writer in him was good at reading faces.
“She said it was a spiritual thing. Never heard her talk like that before.”
“Me either.”
“I said you might get mad.”
Bill held his hand out expectantly.
Ricky stood up and looked down at the old man and held the bottle out just within Bill’s reach. The old man grabbed it like manna from heaven.
“Thank you, son.”
“No need, old man. A promise is a promise.”
Ricky walked slowly down the block to one of the few corner pay phones left in Williamsburg, dropped a few coins, and dialed a number.
“Dr. Frey, please.”
“I’m sorry, he’s unavailable right now. May I take a message?”
“This is Ricky Pyro, one of his rehab patients. Can you tell him that I have to cancel my appointment? I’m playing a special gig tonight. At Precious Blood Church in Cobble Hill. He’s been asking about it. Tell him he shouldn’t miss it.”
Cecilia, Lucy, and Agnes descended the cobblestone steps as they had before and stopped at the squat narrow door. It was ajar. Cecilia pushed it open and led the others in. It was dazzling. Every votive was lit and burning, throwing warm red light and thick shadows across the sacred fossils bedecking the chapel and a lone figure seated cross-legged, hands clasped, still, head bowed, swaying slightly, and facing the altar. He shimmered in the candlelight and shadow of the Sacred Heart fresco before him.
“Sebastian,” Cecilia whispered.
They were all nervous about approaching him. He seemed in a trance. Weak, breathing shallow and unsteady. Like a resistant captive in the midst of a hunger strike.
“Is he all right?” Agnes asked, wanting to run to him to find out.
Lucy shrugged, uncertain. “He’s alive. I think.”
Finally, he spoke.
“I have no idea what will happen, or in which places the pain will come,” he mumbled, before opening his eyes to see them. They were cemented into a stare that left them to wonder whether he’d gone completely mad.
Agnes walked slowly toward him and fell to her knees.
“Sebastian, we’re here.”
He smiled and brushed his hand against her cheek.
“Agnes.”
Lucy and Cecilia came and kneeled as well. He met each of their eyes with his.
“You came back,” he said.
“Of our own free will,” Lucy said.
“I think we are being watched. You’ve got to leave here,” Cecilia said.
“Why? There isn’t anywhere to go.”
He was having trouble responding fully, almost seeming to hear and answer different questions than the ones they were asking.
They looked around in awe and trepidation, their memories of a few days earlier still raw and visible, bloodstains still on the floor. Their chaplets resting in the reliquary.
“What happened to us down here?” Lucy asked. “We need to know.”
He did his best to explain and reassure them all at once. “I would never hurt any of you.”
They wanted to be skeptical, to fight what they were feeling inside, but he was so beautiful, so genuine, so real, and now so vulnerable that it was almost impossible not to get lost in him.
“We want to understand,” Cecilia added. “We want to believe you.”
Sebastian was heartened by their trust.
“I will tell you everything I know,” he said, gesturing then toward the bone-legged altar. It was surrounded by four pillar candles, one at each corner, and covered with the chasubles they modeled. A patchwork tablecloth of green, red, and white fabric with elaborately woven images of young men and women crowned with halos and clothed in glory. Atop it sat magnificent place settings, gold plates and long-stemmed silver cups glimmering. At the center, the Legenda Aurea Agnes had flipped through on the lectern.
The girls joined him at the altar and sat on the antique short benches he’d arranged around it. They felt like royalty.
“What is this?” Cecilia asked.
Sebastian took a brass candle lighter that had been leaning against the altar and struck a match. He lit one candle and passed the rod around, asking each girl to do likewise.
It was a ritual, but unlike the ones they had experienced before. This was only for them.
When the last candle had been lit, Sebastian took the case holding the chaplets and placed it on the altar before them.
“We’re getting them back?”
“Yes.”
“But Sebastian, they don’t belong to you,” Agnes said.
“That’s true.”
“Jesse said you stole them,” Lucy reminded him.
“I didn’t steal them. I took them,” he admitted.
“I don’t understand. You took them but you didn’t steal them?” CeCe asked.
“I took them,” he explained. “So I could return them to their rightful owners.”
“Us?” Lucy asked.
“These chaplets were made from holy relics, from the bones of St. Lucy,