Chapter 1
One
Mercy
The bathroom is fogged up when I step out of the shower at midday. We were up at eight, but spent the next few hours planning for Rome despite Cisco’s insistence that we take a few days. The team is only too eager to get us out of the abbey.
I don’t blame them.
Jasmine is dead. Hannah is missing. Leila and Thea tried to kill Cisco with their relics. And I lied–I kept secrets from them after spending days fuming over how they’d done the same to me.
After Jaz died and Cisco retreated to the church, we were all a little terrified and fractious.
We didn’t know what happened, and Hannah disappeared.
We talked it over in the archives to try to understand.
Wesley, Zeke, and Dom admitted they knew that Cisco’s evil-sensing gift had another level to it, but honestly thought it was a story the Vatican used to keep people afraid.
They’d never seen it in action, and Cisco never spoke about it.
Two things are clear. Through the process of elimination, we’ve ruled out that he’s a demon, and for the most part, he’s in control.
The second thing is that each of us knew Cisco had been struggling with something.
None of us bothered to ask if he was okay.
We pushed that nagging feeling into a little corner of our minds and hoped it would disappear.
That’s how Sinners survive—we tuck the painful parts of our souls into dark corners and pretend they don’t exist. Cisco, though, dedicated a decade to helping others find the courage to shine a light into those corners. He tried to help me do the same.
As I towel off my hair, I close my eyes and see flashes of last night.
Shadows streamed from Cisco’s body, latched onto Jasmine, and then drained the life from her eyes.
Before that, I watched the priest who’d just tended my wounds with compassion snap and lose control of his violence.
One second, he was a silent bystander as Jaz strangled me.
Next, he was brutally bashing her skull against the wall and saying things like,
You think you can feast here? In my domain? On my Mercy?
Unhinged doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Now he’s stewing in a pool of his misery, refusing to talk about it, and it’s all my fault.
If my head hadn’t been so far up my ass, I would have seen the signs. I wouldn’t have chased Jasmine in a jealous rage after seeing her in my robe and him zipping his trousers over a clear erection.
I slam my palms on the sink and turn to dress in my travel disguise. Underwear first, then the cross-shoulder back holster for the sword.
Wesley inscribed it with a cloaking spell to avoid security metal detectors during travel.
I slide it on and buckle it beneath my ribs.
When the long, leather sheath settles between my shoulder blades, a tingle of power thrums into my spine.
I flex my arms, testing the movement. It’s not great, but the blade isn’t long.
It ends before my waist, meaning I can sit well enough.
The heavy robes, veil, and my hair do a good job of concealing its bulk.
I don the robe, hating every minute. Pretending to be a pious nun goes against every loud instinct in my body, but it’s necessary to access the more secure parts of the Vatican with Cisco.
As I’m slipping on my joggers, something falls out and lands with a tinkle onto the tiles. My chain cilices. I forgot that I went to the church this morning and pulled them out of Cisco’s trash.
My hand shakes picking them up. I should put them on or at least take them with me. Even with the ribbons cut, I’m sure I can find a way to fasten them onto my thighs . . . move them to a different position, so I don’t exacerbate the existing wounds.
A normal person wouldn’t have thought about fucking the monster all morning, but I did. It’s a miracle I made it to morning without Cisco realizing, or forcing myself on the poor guy. He hardly slept a wink as it was.
I know you think this helps, but in the long run, it doesn’t.
Before my brain catches up to my body, I’m at the toilet in two steps, dropping the cilices into the bowl. I press the flush, water erupts from the cistern, and the cilices are sucked down the drain.
I stare at the twirling blue ribbon and silver chains, and for a moment, I’m not here. I’m in the past, when my father was still alive, and I was in another bathroom, watching blue and white ice cream flush away.
It was summer at the country club, and the air conditioning had surrendered hours ago.
It felt like even the tables sweated through their white linen and the air smelled like sour perfume.
Daddy sat with his tie loosened a careful half-inch, going over the same folded papers he’d been holding all afternoon.
Mom swept the room, networking like a shark and keeping an eye out for important people we were meeting who would make everything better.
I was nine and didn’t care about any of it. The leather booth seat stuck to my skin, and the stupid dress I had on was too small. I’d already started puberty, but we couldn’t afford to keep up with my growth. I had my head on Daddy’s lap, a crayon in one fist, and an ice cream in the other.
Two violations of my mom’s golden rule already.
No food, no mess, and no inappropriate physical contact in public, Joan. We are not animals.
He let me anyway. While I scribbled and licked my ice cream, and he read his papers, he idly twirled a lock of my hair.
God, I still remember the feel of his hand in my hair, the way he smiled down at me, eyes crinkling.
Never once did he try to hurry me up, even though he’d bought the ice cream without my mother knowing.
And then Mom came back with her smile frozen in place, and her eyes doing something entirely different.
“Joan,” she hissed, “you’re too old for that.”
Daddy’s hand tensed in my hair. “For Heaven’s sake, Ava, she’s nine.”
“She’s a nine-year-old already bursting out of every dress I buy her.”
My dress was too small because she wouldn’t let me buy the sunflower dress I wanted. She said it was too gaudy, whatever that meant. It never made sense because the next day she went out and bought her own sunflower-print dress.
“Let the girl eat an ice cream for once.”
“Hi, Bob! Kids grow up so fast, don’t they?” Mom shook off her frozen smile and waved. Two seconds later, she stooped between us and whispered loud enough that everyone heard, “People are looking, George. You look utterly perverse with her head down there, clutching that sticky thing.”
My father’s thighs went rigid under my head.
Something ugly and sad twisted his face, and then he suddenly stood up.
Frantic. Horrified like I’d caught fire, I rolled off beneath the table and hit the carpet.
My ice cream cone landed a second later.
By the time I scooped it up and crawled out, sticky-fingered and red-eyed, it was worse than I realized.
The important men had arrived, and Daddy was already reaching out to shake their hands, smile screwed on, oblivious to the ice cream stain on his groin.
Gasps. Choking sounds. One of the men looked at me with a smirk.
My mother grabbed my wrist before I could stand.
Ice cream ran down to my elbow as she marched me to the bathroom.
She didn’t say a word until the door swung shut.
There was hardly any left, but she made me watch it flush down the toilet while she told me what I was, what I did to men, and what I’d keep doing if someone didn’t teach me better.
A part of me always knew that bitch had a role in my father’s death, but I never realized how much until now. When the business deal failed, she told everyone at church I distracted Daddy on purpose because I was jealous his attention was elsewhere.
My vision blurs.
Now is not the time to lose it. I just need to get through this trip to Rome, then I can fall apart.
I face my reflection, fix my wimple and veil, then stretch my lips into a beauty queen smile. I walk out of there with my head held high.