Page 44 of Girl, Sought

He had to put his mind at ease.

Joseph marched back through the living room and grabbed the broom he kept by the cellar door. There was no need to call pest control when a good sweeping usually did the trick.

The broom felt ridiculous in his hands. It was a peasant's weapon in a house full of saints' bones and holy wood. But something instinct told Joseph not to go down into the basement unarmed.

The basement keypad glowed blue. Joseph punched in the code - his mother's birth year followed by his first RV dealership's zip code. A combination of the sacred and profane, just like everything else in his life. The lock chirped acceptance, and Joseph took the first step down.

It was a little suffocating down here. You couldn’t air out a basement, not without additional doors or windows. But with these kinds of relics, Joseph kept this place airtight. The only way in was through the security door.

Thirteen steps down. One for each apostle, counting Matthias after Judas took early retirement. Joseph had always appreciated that symmetry, even had the stairs restored to maintain that exact count. His heart seemed to be stuck in his throat. He swore off the pills years ago, but what he wouldn’t give for a Valium to take the edge off right now. He wished he still had the nerve gas system in place, but he’d been forced to take it out after the accident a few years ago. It was his littlequid pro quowith the cops to keep him out of jail.

Get it together, man. It’s just a couple of rats.

Truthfully, Joseph hated the things. He didn’t dare to trap them and free them outside, and the thought of brooming them to death made his stomach twist. But still, death was easier, and Joseph always took the path of least resistance.

At the bottom of the stairs, Joseph's hand found the manual switch. Part of him wanted to retreat, to call the police or his security company, but pride - that deadliest of sins - kept his feet moving forward. This was his sanctuary, and he'd be damned if some creature was going to spike his anxiety.

Joseph breathed a sigh of relief when he saw everything still in its place. First the main aisle, then the side passages between display cases. Joseph's treasures emerged from shadow - the prayer book in its hermetically sealed case, the chapel bell suspended in its custom mount, the icon of Saint Nicholas watching with those roving eyes.

But something was wrong with the light. A shape interrupted its flow and forced a shadow where no shadow should be.

Joseph's reading chair. The leather wingback he'd imported from London.

The figure sat so still he almost missed it - just another shape in a room full of sacred geometry. But this was no mere artifact.

His first thought, absurd in its mundanity, was that someone had moved his reading chair. The leather wingback sat at the wrong angle, but that observation died as his eyes adjusted to what sat in it.

A man.

No - something more than a man.

Because the face wasn't a face at all. It was perfection rendered in whatever material could capture divinity - porcelain maybe, or some kind of resin. The eyes held infinite compassion. The lips curved in that serene smile known from a thousand paintings. A crown of thorns wrapped the brow.

Joseph was staring at the perfect visage of Jesus Christ.

‘Dear God,’ he whispered. The broom slipped from nerveless fingers. ‘Is this... Who are you?’

His mind fragmented. A divine visitation? A miracle? Had his collection of holy relics finally manifested something truly supernatural?

Cold sweat broke out across his forehead and trickled down his temples. His collar felt two sizes too small. Sweat stung his eyes, but he couldn't move to wipe it away. His muscles had locked up, frozen by some primitive part of his brain that recognized predator even when it wore a holy face.

And then the figure stood, and there was nothing divine in that movement. Nothing holy in how it flowed across the space between them. Those latex fingers reached for his throat with an intent that belonged in darker testaments than the ones Joseph preached from.

The world began to dim at the edges as his lungs fought for air. His collection - his precious pieces of the divine - blurred and doubled as darkness crept in. The mask caught the light as its wearer stood over him, and suddenly Joseph saw it for what it really was.

Not divine at all, but a mockery. A perversion of everything he'd spent his life collecting.

As consciousness fled, Joseph had time for one final thought: maybe this was God's judgment after all. For a man who'd spent his life collecting pieces of the divine, perhaps this was simply the collection coming full circle.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

The business card sat between them on the desk.Gabriel Thorne-Senior Acquisitions Specialist - Curated Value Group.

Ella had heard Luca’s story on the journey home, but now she needed to hear it again in the sanctity of the office. Maybe here, in an official hub of law enforcement, she could find an angle on this that didn’t end up with her and Luca sitting in front of the director.

‘Talk me through it. One more time.’

Luca was perched on the edge of her desk in that casual way that said he knew he'd done something technically illegal but was reluctant to apologize for it.

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