skin. “Interested, Keystone?”
Quickly, she moved to distance her demeanor. “I don’t do virgins, Father. Okay, back to you. So, it’s hereditary, but when did you know? How did you find out you could do all this?”
With a sigh, he leaned back in the booth and crossed his arms over his chest. “The first parish I was ever assigned to was in this tiny backwoods town in Alabama. Let me tell you, on a scale of one to fucked up, backwoods Bammer ranks at about an episode-of-Jerry-Springer-during-sweeps. My congregation was only about fifty people, most of them not so bad beyond a few premarital shaggings and petty blasphemies. There was this one woman though, old and wrinkled. Had an attitude like a pig poked with a popsicle stick. I’ll never forget her name: Evangeline DuBoux. Is that not a classic Cajun belle? Anyways, come Ash Wednesday my second year there, Evie comes to the front of the church, and leans into me and says, ‘I know what you are, and I know what you need.’ She invited me over for dinner about a week later.”
“Ew, I asked how you became a Pure Soul, not how you had your innocence stolen in the throes of horny granny sex.” Riona’s lips curled in disgust. “You didn’t… you know… jiggle your prunes for her, did you?”
Marc looked insulted by the very idea. “No, and gross. Anyways, she drags out all these weird voodoo trinkets and totems, and I’m like a Jehovah Witness at an atheist convention because I’m all green and young and think I can save her mortal soul and all that shit. So I start talking to her about the wonders of God and the glories of Heaven and how faith can lead her away from Lucifer’s snares, and she just goes about her business, mixing up something that smelled like a cat pissed after eating a crate of broccoli.”
“And you know this is an apt comparison… how?”
He had the gall to look ashamed of her ignorance. “Some things, even a priest won’t confess, Keystone. But I was just about to give up for the day, and Evie pours this stuff in a big dish and sets it on fire. Next thing you know, I’m looking at a three-foot-high wall of purple smoke in front of me, and I start to see people’s faces in the smoke. And I think I’m fucked, because all my education at the seminary has taught me that I’ve somehow fallen for one of Satan’s tricks. Turns out, Evie was an old wood sprite, could see the magic welling up in me. I’d had a few sparks of magic before, but I always hid it, suppressed it, was embarrassed. But Evie,,, She showed me a whole bunch of other stuff I couldn’t…. Well, I had no way of knowing then. You know, things that would come to be, but hadn’t. People I’d meet. Like him.”
He pointed across the room to where Dee brushed a fallen strand of hair from the face of one seriously flushed waitress.
“When I saw Dee for the first time in real life, that sealed it for me. I felt it. Inside. Dee was already working for the Seven, brought me into the fray. Bastard’s been through a lot with me. He’s the best friend I got this side of Heaven and Hell.”
“Dee?” Riona questioned with an incredulous smirk. “Ah, yes. Our friend, Dionysus Zitka. The half-human/half-deity brought a priest into a wiccan assault force. Just curiously, his father is the head of the Greek pantheon. How does that square with the whole ‘thou shalt have no other gods before me’ dogma?”
“Didn’t say anything about after Him, though, did He?” Marc looked pleased as punch with his quip. “You have to read the fine print, Keystone. Especially in cases of politics and religion.”
“Why don’t you ever call me by my name?”
That fact had been driving her mad for weeks. Only on one occasion, on their initial meeting in the psychiatric ward, did Marc actually utter, “Riona,” and then only as a way of confirming he had the right psycho. Since, her fated role, Keystone, had been the only moniker he employed. Even after months, Marc remained an enigma to her. He wasn’t a complete jerk; she’d witnessed his compassion when priestly duties called. Once when Dee and she met him at a small parish church in South Boston, he demonstrated a gentle demeanor and comforting spirit with his parishioners. But with her? At the