The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,79

a feeling of disquiet and uncertainty. Sebastian was clearly deranged, but deadly?

He definitely got Sebastian’s appeal to the girls. Sexy, smart, sinister, misunderstood, Byronic good looks, and a whiff of tragedy around him, he was the entire package. He wouldn’t need to drug or brainwash them to keep them around. Jesse had written too many stories about far lesser local ladykillers and their “way out of his league” conquests to buy that. Especially now that he’d met him, or at least confronted him.

There was always the possibility, he thought, that he had not met the “real” Sebastian. Criminals and lunatics were consummate cons after all, and according to Dr. Frey, Sebastian was both. Bloggers weren’t far behind, so he could sympathize. It was perhaps the only way in which he could relate to Sebastian. He didn’t have the rugged looks or the seductive personality, but he had the desire, the need to get his point across. And of the many tales he’d told about Lucy—true and not—none was more important than this one. The ones before were to give her a life. This one was to save it. So why couldn’t he bring himself to write it?

The only thing he could figure was that maybe Lucy was right. Maybe she was contagious. Maybe he was growing a conscience too. Jesse searched his contact list and hit send on his cell.

“Dr. Frey, please.”

Sebastian sat up from the hard wooden pew he’d been lying on and stretched his arms outward. He breathed in and exhaled deeply and more easily than before. The dampness had subsided along with the bad weather, and the mildewy mist that hung throughout the church like moldy drapes had dissipated. The place was empty again, as it had been when he arrived. His closest companions were once again the hammers, saws, rats, and roaches that littered the once gleaming and holy space.

He missed Lucy.

He missed Cecilia.

He missed Agnes.

But the time for wallowing was long gone. He grabbed the chaplets they’d left behind and headed for the sacristy.

Sebastian noted the vestments scattered about. It looked more like the changing room at a trendy Smith Street shop than a priest’s preparation room. Indeed, he thought, the girls left their mark on this place as much as was left on them. Pulling open the doorway to the ossuary stairs, he paused and thought of Agnes and her struggle to turn the heavy knob and of the many struggles that lay ahead.

He took the stairs down to the ossuary slowly, experiencing the descent, feeling each step beneath his feet before dropping to the next. He stepped through the chapel door and walked directly under the enormous bone chandelier and to the center kneeler. It is as sturdy and solid as the day it was made. From red dogwood, like the ones that lined the gardens of the church outside, now sick, diseased, and dying. A perfect wood for making weapons or wagons or crosses.

Red dogwoods, weeping dogwoods, pink dogwoods, all planted to honor the long-forgotten men who died there and the saints they died for. These were special. They bloomed in the fall, near the start of November. The air was heavy with the scent of incense still smoldering in the metal urn and the dogwood flowers that he’d managed to gather from trees that had fallen through the windows.

Looking up, he gazed upon the name of his enemy. Their enemy. The name he’d scrawled across the chapel walls.

CIPHER.

Frey was winning. There was no doubt about it. All without lifting a finger. Sebastian was on the run. Abandoned. Renounced. Lucy, Cecilia, and Agnes were gone. Lonely as it was without them, he couldn’t also help but feel relieved. If they were away from him, they might still be kept safe. It was cold comfort, but it was all he had after what he’d done to them, the danger he’d put them in. He’d done his best. He’d delivered his message as he was charged. Whether they would accept his word he didn’t know. His fate was sealed. Theirs was still in their own hands.

Sebastian returned the chaplets to the glass reliquary box that he’d taken them from, bowed his head, and reflected, preparing himself. Instead of finding peace, all he could conjure inside of himself was despair. And anger.

“I failed.”

He kicked over the kneelers, screaming at the top of his voice.

“What more do you want from me?” Sebastian raged, toppling the iron maiden and flinging the other instruments of mortification around the