The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,91
her expense, when a frightning cry rang out.
“Oh, my God,” a blogger girl cried, pointing at Lucy’s knees.
Sanguineous drops stained her legs as they formed a puddle of plasma on the carpet beneath her. At first, there was a collective gasp of embarrassment. It appeared to them that she had gotten her period, but when she removed her hands from her face and looked up, the true source was revealed to them.
Her tears were of blood.
The flashes went into a frenzy once again.
The whites of her eyes shone bright red in the bloodstream. She gazed up at the white tent above her and felt it fall further and further out of focus, until she could barely distinguish the massive canopy.
“My eyes,” she said, over and over.
She could see nothing until she closed them. And then all she could see was him.
An older woman, a waitress at the gala, had seen enough and ran toward the girl she’d watched bear the brunt of this full-frontal media assault. She helped Lucy behind the backdrop, out of view of the photographers, where the girl collapsed in her sympathetic arms. The event personnel began to crowd around, more concerned with their potential liability than with Lucy. A single look from the waitress was enough to disperse them.
“Should we call an ambulance?” the minder asked as he backed away.
“No,” the woman said authoritatively.
She pulled out a white linen and lace hankie and placed it over Lucy’s face, absorbing the blood and tears into the fabric. As she removed it, she noticed that a replica of the girl’s face, outlined in her blood, had been transferred. The woman tucked the cloth in the front pocket of her smock carefully, respectfully, and proceeded to comfort her, wiping the matted hair away from her face.
“Oh, my head,” Lucy moaned. “It’s splitting.”
The woman gently took Lucy’s hand and ran her fingers along her wrist in the exact place where the chaplet had been, and began making tiny crosses as she whispered prayers in Lucy’s ear.
Lucy yawned.
Again and again.
“Good, let it out,” the woman said.
The pain seemed to escape through Lucy’s open mouth.
She relaxed as the woman cradled her head in her arms.
“What was that?” Lucy asked, after her headache vanished.
“A fatura,” the woman said in Italian-accented English. “The malocchio.”
“I don’t understand.” Lucy said, wiping at her eyes and face.
“It’s like a curse. The evil eye.”
“Oh, I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe. The truth is what matters.”
“I don’t know what’s true anymore,” Lucy said, rising to her feet. “Thank you for helping me.”
“No,” she said. “I thank you.”
Lucy was flattered that she’d had such an impact on the woman. She never imagined her celebrity had trickled down so far, especially in her own neighborhood, where she tended to be the least popular and most resented.
She hugged the woman tight, as she imagined she would hug her mom if she ever saw her again. The waitress reached into another pocket of her smock and pulled out a gold charm in the shape of a horn of plenty and placed it in Lucy’s hand.
“Who are you?” Lucy asked.
“Perpetua.” The old woman smiled. “I live in the area. Near Precious Blood. I took him in after his escape, so they wouldn’t find him when they looked in the church.”
“Sebastian?” Lucy asked, stunned.
They lived in different worlds. Until now.
“One has overlooked you. Three can save you. You understand me?”
“Yes,” Lucy replied. “I think I do.”
“Then go back to him.”
3 “You must think I’m some kind of a psychotic, don’t you?” Agnes blurted out as she gathered her things and headed for the door, her paranoia reaching new heights, feeling as if she were being watched, even inside the house.
“I only know what I see,” her mother responded casually, showing neither disgust nor sympathy as Agnes prepared to leave her again.
“Do I look crazy to you?” she asked, trying to prompt some kind of reaction.
“You look like,” Martha said frankly, looking her only daughter up and down, “a girl with nothing to lose.
“I’m praying for you,” Martha called out to her as she walked out the door.
“No, Mother,” Agnes began, putting on her lambswool poncho. “I am the one praying for you.”
Agnes ran down her block and was stopped in her tracks at the sound of children playing and the sight of a little boy in the St. John’s schoolyard. It was Jude.
She hurried to the towering silver cyclone fence surrounding the playground and grabbed hold of it for dear