Chapter 10
James
I stand with my boots kissing the edge of holy turf, Eddie a dark line two paces to my right, and the church sitting there like a big stone lie. The air on the consecrated side fizzes like a low-voltage fence.
As soon as we fucked her to sleep, we left Prayer at the house with Daddy, who holds the door between wakefulness and dreams.
“Think this’ll work?” Eddie asks.
“We’ll find out,” I murmur, toeing the grass that shocked me earlier. “But if anyone can shove Vincent right into our wee collection plate, it’s her.”
Eddie nods, eyes on the nave like he can see through stone.
We wait. The street’s got that late-night quiet where sound travels for miles. A cicada ratchets up. I can hear Eddie’s breathing, measured, and my own pulse thrums a psalm in my wrists.
Then the air changes.
You ken that feeling when a storm flips the world?
How the leaves show their pale bellies and the wind comes from the wrong direction?
Aye, that. The church’s breath stutters.
The air grows colder. And from inside, carried thin through stone and stained glass, a man screams like he’s just met his god, and it’s not a friendly one.
“That’ll be her,” I say. “My sweet, dangerous Prayer.”
Eddie lifts his chin, his blue eyes bright, and backs away two steps from the consecrated ground. “I’ll take point.”
“Aye, ye do that.” I slap him on the back and fade into the shadows. “I’ll play hide-and-seek.”
The church doors’ latches thunder. The oak slams wide like a psalm book smacked shut.
Vincent spills out, half falling, half running, eyes blown, hair damp with sweat, piss darkening his trouser front like a confession.
He makes it three steps into the night and then jerks to a stop as if yanked on an invisible leash.
He sees Eddie.
Och, the way his face goes white.
“Evening, Vincent,” Eddie calls, voice level as it travels the distance between them. “You were saying something about Red Hands when you shot me? Something about how I wouldn’t believe he murdered your wife?”
Vincent’s mouth opens and takes a moment to remember how words work. “You…you…”
Then muscle memory saves him where sense can’t. His right hand goes jacket, holster, grip. Is he reaching for the same gun he used on Eddie earlier? Does he really think it’ll work this time?
I move on the beat between thought and pull.
Two steps onto consecrated ground. I can handle that much. I move my left hand to his right wrist and pinch the webbing there, my thumb on the tendon. My hip checks his balance, then the world tightens to joints and leverage.
Twist. Pop.
Well, will ye look at that? The gun’s mine.
He swings at me, but his movements are slow and sloppy. I let his fist sail through empty air and then give him a jab to the ribs for his trouble, my knuckles driving into soft meat. The breath wheezes out of him on an “oof.”
Eddie steps in on cue, all precision. He doesn’t even look at the gun I’ve palmed; he just brings out an evidence bag, and I drop it inside. He’s still a detective even with a devil stitched into his shoulder.
“That’s attempted murder on me times two,” he says mildly. “Some would call this a bad habit.”
Vincent gapes, jaw working, eyes flicking past us to the road. Sweat beads on his lip. Up close, he smells worse than he looks.
“You…can’t….” He abandons whatever meaningless words he was about to spout when he sees my shadows creeping up his legs toward his arms.
“Hands,” I say, cheerful like.
He doesn’t listen, so my shadows make him listen. They wrench his hands behind his back with enough force for his joints to pop.
Poetics, aye.
The shadows hum loudly.
“Do ye hear that?” I bend close to his ear. The whisper’s for him and for her, my queen, sleeping across town with winter on her tongue. “That’s the choir warming up. You’re going to sing for us, Vincent. Are you nae excited?”
He snarls something about rights, attorneys, god. That last one makes me laugh.
“God’s done listening to ye. He’s sent you straight to hell.” I grin wickedly. “To us.”
He lunges for the street, definitely not back toward the church. He catches my elbow instead, straight to his temple, with a wee sweet crack like a handle breaking off a teacup.
He goes slack to the pavement, mouth open, eyes rolling back till they show a rim of white. I take his pulse because Eddie will ask and because it pleases me to feel it banging like a trapped sparrow against my fingers.
“Rest easy,” I say. “Prayer still gets the first bite.”
“Let’s go.” Eddie is already scanning the street as he strides toward my van. “We need to move before someone looks outside and sees us.”
“Aye.” I haul Vincent by the collar, deadweight now, his boots thumping the pavement.
We drag him off the holy and into our dark, and the air loses its static. I swear I feel Daddy breathe easier across town, and in that breath is the taste of Sera’s smile.
After I toss Vincent into the back of the van, I lean down next to him. “Don’t sleep too long. Ye owe the queen a hearing.”
With him secured, I start the engine. “Ready?”
Eddie nods, his eyes all blue and shadow and purpose.
“Good. Now comes the reckoning.”