The First Sacrament (The Demons of Stone Chapel Book 1) (25 page)

While Sadie went to add to my Get Well Soon memorial, Aralia latched onto my arm. My good one. “What in God's name
happened
, Beatrice?”

“Aralia,” Dante stepped aside to make room for Sadie. She put the balloons down and scooted over next to Max, eying Dante like he might eat her. “We need to let Beatrice rest.”

“Oh,
go away
,” Aralia said. “You get hours with her and when
we
come back you say we need to 'let her rest.' Honestly, Dante, you're fooling
no one
.”

He paled. I threw my hand up to conceal my laughter. Just as no one could kill a mood like Dante Arturo, no one could put him in his place like Aralia Spinosa.

“I'm going to make a few calls,” he decided, then headed for the door. “But we really should―”

“Go away,” Aralia deadpanned. “She'll be fine.”

“I'll be fine,” I said. Not that anyone asked.

Dante, being the smart man he was, had nothing more to say on the subject. He knew a lost cause when he saw one. So he did the only thing he could do. He left.

Max had coaxed Sadie out of her shell and they chatted freely about the weather. Nasty storms were supposed to roll through tonight. The weather guy on Channel Ten was freaking out about it.

Aralia scooted her chair closer to the bed and folded her arms on the mattress. She looked up at me with her usual exasperated expression. It was so familiar to me now that I couldn't help but enjoy it a little. “I'm glad you're awake, darling. Dante's been driving me mad. You should have seen him when I told him what happened. He
lost it
.”

It was hard to imagine Dante losing it. He never lost it. He didn't lose it when he had to stab himself in the arm to save Max, he didn't lose it when the mayor was being his typical arrogant self. He was always cool, always calm, always collected. Though, recently, he'd been skewing those boundaries. Coming home at one in the morning smelling like a corpse. “What's going on with him?”

“Maybe he's finally coming to his senses,” Aralia said, shrugging lazily. “But I don't want to talk about him. I want to talk about
you
, darling. You gave us quite the scare.”

A jolt of pain spliced the back of my head, a not-so-gentle reminder of my
condition.
I sucked in a breath through my teeth. “Yeah, uh, sorry about that.”

“D'you remember anything?” She asked.

I told her what I told Dante. I hoped talking about it some more would jog my memory. No such luck. I was just as clueless as I was a minute ago.

Aralia gav
e
my head a pat. “Don't worry, darling, we'll figure it out. We always do.”

“Speaking of figuring things out,” I glanced over at Sadie. She wasn't paying a bit of attention to me, so enraptured by whatever it was Max was talking about. It was kind of cute.
They
were kind of cute. “Have we found anything else out from the book? Has anyone else...”

“Gotten murdered?”

“Yeah. That.”

“No, thankfully. Things have been quiet these past few days. Maybe our killer is simply doing the courteous thing, waiting for you to get well before they start butchering people again.”

“How sweet.”

“This is, what, the third time you've been targeted?” She counted the ways on her fingers. “There was the church, your apartment, this bit at St. Agatha's.”

“The house on Halloween,” I added. Still hadn't puzzled the meaning of that one out yet.

“Yes, about that,” Aralia said. “Before you come home, Dante wants me to make you a ward. I would have made one for you earlier, but we've been busy lately. You understand.”

I nodded. We'd all been busy lately. Dante was doing his thing, Aralia was doing her thing, Max was running Armageddon Now, and I was...sitting in a hospital bed with a concussion. Go figure. “Do I get a cool necklace or something? A ring?”

“You'll get whatever I decide to make you,” she flashed me a prim smile. “But I suppose I can take requests.”

“In that case, I want a crown.”

“Of course, Queen Elizabeth, I'll get right on it.”

We laughed, and as our laughter died down, I realized something about her. My third (fourth?) brush with death had me ruminating on my mortality, on the people I surrounded myself with. Aralia and I had been through so much together this past couple of months. We watched movies together, we lived together, we hunted together. We were friends. Good friends. I didn't even mind her thinly veiled insults anymore because I knew they were coming from a place of humor.

If that wasn't friendship, I didn't know what was.

“Beatrice?” Dante opened the door and poked his head inside.

I settled back against my pillows. Being knocked out for two days was exhausting work. “Yeah?”

“The police are here,” he said. He sounded none too thrilled about it. “They want to speak with you.”

Twenty-Six

Chief Morales asked me a long series of questions, half of which I had no answers to. Who would want to hurt me like this? Why was I in the chapel in the first place? Did I remember anything? Did I want to press charges?

While the others went for a coffee break, Dante hovered like a hawk in the corner. He didn't try to speak for me, nor did he try to
protect
me. He simply watched. And when it was over, he returned to his chair at my bedside.

“That went well,” he murmured.

I yawned. “Whatever. I just wanna get some sleep.”

“Would you like me to leave?”

“I mean, if you want―”

“Would you like me to leave, Beatrice?”

“No,” I admitted. I didn't. Now that we were finally working on busting through that invisible wall, I wanted to enjoy the freedom doing so provided. He promised to be open with me. He promised to tell me everything. In due time. But that didn't mean I couldn't ask him about things that had nothing to do with our current situation. “You can stay. And you can tell me all about how freaked you were when you thought I was dead.”

He crossed his arms over his chest in a typical Dante pose.
“I'm glad you're amused.”

“Did you cry? Scream? Throw a plate against a wall?”

“No.”

“No what? No crying? No screaming?”

“I was very upset, Beatrice.”

Good. He needed to be upset, especially after how he treated me on Halloween. “It's perfectly okay for men to cry, you know.”

He sighed.

I sighed right back.

We were getting good at this communication thing.

“You really do need to rest,” he said.

“So do you,” I replied. Technically, I'd been “resting” for two days straight. Dante had probably been awake for most of it. “I wasn't kidding when I said you looked terrible.”

“I'll be―”

“No, no,” I held a finger up to silence him. “We're not doing this. I'll let you stay in here so long as you promise me you'll go to sleep.”

“But―”

“Are you seriously going to deny a hurt girl her one request? I thought you liked me, Arturo.”

“Beatrice―”

He gave me no choice. I had to do it. I had to manipulate him. Sticking my bottom lip out, I turned toward him and I pouted. I pouted like I'd never pouted before. “Pretty please?”

There was something incredible about watching someone you liked melt because of something you said. Doubly so if that someone usually had the emotional range of a rock. Upon feeling the full force of my pout, everything about Dante softened. His posture, the lines on his face, the shadows in his eyes. Even his voice had lost its edge. “Fine. Please don't do that again.”

“Do what?” It was hard talking with my lip jutted out like a rudder, but I managed.

“
That
,” he gestured to my face.

“Oh,” I set my mouth right and slapped my hand down on his shoulder. “Sure thing, Dante.”

Again, he sighed, but this sigh was tinged with a smile.

Score one for Beatrice.

I tried to make myself as comfortable as my bed would allow. I didn't know how Rosie managed it all these years. Endless hospital rooms, endless hospital gowns, endless hospital beds. She had to endure a lifetime of it. Two and a half days and I already wanted out.

“Do you know if the sanatorium called?” I asked. They were used to me visiting weekly. Calling daily. Surely they'd have noticed my absence. Surely Rosie, despite her current state, noticed. She must have thought I abandoned her.

Dante stood. Went over to the table with the cards and the flowers and Sadie's balloons. He reached behind the glass vase and returned to his seat. Put my phone in my lap. “No, but you have a voicemail.”

From an unknown number.

Weird. I typed in my password and put my phone on speaker.
You have one new message,
sent today at 12:26 PM.

The recording crackled in silence for a few seconds and I was about to hang up when the voice kicked in. A gravelly voice that existed on the far-flung fringes of my memory like an echo. The more I tried to remember whose it was, the more distant it became.

“
You escaped because He allowed it,
” said the voice. It wheezed.
“
You will not be so lucky next time. You will burn like everyone else. And I will be there to watch.
” Another wheeze.
“Be a good girl, Beatrice Todd. We will see you soon.
”

End of messages.

Okay, then. That was fun.

Aralia picked a good time to come traipsing through the door. Max and Sadie followed, a couple of crazy kids on their first date with their supermodel succubus chaperone. Sadie tugged at her hair and Max rocked back and forth on the heels of his sneakers, said something too quiet for me to hear, which made Sadie giggle more.

“You two are disgusting,” Aralia told them with a repulsed arch of her brow. She turned to me. “Aren't they disgusting?”

I stared down at the blank face of my phone. Max and Sadie's flirting was the least of my worries right now.

“You're being awfully quiet,” she said. “Dante, what did you do?”

“He didn't do anything,” I dialed my voicemail again. Let the message play.

When it was over, Aralia smoothed her dress and pulled her hair up with a rubber band Max found in his back pocket. Her long hands formed fists at her sides. “Well, Beatrice. We'll need to measure your head.”

I'd gotten a threatening voicemail from the person who attacked me and she expressed her concern by wanting to measure my head. “You want to measure my head?”

“You've got a crown that needs fitted,” she said. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

***

The hospital released me a day later because they
insisted
on keeping me overnight, despite my protests to the contrary. They just wanted to be “safe.” Little did they know, safety wasn't I luxury I enjoyed anymore. Safety took a nosedive out the window when the church tried to possess me.

I omitted that part―and many others―during my second chat with Chief Morales. A lot of parts, though, I didn't have to omit. Amnesia was good for that.

She'd returned an hour before my release with a fresh set of questions and I answered with the same variations of “I don't know.” Because I didn't. I had no idea what happened at St. Agatha's. Asking me if I saw anybody before it happened or if I had any enemies there wouldn't change that.

Clearly frustrated, she gave me her card and made me promise to call her if I remembered anything. I promised, then saw her out with a salute. She ignored it.

Mother Arden arrived in her minivan to pick me up right as my nurse wheeled me downstairs. Remnants of last night's storm lingered in the dark of the clouds, the snarl of the wind. The power flickered with each new gust but the hospital had backup generators, so an outage wasn't much of an issue.

Dante, however, did
not
have backup generators. None of the lights worked and stepping into the house felt like stepping into a freezer.

Mother Arden was hesitant to leave me there.

“Are you certain you want to stay?” She asked. She hugged her arms to her chest and grimaced at the cobwebs in the corner. It was a similar face to the one she made at the symbol carved in the door. “It's very cold. You could get sick.”

“I'll be fine,” I said, zipping my hoodie up the rest of the way. “We have lots of blankets and a couple of fireplaces. I think Aralia said she made soup, too. Before the power went out.”

Mother Arden found something new to stare at: Aralia’s knife collection spread out on the coffee table.

I changed the subject to keep her from realizing the roof was leaking. “I wonder where everyone is.”

“Upstairs?” She suggested.

It was as good a place as any.

“Beatrice,” she said before I could get too far, “could you wait a moment?”

Uh-oh. “Am I in trouble?”

She shook her head. “No, no. If anything, I'm the one who should be in trouble.”

“What? Why?” She was a
nun.
What could she have possibly done wrong?

“I pushed you to go to St. Agatha's,” she said. She clasped her hands in front of her and cast her gaze to the floor. Good ol' Catholic guilt. It happened to the best of us. “If I hadn't―”

As satisfying as it was to hear her apologize to
me
for a change, I couldn't let her shoulder all the guilt. I was a magnet for trouble. It wasn't her fault. “You thought you were helping me. I get it. I mean, let’s be real here for a second, I pretty much attract this sort of thing,”

That seemed to lift her spirits. Smiling, she rested a wrinkled hand on my cheek and kissed me on the other. “You've certainly grown, Beatrice.”

“I know, right?” I smiled. No matter how old I got, no matter how grown I was, there would always be a part of me that would bask in Mother Arden's praise. “I feel like I've gotten taller. Do I look taller?”

She pulled back, smile dissipating into something more thoughtful. “Yes, my dear. Much taller.”

See, that's why I loved her. She let me have my emotionally evasive jokes. I gave her a hug to show my appreciation. She hugged me back, and we went upstairs to find the others. Two bonding moments in as many weeks with the important authority figures in my life. More points in my maturity column.

“Dante?” I led Mother Arden down the hall toward my bedroom and his study. “Aralia? Max?”

Not a peep. Even Mo was suspiciously absent.

I stopped at the study, gave the doorknob a jiggle. It was locked. But both Dante and Aralia's cars were parked out front. They had to be here.

“Hello?” I lifted my hand to knock and the door opened a crack, Max's befuddled face appearing.

“Uh, hey, Beatrice!” He said. “And Mother Arden, too! Hi.”

“Hello, Max,” Mother Arden said gently.

Behind him, something crashed and someone cursed. Her smile

I gave the door a push. It wouldn't budge. “Max, move.”

“Hold on for one second okay?” He glanced over his shoulder, mouthing something that looked like
hurry up.

“Max,” I repeated, “
move
.”

“But―”

“Max.”

“Okay, okay, fine,” he relented, and moved.

I fell through the door into the study. Max caught me. I shoved his hands away. “Okay,
someone
needs to tell me what's―”

“Surprise!” Aralia sat on Dante's desk, holding up a necklace. It was a long, dark chain with a pendant molded in the shape of the banishing seal. The pendant itself was a black color to match the chain, and set within it were a dozen tiny diamonds. Or rhinestones. I didn’t care which. “D'you like it?”

Mo, sitting at Dante's side, barked happily, as though the necklace was his idea all along.

“That's mine?” I asked, eyes widening. Aralia and I had talked about my ward, yeah, but I wasn't expecting anything so
pretty
.

She got up off the desk and came to drape the elaborate demon-repelling necklace around my neck. “Of course it is, darling. I know it's not a crown, but we did get you one of those plastic things. Dante? The plastic thing?”

He plucked the plastic thing from his desk. A rhinestone tiara purchased from a dollar store with the tag still on it.

“You got me a tiara?” I'd never been so happy to receive cheap costume jewelry. They liked me, they really liked me. “I can't believe you got me a
tiara.
”

“Believe it, darling.” She snatched the glittery hunk of plastic from Dante and placed it on my head. “There.”

I gave an exaggerated sniff, flapping my hands at my eyes to dry the invisible tears. “I'm just so flattered, you know? I never expected to win this award and to win over such a large―” I quit flapping to gesture around the room. “―audience. To know that my work has affected
so
many people is truly
―
”

“Calm down, Beatrice, it's not an Oscar,” Aralia snorted despite a hardly concealed smile.

I dropped the act (literally) and threw my arms around her for a hug. Two hugs, three bonding moments. Wow. I was on a roll. “I know, but I'm not exactly a pageant girl. The Oscars are more my thing. And thanks, by the way. I love it. All of it.”

Though she initially seemed startled by my hug, she softened into it after a moment and gave my shoulders a squeeze. “You're welcome, Beatrice.”

“Anyone else want in on this?” I asked before stepping away. “Group hug? Yeah? No?”

“Let's not,” Aralia said. She separated from me like I'd suddenly contracted a deadly disease.

No one else moved.