Chapter 2 The Exorcism #3
“They opted not to participate,” Sister Josephine said primly.
“That was an option?” Atticus snapped.
“Can we please stay on task?” Sister Josephine asked.
“As soon as you tell us what it is,” August countered. “Why are we here? Was their Latin incantation incorrect?”
“I—well, actually no.” Both August and Atticus exchanged smug looks, causing Sister Josephine to give an exasperated huff. “But do you not find this at all concerning?”
“What I find concerning is that you dragged all of us here for something that feels like it could have been an email and a few house point deductions. Would you rather the children invoke demons or rebuke them, Sister?”
“Yeah, what he said,” Ty added. “I thought the Catholics were big on this sort of thing.”
“Mr. Mulvaney, Mr. Jones, if you refuse to take this seriously—”
“Then what?” Thomas asked, menacingly. His tone wasn’t raised, but it filled the room anyway.
She gave him a pissy look. “Then we might have to consider expulsion.”
“Then perhaps it’s time I considered buying the school,” Thomas countered. “I feel quite sentimental toward it.”
Ty’s face split into a grin, his arms crossing to mirror Thomas’s as he leaned back in his seat like he was about to watch a Wimbledon match. Cherice elbowed him in the side, but he continued to grin at Sister Josephine like they had a personal beef August wasn’t yet aware of.
The silence that followed was taut, the kind that made even the saints in the paintings look like they were waiting to see who’d break first.
Sister Mary Elizabeth looked utterly confused by this whole exchange, but Sister Josephine leaned back in her seat. “Mr. Mulvaney,” she said evenly, “you can’t simply buy the school because you’re unhappy with how we conduct ourselves. The Sisters’ charter can’t be bought.”
“Then I’ll build another school,” Thomas said mildly, straightening his cufflink. “Bigger, better funded, and far less…encumbered. One that allows for creative…expression. When the donors and parents follow their children through its doors, perhaps you’ll understand what can—and cannot—be bought.”
Ty nodded. “Sign me up, Tommy. I just know Jasmine would do amazing in a Mulvaney-run school.”
Tommy. Nobody but Aiden had ever gotten away with calling Thomas Mulvaney anything but Thomas. Who was this man? Did Aiden and Thomas have…friends? August spared a moment to try to picture Aiden being sociable with anyone outside the family but it just didn’t track. It felt…unnatural.
His father gave Ty a nod of approval, like Jasmine’s acceptance to this nonexistent school was all but guaranteed. The grin that flickered across Ty’s face was the kind of look that said he’d just found his new favorite billionaire.
That seemed to throw the headmistress, who cleared her throat. “Perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves—”
“Perhaps,” Atticus said tightly. “Have you asked our children why they decided to…perform an exorcism?” He said the last part like it physically pained him to shape the words.
“Well, no.”
“I suggest you start with ours,” Lucas said, staring pointedly at the girls’ costumes. “I have a feeling it’s far less complicated than you might imagine.”
“Adelyn. Arabella. Come here,” August said, crooking his finger.
The two girls stood, walking to him, heads down, fingers clasped. “Yes, Daddy?” they chorused in unison, so sweet sugar wouldn’t melt in their mouths.
August fought not to roll his eyes. “Can you please explain why you were…exorcising your friend?”
“He was a demon,” Adi said.
Jasmine nodded hard from the sidelines, like she was prepared to testify in her—and their—defense if compelled by the prosecutor.
“What does that mean?” Lucas asked, voice tense.
“He was a Saja Boy,” Arabella said. “Duh.”
August bit his lip as reality came crashing down on all of them. The Mulvaney children—all children, really—had a new obsession: K-Pop Demon Hunters.
Arabella had dressed as Mira, her pink wig split into two pigtails that fell to her hips.
Adelyn was dressed as Zoey, her dark hair twisted into what Lucas had called space buns.
Jasmine’s participation now made sense as she was dressed as Rumi, her thick hair plaited into a purple braid that fell over one shoulder and rested in her lap.
They were all dressed in the Huntrix group’s white and gold costumes. Jagger was dressed as the three-eyed raven, and Jett was dressed as the derpy blue tiger. The level of detail would have impressed a Comic-Con judge, down to the fake runes drawn on their wrists.
They’d chosen to exorcise their classmate who’d had the misfortune of deciding to dress like a Saja Boy. August absently wondered which one, but quickly shook the thought away.
“And he agreed to let you exorcise him?” Atticus asked, sounding genuinely impressed.
“Yeah, it was the only way Jinu and Rumi could be together.” Well that answered that. “We had to return his soul and expel Gwi-ma. We were gonna do Rumi next to sever her demon side so they could be free,” Ara said, looking deadly serious about the process.
Silence fell again, thick with the kind of collective adult disbelief usually reserved for tax audits and PTA meetings. Even Thomas’s lips twitched, betraying amusement he didn’t bother to hide.
“Don’t y’all just kill demons in the movie?” Ty asked, then snapped his mouth shut like he’d realized he was focusing on the wrong aspect entirely. “I don’t remember there being an exorcism.”
“We’re not allowed to kill people, Mr. Jones,” Ara said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Even if demons technically match the code.”
“That’s a good call,” Ty said, equally amused and conspiratorial.
They all seemed to gloss over her code statement. August sent up a silent prayer to a God he didn’t actually believe in.
“Sister Mary Elizabeth said that K-pop Demon Hunters is just a silly movie—” Adi cut herself off to give the woman in question a look that said just exactly what she thought of her lack of taste.
“—and that real demon hunters are priests, and that real exorcisms have to be sanctioned by the Vatican and can sometimes take months or years to approve,” Adi said.
“I don’t have months,” Jasmine said. “I want to get married while I still have my looks.”
All the adults bit back laughs, nodding encouragingly. Thomas pressed a fist to his mouth, shoulders trembling. Even Sister Josephine’s eye twitched like she was fighting a smile.
“We looked up an exorcism during recess,” Jagger added helpfully.
“You looked up an exorcism online?” Atticus asked, sounding genuinely concerned for the first time. He looked at Jericho. “I thought you had the parental controls on.”
“Of course I do,” Jericho said. “Jagger, where did you look this up?”
“YouTube,” he said.
“Can you show me?” Jericho asked, looking a bit constipated.
Jagger nodded solemnly, digging his phone from his bag and thumbing it open, tapping until he pulled up the video and then handing it to Atticus. The adults all gathered around to watch as they hit play and found…a clip of the show Supernatural.
There was a man in special-effects makeup tied to a chair in the center of a chalk symbol. He was spitting and hissing, his skin sizzling each time the water touched him as Sam Winchester began to speak in Latin.
“This is the Latin you used to exorcise the demon?” August asked, lips twitching.
“We looked at Dad’s The Lesser Key of Solomon text, but that only told us how to summon demons, not expel them.
We tried to find the official church doctrine on exorcism, but it’s surprisingly hard to find,” Arabella said like a thirty-year-old defending her dissertation.
“Even after Jasmine jailbreaked our phones, this was all we could find.”
“Guess that STEM endowment is really working,” Thomas muttered.
“We checked the Supernatural wiki, and it said that they used real incantations from Roman doctrine, so we thought it would be good enough for our game.”
“Game?” Jericho echoed.
Arabella gave him a pitying glance. “Yeah, Uncle Jericho. Demons aren’t real.” Her gaze darted to the sisters. “Sorry. I know you guys think they are, but they’re not. None of this is really real.”
The other kids all nodded sincerely. The conviction of children, unshakable, smug, and utterly damning.
“Perhaps it would be best if the kids stayed home for a few days,” Sister Josephine said tightly.
“You’re suspending second graders for being atheists?” Atticus asked, disdain dripping from every word.
“No, Mr. Mulvaney, I’m suspending them for escaping recess, breaking into the chapel, stealing holy water, and eating two bags of communion wafers,” Sister Josephine shot back.
A beat of silence. Then Ty snorted. Hard. Lucas coughed into his fist to cover a laugh, and Thomas looked one sideways glance away from writing a check for the chapel’s repairs.
When, once more, the parents turned on the children, Jasmine only shrugged. “We were hungry. Huntrix always carb-loads before their kills and their shows.”
“Still,” Thomas said, “suspension seems a bit much.”
“I agree,” Cherice said, sitting up a little straighter, looking at Sister Mary Elizabeth like the two women might once have been rivals themselves. “After all, it was Sister Mary Elizabeth who decided to give them a lesson in actual demon hunting, was it not?”
Not Cherice coming in clutch.
All the parents turned to give Sister Josephine a knowing look.
The older woman sighed, white-knuckling her own tangled fingers.
“Fine. We’ll let it go…again. But this is your final warning.
There is only so much protection a last name can provide,” she said, looking pointedly at Thomas.
“It seems I’m outnumbered. Still, we will be revisiting our costume policy next year. ”
They decided to quit while they were ahead.
The meeting dispersed quickly after that, with Thomas asking if they wanted him to take the kids for a playdate with their cousins.
Both couples refused; they already had plans for the following day before the official Halloween-weekend festivities.
The children were not at all happy about this turn of events but accepted it in lieu of the grounding that was the counter-offer.
Outside, the evening had gone silver-cold, the air sharp with rain and exhaust. The gothic bulk of St. Agnes loomed behind them like it was watching, judgment carved in stone.
August tucked his hand into Lucas’s, the faint scrape of wedding rings the only sound between them as they walked to the car.