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I tell myself not to laugh. “Like a mental health professional?” I ask. “Because the guy with the tattoo is a priest, the one with the glasses a psychiatrist, and the one with the red hair is a counselor.”
“I didn’t mean to fuck,” she says. “Maybe see a woman if you can’t help yourself around dick.”
“Haha,” I reply humorlessly. “I don’t have time for counseling. Maybe I will after we win the fucking war against demons, but for now…”
“Wow, okay. I’m not even going to try to unpack that,” she replies. “But I’m not letting you just go with them again. It’s obviously not good for you. Tell me how I can help.”
I sigh, barely resisting the urge to bury my face in my hands. “I would if I could,” I say. “But honestly, I have no idea.”
Bryony approaches me. I know she’s worried about me, but I’ve never seen her look sorry for me before. I really don’t like it.
“It’s okay,” she says in a soothing voice. She wraps her arms around me, pulling me close. “You’ll be okay.”
“And if I’m not?”
She laughs. “Well, then you’ll have enough material to write the next album,” she replies, pulling away from me. “Isn’t pain what art is about?”
She giggles, and I giggle with her. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but at least she’s here.
LUKE
This is like an old-school investigation, the kind we would do at the office back at home. But this isn’t at the office. We ordered room service for breakfast and we’re sitting around in the messy room, looking up anything we can find about Malon O’Mara.
Misha is better than me at the investigation part of things, but I’m researching feverishly. I’m trying not to let my concern about Malon get to me, but it’s hard. I can see that this is getting to Trine, and I know it’s going to get worse if we don’t do anything to stop it.
She’s the one that has to suffer the consequences. She’s the one that’s getting progressively sicker, and there’s no part of me that trusts what Malon wants her to do. The worst part is that there’s nothing I can do to send him away. I can pray all I want, but I can’t exactly exorcise someone who’s taken a corporal form. At least I don’t think so. Someone who is being exorcised must want to be exorcised, otherwise, it won’t happen for them.
Misha takes a sip from his coffee from the bed, noisily. “Nothing,” he says.
“Like he’s clean?”
“No,” Misha says, his brow furrowed. “Like there’s nothing under his name except for these professional pages, but I can’t find anything on him. No address, no voting records, no priors…”
“Maybe he’s just really private,” I say.
He meets my gaze, a question in his eyes.
“We’re going to have to keep digging.”
He nods. “I agree,” he says. “Something about his online presence…it’s too clean. I don’t like it. It feels manufactured. Everything about him feels fake, from the way he appears online to his name. Fucking Malon O’Mara? It genuinely sounds fake.”
“I didn’t want to bring it up,” I say. “There are already so many suspicious things about him. But she trusts him. I don’t want to take anything else away from her.”
“Not even if it’s bad?” he asks. “Not even if it’s toxic?”
“I don’t know how to convince her,” I say. “Not before we have facts to convince her with. She’s letting her feelings guide her. Right now, that’s probably not a good thing.”
“You’re right,” he says. He takes another noisy sip of his coffee and sets it down on the duvet next to him. The foam cup has a lid on it, but it still freaks me out when he does this. “We’re going to have to keep digging.”
“For how long?”
“Until we find something,” he says.
“I don’t know how much time we have,” I reply. “I don’t know how long it’ll be until Trine is beyond salvation.”
He laughs under his breath.
“What? What could possibly be funny about what I just said?”
