The Priest (The Original Sinners #9) - Tiffany Reisz Page 0,19

time, the whole world could hear it. I like singing in God’s choir.”

“You’re a good priest,” she said to that and kissed him. But he wasn’t a priest anymore.

No. Not true. S?ren was still a priest. It was a sacrament, after all, the priesthood. Once a priest, always a priest, they said. Even if a priest were to leave the priesthood, even leave the Church altogether, he would still bear on his soul a brand that said PRIEST in ornate all-capital letters.

What he wasn’t anymore—technically—was a Jesuit. Six weeks ago, after the very last day of the summer course he’d been teaching at Loyola, he’d gone to his Jesuit superiors with a photograph. He showed it to them, a picture of a blond three-year-old boy in a suit jacket and short pants. “This is Fionn,” he said. “This is my son.”

The silence that followed, S?ren told her, had sucked the sound from the entire city.

But thanks to a severe shortage of priests in the Church, he’d been spared the worst-case scenarios—he hadn’t been laicized or excommunicated. The punishment handed down was still severe: he was to be suspended from the Jesuits for the period of no less than one year for the crime of fathering a child with a married woman.

Alone in the dark, stuffy chapel, she cried. She cried because S?ren had disappeared without a word to her or Kingsley, which meant he was in such deep pain he wanted to protect them from the sight of it.

She cried because she was afraid for him out there alone with only his thoughts to keep him company. And though she didn’t know his thoughts, she knew they were dangerous company.

“Keep him safe, God,” she prayed aloud. “Don’t let him forget how loved he is. I love him and Kingsley loves him. Protect him and bring him home.”

These were simple prayers, children’s prayers, but they were all Nora had.

Usually, she prayed and went home again. But tonight her prayers felt insufficient. She needed something more. Not for God’s sake, really, but her own peace of mind. She left Gmork lightly snoozing on the floor by her pew and walked through the nave to the narthex, where she found a bank of votive candles and matches on an iron stand.

She stuffed a twenty into the offering box. A dollar for the candle. Nineteen dollars as a guilt-offering for all the dog hairs Gmork left behind.

With a practiced flick of the match, Nora lit a votive candle and whispered her brief prayer as she touched the tip of the flame to the wick.

“God, bring S?ren home to us.”

Nora left her little prayer burning and slipped out the side door, Gmork at her heels. She saw almost no one out and about as she walked back to her house, Gmork at her side, keeping her safe from all the ghosts and goblins and dangerous drunks of New Orleans. Where Kingsley lived in a six-thousand square-foot Italianate mansion, she lived in a much smaller house, painted red and nearly hidden by a wrought iron fence and an enormous oak tree. The fence and tree were both festooned with Mardi Gras beads.

The beads were there when she bought the place, and she’d left them there since they were colorful and pretty. She assumed they’d wear out and drop off at some point, but mysteriously they’d multiplied. She never saw anyone adding to the beads, but there were undeniably more beads now than when she’d moved in. Reds and blues and purples and gold and black and white. But mostly silver.

One of these days, she was going to catch someone in the act of beading her house and she’d ask them why her and no one else on the street.

And why silver?

So far, no luck. But she could live with a little mystery in her life. Kept things from getting boring. S?ren had taken a few strands of beads off her tree once and tied her up with them. It had been Mardi Gras in her bed that night.

“S?ren,” Nora said to herself as she unlocked her backdoor. “Hurry up and get home, please. I miss you. My pussy misses you…”

That was not a prayer.

It was a cry for help.

Nora entered through the back door into her kitchen and flipped on the lights. She had mail—a handful of junk mail flyers. An electricity bill for her dungeon. A vet appointment reminder. The book she’d ordered (The Power and the Glory)…and a check from her publisher. A large