Sister Betty crossed her legs under her tunic.
The reprimand I’d have expected from anyone else didn’t happen. Robicheau barely had the guts to hold himself together against her, never mind assert himself against impropriety.
“I assume you and Caitlin have worked out access to the armory?” She smiled her dangerous smile. Her words rolled out in a disarming purr disguising the threat of impending menace.
Father Robicheau sat squarely in her sights, and he had no idea.
“Yes, in fact,” he opened the drawer and produced the key, “she’d just requested access it again. Which I was about to permit, of course.”
“Great.” Her foot bounced, making her tunic sway.
I accepted the key, now so readily given, and sat back, waiting for the drama. “Thank you, Father.”
“Thank you for your support,” she said, her voice low and sultry.
He avoided looking at her, maybe pretending not to see the unseemly wiggle of her tunic. Kudos to him, but maybe it distracted me more since I knew what was underneath. I bit the inside of my cheek to subdue a giggle while trying not to squirm.
“Of course.” His sour scowl fought to be a professional, emotionless expression, but lost. He blinked several times, tugging his cleric blacks. “Was that all?”
“Not. Even. Close.” The threat in her slow, staccato words stopped him, mid-rise. “There’s something foul in your house, Father, and I’m here to clean it out.”
“No, no, you’re mistaken,” he said, his words tumbling over each other, his eyes wide. “I’m just serving God by tending the New Orleans flock.”
Sister Betty’s predatory grin reminded me why she was one of the most terrifying hunters the Church had ever known. She sat still as a vampire, her eyes locked on the cleric behind his desk. “Are you sure?”
“This is highly irregular, Sister Bridgit!” Father Robicheau pushed back in his chair, sweat rolling down his forehead.
Sister Betty stood, aiming a quick gesture at me to do the same, and we rounded the desk in opposite directions. “Please. Call me Betty. Everyone does.”
Robicheau’s head swiveled between us, a trapped animal looking for escape. “What is this? Why are you doing this?” Finding nowhere to retreat, he dropped into his seat, cowering.
“You know why. And you’d better start talking before things get…” She leaned over him. Her white teeth, flushed cheeks, and pink lips belonged in a magazine rather than a religious order.
Then there was her stance over the cowering man.
Lethal and sexy.
I swallowed hard, unsure if fear or arousal would win the war within me.
“…serious.” She stretched the word, the long sibilant hiss of a snake ready to strike.
Father Robicheau shuddered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How about we talk about Sister Evangeline’s death?”
Had there been color in his face, it would have drained away. Instead, his skin yellowed, as if aging thirty years before our eyes. I expected him to have some kind of heart attack. “I don’t like to talk about it,” he finally managed.
“Hard to discuss it without incriminating yourself?” I asked.
“No, no, that’s not it, I don’t like talking about it because she died—”
“Serving God?” I offered.
His face hardened, wrinkles like rigid cracks as his mouth twisted in distaste. “You have no idea what it is to serve God.”
“Funny.” I glanced at Sister Betty without letting him out of my sight. “Last I checked, I work for the Church.”
The priest huffed. “You have no idea what God’s work really is.”
Sister Betty laughed. “Enlighten me.”
The Father fidgeted. “It’s shepherding your fellow man and leading sinners to repentance. But not all sinners are repentant, and some will never seek God’s light.”
As if on some kind of divine cue, a shadow crossed the window over his head. I slid my hand into my pocket and pulled out my cellphone.
“Put it on the desk, Miss Kelley.”
I hadn’t seen Robicheau draw the gun he pointed at me. All I could do was blink and stare. Where the hell had it come from?
“Don’t make me repeat myself.” The hardness in his eyes didn’t replace the sad droop around the corners. Even though the bastard had me, I still pitied him a little. A very little, but it was there.
“Father,” I placed my phone face down on the table, “we’re on the same side.” As long as he was focused on me, Sister Betty might pull off some kind of miracle. What exactly, I had no idea.
That was up to her. I had to give her time and opportunity. And take it if it came my way.
“This isn’t part of protecting your congregation,” Sister Betty added, her hands hidden in the sleeves of her tunic. She had to have some gadget, or weapon, hiding up there.
“Who are you to judge me?” Robicheau’s color returned in a rush. “You,” he pointed with the gun, “cloistered away in…wherever you hide from the world. You have no idea what it’s like, what it takes—”
“You’re harming them by hindering us,” I said.
The gun swung in my direction along with his scowl. “I leave judgement to God.”
“Do you know what we do?”
“We?” He scoffed. The sleeves of Sister Betty’s tunic wriggled. “You say you serve God, yet when His creations punish the sinful and unrepentant, you kill the means of His justice. You. Kill. Them.” He punctuated his words with thrusts of his gun. “Thou shalt not kill.”
I flinched to keep his attention on me. Letting him believe he had the upper hand was so simple, it might actually work. “And yet,” I said, “you’re ready to kill us.”
“Like you killed Sister Evangeline,” Sister Betty said.
“Her death was a tragic accident. She—”
I held up both hands, the gun thrusting in my face again as soon as I moved. “Right, seatbelt, banking helicopter, got it. But you knew. You had something to do with it, didn’t you?”
A sinister smile oozed across his face. The hair rose on my arms. He didn’t have to say anything else.
“You did. Whatever you did, you made sure she died.” I heard my own astonishment. How had I not seen it? How had I not suspected something as odd as falling from a routine helicopter ride, especially someone as tactically experienced as Sister Evangeline?
“Shut up.”
I caught the glow of Sister Betty’s cellphone screen through her tunic.
“You killed your local monster hunter.” Marty owed me for being right. Again…
“Shut up!” His arm shook, and he leaned over the desk, the muzzle of the snub-nose .38 dancing inches from my face.
“You murdered your mentor because she protected innocent people from monsters who threatened them!” I leaned in close enough to smell the gun oil, daring him to fire, demanding his full attention. “You murdered her and tell me not to kill?”
“She interfered with God’s design. She questioned His decisions and intervened!” He pressed the gun against my forehead, face flushed and breathing in ragged gasps.
“And you’re doing the same with us.” My words were almost a whisper.
He recoiled. “I am not.”
“Aren’t you?” I leaned forward again to keep his attention on me. “You’ve got a gun in my face because I protect people, repentant or sinful, worthy or unworthy, from the monsters who hunt them. So, who’s interfering with God’s plan, here? Who’s really their brother’s keeper?”
He squared his shoulders in defiance, the gun no longer wobbling.
We locked eyes.
Time to take the bastard down.
I felt the quick shift in the energy before I saw anything, but as Sister Betty moved, I dropped.
The report of the gun drowned out Robicheau’s surprised yelp. My ears rang as I rolled to regain my footing. Hearing only a screaming echo of the gun’s report, I shook my head and scrambled around the desk, struggling to keep my balance. In the narrow space between the desk and abandoned chair, Sister Betty and Robicheau became a tangle of flailing, struggling limbs and too much black cloth. Of course, I jumped in, struggling to pry the gun from his hand. His wiry fingers were far stronger than they looked, so I went with the only feasible option.
Breaking them.
The suggestion of sound broke through the howl of deafness, probably Robicheau’s scream since he released his weapon. I slid it across the floor and pinned his arms. Maybe I tweaked his broken finger a little more than necessary, but the bastard had threatened me with a gun. And fired it. A little manhandling balanced our debt. Sister Betty’s knee seemed to be taking her due with his holy jewels.
A hand on my shoulder.
I twitched, wrenching another finger to keep Robicheau subdued. Another spike in the roar of non-sound.
Standing over me was my new bestie, Officer La Fontaine, red faced and sweating, his gun pointed at me.
Awesome.
Half a dozen cops in body armor filled the room, some clustered around the desk, weapons pointed at the wriggling clerics, a few more in the hall, weapons aimed at me.
Even better.
Nothing says vacation like being held at gunpoint.
His mouth moved, and I shrugged. “Can’t hear you, but he’s the one you want.” I gestured at the wriggling man on the floor as a uniform pulled Sister Betty back on her heels. She held her hands over her head, her face too pale and sweaty.
I reached out to give her a thumbs up to see if she was okay, when both of my hands were wrenched behind my back. “No,” I said, or maybe I yelled. I couldn’t really tell. “He’s the one you want. He fired the gun. He killed Sister Evangeline.”
They ignored me.
As someone pulled me out, another cop lifted Sister Betty. The wet shine on her tunic glistened, but pain transformed her face. “She’s been shot!” But no matter how I struggled, I couldn’t break free.
I tried to relax my jaw and not grit my teeth as I answered. “I told you, already, Robicheau fired the gun. The only time I touched it was to take it away.”
“And broke his fingers.” He glanced up at me, his pen poised over a steno notebook.
“Either that or get shot.”
He wrote without acknowledging my response.
“Once I had it, I slid it across the room and tried to secure him against further violence. Now, will you please tell me the status of my partner?”
“He’s being questioned.” The detective sounded bored. “But since he wasn’t there, he’ll probably be released soon.”
“He? No, my other partner. Sister Bridgit. The one in the room with me. She was shot. I need to know how she is.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t aware anyone had been injured.” With a nod at the notebook on the table in front of him, he continued. “You’re saying the priest shot the gun?”
I stopped pacing around the spartan, industrial green conference room and stared at him. “Seriously? How many times do I need to answer this question?”
A knock at the door interrupted whatever he intended to say. When it opened, an officer gestured to the detective, and the two whispered at the door, too low for me to hear over the buzzing in my ears. The detective glanced at me but returned to his conversation.
I folded my arms and waited. Never had I been held or questioned this long by local law enforcement. Of course, I’d never had such a contentious encounter with them before getting caught up in such a weird situation. Okay, not never, but not often. Not more than half dozen times or so.
And probably because Sister Betty or DEMON, the Department of Extra-Dimensional, Magical, and Occult Nuisances, usually intervened. Without her, it would take time before DEMON got the message.
Without her—
Nausea roiled in my stomach, and I pushed the thought away.
The two men nodded at each other, and the detective returned to his seat at the table, refusing to meet my eyes.
“And?”
He looked up. “And what?”
“What did he tell you about my partner?”
“Nothing.”
“She was shot.” I approached the mirror, staring past the detective’s reflection, trying to see whomever might be observing on the other side. “I need to know she’s okay.”
“Miss Kelley, yesterday, you were attacked on the street. Today, you claim a priest held a gun to your head. That this same priest tried to shoot you. In a church.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“You have to see why this is so difficult to believe.”
“What?” I turned around.
He stared at me, implacable, expressionless, pen in hand, waiting for something remarkable enough to write down.
“You think I’m lying?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“That’s what you’re implying.”
His chin lifted a fraction as he inhaled slowly. “Explain to me the circumstances of the attack yesterday.”
“I already have!” The echo of my own voice made the ringing in my ears louder. “And I’ve already explained what happened in the church. Tell me how my partner is.”
“Miss Kelley—”
“No. No more. Charge me if you have to.” If they hadn’t already filed a report with my name on it, as soon as my name was entered, I’d have backup. Someone from the Church, or someone from DEMON would be here. Either way, it didn’t matter. Either way, I’d be released. Either way, I could check on her. Sister Betty could be dying. I could be losing her.
She might already be gone.
Nausea swelled within me.
Without moving, the detective stared at me.
I sat in the chair across from him.
Neither of us spoke.
He sighed. “Your partner is fine. She’s being treated for an abrasion and a cracked rib.”
Relief flooded through me with such intensity I thought I might slump onto the table. My voice cracked as I thanked him.
Another knock at the door, and it swung in without hesitation. A short man in government-blue suit that fit better twenty pounds ago nodded at me, shifting his battered brown briefcase to his left hand. “Miss Kelley, you’re free to go.”
The detective stood up. “Who are you?”
Before he’d finished the question, the little man produced a business card with the flick of his fingers. “Agent Cooper Hardin. I’m with the federal Department of Extra-Dimensional, Magical, and Occult Nuisances.”
“Department of…” He scowled, standing. “DEMON?”
“That’s right, and he’s legit, McKenzie.” A uniformed cop appeared behind Agent Hardin, his insignia identifying him as the commander. “And don’t bother Googling that department. It’s one a’ them that doesn’t exist.”
Agent Hardin gave what might have passed for a smile in his world. “They do call it one of the No Such Agencies for a reason.”
I grinned. I’d not met Agent Hardin before, but I could tell I’d like him. The little man had gusto.
“Since there’s no grounds to hold Miss Kelley, she will be leaving. With any, and all, weapons she had on her person.”
“Of course.” The commander’s jaw twitched.
“But sir,” the detective who’s name I’d not bothered remembering tried to protest.
The commander shook his head. As he approached, I glimpsed his nametag. R. Albert. He stuck his hand out, thin skinned and flecked with dark spots. Far older than the man it was attached to. “Miss Kelley, my apologies. My team does their best to protect New Orleans, and we appreciate your…unique expertise, no matter how poorly we show it.” His drawl made the city’s name into something more exotic and vaguely foreign. Combined with the sincerity in his eyes, I lost the conviction of my irritation.
“Of course. If I’d been here in any professional capacity, I’d have come to introduce myself.” Probably not true, but it sounded good. I needed to get better with that professional courtesy thing.
“Of course.” His smile hinted that he knew better. “Our city hasn’t been easy on your kind lately. I’m hoping you can help us change that.”
“I’ll do what I can,” I said.
“Glad to hear it.”
The death knell of my vacation rang in the familiar laughter behind me.
“Caitlin, we’d best be on our way to see Bridgit before visiting hours are over. There’ll be plenty of time to chat later.” Father Callahan leaned against the doorway, one leg crossed in front of the other, arms crossed. His grin showcased his unnaturally white teeth. When I first met him, I assumed him a monster in disguise because of those teeth. All the better to eat me with.
I agreed. Commander Albert led us out, talking all the way, though I didn’t listen. Father Callahan talked enough for both of us. No one ever noticed who contributed to the conversation when he was around. Except Sister Betty.
No one could hide from her.