Page 103 of The Devil

Once we reach it, the door is opened from the inside. I suppose whoever is in there was looking out for us. We enter and umbrellas are set aside. The door is closed behind us. Only then do I realize how loud the storm was. How the wind and sea howled, a banshee’s screams warning of death. Too late though. They’re already dead.

It’s warm inside but I’m still shivering. The dress is clinging to me, silk that’s come undone creating a train behind me. I can barely feel my feet and my teeth are chattering loudly. But I have a feeling even if it was a hundred degrees in here, I’d still be cold.

“Christ. What the hell happened to her?” a voice at the far end of the chapel asks. I look across the candlelit space to see a man wearing the black cassock and collar of a priest and what Jameson said starts to make strange sense.

Your new husband.

“She’s a little bitch,” Jameson tells him, showing his hand where I’d bit it like a little bitch himself.

The priest’s eyebrows rise dismissively. Jameson is the lowest ranking man here, I think.

“Are we ready? Finally?” The priest asks, annoyed.

I wonder what the hell kind of church this is? What kind of priest?

I look around, search for an exit. The old chapel is bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside, and although there’s an altar, there’s no crucifix. In its place is that plaque of interwoven vines and roses. There are no pews, just the exposed stones of the floor, graves beneath where names and dates have been worn smooth and unreadable over time. A chain bolted to a stone at the very center lies ominous and telling.

I hear my heart pound. Feel the blood thudding against my ears.

Where the Stations of the Cross should be are small portraits and inside each of them, something that makes me shiver. That fills me with a dread I don’t understand. Not yet.

Portraits of a man and woman inside each. The women are all in red. Each wore the dress I wear now. Around each of their throats is the shard necklace.

The men are interchangeable, all in dark cloaks, masks over their faces, anonymous.

The women’s faces have been exposed, that lace cut. They all wear the same expression. One of fear. Most are bruised and bloodied. None are smiling.

But there’s one thing we all have in common apart from the red dress. And I begin to understand.

This was never about the watch.

Never about the Blackstones.

It was about me. It was always about me.

Because that one thing the women and I share is our eyes. I see theirs every time I look in the mirror.

And as I’m dragged up the aisle, I see the most recent portrait. This one’s more modern and not a painting but a photograph.

Looking back at me from inside it is a younger version of my mother.

34

JET

“It’s not her! It’s not her!” I hear myself screaming over the sound of waves crashing against what may as well be a canoe given the storm.

“Hold on!” Sev yells from the helm where he’s trying to keep the boat steady. It’s an impossible task.

I stand and am immediately tossed to the other side of the boat. I grip the edge of it and try to get to Sev.

“Go back! Turn it around!” I’m yelling but the storm washes out my words, soaking me with freezing water as the boat crashes loudly from one wave to another taking on too much water.

Sev is soaked. He’s gripping the wheel but it’s no use.

I get to him, take hold of the wheel to turn it.

“What the hell are you doing?” he calls out.