly closes the door behind them.
“We need to talk to you about something,” she says and glances over at Cain.
He nods in agreement. “We need your help.”
The pair share another look, and I feel weirdly left out. But then I tell myself, they’ve come to me. They’ve included me in whatever this is.
“Do you want to tell him?” Cain asks Ophelia.
She shakes her head. “I’m all talked out. Can you?”
I’m starting to get frustrated. “Tell me what?”
“Sit down.” Cain nods to the leather chair I’ve just vacated. “I’ll tell you what Ophelia has just told me.”
I drop into my chair and lean back, my fingers steepled to my lips. Ophelia takes a seat on the floor at my feet, and there’s something about her position that kickstarts my heart. We both look expectantly at Cain, and he begins to tell Ophelia’s story.
By the time he reaches the end, I don’t know what the fuck to do with myself.
All I can picture is Ophelia as a young girl, snatched from her family and forced to live a lie.
A grown man took a blade to her face because she tried to run away, and now she has to wear that scar for the rest of her life.
I wonder how much of him haunting her is because she must think of what he did every time she looks in the mirror.
If he was here in the room with us right now, I’d tear him to shreds with my bare hands.
“So, what do you think?” Cain asks. “Will you help?”
I turn my attention to Ophelia. “Are you sure it’s what you want—the being involved with magic part, I mean? When you were in the water tower and saw our altar room, you ran.”
She presses her lips together. “I know. I’m sorry.
” I expect she’s going to say it was satanic or something, but instead she surprises me.
“It took me back, in a sense, to being in the commune. There were similar things there in the church—the candles, white of course, not black, and the pictures—and emotionally, even though it wasn’t exactly the same, I felt like I was back there. I panicked.”
“But if we do this for you, it’ll feel the same way. Those same feelings will return. You might regress rather than feel better”
I want her to understand completely what she’s asking.
I don’t want her to freak out and then look at us as though it’s our fault.
She’s vulnerable, I think, but then I shake my head at myself.
She escaped. She got away. Even after a man slashed her face and forced his beliefs onto her for years, she still didn’t break.
Instead, she came here, to be among us reprobates, and still she hasn’t quit.
She’s here, fighting for her future, asking for our help, and it occurs to me that she might be the bravest person I’ve ever met.
Emotion swells inside me.
“I understand,” she says.
I offer her a flash of a smile. “Then I’m in.”
I’ll do anything she asks me to, if it makes her happy.
“There’s one problem,” Cain says.
I already know who he means. “Roman.”
He grimaces. “Yeah, Roman. He’s not happy about Ophelia being here.”
“He warned me away from you,” Ophelia adds.
I give a wry chuckle. “He warned me off you, too. Not that it did much good.”
She smiles at me, and her eyes catch mine. “No, it didn’t.”
Her voice is soft, and my heart does a flip. I hadn’t imagined that connection between us; I knew I hadn’t. I’m sure she feels it, too.
“But Roman is a part of us,” Cain says. “We can’t do this without him.
He might be resistant, but isn’t this what he’s worked all these years for?
To become strong enough to help those who’ve been abused by people with more power than them?
Ophelia is one of us, even if he doesn’t want to accept it.
Just because she’s female doesn’t mean she can’t be a Preacher. ”
Cain’s suggestion that Ophelia should become one of us might be a step too far, especially for Roman, but I understand what he is getting at. It’s our suffering and trauma that brought us together, and, in that respect, she is one of us.
I arch my brow. “And if he says no?”
Cain grits his teeth. “He can’t say no. What’s more important to him? Keeping us together, or getting his own way?”
I’m not sure this is going to go as smoothly as Cain imagines, but I understand his point. We can’t abandon Ophelia when she needs our help. I hope Roman is going to see that. She’s not a threat to us. She can bring us all closer, if only he’ll let her.