Human evil could be terrifying, but also so petty compared to the real thing.
Fourteen
This is the night of spirits. This is the hour when veils are thin. Far be it from me to make demands on what I cannot understand.
—ARCHBISHOP GREGORY T. SOLOMON, UNOFFICIAL CORRESPONDENCE
“Someone might die tonight,” Nina said, muttering to Angela under her breath. Her eyes looked even more bloodshot than usual, practically crimson, and her hair stuck out from its bun in a hundred messy tangles. “Or so I’ve been told. I had the worst dreams you can imagine early this morning. There were so many people talking to me. Young. Old. Ugly. Pretty. And they all looked the same as when they died—frozen in time. The worst are the people who’ve drowned. Their skin has this nasty bluish color to it.”
Angela kept her fingers wrapped around the doorknob. Soft light emerged from below it in a strip, like the orange hue of a dying fire. She’d chosen to be deliberately late, missing the dancing, the drinks, and the music.
Now the silence suggested she’d missed a little too much.
They stood on the creaking stairwell, two young women surrounded by a vertical shaft of stones, as if they were two Rapunzels locked away in their tower. Rain seeped through little chinks in the rock, sliming the interior. It was cold, almost chillingly so, but that could have had more to do with Stephanie summoning spirits than the actual weather. Above them, lost to the murky shadows, the stairwell continued to a third chapel and the Bell Attic. Below, there was little but cobwebs and the occasional window.
“Did you happen to see any angels?” Angela said, careful about what she might be insinuating. “Any that died? Maybe—tragically?”
It sounded even crazier out loud than in her head. And she felt a little guilty, aware of how she shouldn’t keep shoving her own much happier dreams in Nina’s face. Last night, she’d seen the bronze-haired angel and had been fascinated by his strange anger and the petulant smile on his lips. The black makeup around his eyes was even more intricate than she remembered, precise circles of shade and ink that brought out the unbelievable sea of his irises. His wings were so perfect, and she’d awakened wondering at their softness; the way that down would feel, caressed between her fingers. It was probably heaven compared to the ghostly visitations that haunted Nina.
“Angels,” Nina said, taking one last drag of her cigarette before they entered the room. Her hands shook, peppering her boots with ash. “No, sorry. I don’t even think they can die.” She raised her eyebrows. “Can they?”
“Apparently so.” Angela grabbed the cigarette and pitched it down into the darkness.
Nina watched it tumble away, sucking in her bottom lip. “You really do hate those things, don’t you?”
“Smoke. It brings back bad memories.” She turned the knob.
“Like of the fire that didn’t kill you?”
Exactly. And if Stephanie pisses me off enough, maybe I’ll try another.
Angela sighed, pushing the door open. “Let’s get this over with already.”
She’d expected more of a dungeon atmosphere, but the deconsecrated chapel glowed cozily with the light of hundreds upon hundreds of candles. They had been set in ritualistic semicircles throughout the room, framing a pathway that led to an even larger, closed circle, complete with a pentacle carved deep into the floor.
There were no signs of a party. Not even a broken bottle or two.
Just the faint odor of herbs and alcohol.
“Angela. And here I was afraid you’d chickened out again.”
Stephanie stood in the middle of the candles, robed, her porcelain hands on her hips, smiling at Angela and Nina like she’d been waiting for them all her life. The other members of the sorority, at least thirty strong, had adopted regular spots near a porch that opened to the storm. Behind the shallow veranda, the storm bubbled smoky gray and violent.
“So what do you think?” Stephanie spread her arms, indicating the decorations around them.
Angela stared at the peeling paintings, the worn frescoes, the marble altarpiece completely split in the middle. Yet the chapel was strangely cavernous, and most of its outer reaches extended into unreadable darkness. Besides the leftover junk, everything was too clean. Too orderly. Like someone had been sacrificing so many animals here, they’d decided to make it home.
“Luckily, it didn’t take as long as it looks to set up.” Then Stephanie lost some of the soft sweetness in her voice. “I’m glad you came, Angela. Tonight is an important one to the sorority.” She paced inside the pentacle. “Or didn’t you know that? You are somewhat out of the loop, I think. Just like your brother. Who, by the way, will not be here with us.”