The First Sacrament (The Demons of Stone Chapel Book 1) (21 page)

I shrugged in lieu of a victory dance. She'd given in. For once, I won. Made her see things my way for a change. “It was a good effort on your part.”

“But I do think St. Agatha's will―”

“And you were doing so well, too.”

“You can't stay here forever, Beatrice.”

“I know, but I figured I could stay until I graduate and then I'll...”

Dante came in from the kitchen with Aralia trailing behind him, whispering fervent things in his ear. He shook her off. In turn, she blew out an aggravated breath and said, “fine, have it your way,” before storming back into the kitchen.

“I forgot the cake,” she said.

“What's going on?” I asked. Dante had his Serious Face on. The frown, the furrowed brow, the stiff posture. I knew it well. Could probably sketch it from memory at this point.

“I want you to leave, Beatrice,” he said. “Go to St. Agatha's.”

I was in the midst of learning an important lesson. Betrayal wasn't a knife in the back. It wasn't a kiss on the cheek. It was Dante, standing there and telling me to get out of his house when, not even two hours before, he claimed that I was the last person he wanted to hurt.

“You want me to leave,” I repeated dumbly.

“Yes,” he said coldly. I thought that, maybe, after what he said in the car...He was going to let me in. Open up. This was the exact opposite of opening up. “You need to leave. You need to make a life for yourself.”

“What about what you said in the car, huh?” Fury sparked in my chest. Burning in place of the ache. Fury, and a deep sense of pain. It was all I could do not to cry. Or throw my chair against the wall. Or both. “Do you even care about me at all or were you lying?”

“Beatrice―”

“You wouldn't have found the―” I paused, glancing at Mother Arden. I wasn't mad enough to mention the book in front of her. Yet. “―
thing
without me. You
need
me, Dante. I can help you, I want to help you, so for the love of God, just let me!”

I thought I saw a trace of indecision on his face. A genuine measure of
something
. A something which he stamped out as quickly as it came. “No.”

“
No?
”

“You're still a teenager, Beatrice.”

“Is that what this is about? Do you think I can't make my own decisions about what I want?”

“I never said that―”

“―I want to say
here
―”

“You
can't
,” he took a step toward my chair, the pained tremor in his voice startling me into silence. “You can't stay here. Not anymore. I'm sorry.”

I couldn't bear to look at him, so I looked at the table instead. My half eaten plate of food. My full glass of water. I wanted to throw it at him. “I get that this is your house and I get that you can kick me out whenever you want, but if you're going to do that, at least have the decency to think of a good excuse.”

“I'm not kicking you out, Beatrice.”

“Oh, really? Because it sure seems that way.”

“I just want you to be safe.”

“Safe from what, Dante? You?”

He hesitated and I had my answer.

I didn’t know why he was acting like this. We were
fine
a few days ago and now he just—Ugh! I slapped my napkin down on the table and got to my feet. “Fine, Dante. Whatever. I'm done letting you jerk me around. If you want me out of your house, I'll leave, but don't pretend you're doing me a favor. You aren't
protecting me.
You aren’t
caring
about me, because when you care about someone, you don’t—you don’t do
this!
”

“Beatrice,” Mother Arden’s crooked fingers rested on my wrist. “Perhaps you should sit down.”

“No,” I replied, angrily wiping a stray tear away. “I can't. I have to go pack.”

***

I’d been on the move for eighteen years. I moved from my parents' house to the orphanage at the tender age of seven because they tried to kill me. Eleven years later, I got kicked
out
of the orphanage because some other poor kid needed my bed more than I did. Then I entered an uncertain state of limbo. For four weeks and three days, I had nowhere to go. I slept wherever I could and ate whatever I could get for free. I showered in the school's locker room. I got dressed in the stalls.

I did what I had to to get by.

And then I found an apartment. A slum near the Old Quarter. Marion took a chance on me, and though he threatened to multiple times, he never kicked me out.

Now he was dead. And I was on the move yet again.

I dragged my old tubs up from the basement. Stuffed my clothes and the rest of my possessions inside. Aralia helped. So did Max. Morgenstern even made an appearance, whining as I scratched behind his ears. Dante was the only absentee.

When we were finished, Aralia gave me a hug and made me promise that I'd call from time to time. Max assured me that he'd keep me updated on any demonic happenings, then tried to shake my hand. I gave him a hug instead. Morgenstern followed me to Mother Arden's van. We stacked the tubs in the back, and in a little under an hour, it was like I'd never even occupied that big room upstairs with the moth eaten blankets.

Dante got what he wanted. Again.

Twenty-Two

St. Agatha's Home for Girls was a castle fit for war. A behemoth of stone, it stood tall against the backdrop of the coast, its many turrets sticking out like spikes ready to impale any and every intruder. The lawn was impeccably trimmed and the fountain wasn't broken or choked with weeds. The trees didn't huddle protectively around the building and the roof was firmly intact. A pair of wrought iron gates guarded the driveway. They were mostly there for show.

Few people came through them. Even fewer came out.

Mother Arden dropped me off two weeks ago under the condition that I'd give it a trial run so long as I was still allowed to attend Stone Chapel High.

I was issued exactly five uniforms, a hefty rulebook, a copy of the Bible, and a key to my room. Third floor. Number 315. My roommate was an excessively quiet girl named Sadie Li who flinched every time I opened my mouth.

I think I scared her a little.

On the first night, all one hundred ten of us were herded into a small chapel connected to the main building for evening prayers. I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and went over hunting techniques for an hour. When prayers were finished, we ate dinner in the dining hall, a gaping space filled with heavy wooden tables and gobs of white candles. A crucifix bigger than any I'd ever seen watched over us from the apex of the room.

“Doesn't it creep you out?” I asked Sadie, waving my fork in Jesus's direction.

She stared at me like the blasphemer I was, looked at the crucifix to assess its creepiness, then went back to nibbling her bread. We didn't speak for the rest of the evening.

In the subsequent days, I went to school. Spent lunch in the library with Ms. Hayworth. She asked me about Dante. I told her not to bother. When I got back to St. Agatha's, a different chore list was tacked to the bulletin board on our door. Sadie and I were assigned to the chapel. We'd be polishing pews for the next month.

Now, two weeks later, after pew polishing and dinner eating, I sat in my little room on m
y
little bed with my little stack of index cards, scribbling a demonology related question on one side of each card and the answer to said question on the other. I was determined to cram as much knowledge about demons as I could into my overcrowded brain, if only to prove a point.

Dante needed me. And I was going to make him see it.

Sadie, busy knitting a sweater or a scarf or something on the bunk below, was my silent companion. I'd hoped to goad her out of that silence tonight.

“Hey,” I said, leaning over the side of my bed. I thrust the stack of cards down to her. “Can you help me with these?”

She put her wooly creation aside, blinked up at me.

I slapped on my best smile, strands of hair falling into my eyes. “Pretty please?”

Hesitantly, she took the cards and awaited further instruction.

“You're the best, Sadie,” I said, and meant it. “All you have to do is read me the question and tell me if I got it right. Cool?”

She nodded.

Cool.

For the first time since I moved in, my roommate spoke. Her voice reminded me of Rosie's. Soft and warm. Like a favorite sweater. “What is transmutation?”

Transmutation. What Aralia said had happened to that dog in my apartment. Dante and I discussed this in one of our training sessions.

“The fusion of two organic beings by a demonic force. Lots of scary ritual involved. Doesn't usually turn out well. Outlawed by the government.”

“Er, correct,” Sadie said. “I think.”

I did a celebratory fist pump. “Awesome. Next question.”

“Beatrice, what
are
these―”

“Research for a project I'm doing. Don't worry, it's not sacrilegious or anything.”

Well, that depended on your definition of the word. But Sadie didn't need to know that.

A pause, then the next question. “What are the Five Sacraments? In Order.”

This was an easy one. “Creation, Destruction, Banishing, Summoning, and Exorcism.”

“Correct. Why is it recommended that we take iron supplements as part of a healthy diet?”

“Demons are allergic to it. Keeping your iron count high lowers the risk of possession.”

“Correct. How can you tell if someone or something is possessed?”

“The eyes. The deterioration of the body. The change in speech. Animals mutate over time. Grow horns. Extra legs. Stuff like that. They also smell. Badly.”

“Correct.”

We'd gotten through most of the stack by the time lights out was called. Sadie handed the cards back up to me and I wrapped a rubber band around them to keep from losing any, then tucked them underneath my pillow for safe keeping. I'd gotten every question right. Now if only that worked for math tests.

“Beatrice?” Sadie asked after a while.

I stared up into the dark, unsettled by quiet. In my apartment, I had someone's music or someone's kid or someone's sex life keeping me awake. At Dante's, I had the crickets. Here, I had nothing but Sadie. And she'd be going to sleep soon. “Yeah?”

“You aren't working on a project, are you?”

I was glad she couldn't see my face. My lie would've been obvious. “Uh. Kind of? Not really. I mean, sort of. It's complicated.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah.” It was too quiet to let the conversation end there. I never thought I'd miss the crickets. “Sadie?”

“Yes?”

“How did you end up here?”

“My parents were killed by our neighbor when I was three.” She said. “He was possessed. I've lived in orphanages ever since. And now I live here.”

“That sucks,” I said. Three years was an awfully short time. At least I had
some
memory of my parents. I doubted Sadie had any. “Mine got possessed. Tried to kill me. The cops had to shoot them.”

Another bit of rustling. “I'm so sorry.”

I blinked. “It happens.” And it did. A lot. That St. Agatha’s even had to exist was proof enough.

The last thing I heard before I closed my eyes was a yawn and two quiet words:

“Goodnight, Beatrice.”

My eyes snapped open. The breath caught in my throat. A familiar ache blossomed in my chest. Goodnight, Beatrice. That was me and Dante’s thing. And then he ruined it.

I couldn't let him do that. I couldn't let him ruin a perfectly normal phrase. Sadie was trying to be nice. She deserved a response.

So, I sucked it up. Tossed my sadness aside like a broken toy I didn't need anymore. Responded. “Goodnight, Sadie.”

***

Ms. Hayworth held out a fruit cup as I walked through the door. “Peaches?”

I wrinkled my nose. “No, thanks.”

“Are you sure?” She peeled it open regardless and grabbed a plastic fork off her desk, ready to dig in as soon as I gave the word.

“I'm not a big peach fan,” I said, putting my backpack and tray down on my usual table. Lunch in the library was swiftly becoming a habit. With Rosie in the sanatorium, I didn't really have friends here. Eating alone was fine but eating with Ms. Hayworth was better. Mostly because we had TV. “Besides, I have all this delicious, uh,
food
to eat.”

“What is it today?” She dragged her chair up next to mine, peaches in hand. “I haven't checked.”

I appraised the hunk of meat on my plate. It was smothered in some grayish-brown substance and accompanied by a heap of plastic looking green beans. “Salisbury steak? I think.”

“It doesn't look bad,” Ms. Hayworth said. I always thought of her as being entirely too nice.

Myself, on the other hand...

“It looks like cat food.”

She laughed so hard that she snorted a bit of peach juice up her nose. “Beatrice!”

“What?” I unwrapped my utensils and stabbed my fork in the steak. The “gravy” seeped into the green beans, saturating them in processed gray. Gray beans. Somehow, way less appealing than their green counterparts. “You can't tell me this doesn't look like cat food.”

Ms. Hayworth pivoted around in her seat to blow the juice out of her nose and into a Kleenex. “But you're eating it anyway.”

You couldn't be picky if you were poor because you never knew when your next meal was going to be. Not that I had to worry much about that
now
, but old habits died hard. And the chances were high that I'd end up homeless again after St. Agatha's got tired of dealing with me. So, yeah. I was going to eat my cat food steak and I was going to like it.

“Are you doing anything fun tonight?” Ms. Hayworth asked between bites of peaches.

I never did anything fun. The last time I tried, Max got possessed and a crazy guy tried sacrificing dozens of people on a roof. “No? Should I be?”

She blinked. “It's Halloween.”

“That's
today?
”

“I was thinking about wearing a costume, but it's against the dress code, so―”

“Halloween is
today?
Are you sure?”

“Unless my calendar is lying, yes. I'm sure.”

I shoved another bit of steak in my mouth, chewing thoughtfully. I'd completely forgotten about Halloween.
Halloween
. My favorite holiday. What was
wrong
with me? Was I getting sick?

“I'm volunteering at the church's trunk-or-treat,” she continued. “You can come if you'd like.”

Instead of laughing, I tried not to do the rude thing for once and chased my steak with a forkful of gray beans. It wasn't Ms. Hayworth's fault that the idea of volunteering at the church made me want to gag. That place needed to be burned down as far as I was concerned.
“Uh, no, thanks. I think I'm just gonna...Watch a movie or something. Steal candy from unsuspecting kids.”

She gave me a look that sat somewhere between ashamed and horrified.

I waited to see if she'd catch onto the joke. She didn't. “I'm kidding.”

“Oh!” Her eyes widened. “Oh, right. Of course you are.”

“Jeez, Ms. Hayworth, what kind of person do you take me for?” I furrowed my brow a bit and pretended to be offended. “I'm not
that
mean.”

She paled. “No, no, I didn't―”

I sighed. “Ms. Hayworth?”

“Yes?”

“I'm kidding again.”

“...Right.”

The bell rang twenty quiet minutes later. I dumped the contents of my tray into the g
a
rbage, said goodbye to Ms. Hayworth in a manner that couldn't be misconstrued as rude or horrifying in any way, then hauled myself up the stairs to algebra class. I wasted the entire period doodling.

As soon as the final bell rang, I grabbed my stuff from my locker and rode the bus back to St. Agatha's. When I stepped off, I saw the faint outline of a black car parked up front. A fancy black car I'd grown quite familiar with over the past month and a half. My stomach squeezed.

A ways up the drive, I convinced myself that it wasn't Dante's car. It couldn't be Dante's car. He made his feelings perfectly clear when he kicked me out of his house. No way he’d come here to visit me. No way he'd compromise his pride so quickly.

Nope, no way. No way because, the closer I got, the more I realized this car wasn't his car. It was Aralia's. I'd have recognized that bedazzled steering wheel cover anywhere.

“Aralia?” I burst into my room to find her sitting on the bottom bunk while Sadie practically cowered in the corner.

She squeaked, hand flying to her chest. “Beatrice! Who―who is this? Do you know her? She―she just came in and she said she was looking for you and I tried to get her to leave but―”

Aralia leaned back on Sadie’s bed, rings sparkling on her fingers. “Calm down, darling. I'm not as scary as I look. For the most part.”

“It's okay, Sadie,” I said. I grinned from ear to ear. “She's a friend.”

Sadie had nothing to say to that. She busied herself with her book of poetry instead. Sylvia Plath. I’m sure the nuns loved that.

“Right, now that the messy introductions are over,” Aralia patted the spot next to her. “Why don't you sit down here and tell me how you're doing?” I would have happily done so if she'd let me talk. But she didn't. Before I could get a word in edgewise, she sighed a heavy sigh and grabbed my hand, yanking me down on the bed. “I know you've only been gone a couple of weeks, but honestly, Beatrice, it's been a
nightmare
.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What I
mean
is that Dante's gone mad. Absolutely mad.”

“―You wanna expand on that or―”

“―First, he kicks you out for
no
reason and
then
he's kicked Max out, too! Booted the little troll out of the basement last week. Can you believe that?”

“Wait,” I said. “He kicked
Max
out, too? Seriously?”