Chapter 16
Sixteen
Mercy
Half an hour later, I’m sitting at the long table in the archive’s boardroom.
All, except Jasmine, are here. Exhaustion grinds the back of my eyelids, and I blink, trying to wake the fuck up.
Raven sits back in her chair, boots resting on the corner of the table, picking her nails with a dagger, eyes on the door.
An empty seat separates her and Hannah, who sits frog-legged on her chair.
Beside her, at her usual spot at the head of the table, the Rev rubs her eyes beneath her spectacles.
“I swear I heard Jasmine leave her room,” I say. “She knows she has to debrief, right?”
“Of course,” Hannah grumbles, cracking her neck.
Tawny yawns. “Maybe she went back to sleep.”
“Not good enough,” I counter. “Even Thea is here.”
Stitched and bandaged, she should be in the infirmary resting, but with Wesley locked away, she refused a general anesthetic for the surgery. She wants to stay alert. Even now, she’s casting nervous glances at the door, probably wondering if Jasmine’s going after Wes to finish the job.
Fortunately, none of Thea’s major internal organs were damaged by the knife, but she won’t be going on field missions anytime soon. She’s the only person in the world the archangel’s healing staff won’t work on, so it could be months before she’s back to fighting shape.
The recklessness Jasmine showed is unforgivable. Sinners do not lose their cool like that. We spend years training to remove emotion from battle situations.
Leila has the Helwing gun resting on the table before her, her finger tapping one of the True Nails sticking in the barrel.
The gun’s divine properties only work on demons—as far as we know—yet she sits close to Thea, who’s holding Raphael’s staff like a crutch.
This is a show of force, no doubt, or perhaps righteousness, and it’s entirely for Jasmine’s benefit.
Righteousness. The word tastes bitter. Do we even know what that means anymore?
“For fuck’s sake,” I mumble, sliding my chair out to stand. “I’ll find her.”
But the instant I’m up, Jinx’s frilly ears fan out toward the open door.
A low, vibrating growl rattles in her chest. Two seconds later, Jasmine crests the staircase landing and strolls across the archives floor toward us as if she’s arriving for Sunday brunch.
Hair down and flowing, she’s clean and wearing satin, slinky pajamas, and—wait, they look familiar.
Thea winces and puts her hand on Jinx’s head when the growling escalates. “Shh.”
“About fucking time,” Raven snarls, dropping her boots to the floor.
“I had a lot of blood to wash off.” Jasmine ignores me and heads toward the vacant seat, where Hannah pulls out a seat beside her.
She sits down with a huff so big it scatters papers.
“I get it, the garden is compromised, but can’t the magpies pick up groceries from the local store? Do we all have to all starve?”
“The nuns aren’t our slaves. You’re more than welcome to make the trip to the store yourself.
Tawny does.” I smile sweetly, then gesture at Tawny, who is now suddenly awake and jumping up to retrieve a tray of mugs from the snack bar—each topped with a snarl of marshmallow that’s more foam than sugar.
“But as she can attest, even the local stores are affected by the taste issue.”
“Food tasted fine in Spain.”
Jasmine scowls at me and scratches the back of her neck. Her elbow gets in Hannah’s face, who then slaps her hand away like a mother.
Tawny starts at the end of the table near the door and hands a mug to Thea. “For your blood loss. With extra marshmallows, as you like.”
Thea raises the mug, murmurs thanks, but doesn’t really look at her. She’s too busy eyeing off Jasmine. Leila is next on Tawny’s list, but the gun is in the way. Leila’s also too busy glaring daggers at Jasmine, so Tawny just dumps the drink on the end of the table and moves on.
When Raven’s turn comes, she grabs the cup before Tawny even sets it down and offers a rare smile of gratitude. Hannah accepts hers without a word but doesn’t drink, instead pushing the mug toward The Rev. By the time Tawny gets to my side, her knuckles are white on the tray, jaw a mess of tension.
“Thanks, doll face.” I keep my tone deliberately bright. “You’re the best.”
Tawny offers another mug to Jasmine. “Here you go. With—”
“I don’t want your sugar bombs,” Jaz snaps, shooing her away.
Tawny jumps back to avoid the mug being hit. Cocoa sloshes over the rim of the mug and drips down her fingers, hot and sticky. Normally, she would apologize, laugh it off, maybe lick the sugar, and declare it “gross but worth it.” Instead, she stares at her fingers.
“It took me ages to find marshmallows that haven’t lost their taste,” she murmurs. Tawny, the heart of our team, wipes her hand on her sleeve in a slow, mechanical way and then sits without another word.
We all poke fun at Tawny’s obsession with food, but it’s lighthearted. She knows it, just as I know when they make fun of me for my hypersexuality, they’re not calling me a slut. Not the way Jaz almost did.
I level my best boss-lady stare at Jasmine. “Apologize to your sister.”
“You’re not my mom,” Jaz fires back.
Jinx rises on Thea’s lap, frilly hackles up, scales catching the soft glow of the healing staff.
“If your pet bites me again,” Hannah warns, “I’m killing it.”
Thea gasps. “Don’t you dare—”
Jinx launches across the table, tiny body arrow-straight at Jasmine … or is it, Hannah?
Jasmine’s fingers curl, and she slowly rises. Is she going to punch Jinx?
Right. That’s enough.
I meet Raven’s dark gaze across the table, and then we move in sync. It all happens in seconds. Raven’s behind Jasmine in a blur, yanking her ponytail down and forcing her into the chair. Her dagger flips once, and the point kisses the skin near Jasmine’s carotid.
“Jinx.” I whistle, shrill and sharp. “Come here.”
The little demon diverts and dashes toward me, leaping deftly over mugs and into my arms. I gather the scaly, warm body and hold tight. When she’s facing Jasmine again, Jinx lets out a strangled, warning growl that says, I’m watching you.
My skin prickles as I meet the eyes of the original four Sinners—Leila, Thea, Tawny, and Raven. Jasmine is a wild card. She was never this volatile before Spain. Lethal, private, and opinionated, yes. But most of us are. This feels off.
The Rev takes a calming sip of her hot cocoa, glances at Raven’s dagger, and says, “Perfect technique, as usual, Raven. Perhaps you might hold it a little longer.” She shifts her attention to Jasmine. “We wouldn’t want another accident tonight.”
I’ve always loved the Rev’s no-nonsense bullshit detector.
“Oh, no chance of that,” Raven drawls, twirling the blade. “I only slip intentionally.”
“This is … I can’t believe…” Flames virtually erupt on Jasmine’s cheeks. “Can you believe this, Hannah? What a welcoming party.”
Hannah simply stares at her.
“We don’t have all night, Jaz.” I cross to Thea and deposit Jinx in her lap. “I still have to find alternate sleeping arrangements.”
I let the words hang, evaluating her reaction as I return to my seat. Jasmine bristles, and her gaze slides to the Rev, looking for backup, but doesn’t get it.
“Start from the beginning, Jaz,” I add, voice flat. “And don’t leave out the parts that matter. Like, what the fuck is in that sack?”
We could get Hannah’s take first, but she seems the calmer one here. She was also clean upon arrival, which likely means she was too late to do anything to help Jasmine survive whatever went on at the Spain chapter. It’s best to get Jasmine’s raw, unfiltered story and to fact-check it later.
I gesture to Raven to stand down. She returns to her seat beside Jasmine but leaves her dagger resting on the table in her hand. Jasmine squares her shoulders and takes a single, shaky breath.
“I was at the Spain chapter, as you know.” Jasmine brushes her hair from her eyes. “Things were tense but under control. A couple of weeks ago, we received an anonymous tip to secure all relics—”
“That anonymous tip was from Wesley,” Thea snaps.
Jasmine ignores her and continues. “So, we cataloged the relics and prepped them for extraction. Nothing new. Just protocol.” She swallows.
“But then, a few days ago, we were attacked. Masked men, tactical gear, normal-looking mercenaries until we heard them scream at us in Latin and Italian: heretics, traitors, blasphemers. The Team Saint that was supposedly on our side conveniently disappeared. The soldiers went for the archives first. Wanted Mary’s gospel and any evidence supporting our cause. Didn’t care what got in their way.”
Her voice grows louder, meaner.
“I tried to get the girls out through the secret passage, but one of them—the Team Saint exorcist—found us. He used a … thing. A relic, maybe. It drained the nun with me so fast she hit the ground before she could scream.”
That explains the girls’ reluctance about Cisco. Jasmine’s fists are clenched so tightly that she shakes.
“They executed the Sinners who tried to fight. The nuns they took for questioning. I never saw them again. And the entire time, they kept shouting about purging evil. They didn’t care who they hurt. It was a massacre.”
Now she’s sweating. Literal beads form along her hairline. She scans the table, dares us to argue, but nobody does. Raven’s eyes slit. Thea sits up, even though it clearly hurts. Hannah’s eyes grow stark as they lock with Jasmine, who averts her gaze and fidgets beneath the table.
Her voice goes flat. “We hid out among corpses until maggots crawled out and hatched into flies. The only evil I saw wore a collar, so you’ll have to excuse me if I was a little jumpy when I arrived and saw you cozying up with a Team Saint.”
“Jesus,” Leila mutters, her own lips pale. “They really killed everyone?”
“It was a blood bath.” Hannah nods. “By the time I got there, it was over.”
Jasmine points her finger at me, at the Rev, at every Sinner at the table.
“You’re being played,” she declares. “The Vatican is our real enemy, not demons. We hardly saw any evidence of them out there. Don’t get distracted by fairy tales. If you trust those Saints, you’re as good as dead.”
I’m not buying it. Not all of it, anyway.
Something still feels off about the timeline.
If flies laid eggs in the corpses, it would take a day or two to hatch into larvae, and then another three days before they turned into flies.
That would mean the attack happened days, if not a week, before Hannah arrived.
Jasmine might have been covered in blood and gore, but it wasn’t a week old.
Unless the Rev sent Hannah a few days earlier than what she told me the other night, Jasmine’s story has holes in it.
“You came back to us changed, Jaz,” I remark. “You kicked me out of my room, and now you’re wearing my clothes. The young girls refuse to share a room with you. What really happened over there? What aren’t you saying?”
For a heartbeat, nothing happens. Antagonizing her like this might be cruel, but it’s smart.
The truth comes out when you’re pushed to the limit, and we have an apocalypse to fight.
Claiming demons aren’t out there is hogwash.
Jasmine’s going to crack one way or another.
At least if she breaks with us all around her, we can pick up her pieces together.
If I ever find myself in a similar position, that’s what I’d want—to be around my sisters as I fall apart.
Jasmine starts to shake and breathe heavily through her nose.
“I did what I had to do!” she snaps and pounds her chest with a fist. “I got us out. That’s all that matters. I’m not a traitor. I brought the proof.” She gestures to the sack. “I sent the prophecy. Without me, none of you would have those relics. Those three girls would be dead. Like the rest.”
She’s not wrong. I turn to Hannah. “Does her story align with what you saw during the extraction?”
Jasmine jerks to her feet, chair screeching. “I told you—they were the monsters. Not us, not demons.” She stumbles back. “Can’t you feel it? They’re coming. They never stopped coming.”
Oh-kay…
A throat-crushing, blood-draining silence fills the room.
Jasmine’s standing now, hair pasted to her face with sweat, hands clenched so tight her nails have drawn blood.
“Sit down,” I say, cool as ice.
She hovers, twitching, then slowly sinks.
“I did what I had to,” she repeats, softer now, brittle. “I got us out.”
“You done?” Hannah drawls. “Can I speak, Your Majesty?”
Jasmine bares her teeth, but Hannah barely blinks.
“What she says checks out,” she says. “By the time I arrived, it was over. There were signs of battle, nothing demonic. Blood everywhere.” She pins me with that clear senator’s gaze. “No signs of life except for Jaz … and the girls.”
“And the flies,” Jasmine points out.
Hannah intones, “Yes.”
No one, apart from the children, can corroborate Jasmine’s story.
Thea and Leila share a look over the rim of their mugs. Raven presses her fingers to her temples and shudders as if she’s just walked through a spiderweb. Even the Rev’s eyes narrow, and the corners of her mouth droop.
“So,” she says, “we still don’t know who the real enemy is.”
Her verdict echoes mine.
Jasmine stands again, chair toppling. “You can’t trust them.
You can’t trust any of them!” She’s gone from fever to full mania, voice pitched high, eyes rolling to me, to the Rev, to the open door.
“You heard what they did in Spain. They’ll do it here.
That priest is not what he seems. None of them are. ”
I lock eyes with the Reverend Mother, and she returns a small, subtle nod. I agree. We won’t get anywhere else with this tonight. Jasmine needs to rest.
I lower my volume. “We’ll dig deeper, Jaz, don’t worry. But for now, no one leaves the abbey alone. Eyes on the perimeter and each other. Tomorrow, we interrogate every Saint. We find out what they know, and who they’re really working for.”
In the meantime, I’ll have a more thorough look through Cisco’s phone.