Saint And Sinners (93 page)

“Alright alright!” Jagger protested, waving his hands around. “Yes, it happened, okay?!
But I
never
would have done anything about it.”

“Exactly, and neither would Saint.”

Lawrence obviously felt somewhat vindicated and Saint would have found the entire
scene amusing had he not been suffering from a severe case of blue balls.

“No, even if she was game, I would not have gone through with it, just like I said.
I’m being totally honest about that. What bothered me was the split second that I
thought about it… I wasn’t sure, ’cause, you know, my mind was kind of messed up.
But as the night unfolded, I saw my outcome, like walking five steps ahead of myself.
No, I would have stayed true to my wife, but that still didn’t cure all the guilt.
It was terrible.” He shook his head as he reflected over the entire ordeal. “It was
like someone said, ‘Let’s fuck with Saint tonight and create a woman almost as beautiful
as Xenia, drop her in front of him, and let her have a good heart, too.’ From that
standpoint, it was horrendous. She was the kind of woman that, had I been single,
I could have possibly pursued, and I rarely run into women that are anywhere near
Xenia’s level. That moment of contemplation lasted less than sixty seconds, but those
sixty seconds will haunt me the rest of my life.”

“Don’t. Let it go,” Jagger spoke up. “You can’t do that to yourself, beat yourself
up about it. You were tempted because you felt rejected by your wife. It’s not like
you had a good thing goin’ at home and went out and messed up. You still were noble,
Saint, and that’s what matters. You fought, you won. No clothes came off. No kisses
were exchanged.”

Lawrence nodded in agreement. Before Saint could respond, Jagger’s eye gleamed with
mischievousness.

“What she look like?” Jagger slicked his tongue over his lower lip, leaving a sheen.
Saint wanted to reach across the desk and choke the fuck out him.

“What the hell does it matter what she looked like, Jagger?!” Lawrence barked.

“Well, shit.” Jagger grinned and threw up his hands. “I was just curious! It’s not
a crime, you know!”

“I think it’s safe to say that she was pretty nice looking and just leave it at that.
The bigger issue here is that Xenia is a wreck. What are you going to do about her?”
Lawrence inquired as he turned back towards Saint, bringing the conversation back
on track.

“I keep trying to prove to this woman that she’s got me.” He patted his shirt right
above his beating heart. “…That I’m not going
any
damn where.” Saint sighed in frustration. “But it’s like it’s going in one ear and
out the other. She doesn’t trust me as far as she can throw me. It didn’t help when
the paintings arrived…”

“Huh?” Jagger’s brow shot up.

“You know, the paintings I bought of the woman’s, like I explained.”

Jagger shook his head in disbelief. “Maaaaan! Saint, you
really
dug yourself a hole.”

“…And then I even told Xenia that I gave the woman extra money, for her rent and groceries.”

“You did WHAT?!” both men said in unison, their eyes glowing and a look of utter incredulity
etched into their faces.

“I know, I know!” Saint tipped back in his seat and looked up at the ceiling as if
to say,
‘Why have you forsaken me, Oh Lord?’

“At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. She helped me that night, man.
It ended up being a beautiful exchange! You guys should see this tree couple painting,
I mean seriously. It gives me so much strength.”

Saint maneuvered his phone out of his pocket and looked down at it.

“Damn.” He ran his hand leisurely over his lips. “Three more missed calls from Xenia…looks
like I gotta voicemail here, too. Fuck…let me go ahead and play this back.”

Both men nodded and began to talk about the new case amongst themselves as Saint rose
from his seat and walked to the far right corner of his office, trying to gain a bit
of privacy. As he listened to the message, he couldn’t believe his ears.

“Yo! Lawrence!” he screamed out as he ended the playback and rejoined the group. “I
am wishing on a star you can help me here! I’ve got a theory about this whole sexless
situation.”

“By all means, run it past me.”

“Initially, though I didn’t tell you, I felt like Koki was involved in this. I didn’t
say anything to you because once I asked Xenia if she’d seen him and she told me she
hadn’t, so that pretty much flushed my theory down the toilet. I felt like I had nothing
else to hold onto regarding that rationale. Well, guess what? The day this shit first
started, some big guy ran into her after work, almost knocking her down. I bet he’s
got something to do with this!”

“Well Saint, come on. That’s kind of a shot in the dark,” Jagger interjected.

“Not really,” Lawrence interrupted, raising his hand in the air, “Do you by chance
know where he ran into her?”

“Yes.” Saint clenched his teeth. “He ran into her ass, she said.”

“I bet he touched her lower vertebrae…” Lawrence drifted away in thought, slumping
into his seat as he ran his fingertips along his chin. “Saint, he may have put a hex
on her, a very common one, but powerful. It doesn’t work on us Angel Children, and
attempting to get close enough to touch you without detecting them would have been
far more risky. Once he realized your wife was a civilian, he may have felt that was
his way inside, his way to get close to you. Yes, this could really make sense… They
direct their energies towards our weaknesses. Koki was smart enough to realize that
if he could get you in a weakened state, he’d have an advantage. The man who ran into
her must’ve been what we call a ‘Love Jones’ Demon Child.”

“What’s that?” Jagger inquired, now hanging onto Lawrence’s every word. “This one
is new to me.”

“From the urgency in Saint’s movements and energy, we don’t have time for me to get
into a long and deep discussion regarding Demon Children. It could take hours. They
are very complicated people, but basically, there are different types of Demon Children,
Jagger.”

“Well, I already understood that part, Lawrence. I just have never heard of a ‘Love
Jones’ one though.”

“It’s just a nickname said amongst ourselves. The Latin term for this is,
Amor est daemon meus,
which means, ‘Love is my Demon.’ It is based on the principle of the seven deadly
sins. It turns the object of your desire into someone that literally repulses you.
The one in question is more than likely a Demon Child that puts a curse on someone
based on his or her romantic affiliations. They basically touch the lower vertebrae
of the person with their right hand, and say, ‘May you lose all desire for your one
true love.’ That is a very rough translation, so don’t quote me on it, but that’s
the gist of it. As Saint is well aware, our bottommost chakra, the Muladhara, is located
in our lower backs. I am compelled to believe that you were right the whole time,
Saint. This wasn’t some coincidence.

“There are seven chakras, seven days of the week, seven deadly sins…” Saint muttered
as he paced back and forth like a caged panther, gathering his thoughts. “Un-fucking
believable!” Saint wanted to tear something up, but at the same damn time, he had
a sense of relief. “Okay, what do we do now, Lawrence? How do I get my woman back?!”

“Well, that’s the tricky part, Saint. There isn’t a short answer, per se.” He winced
as his shoulders slumped a bit, trounced before the game even began.

“Tricky part? I don’t give a shit if it’s an entire year long magic show. How do we
stop this?! Make it right? I can’t take one more day of this. Not one more!”

“Okay Saint, I need you to calm down.” Lawrence stood from his seat. “We have to go
about this in the right way, to ensure that we can take care of it.” Raising his hands,
he slowly approached Saint, as if a riled up serpent had landed in the room, and everyone’s
safety was at stake. “We can’t have you tracking Koki down and beating on him like
you want to; no, we need to be methodical about this.”

“It is tearing my marriage apart.” Saint backed himself into a wall and covered his
eyes with his sweaty palms for a brief spell. He’d become winded and an internal inferno,
burned within, marinating with a bloody taste for revenge. “Xenia even brought up
letting me leave if we didn’t find a solution soon, man. Now you
know
I can’t let that woman go… Over my dead body!” he rasped, gripping his shirt into
a tight ball. “She said she’d rather me get what I need than hold me back…you all
have no fucking idea the shit going on in my house right now. It’s been awful!” His
voice shook. “That’s the type of woman I’m married to—selfless, but she doesn’t get
that if she’s gone, I may as well be dead, so what would be the use in her leavin’,
huh?”

“Oh man…” Jagger’s eyes turned dark sapphire—nothing but pure sympathy. “Saint, I’m
so sorry, man…but at least we know now what’s going on. You know we will do whatever
is necessary to help you get this straightened out.”

“Lawrence, what do we need to do to help Saint?”

“Frankly?”

“No, un-frankly…yes, damn it! How else would I want you to be?!” Saint screamed at
him. He was a loose canyon and the lack of intimacy from his Queen, paired with this
new revelation, made every muscle inside his temple jump. “I’m sorry Lawrence, I’m
losing it… Go ahead, please.”

“Alright. I’ll just say it. Saint, Xenia will have to kill the man who did this.”
Lawrence sat back down, slumped in his seat, and stared aimlessly at the ground.

“I must’ve misheard you.” Saint blinked hard a few times, as if someone had cold-cocked
him from the side.

“No, you heard me just fine. That’s the only way to break this sort of curse.”

“Oh, for the love of God! She can’t do that, Lawrence! I
can
though, and happily!” He narrowed his eyes. “No, we need a second opinion. There
has to be another way.”

“There
is
no other way, Saint. We’d have to find him for her and arrange it. The one good thing
about this is that, once the curse is removed, it can never be placed on her again,
by anyone. Now Saint, you can be there, you can
help
her, but she has to be the one to do it.”

“Oh, fuck! Uh uh! I can’t believe this.” Saint gulped and walked to his desk, flopping
down in the leather chair like a sack of uncooked rice. “Can’t you call someone, find
out about some provision at least? I just can’t ask her to—”

“The only way! I am certain about this. Now, do you want me to tell her? You don’t
appear to be in a position to disclose such details.”

“No, no.” Saint shook his head and exhaled. “I’ll call her.” He removed his phone
from his pocket once more and stared at it, as if he weren’t sure how to work the
contraption.

“Well?” Lawrence urged after a few moments. “Call her.”

Saint shot him a menacing glance, then dialed his wife’s number, putting the woman
on speakerphone.

“Hi Xenia…” he started, sounding like he was being crushed under a pile of fallen
brick. His heart skipped beats as he danced around pending words, scattered about
in his brain like scrabble pieces for a game.

“Am I on speakerphone?” she asked warily, a ’tude in her tone. In the distance, he
could hear his children laughing and playing. Dakarai was the loudest, and it made
him smile ever so slightly.

“Yeah…Jagger and Lawrence are sitting here. I got your voicemail, baby. I have good
news, and I have bad news, which one do you want to hear first?”

A brief pause ensued.

“The good news…”

“The situation that you have, that
we
have, is not of your own doing.”

“Saint, uh…I don’t want to talk about this in front of…you know…”

“Baby, too late. They already know. Now, just listen. That man that ran into you,
the one you told me about on the voicemail, well, we’re pretty sure he put a curse
on you, Xenia.”

“Oh my God! I knew it, Saint! I
knew
I wasn’t doing this to myself but I couldn’t figure out what was happening! It was
like my body was fighting me every step of the way. Okay, well, now we know, that’s
good, right? Yes…that’s good because we know how it happened and we can get rid of
it, right?”

“…Yeah, that’s good, but…”

“And the bad news? Saint, what’s the bad news?!” The woman was entering a state of
panic and he wasn’t sure he could steer her clear of it.

“We know how to remove the curse.”

“That’s good, too! Let’s do it then!” She sighed openly in relief.

“Xenia…” Saint ran his finger down her photo in his phone. He closed his eyes and
sucked in air, hating that moment in time, hating it for the trouble it would cause.
“Are the children within hearing range?”

“Uh, not really, but just in case, hold on…Hey!” she called out. “You all go into
the play area, please!” Everyone waited while the tromping of feet got lighter and
lighter until it could be heard no more. “Okay, what is it?”

“Xenia, there is no easy way to do this. You have to…you have to kill the man that
did this to you. It’s the only way to break the curse.”

“What?! Saint, are you serious?!”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

The woman didn’t speak for a long while.

“Xenia, if I may address you… This is Lawrence. I don’t need to ask how you are doing.
I think we’ve got that covered.”

“Hello, Lawrence…” Xenia said weakly, as if she’d just awoken from a sound sleep and
fell the fuck out again, this time into the fiery pits of hell.

“Yes, uh, I just explained to your husband the gravity of the situation. I know you
are not like us, you are a civilian; thus, the act of exterminating a life is not
exactly on your wish list. I get it. However, I have additional information that may
make you understand the severity of the issue at hand.”

Saint shot Lawrence a look, his brow raised. He wanted answers, damn it.

“I thought you’d told me everything.
What
information?!” Saint barked.