Page 14 of The Sinner and the Priest: Part Two

Typical men. Give celibates one Latin phrase with cum in it, and suddenly they’ve built a whole religion around locking themselves in rooms until something white and important shoots out of a hole.

Something in the nun’s stony face makes my smile waver.

“You wrap yourself in our cloth, child,” she intones, “but you cannot hide the sin sweating from your pores.”

Well, there goes the fun.

“Didn’t think I smelled that bad after the plane ride.” I lean my hip against the desk. “But since you confiscated my bag upon entry⁠—”

“We did not confiscate it,” she snaps. “We are bringing it up for you.”

“Right.” I peer out the door. “So where is it?”

Her gaze skims over me with open disgust.

“I have seen many girls like you,” she declares. “Girls who mistake a man’s weakness for devotion. Girls who think offering their bodies makes them powerful.”

Something ugly stirs beneath my ribs, but I keep smiling. Barely.

“Speaking from experience?” I counter.

“You think you are saving him,” she spits out. “You are merely a fever. When it breaks, he will remember his God and feel nothing but exhaustion.”

For a filthy second, she reminds me of my mother.

The nun steps back and gives me a final parting word. “You are not his salvation, child. You are his relapse.”

Then she closes the door. The electric lock whirrs and clicks.

“Bitch.”

I stare at the closed door for far too long, pretending I’m not affected by her words, but the truth is, she could be right.

Cisco and I aren’t like Thea and Wesley, or Zeke and Leila. They’re perfect matches. Their relics worked the first time they needed them. The girls don’t look like Lilith, and the men aren’t afflicted by a violent, evil-sensing, sin-eating curse that could be killing them slowly.

I’ve noticed Cisco isn’t eating well. He’s not sleeping either. Since Jasmine, he’s not been himself at all.

I pace the length of the tiny room, my robes swishing. I don’t like that they’ve deliberately separated Cisco and me. It’s even more strange that they’ve housed me here, a place traditionally reserved for important male-only events.

And locked me in.

I pivot at the window, and the oversized rosary beads around my hips clink together.

“I’m just a relapse.” I scoff and pace back to the door. “Who does she think she is?” I turn back. “She doesn’t know us. She doesn’t even know the prophecy. She probably thinks I’m just a regular heretic.” I stop at the window again and glower. “They have no idea I’m a Sinner. If they suspected, I’d have been frisked or strip-searched.”

Breathe, Mercy. Breathe.

Calm the fuck down.

But the moment I will myself to relax, I become hyperaware of the feeling of fabric against my skin. The loose robe somehow feels too tight.

Fuck.

I drag out the desk chair and sit hard, air puffing from my lungs. Strumming my fingers on the desk, I stare at the closed door and consider the plan.

We helped Cisco draft a message on his phone to request a formal meeting with Cardinal Valerio, his superior. In that message, we mentioned news of another Sisterhood Chapter’s demise and our chapter’s wish to parlay. Even though Cisco witnessed bloody murder in Jasmine’s sin, both Sinners and Saints were fighting. Frankly, we still don’t know for sure who caused the conflict; we only know that something supernatural was involved, and one of our own is missing.

In the message, we said Saint Dominic would remain behind to oversee our cohort’s morality and keep a close eye on the divine relics in our care. Cisco would bring a representative from the Hildegard Sisterhood with authority to speak for the Reverend Mother.