Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) - By Killian McRae Page 0,29

on the sofa. “Ramiel has given us marching orders. Marc, you know anyone at St. Cecilia’s School?”

Recognition filled his features. He stumbled with his answer, like he was responding to a magician’s ability to know what card he had in his pocket. “One of my mentors in the priesthood is the principal.”

“Great. We need to get in there. There’s an evil at the school, a demon presence we need to track down and eliminate.”

Dee chuckled. “You mean, besides a whole bunch of horny teenagers?”

Riona’s gaze turned steely. “Teenagers? Hell, I’m not worried about them. I’m more annoyed at the overly righteous, tight-assed priests.”

Chapter 10

It smelled like chalk. Which was odd, given that there was, in fact, no chalkboard. Instead, a smudge-plagued white expanse stretched the width of the room, marked over in random intervals with blue formulae, green announcements, and blood-red prayers to the saints.

“You sure you’re up to this, Ms. Dade?”

St. Cecilia’s principal, Father Hector Hermosa’s hand landed reassuringly on Riona’s shoulder. For such a senior clergyman, she was shocked to learn that he bought the whole fabricated story so easily.

Ramiel had gotten a special dispensation for the witch to cast a sickness hex over three nuns who were on the teaching staff as they walked into school. Ordinarily, the use of darker spells on innocents was a big no-no, but as long as it didn’t leave scars or induce vomiting, she was given a pass for the sake of the mission. Marc, who sometimes actually did sub or volunteer at the school, suggested his two “colleagues” as qualified and ready-to-serve stand-ins. It had taken all of them a little by surprise that the principal agreed without hesitation. Marc’s powers of magical manipulation must have been further developed than he led on, Riona thought.

She looked at the faces of the innocent teens before her, swallowed hard, and answered. “Sure, what could possibly go wrong?”

Riona once heard that you shouldn’t show fear to either dogs or children. Apparently, they could sense it. Or was it, smell it?

Maybe fear smelled like chalk.

Hermosa shook her hand like an old friend and left her in her classroom unarmed.

With a cough, Riona cleared her throat and tried not to feel overwhelmed by the twenty-two sets of eyes boring into her. “Good morning, class. I’m Miss Dade. Sister Mary Alice is out sick and I…”

“You’re not a nun.”

Shit. She told Dee this wasn’t going to work. She might have all command over magic and dominion over demons, but teenagers were one type of monster she knew she had an ice cube’s chance in hell of standing up against. Clearly, they saw right through her façade. When Dee suggested going into the school undercover, Riona thought he meant perhaps as janitors or with her dressed as a secretary. Riona, a teacher? Like trying to pass off Lady Gaga as a well-mannered IRS agent.

The petite, blonde-haired girl with tweed-covered arms and a face partially obscured by a pink bubble threw out the words like an accusation, putting Riona immediately on the defensive. What? Was she sixteen again? Was she going to let herself be intimidated by a bad attitude and a worse dye job all wrapped into size two skinny jeans? Hell-to-the-no.

But, as Riona cocked her hip and plastered on a conspiratorial grin, the confirmation of just how much a fisher-of-men out of water she was in front of the parochial school classroom slipped out before she could stop it. “A nun? Ha! Honey, I’m not even Catholic anymore.”

The declaration earned a sly nod of approval from the bubble blonde, but the yin to that yang was the jittery shift of the stick-figure-in-student’s-clothing behind her. His pasty arm shot right up in the air like it was spring-loaded.

“Wait, are you even, like, a credentialed teacher?” he spat back when Riona called on him. The anxiety in his eyes rated right up there with a fretful mother asking if her hard-partying teen had survived the crash.

Riona bit her lip and shied away her eyes. “Um, no…” But wanting Mr. Teacher Screener and the others to be certain she wasn’t a complete heathen off the street, she immediately followed with, “but I am a certified statistician, which makes me more than qualified to teach calculus.”

“Hardly!” her student critic exclaimed, rolling his eyes. With a flip of each finger, he read the list of charges against her. “If you don’t have a credential, you’ve never studied instructional pedagogy, multiple learning perspectives, or educational child psychology, let alone classroom management. Assuming