The Priest (The Original Sinners #9) - Tiffany Reisz Page 0,63
I were going to stop by your shop tomorrow morning to see you.”
“Your friend, the man you were with tonight?”
“Yes, he’s a private detective.”
“I would rather speak to you alone than with a man. If that’s all right. I saw your porch light was on, but I’m happy to go, if you like. Would you like that?”
Her voice was low and soothing. Nora was too curious to turn the woman away, but she kept her guard up.
“No, you can stay. It’s fine. Let’s go into my office.”
Nora had converted the house’s formal dining room into her office. She led Mercedes there through the kitchen. Nora switched on the brass floor lamp. Six oak bookcases lined the walls. Nora’s big boat of a desk sat in the middle of the room, facing the French doors that looked out onto her jungle of a patio garden.
“Can I get you anything?” Nora asked. “Water? Wine? Whiskey?”
“Wine would be nice.”
Nora went into her kitchen and quickly poured two shallow glasses of Syrah. While alone in her kitchen, she thought about grabbing her phone to send Cyrus a quick text. But she had a feeling Cyrus would immediately come over, and Mercedes might not answer Nora’s questions with a man present.
When Nora returned to her office, she found Mercedes standing at the bookshelves, eyeing the titles with interest.
“Your wine,” Nora said. Mercedes took the glass with a nod of thanks.
“You have a very large library of books on Catholicism,” Mercedes said. “The Catholic Catechism. The History of the Catholic Church. Pope John’s Journal of a Soul. Thomas Merton. G.K. Chesterton. St. Augustine. St. Thomas Aquinas… Have you read all these books?”
“I like looking for the loopholes,” Nora joked. Mercedes didn’t smile.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” Nora said. “I’m just a bad Catholic.”
“Perhaps you aren’t a bad Catholic,” she said. “Perhaps you’re just a very good pagan.”
“Cradle Catholic.”
“You’re old enough to leave the cradle,” Mercedes said. “Aren’t you?”
“There’s someone in my life who would be very put out if I did.”
“If there’s someone in your life trying to control your faith, you’re the one who should be put out, Mistress Nora.”
Nora tensed. Not often another woman put her on the defensive.
“You can just call me ‘Nora.’ The ‘Mistress’ is for those who want to serve.”
“It’s a title of respect, yes?”
“Well, yes.”
“I respect your work, Mistress. But I’m happy to call you whatever you like. So Nora it is.”
“Mercedes,” Nora said. “Unusual name for an American.”
She shrugged. “I’m impressed you say it right. Nobody ever says it right, even after I tell them.”
“It’s a French name,” Nora said. “No accents. Not like we say the car brand.”
Mare-SED-ess, not Mur-SAY-deez.
“You know French?” the woman asked.
“Some. My boyfriend is French. One of my boyfriends, I mean.”
Mercedes raised her eyebrow but made no comment. No comment necessary.
“Sorry,” Nora said. “I say that stuff all the time. I forget it makes some people uncomfortable.”
“I’m a witch. Does that make you uncomfortable?” Mercedes asked.
“You know, I always thought if a witch showed up at my house in the middle of the night, it would be to tell me there was such a thing as a tesseract. That’s from—”
“A Wrinkle in Time. I know. And there really is such a thing as a tesseract.”
“Is there?”
She nodded. “A tesseract,” Mercedes said, “is a cube cubed. A hypercube.”
“It’s also known as ‘sacred geometry.’ Some believe geometry is God’s native language and that by learning sacred geometry, one can access the mind of God.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t recognize your god,” Mercedes said. “I serve the Goddess.”
“I thought everyone in this town was Catholic.”
Mercedes smiled. “Not everyone.”
She gestured toward her stomach. She was wearing a long red skirt that flared at her hips and a white top, cut off a few inches above her waist so that Nora could see the tattoos on her lower stomach. A sliver of moon on one side, a sliver of moon on the other, a full moon that surrounded her bellybutton.
Nora had seen that symbol before but couldn’t say what it was. “What’s your ink?”
“It’s the symbol of the Triple Moon Goddess,” Mercedes said. “Everyone in my coven gets marked with Her symbol. Not necessarily on the stomach, though. I just did that to cover a stretch mark. I made my daughter pay for it.”
She smiled and Nora knew she was joking.
“It’s pretty.”
“Thank you.” Mercedes nodded toward the armchairs set in front of Nora’s desk. “Shall we talk about why