Chapter Six
Dust and mildew spores filtered through the pale, diffused light.
A wire-mesh garbage can, a threadbare couch with exposed wiring, and a stained mattress rested beneath a cracked fresco of the Madonna and child.
It was precisely the creepy, haunted environment one might expect after being cursed through a mirror and assaulted by the unseen.
Sickly-sweet nausea stuck in the back of my throat as I fought to compose myself.
Silas claimed we had three days before the angels would come for us. He was wrong.
Silas also claimed we had to leave Nia’s house. As soon as we had, I was attacked. He was wrong.
And now, Silas led us confidently into a church, and I’d dragged the most important people in the world along to face the consequences of my actions.
Domed ceilings, arched windows, centuries-old paintings, and the fractured melding of religion and history blurred together as we walked. I warred with two conflicting truths: I wanted to trust Silas, but the stakes were too high for me to let my guard down.
Dirt and rubble crunched underfoot. We picked our steps carefully past the broken foundation and slumping pews, immersed in the damp cloud of decay, until we reached the stage of what was once St. Lawrence’s Cathedral.
“What is this place?” Kirby asked beneath their breath.
“It’s a church, you heathen.” Nia whispered her reply.
They were too busy glaring to watch where they walked. A piece of cement dislodged under Kirby’s foot, forcing them to stumble into the pulpit with a soft thump. “I know it’s a church. I mean, why the fuck is it like this in the middle of downtown?
“The Chapel of Resurrection is a historical site,” I said.
“It’s hard to pay the mortgage on these big buildings but equally hard to get the permits to tear down a building with landmark status.
” A small puff of dust kicked up around my ass as I plopped onto the top step of the stage.
I planted the box of liquor in the space beside me, and the others dove in, twisting off tops and drinking straight from the bottle.
Azrames flattened his hand, covering the remaining bottles just as Silas reached for one.
“Take a lap,” he said to the angel. “Didn’t you drag us here to flex your angelic protection? Unless you’re fine with what happened in the car?”
The men were poised for a standoff, both itching for a reason to fight.
Silas’s nostrils flared with thinly controlled agitation. He pulled his hand back, holding Az’s gaze all the while. “You’re kidding yourself if you don’t see how dedicated I am to her safety.”
“You said we had three days before the angels attacked,” Azrames said coolly.
“I have three days to pivot and stay in their good graces,” he replied. “They didn’t say anything about how long the rest of you have. I’m here for Marlow, am I not? I’m standing on deconsecrated soil with a demon and the antichrist. My allegiances are clear.”
“Are they?” Azrames shoved his hands into his pockets, shrugging as he said, “Words don’t mean much when your brethren found the single loophole they needed to end her life.”
It was hard for me to categorize the breathless, aching tear that pulled me in two directions.
Gods almighty, I loved Azrames. I trusted him to the ends of the earth and felt so wholly seen and defended by the infernal Patron Saint of Women.
On the other hand, Silas wore raw, strangled pain on his face the way I wore lipstick.
I couldn’t explain the parts of me that were so desperate to defend him, to say he was misunderstood, to advocate for someone who’d been used and tossed aside by Heaven. But was I willing to bet it all?
Nia was three strong pulls into her bottle of Don Julio. Kirby was sucking down a purple, pre-mixed monstrosity. I grabbed the neck of a merlot and tipped it toward Azrames.
“Shall we take communion?”
He tilted his head toward the moth-eaten couch, and I followed him over to the filthy furniture. He had no problem unpacking Nia’s laptop and resuming his searches in the middle of a sanctuary.
“Give me a second,” he said. “As soon as the angel returns, I’ll follow his trail and seal any mirrors in earnest.”
“You don’t trust him?” I asked, knowing the answer.
He continued to tap on the keyboard but didn’t answer me. Perhaps he was sparing us both the oxygen of discussing a moot point.
“Now that the blood’s cleaned away, you smell like sex,” he said without looking up.
“I was dreaming in the car” was all I could spit out. “I almost died.”
I barely saw his disinterested eyes pop up from the silver brim of her computer.
He shrugged, talking as he returned rapidly typing fingers to something on his screen.
“You nearly dying is a pretty standard Tuesday. But while you’re alive, if you’re planning on fucking an angel, now’s the time to do it. ”
I looked at the way the white, hazy light silhouetted the horns peeking through his black tousle of hair. Below the halo, his gray features were difficult to distinguish against the church’s shadowy smears of poorly-lit walls and aisles.
My eyes shot to Silas, who had reemerged from the halls that ran along the perimeter of the sanctuary. He appeared to be oblivious to our conversation, though I couldn’t tell if his disinterest was earnest.
The joke wasn’t funny. I didn’t dignify Azrames with a response. Instead, I turned to my friends.
“What’s everyone doing to stay sane while we wait out the apocalypse in a haunted church?”
Nia looked up from her phone. She lifted the silver rectangle and said, “Researching homeowners’ insurance and seeing if I can get it upgraded to cover acts of God.”
“Smart.”
“And buying new mirrors,” she added.
“Just have Az seal the ones you have now,” I said. “They’ll be safer than new mirrors.”
She rapidly hit a button on her phone. “Delete from cart. Oh, I’m also getting backstage passes to Alessia’s next speaking engagement. It’s tomorrow night. Did you know Az was some kind of hacker?”
My mind filled with flashing computers, short-circuiting cameras, and the slack-jawed dissociative state of a thoroughly punished hotel clerk. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Oh.” Kirby gripped the purple drink with their right hand and fished in their pocket with their left. “Whoever you called has been redialing you. I knew it wasn’t for me, and that you’d sleep off your buzz in a second.”
I took the phone. Whatever alcohol-fueled spell had sent me to sleep it off had apparently spared them. “And you’re both fine? Not tipsy? Not hungover?”
“I helped them out,” Silas said, shrugging a single shoulder.
“You’re good at that, aren’t you,” I clipped.
I’d barely accepted the phone when it began to buzz with Xuan’s number.
An underhanded view of my pixelated chin informed me that she wasn’t just calling.
I looked at the others, about to tell them I’d be back, but Azrames had joined Nia and Kirbs against the dusty pulpit, and whatever they were doing on the computer was too interesting for them to worry about me.
I stepped into the annex just behind the sanctuary, stopping in a pool of outside light before I answered. “Hello?”
“Who the hell are you?”
I blinked rapidly at the shock of lime strands dangling over the camera.
On our first encounter, she’d worn her hair in a frizzy bun.
This time, it was stick-straight and hung just to her shoulders.
Her face was free of makeup, save for the barest of black wings on her outermost corners. I said, “I’m…Marlow. Merit. Both?”
Xuan remained steely. Chaos, children, and the unkempt kitchen were absent as she moved from one room to another. I wasn’t sure where she was going, but she was in a hurry. There was no levity to her question as she stared at me.
“I already gave you my legal name and my pen name. What do you…?”
I sucked in a staccato breath. I’d struggled with the veracity of giving my pen name over my birth name before. I’d had no way of anticipating that she’d find the Pantheon books and be offended by the legal name. I battled for my first word when Xuan took the labor off my shoulders by elaborating.
“Priscilla is already on her way. Apparently, she wasn’t deterred by you summoning us to some haunted-ass serial-killer abandoned church in the middle of the no-go zone.
After I met with my guides, I called her.
She pulled the Ten of Pentacles to confirm that you mean big money.
Yes, yes, you’ll reimburse us, but what the fuck is going on? Exorcism? Come on.”
I could have sworn I heard a mocking laugh wafting from the pews. I had no idea how good Azrames’s ears were, but it wouldn’t shock me if he’d mastered multitasking to eavesdrop.
I focused on Xuan. I didn’t know what to tell her.
I felt like I was in trouble. I hadn’t hidden anything. “I told you money was no object. My books have done well. Name your price.”
“Sorry, we’re miscommunicating. I don’t care who you are. What are you?”
I opened my mouth but was met with dust on my tongue. Everything was too big. It had spiraled too quickly. I had no information that anyone would find satisfying. I didn’t even have a plan for what I’d intended to say upon their arrival. Honestly, I’d expected Az would do it for me.
I shivered in the dark, huddled between collapsing passageways and broken doorframes. It seemed ridiculous to fear the dark, given my allies, but I knew the world was filled with things far scarier than demons.
The angle on the phone screen changed as she fixed her phone into a small holder. A slamming door and the snap of a belt buckle followed.
“Oh, Pris might beat me to your ghost-infested church. Her intuition told her to be a lot more trusting than I am.”
I didn’t even want to be in the so-called ghost-infested church. If I’d had my way, I never would have stepped foot on religious soil again. My lips bunched to the side as I awaited Xuan’s final judgment.