The Ant’s eyebrows were arching, but not quite high enough to disappear beneath her hard shiny bangs. “Hello again, Betsy’s husband.” She wasn’t kidding. She’d never bothered to learn his name. “Hi, Marc!” Whoa. Actual warmth.
“You know you missed me,” Marc replied, smiling. She giggled
(!!!!!!!!!!!!)
I know! My thought exactly: !!!!!!!!!!!!
and ducked her head.
“Father Markus was just explaining why the buddy system should be dismantled.”
“I didn’t use the term ‘dismantled,’” he said mildly. He turned to me. “I understand you’re trying to lighten your own workload by getting the souls here to take on some of the burden. But you’re laboring under the same misunderstanding you always have: it’s not your job to make things easier for them.”
“Actually, I’ll be the one who decides what my job is.” I kept my tone mild, too. “We’ve had this discussion already. The buddy system stays. The new and improved Ten Commandments stay. Which reminds me, it’s time for me to work on the new and improved Seven Deadly Sins. Being jealous because your neighbor got backstage passes to Jim Gaffigan is no reason to be damned for eternity.”
“That is enough.” Father Markus was on his feet, face flushed. “With all respect, Betsy, that’s idiotic.”
Don’t, I thought as Sinclair’s fist clenched. Seriously: you keep the fuck out of this. I mean it.
As you will.
Thank you.
If he touches you, I may have to disobey. Punish me as you will. His thought was serious and unwavering, like a five-hundred-watt flashlight in a dark basement: this is what will happen, I’m sorry to disobey, I will accept the consequences. There were some things a chivalrous man in his nineties couldn’t tolerate, I guess.
It didn’t matter, it wasn’t going to come to that. But I made a mental note to give the old duffer a serious scolding when we were back at the mansion. After I’d fucked him.
“You know, Markus, I’ve about had it with your attitude. For a guy who’s never been out of Minnesota, you’re pretty surly.”
“Minnesota Nice is a lie,” he replied, so I punched him.
Ohhh, did I punch him. My hand snapped into a fist and I belted him in the face as hard as I could. That punch, which had been trying to escape for at least a week, came up from my heels and knocked him twenty feet through the air until his momentum was stopped by a helpful cement pillar.
Total, complete silence—no one gasped, no one stirred, it was just a sea of open mouths and eyes everywhere—broken by Markus groaning and trying to sit up. Once he sat up he tried to stand. Took a few tries, and I was bitchy enough to take pride in that.
I actually heard the click as he pushed his dislocated jaw back into place and Marc hissed in sympathy behind me. “That usually requires big-time anesthesia,” he muttered to Tina, who murmured agreement. They were still holding hands, looking less like an elderly auntie watching out for her boy, and more like Hansel and Gretel wondering when the witch was going to make her move.
????????
Wait.
Excellent punch, beloved. Anything that flies that far and fast usually has wings.
Shut up. I’m working.
“Nnn fffrrr,” Markus said, limping toward me. He’d broken an ankle or a leg when he hit the pillar, too.
“You should put some ice on that,” I suggested, smiling. “Or a cast.”
He shook his head again, spraying blood in fat drops. He opened his mouth but this time I cut him off.
“Who are you?”
He just looked at me.
“There’s this nifty thing called the Directory of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis,” I told him. “It’s online, and free. It lists all the priests and their backgrounds. Father Markus was born in Connecticut and ordained in Boston. He only got to Minnesota a decade ago.” I reached out, seized him by his fake collar, and hauled him toward me until we were nose to nose. “Who are you?”
Those bright brown eyes, which I’d often thought were sparkling with compassion and humor, were gleaming with what I now knew was scorn. “You know,” he whispered, kissing-close. “Don’t you?”
I dropped him and he fell to his knees, scrambled back, and then made the painful climb to his feet again. Except he was moving quicker, easier. The blood was drying, disappearing. The broken bones were reknitting. The black suit and collar were fading. He was shrinking into something else. No. Someone else.
I turned to my family, who’d been watching in stunned and fascinated silence. “You guys remember Lucifer, right?”
And there she was, looking as Satan always had to me: like Lena Olin in a wonderful black suit, sheer black stockings, and black Christian Louboutin Pagalle pumps.