“I’m just the delivery driver,” he says. “You don’t blame the post office for delivering bad news in the mail, do you?”
I keep backing him up the dock toward the road, steering him slightly with each step, not enough for him to notice, but enough to get him to the edge of the sturdy construction. I’d rather he was going out toward deeper water, but there’s no way I could steer him in a circle. He obviously wants to hightail it back to the van, not jump in the ocean. He may be relatively unimportant to the Disciples and infuriatingly stubborn about seeing his part in the trafficking operation, but he’s not that stupid.
He finally glances back, seeing how close he is to the edge of the dock, though. In that moment, I lunge. He starts to fall backwards, but instead of pinwheeling his arms and giving me a chance to take his feet out from under him, he throws his arms around me in a bearhug, like I’m one of the support posts. Even on my strongest day, I couldn’t counterbalance his weight, and my energy has been sapped already. We both tumble into the debris at the edge of the lapping water—sticks and seafoam and seaweed and a few pieces of trash.
The water is shockingly cold, even colder than I expected. I land on top of the sizeable guy with his arms around me, which keeps me from being completely submerged, but he doesn’t get so lucky. His eyes and mouth open wide with shock a split second before they disappear under the water. I grab his neck, shoving him deeper, trying not to gag when I see a dead fish bobbing in the cloudy water around us.
Curtis thrashes for a minute, his arms churning in the water, trying to find purchase, to come up. My brain seems to recede like a tide, and all I can focus on is avoiding his arms. I know he’s stronger than me, that he’ll grab me any moment and dunk me under, hold me down until I’m forced to inhale water and drown. My only hope is to make him do it first.
I remember distantly my horror that the girl who stabbed me at the Slaughterpen was killed. It seemed so barbaric at the time. But now, it seems like the only choice—me or him.
His body scissors, and his head pops up, water streaming from it, his eyes huge and his beard soaked and his lips already turning blue. He’s choking, having inhaled water. But not enough. I see that, see that there’s no way I’m going to be able to wrestle his head back underwater, hold him long enough to drown. In one flash, I realize I’m about to die.
Then something sharp pierces the back of my neck. I reach back and swat it automatically, as if it’s a wasp stinging me. My fingers knock a dart free. I look up and see a huge, muscled bald man crouching on the dock above us. He grins, his mouth full of gold teeth. That’s the last thing I see before I fall forward into the water. A sliver of consciousness remains, though, feels him catch my hair and drag me up. The dull pain throbs through me when he lifts me, and then the world swims sickeningly as he throws me over his shoulder and starts walking.
four
The Salvation
A knock sounds on the rectory door. It’s the seventh night since my lamb has been gone, and I feel her absence in every breath I take, every heartbeat. I expect her around every corner, so when the tapping comes, echoing on the old wooden surface, I jump up so fast I wake my guest. He lifts his arm and peers at me from under his elbow.
“Expecting company?” he asks, his eyes bleary with sleep.
“I’m always available for my flock,” I say, halfway to the door when it swings open.
The wrong Soule is standing in the doorway, though. My entire frame sags with defeat, and I think I’ll sink to the floor in exhaustion and simply sleep until I wake to find it all undone, a nightmare of losing the one I’ve waited for all this time, until I thought she wasn’t coming.
And tonight, she’s not.
Her brother frowns, holding the grey cat in his arms closer and glancing from me to the form buried under a blanket on the sofa. “You have guests?” he asks.
“It’s just a seminary student,” I assure him.
“I told the others to meet me here,” Saint says, lowering his voice so he won’t be overheard. “Should we go somewhere else? My room, maybe?”
“There’s no need,” I say, matching his tone. “He won’t be involved. He was having some troubles, so he’s staying here while he takes a break from school and reassesses his path.”
Already, he’s turned his back to the room and pulled the blanket up over his head, blocking out the light.
Seeming satisfied, Saint sets down the cat and heads for the small, round table in my kitchen without an invitation. He pulls up a chair, sits, and pulls out his phone. “Nate’s on his way,” he reports. “I sent Angel a message too, but I don’t know if he’s talking to me right now.”
“He will,” I assure him. “He’s as scared as we all are right now, but he’s still your brother.”
Saint drops his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s my fault, Father,” he says, his voice cracking. “I let her go.”
“You had no way of knowing what would happen,” I tell him, resting a hand on his shoulder. It shakes under my grip, but he gets himself together after a minute.
“I knew she was upset, though,” he says quietly. “I hurt her on purpose, pushed her away, because of my own shit.”
“She carries the same burden of shame that you do,” I say. “She understands.”
A minute later, another knock sounds at the front door, and even though I know who is coming, an instinctual surge of hope flashes through me. The grey cat perches on the back of the sofa, staring at the door with saucer eyes. I open the door for Nathaniel, and Walker looks up again. “What is this, a halfway house for freaks?” he mutters before flopping back down on his pillow and folding it around his head.
“Considering you’re here, that makes you one of the freaks,” Nathaniel points out, but his cousin doesn’t hear him through the pillow.
“Come in,” I say, gesturing toward the kitchen. “Saint’s already here.”
The cat hisses loudly, but Nathaniel ignores it and follows me in, swinging his satchel strap over his head. “Just becauseyou’re a professor, that doesn’t mean this is free,” he warns, setting his stuff on the table.
