Page 44 of Bound and Tide

Not sure you can string a full sentence together? Xander kept his teeth clenched and smiled. The situation was unfortunate as Xander too needed to speak with the holy man, and if he were going to be even marginally honest, having one of the god’s stabbiest henchmen around wouldn’t do. “Perhaps appealing directly to your divine source might be more helpful?”

“Valcord?” the knight perked up then immediately deflated. “Yeah, but he doesn’t really tell me what I should do when I ask.”

Well, the fool was in luck then because Xander was quite good at telling people what to do, much better than some righteous god anyway. He strode up to the man and risked slinging an arm over his wide shoulders. “Listen, bud”—he leaned in close—“did you ever consider just…getting lost?”

The oaf’s eyes widened as if he’d laid them on something profound. “You know, actually, I do have this prophecy I’m supposed to follow, but I don’t know exactly where I’m supposed to go to—”

“That’s it! Do that!” Xander gave his broad back a push toward the other end of the hall.

He barely moved under the shove, warily glancing up at the carvings on the ceiling.

“It’s what Valcord would want.”

The holy knight looked as if he’d finally learned the wonders of the naked female body, grinned like an idiot, and then he hurried away.

“Moron,” Xander murmured and pushed open the door.

“And a blessed morning to you as well, my son.”

The priest Xander had expected to meet on the door’s other side, a sinewy, scowling, pre-disappointed terror of a man, was not sitting behind the small chamber’s only desk, but instead there sat a rotund, older fellow. He scribbled on an endless roll of parchment, gazing up over a pair of glasses perched on the end of a bulbous nose. Everything about this Father Theodore looked slightly weary except his mustache—a magnificent specimen sprawling out with twisted ends in the middle of a soft and…well, it was a friendly face, if Xander had to put a word to it, which he didn’t, so he wouldn’t.

“Ah, not you,” Xander corrected with hesitation hitching in his voice. “At least, I must assume you’re not a moron to be capable of commanding a temple in this city.” He cleared his throat and tugged at his high collar, straightening as he closed the door behind him.

“Generous of you, not that what I do is commanding so much as serving,” said the priest, leaning backward and pulling off his spectacles. “What can I do for you?”

Xander waited a moment in case his boots burst into flames. When they did not, he squinted into the sun pouring in the window. “Discretion.”

“Well, you’re in luck—these walls are blessed by Valcord to keep secrets in.”

“They are?” Xander stepped forward and gripped onto the back of the only other seat in the room.

“No, but now you know the chamber isn’t enchanted to keep you from lying, so feel free to sit and say whatever you think needs to be said in whatever way you need to say to keep both of us out of trouble.”

Xander scowled at the priest but sat anyway. He crossed then uncrossed his legs, repeating the motion with his arms, slouched then straightened and slouched again.

All the while, the priest simply stared back with a placid grin on under that glorious mustache, reed and parchment pushed to the side, attention wholly on Xander.

“Well, I suppose I’ll start then, if you insist.”

Father Theodore nodded, threading his fingers together.

Maddening. “I think I need—” Xander cut himself off, waiting once again, and even though there was no smell of burning flesh nor a disembodied and disapproving voice, he lowered his tone to a murmur and leaned in. “I think I need to be exorcised.”

That finally got a bit of a rise out of the priest, his fluffy brows specifically, but not much else changed. “Exorcised? From demonic possession?”

Xander’s nostrils flared, clearing his throat and dropping his voice even lower. “Yes, like that, if it isn’t too much trouble. That is what you people do, isn’t it?”

“Well, you’re on the right path by coming here”—the priest gestured to the holy symbol on the wall behind him—“but I must admit that truly possessed gentlemen rarely come and ask to be unpossessed, on account of the demon inside them doing the controlling, you see.”

“Well, yes, that’s why we’re supposed to be whispering,” Xander hissed as he grabbed the edge of the man’s desk and leaned forward as if he could will the priest to do the same.

“Ah, I see, because the demon might overhear?”

“Yes, obviously, because she might—” Xander sucked his teeth. Perhaps that was ridiculous—the infernal realm was a theoretically great distance away, and there surely wasn’t a thinness to the veil in this temple of all places, though it was difficult to know considering Xander’s condition. It was only that he had never heard his mother so clearly in his mind as he did since her banishment, and it was becoming a bit too uncanny to be shucked up to psychosis. “The situation is delicate and complex,” he finally muttered.

“That’s fine,” the priest went on in a hushed tone as he too leaned forward, brows dipping with concern. “But I must warn you, I haven’t done an exorcism in the traditional sense in probably forever.”

Xander sighed. “Well, I’m not really possessed in the traditional sense either. It’s more a…familial curse of the infernal variety.”

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