Where the Devil Says Goodnight (Folk Lore #1) - K.A. Merikan Page 0,10

rollers, as if she feared she wasn’t presentable enough to accept callers. Her eyes were set so deeply shadow hid them from Adam’s view, and the bottom half of her face appeared sunken in suggestion she’d already removed her artificial teeth for the night. In the faint light of the moon, her features appeared almost too angular, too much like a skull straight from a label on a bottle of rat poison, and Adam braced himself for a flood of acid.

“No one.”

“Only the devil walks out there at this ungodly hour,” she said, stepping outside in leather slippers, as if she were the guard dog of this parsonage. “Who are you?”

Adam was way too tired for witty remarks. “I’m Adam Kwiatkowski. The new priest. I know I’m here a bit early—”

“A bit? You were supposed to arrive tomorrow. Oh well, I guess you’re here now, so that’s that,” she huffed and stepped aside to let him in. “I’m Janina Luty, the housekeeper. The pastor should have come down here himself, but he’d slept through the racket, as he always does,” she grumbled, and Adam made a note of her attitude. If he wanted to fit in, he’d need to learn what made the most important people in the village tick, and in his case, the housekeeper might be of even more importance than the pastor.

“I’m very sorry,” he said, wiping the soles of his shoes on the doormat] before taking them off. The tiled floor was like ice against his damp feet, but at least he was out of the rain. The woman looked at the wet imprints he made and shook her head with a low exhale. It only occurred to Adam then that she hadn’t offered him food, clearly not amused by the insolence of someone disturbing her sleep.

“The room’s ready for you,” she said and led the way down a neat yet old-fashioned hallway with religious pictures hung on white walls and wooden beams on the ceiling. Adam was glad to discover his new quarters were close to the bathroom, but the room itself greeted him with a blow of frosty air.

“We will speak about this in the morning,” Mrs. Janina said and handed him a towel. “This parsonage has rules.”

Adam had no doubt ‘don’t wake up Mrs. Janina, ever’ was at the top of the list, but he thanked the housekeeper profusely, apologized once more, and sat in a wooden chair with a deep sigh as soon as she left him.

So this would be his new home. Two single beds on either side of the small space. A chair and a desk. A framed picture of Pope John Paul II, yellowed from sun exposure. And, of course, an old-fashioned tiled stove, which looked as if it had been borrowed from the set of a historical movie, but so far, hadn’t offered him a warm welcome.

He opened his backpack to remove the laptop, only to see that the box of chocolates had been squashed.

Helplessness sank its bony fingers into Adam’s flesh, and he rubbed his face, not even ready to take off his clothes yet. Warmth might have been too much of a temptation after… after being so close to another man while Jinx had carried them to the parsonage.

He faced the door, still in his wet clothes, but his nape tingled, as if touched by a warm hand, and he spun around, placing his palms on either side of the small window. The lone horse rider, who stopped on the way back to the woods couldn’t have watched him from afar, but Adam still sensed his green gaze cutting through clothes and rubbing cool flesh until it was hot.

He could not let those thoughts overcome him.

Adam stepped back, his lungs working like bellows until the flicker of desire spread throughout his entire body, and he stuffed his hands into the open luggage, frantically searching for his most prized possession. The wooden handle felt like an extension of his hand, and when he pulled out the scourge, the sight of three tails finished with wooden beads swung in greeting and promised relief.

Adam’s most trusted friend.

Chapter 3 - Emil

Emil didn’t often ride his old Yamaha motorbike. It had been Grandfather’s pride and joy, a mean 1970s machine the color of a ladybird, but since gas prices had sharply risen, it had gathered dust in Emil’s shed. It might have been most practical to sell it off to a collector of classic vehicles—and it would have been a much-needed