The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,35

was a big mistake. Let’s go.”

Lucy paused, giving him one last chance to explain, but he didn’t. She joined Cecilia, reluctantly.

“They are special,” he called after them in the darkness. “You are special. It wasn’t a mistake.”

They stopped and turned.

“They brought you here. Both of you. Here,” he said. “To me.”

“What are they, freakin’ homing devices?” CeCe remarked.

“The charms, they’re called milagros. That means miracles,” he said, handing them back to their respective owners. “They are used to ground you. Heal you. Lead you home.”

“Well, fail!” Cecilia said, throwing up her arms. “I’m not home. I don’t have a home!”

“Why don’t you just listen for a second,” Lucy snapped at Cecilia.

“I ain’t into threesomes,” Cecilia said, pissed at Lucy’s indecisiveness. “Have fun.”

Lucy grabbed her arm. “It’s going to get really bad out there. Let it pass.”

Cecilia felt a bit of reverse psychology at play in Lucy’s tone. Like she didn’t really mean it. Lucy wanted her out of there. She wanted Sebastian to herself.

“Pass? You mean like a kidney stone? No, thanks.” Cecilia huffed, breaking Lucy’s grip and eyeing Sebastian. “I didn’t come here to play Bachelor. Besides, it couldn’t be any worse out there than it is in here.”

Cecilia grabbed her guitar and her heavy coat and made her way through the darkness to the door. She opened it and was almost immediately blown backward by an angry gust that nearly blasted the enormous wooden door from its hinges. She could barely see, but what she could make out was horrific. The sheet metal and scaffolding rattled and groaned in the wind and large branches snapped from tree trunks, littering the street, crushing parked cars beneath them, blocking the sidewalk below the stone staircase and down the brownstoned block farther than she could see. The downpour had already overwhelmed the sewers, flooding over curbs and into cellars. Plastic supermarket bags, wrappers, and rubbers clogged sewer drains as the smelly contents of overturned trash cans floated by under the straining street lamps. To CeCe, the entire area had the noxious odor of a backed-up dive-bar bathroom.

She held tightly on to the side of the large arched doorway and braced herself; the brutal wind pushed against her cheeks, turning her face into a virtual skull mask and her arms and legs into reddened ripples of wet, quivering flesh. The decision about whether to stay or go was moot.

“Shut the door!” Lucy shouted. “You’re letting it in.”

The door that had proven so difficult to open when they first arrived was now proving equally challenging to close. Lucy rushed to the entrance and got her back into it as well, the sudden pressure drop of the thickening storm spiking the pain in her head.

Cecilia and Lucy pushed against the gusts, but not before a high-pitched whimper found its way through the ungodly din and reached their ears.

“There’s something out there,” Cecilia said.

It was coming from right near the doorstep, as far as CeCe could tell. A stray cat trying to survive the storm on the steps? she wondered. She braved the impossible wind and poked her head outside and around the door and cried out in shock.

“Son of a bitch!” CeCe yelled.

“What?” Lucy screamed. “What is it?”

Cecilia was dumbfounded.

It was a girl, barefoot, weeping, face buried in her hands, her long auburn hair barely contained inside the lambswool-lined cowl of her poncho. Both were drenched. She was curled up in a ball, shivering from cold and from fear. Crashed and washed-up, like debris from a shipwreck, in the doorway.

Cecilia stepped out and was instantly blown back against the church door. She knelt and reached for the girl, who tightened her pose, making her difficult to move. She was nearly catatonic but still resisting, immovable, as if she were nailed to the spot.

“C’mon,” Cecilia begged. “You will catch your death out here.”

Lucy stood unsteadily in the vestibule, frustrated, watching the one-sided negotiation.

“Hurry up!” she screamed. “If she wants to be stubborn, let her. I’m closing the door.”

Cecilia turned back, looking to Lucy for help, nodding her over.

“Weren’t you just leaving?” Lucy reminded her.

“I can’t do this alone! . . . ” Cecilia yelled, realizing she didn’t have a name to go along with the urgent request.

“Lucy. My name is Lucy.”

“Cecilia,” she replied warily. “Please, Lucy. Help me.”

Lucy reluctantly complied, edging over with her back to the door as the two girls fought the elements and the girl, standing her up, and dragging her into the partially open doorway, where they huddled.

“You’d better be appreciating