Page 108 of Deliver us from Evil

And if it’s not? Well at least I’m keeping myself sane and not constantly adding to my rather inventive list of things someone evil could be doing to a pretty girl like Trinity.

Cass watches me over my shoulder, but unlike Rube or Zach, he doesn’t ask me what I’m doing every two seconds.

I’m grateful for that. I never mind explaining shit, but right now it would just slow me down.

Instead, he lets me get into the zone, and once I’m in…

“You should blink,” comes his voice.

I sit back, shake my head, focus on him.

“What?”

He points at his eyes. “You have to blink every now and then. Keeps them moist.” He stretches out his arms, jaw cracking with a yawn. “Let’s get a coffee and a smoke.”

“Dude, I was right…” I shove my palms over my eyes and massage my eyelids. “I was in the fucking zone.”

“Yeah, well, you’re going to develop a hunch if you keep sitting like that. And I can’t be seen hanging around with hunchbacks.” He slaps my thigh. “Come on. Up and at ’em.”

God.

I look back at the computer. I can’t even remember what thread of a thought I was following before he so rudely interrupted me.

We’ve been here twenty minutes, and the only thing I’ve discovered so far is that this camcorder isn’t as unique as I thought it was. They’re all over eBay.

I follow Cass to a food truck, but I wave away his offer of a burrito with my coffee.

I need blood in my brain, not my stomach.

Cass is halfway done with his burrito and I’m halfway done with my cigarette when a cloud passes over the sun. I squint up, staring at the gray-tinged cloud and its now radiant halo of golden light.

“How did Rube figure out the code for the basement?” I ask Cass.

He shrugs. “Don’t know. Said something about a bible verse.”

“I know, I was there.” I roll my eyes. “What does it say?”

“Fuck knows.”

I pull out my phone. “Do you remember what it was?”

Cass stares into the distance, chewing ponderously. “Luke…something.”

I give him a deadpan stare. “Really? Could you try harder?”

“Why?” Cass crumples up the burrito’s packaging and overarm tosses it into a nearby trash can. “It worked.”

“It’s significant.”

“Everything in that book’s significant to bible belters,” Cass says. “Literal needle in a haystack.”

“That’s not—” I cut off with a sigh. “Screw it.”

I start searching.

inspiring bible verse luke…

Google autocompletes on that, so I give the first search term a try.

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