Where the Devil Says Goodnight (Folk Lore #1) - K.A. Merikan Page 0,35
it,” he whispered and slipped his tongue through the grate to lick along the tip of Adam’s ear.
A broken whimper left Adam’s lips and echoed through the confessional. Adam flinched before bursting out of his chair and away from Emil. “Get out.”
Emil laughed and got up, feeling as if the giant weight he’d been carrying since yesterday finally dropped. He much preferred to be despised than pitied. He could still sense the sparks of electricity on his tongue. “Don’t worry, Adam. It’s not a sin if you didn’t agree to the touch.” He followed the priest out into the open space of the empty church, but Adam only briefly looked back, already halfway to the altar.
His face was the color of raspberry cream, so sweet and delicious Emil already wanted another taste. “This is over. Go to your house and rot in sin, for all I care!”
Emil spread his arms. “You have to admit my storytelling skills are excellent, though?”
Adam stormed behind the altar, and for a brief moment Emil wasn’t sure what he saw.
The shadow Adam cast had horns.
It had to be an ironic trick of light, because no other answer made sense. Emil didn’t get to mention it, because Adam shut the hidden door behind him so loudly its bang echoed throughout the single nave. Emil was alone again.
The statues of Adam and Eve judged him in silence. He was rotten. Just like everyone said. If he couldn’t prove anyone wrong, what was the point in trying? People suspected him of sicking crows on an old lady, of devil worship, and Mrs. Golonko once even accused him of stealing from her store when she’d hired him to repair the pavement in front of it.
He exhaled, standing on the steps to the altar, both glad and regretful over chasing Adam away. If Adam hated him, he wouldn’t be tempted into Emil’s clutches. But… if Adam hated him, he wouldn’t be tempted into Emil’s clutches. Whatever plans he might have had, they were all ruined now.
Emil didn’t belong in Dybukowo, and he most certainly didn’t belong with Adam. Radek was right. He needed to get out of here, but with no money for the move, with nowhere to stable Jinx, he was powerless against a life that kept tossing stones at him.
A hollow, metallic thud made him look up, and his gaze settled on the tabernacle, the memory of the expensive monstrance inside resurfacing in Emil’s mind. A slithering sound made Emil flinch, but when he glanced at the wooden snake, nothing had changed about its position.
The padlock on the tabernacle, however, was open, even though he could have sworn it had been locked before. His body thudded with the sound of a hurried heartbeat as he climbed the stairs, passed the altar table and opened the box without thinking. A church that preached about the value of austerity didn’t need a silver chalice. He did. After all the shit he’d been through, he could for once prove to everyone they’d been right about him all along.
He grabbed the thick stand of the solar-shaped monstrance and took it from the tabernacle.
There. He was rotten.
“Emil? What are you doing?” Adam asked, appearing from behind the figure of Eve as if he’d never left in the first place.
Emil stared at him with his lips parted and the monstrance halfway down the front of his hoodie. “I…” What? What did he think he was doing? He didn’t have eight starving children to feed. He was getting by. How the fuck was he supposed to explain this moment of madness? He’d been poor all his life but never stolen from anyone. What he’d just done was an impulse he couldn’t explain.
Adam swallowed hard, still flushed, but his face expressed concern rather than fury. “It’s me you’re angry at. Put that back.”
Emil reluctantly revealed the monstrance in all its glitzy glory. “I’m not angry. Why are you back?” he asked, desperate to change the subject and pretend this never happened.
Adam swallowed, watching Emil place all the liturgical treasures back into the tabernacle. He swiftly joined him at the back of the altar and closed the padlock, as if he wanted to remove the temptation altogether. “I didn’t leave. I thought you would.”
Emil was so embarrassed he didn’t know where to look. Only moments ago, he’d been so happy with himself over embarrassing Adam in the confessional, but that artificial confidence was fizzling out fast to reveal what he really was. A loser.