by Lisa Jackson
“Father, please be with me.” She dipped her fingertips in holy water and crossed herself as she entered the nave, where all of the images congealed. Red votive candles flickered, casting shadows that shifted on the stone walls. A massive crucifix was suspended from the arched ceiling over the altar where Jesus, in his agony, watched over the chapel.
Instinctively, Lucia made the sign of the cross again. The thrumming in her brain turned into a throb.
From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of movement—a dark figure in billowing robes disappearing through a door.
“Father?” she called, thinking the person running from the chapel was a priest. The door clicked closed. “Wait! Please . . .” She started for the doorway. “Father—Oh, no . . .” Her voice left her as she glimpsed a flutter of gauzy white fabric, the scallop of lace undulating on the floor by the first row of pews.
What?
Her heart nearly stopped.
The horrid, rapid-fire images that had awakened her seared through her brain again:
Yellowed gown.
Cruel lips.
A door shutting as the church bells pealed.
Just like before.
The whisper of evil brushed the back of her neck again. She nearly stumbled as she raced forward, her bare feet slapping the cold stone floor, echoing to the high, coved ceiling.
This can’t be happening!
It can’t be!
Stumbling, running, afraid of what she might find, she dashed to the front of the apse, to the altar and the glorious, now-dark stained-glass windows. The crucifix towered to the high ceiling, the son of God staring down in his pain.
“Oh, God!” Lucia cried. “Dios! Mi Dios!”
Horror shot up her spine.
A crumpled form lay in front of the first row of pews.
“¡No, por favor, Jesús. No, no, no!”
Her blood turned to ice at the sight of the body, supine near the baptismal font. Biting back a scream, Lucia fell to her knees near the bride dressed in a fragile, tattered wedding dress. A thin, unraveling veil covered her face.
Lucia’s stomach wrenched as she recognized Sister Camille, her face pale, her lips blue, her eyes wide and staring through the sheer lace.
“Oh, sweet Jesus . . .” Lucia gasped. She touched Camille’s stillwarm flesh, searching for a pulse at the nun’s neck, where small bruises circled her throat. Her stomach threatened to spew. Someone had done this to Camille, had tried to kill her. Oh, God, was she still alive? Did she feel the flicker of a pulse, the slightest movement beneath Camille’s cooling skin? Or was it only a figment of her imagination?
“Camille,” Lucia coaxed desperately, her voice cracking, “don’t let go, please. Oh, please . . . Mi, Dios!”
The ringing bells overhead sounded like a death knell.
She looked up. “Help! Someone help me!” Her voice rose to the rafters, echoing back to her. “Please!”
To the near-dead woman, she whispered, “Camille, I’m here. It’s Lucia. You hang in there. . . . Please, please . . . It’s not your time. . . .” But someone had decided Camille needed to die, and despite her good thoughts, Lucia knew of one person who wanted Camille Renard to die.
She whispered a quick prayer to the Father, praying with all her soul; then, tears filling her eyes, she bent close to Camille’s ear. “Don’t let go.” With her own gown, she tried to stop the spreading pool of blood coming from the wounds on Camille’s neck.
Camille didn’t move.
Pupils fixed.
Skin ashen. Cooling.
Blood flow slowed to nothing.
Lucia was frantic. She had to do something! Anything! Please God, do not take her. Not now . . . not yet . . . Oh, Father!
“Help!” Lucia screamed again, unwilling to leave the friend she’d known so closely for a year, a woman she’d known of most of her life. She couldn’t be dying . . . couldn’t be . . .
Lucia’s mind was awash with images of Sister Camille, beautiful and lithe, with her secretive smile and eyebrows that would arch to show amusement or disbelief. A troubled woman, yes, a nun with far too many secrets, one she’d met long ago before they’d independently decided to take their vows.
Throat closing, she whispered, “It’s not your time, Camille. You hear me? Don’t leave . . . don’t you . . .”
But the poor, tortured woman was gone, her spirit rising from the lifeless shell that was her body. Stolen from her.
“No . . . please . . . Father—”
Thud! Somewhere a door banged shut as the bells pealed again.
Lucia jumped.
Someone was coming!
Good. “Just hold on,” she said to the ashen body, though she knew intuitively that it was too late. “Help is coming.” Her words hung in the chill night air.
Lucia felt a shiver slide down her spine as doubt clouded her mind. She linked her fingers through those of her friend and sent up another desperate prayer as the church bells in the steeple continued to toll off the hours.
Was help really on the way?
Or was the person who had done this to Camille returning?
CHAPTER 3
Val was calmer now, the quivering of her insides having subsided.
She filled her favorite, chipped mug with hot water, set it in the microwave, and watched as hidden letters appeared. The heavy cup, bought online at ABC.com, displayed the cast members of Lost, her once-favorite television show.
It had been a Christmas gift from Camille, a treasure she’d bought before the show had aired its final episode.
Back in the days when they hadn’t let anything drive a wedge between them. Not even Slade Houston.
“Oh, Cammie,” she whispered, shaking her head at their own ridiculous fights as the microwave dinged. Gingerly gripping the cup’s handle, she scrounged the last tea bag from a box and dunked the decaffeinated leaves into the near-boiling water.
Though it was midnight, sleep, for Valerie, was still hours away, if at all possible. What was it Slade had always said? That her insomnia was one of the reasons the department had kept her on; she was a workaholic who, because of her inability to sleep, could work sixteen hours straight while being paid for eight.
Then again, Slade was known to exaggerate.
Part of his ridiculous cowboy humor.
Twisting the kinks from her neck, she closed her eyes, and for a heartbeat, she saw her husband’s face again: strong, beard-shadowed jaw; crooked half-smile with teeth that flashed white against skin tanned from hours working under the brutal Texas sun; and eyes smoldering a deep, smoky blue. Slade Houston. Tough as old leather, all rough-and-tumble cowboy, sexy as all get-out and just plain bad news.
So why was she thinking of him tonight?
And last night and the one before that and . . .
“Idiot,” she muttered under her breath as she willed Slade’s image to disappear. The bells had stopped ringing sometime in the past few minutes. Good. Silence. Peace.
But the eerie sensation that something was very wrong tonight lingered, and she couldn’t help feeling on edge.
Tomorrow.
She’d visit Camille tomorrow, regardless of the Machiavellian methods that old bat Sister Charity tried to use to dissuade her. “I’m sorry, but seeing your sister now is impossible. We have strict rules here,” she’d told Val the last time she’d tried to visit Camille unannounced. “Rules we abide by, rules sanctified by the Father.”
Yeah, right. If Sister Charity had any good intentions, Val had yet to see one. In Val’s opinion, the reverend mother was on a power trip fueled by self-importance and a skewed view of religion.
Always a bad combination.
And one, this time, Valerie intended to thwart come daybreak.
The last tolling bell faded to the sound of footsteps emanating from beyond the chapel walls. Lucia’s skin crawled as she stared at the dead girl. She tried to pray but couldn’t find the words. Who had done this to Camille? Why? And the weird brida
l dress, the ring of bloody drops around the neckline—what was that all about?
She glanced to the side door that had shut just as she’d arrived, and her heart hammered. Someone else had seen Sister Camille on the chapel floor. Lucia had crossed paths with either Camille’s assailant or a witness to what had happened. Fear prickled the back of her neck as she wondered if help was on its way . . . or if the assailant was returning.
Making the sign of the cross, Lucia turned toward the doorway and screamed at the top of her lungs. “Help!”
The side door swept open, banging against the wall. Mother Superior, an imposing woman in a long black habit, hurried into the nave. Her graying hair, which was usually concealed by her veil, appeared fuzzy and disheveled. “Sister Lucy! For the love of the Holy Mother, what’s going on?” she demanded. Her skirts swished against the smooth floor, and her face was a mask of disapproval, her lips pinched. Suddenly realizing where she was, she paused to quickly genuflect at the crucifix and make the sign of the cross over her ample bosom.
“It’s Sister Camille . . .” Lucia rose, her gaze still upon Camille’s body.
“What about . . . ? Oh!” The mother superior dragged in a quick breath as she rounded the final pew. “Saints be with us.” Wide skirts swooshing, she ran to the victim’s side and dropped to her knees.
“It’s too late. She’s dead.”
“But how? Why?” Sister Charity whispered, as if she expected God to answer as she fussed over the corpse and said a quick prayer. “Who would do this?”
“I don’t know. Someone was here, before me,” Lucia said, trying to separate fact from fiction, from the images that were real as opposed to those that had been conjured in her mind. “I saw the door to the hallway close.” Yes, yes, that was right. She pointed to the door that led to a back hallway. “And . . . I think Sister Camille was alive at that point.”
The older nun touched Camille’s wrist and placed her ear next to Camille’s nose, listening for any sign of life. Lucia knew she would find none.
“What were you doing here, Sister Lucy?” Mother Superior asked, addressing Lucia in her formal name—the saint’s name she had taken along with her vows.
“I, uh, heard something,” Lucia lied, as she had so often in the past. No one here knew her secret, not even the priests to whom she confessed.
“Heard something? From your room?”
“Yes, I was on my way to the bathroom.”
As if she realized this conversation could wait, the reverend mother, still kneeling at Camille’s side, ordered, “Go find Father Paul. Send him here.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?”
The reverend mother closed her eyes as if seeking patience. “Do as I say. After you send Father Paul, then go to my office and dial nine-one-one.”
“But the police should be alerted first—”
“Don’t argue! The best thing we can do for Sister Camille is to pray for her soul. Now, go! And if anyone else wakes up, send them back to their rooms!” Her expression brooked no argument, and Lucia took off, walking rapidly through the very doorway where she’d seen someone exit. Send the other nuns back to their rooms? Cells, more likely. Or kennels. Like dogs. Oh, Lord, she knew she was not cut out to be a nun. Not with impure thoughts like these.
Heart pounding, she closed the door behind her and took off at a dead run—heading straight to the reverend mother’s office. Let them punish her later, but right now she knew Camille was the priority. She pushed open the frosted-glass door and stormed into Sister Charity’s inner sanctuary.
Everything was neatly placed on bookshelves that lined the room—books, candles, crucifixes, a healthy amaryllis with a heavy white bloom, and a solitary picture of the Pope. Lucia rounded the big, worn desk, where far too many times she had sat on one of the uncomfortable visitor chairs, her hands clenched in anxiety, as the mother superior had lectured her across the expanse of lacquered walnut. She reached for the telephone with its heavy receiver, a black dinosaur left over from the sixties or seventies, and dialed quickly, nervously waiting for the rotary dial to click into place.
“Nine-one-one. What’s the nature of your emergency?” a woman’s voice answered.
“Sister Camille is dead! There was some kind of accident here at St. Marguerite’s Convent—no, in the chapel—and she’s dead! I . . . I think she was killed. Please, please send someone quickly!” Her voice, already tremulous, was elevating with each word.
“What is the address?”
Lucia rattled off the street address and, when asked, her name and the phone number.
“What kind of an accident?”
“I don’t know. Maybe . . . maybe she was strangled. All I really know is that she’s dead, and the mother superior is with her now.”
“A homicide.”
“Oh, I don’t know! We need help. Please, please send help!”
“We are. Officers have been dispatched. You need to stay on the line.”
“I can’t . . . I have to tell Father Paul.”
“Please, Miss Costa, do not hang up. Stay on the line—”
Ignoring the dispatcher, Lucia dropped the phone, letting it dangle as she took off at a full run through the back door of the office, one only Sister Charity used.
Lucia’s heart was a drum as she sprinted through the dark hallways with their gleaming floors, down the stairs, and out the double doors to a courtyard. As if Lucifer himself were chasing her, she raced through the rain-splattered cloister and past a fountain. Wind scuttled across the flagstones, kicking up wet leaves and tugging at the sodden hem of her nightgown.
She couldn’t tell anyone about how she was awakened so abruptly in the middle of the night. What would she say? Anyone who heard about the voice that directed her, the beast she’d somehow unleashed, would think she was certifiable. As she did herself. She figured that voice in her head was between her and God. No one else. Not even Father Paul or Father Frank. They might think she was possessed by a demon, and maybe she was, but she just didn’t want any attention drawn to her.
It’s not about you! Camille is dead! Dead! Someone killed her and left her lifeless body in the chapel.
And somehow the voice knew. And awoke her.
Oh, it was all so disturbing.
Through another door and under a dripping portico, she flew to Father Paul’s door, where she pounded desperately.
“Father!” she cried, shivering in the pale glow of the priest’s porch light. “Please! Father! There’s been . . . an accident!”
Over the drip of rain, she heard footsteps behind her, the scrape of leather against wet stones. From the corner of her eye, she saw movement in the shadows, a dark figure emerging through a garden gate. She gasped, stepped back, and nearly tripped on her own hem as a large man appeared, his face white and stern, his eyes sunken and shadowed in the night.
“Father Frank,” she whispered, recognizing the younger priest. She had clasped her hand over her breasts and suddenly realized that the cool rain had soaked her cotton nightgown, which now pressed flush against her skin. The fabric clung to her body, hiding nothing in the watery light. “There’s been an accident or . . . or . . .” She swallowed hard, aware of the secrets that Sister Camille had shared. Secrets about this tall man standing before her. “It’s Sister Camille, in the chapel. . . . She . . . she . . .” And then she saw the blood leeching from his cassock, running in red rivulets onto the smooth, shimmering stones of the pathway.
“She’s dead,” he said, his rough voice barely audible over the gurgle of rainwater in the gutters, his gaze tortured. “And it’s my fault. God forgive me, it’s all my fault.”
CHAPTER 4
“Still up?” Freya’s voice cut into her fantasy.
“Always.” Val tried to ignore the worries about Camille. She tossed the tea bag into the sink and glanced over her shoulder toward the archway leading to the main house. When they’d bought this old inn, Val had been attracted to the small living space of
the carriage house, while Freya took over the private quarters just off the main kitchen. Freya, all tousled reddish curls and freckles, appeared in shorts and an oversized T-shirt. She was cradling a cup with whipped cream piled so high it was frothing and running over the lip of her mug. Somehow, Freya managed to lick up the drip before it landed on the cracked linoleum.
Freya was five-three and still had the honed body of the gymnast she’d been in high school and the metabolism of a girl twenty years her junior.
“You look like hell,” Freya observed.
“Thanks.”
“Really, you should try to sleep.”
If only. She turned and leaned her hips against the counter. “Insomniacs R Us.” The inability to sleep was something she and Freya shared in common.
Freya toasted her friend. “Mine is decaf. Though it doesn’t mean I’ll actually fall asleep anytime soon.”
“I’ve got decaf, too. Something called ‘Calm.’ ” Val took an experimental sip. Hot water tasting of ginger and chamomile singed the tip of her tongue. “It’s supposed to help you chill. . . . Wait a minute, let me see what exactly it’s guaranteed to do.” She picked up the empty box and read the label. “Oh, yeah, here it is. ‘Calm’s unique formula is guaranteed to ease the worries and cares of the world away with each flavorful swallow. With hints of ginger and jasmine, this chamomile blend will relax and soothe you.’ ”
“Sure,” Freya mocked, wrinkling her nose. “Soothe you? No way. Anyway, it sounds disgusting.”
“No, just boring to fans of triple-caramel-chocolate-macchiatos with Red Bull chasers.”
“Very funny.” Freya couldn’t help but grin as she climbed onto one of the two café chairs near Val’s bistro table.
A friend since eighth grade, Freya Martin had convinced Val to invest in this eight-bedroom bed-and-breakfast inn in the Garden District, a few blocks off St. Charles Avenue. Named the Briarstone House, the old Georgian had been minimally damaged during Hurricane Katrina, but the owners, Freya’s great-aunt and uncle, had decided they weren’t about to weather any more Category 5 storms. Actually, they didn’t want to see any Category 1, 2, 3, or 4 storms either.