Page 38 of The Sinner and the Scholar
“Okay.” The Rev’s brows lift. “What really happened?”
“I had this horrible dream.” I inadvertently touch the necklace and then remember it’s gone. “Wesley gave me a good luck charm and said to keep it on. But I had a nightmare: an evil force entered through the open window and pinned me down, and I couldn’t move.”
“Probably sleep paralysis,” Leila noted. “A night terror. We’ve all had them.”
“Maybe, but Prue was whimpering in her bed when I woke. I checked on her, and she rolled around and looked like that.” I point at her snarling and slobbering form.
Leila says, “Prue looks different to us, Rev. Her skin is rotting, but Team Saint can’t see the diseased flesh and”—she gulps—“crawlies.”
The Rev’s pale eyes narrow suspiciously. “Prue looks normal to me. Sickly, but normal.”
My theory about the five of us strengthens, but I feel like a child caught breaking into the sweets cupboard. We go quiet, and I twitch, hating that we’ve been keeping secrets from the Rev. Finally, Mercy mumbles, “We found a book.”
I glare at her.
“What?” she whines at me. “I think the Rev should know.”
“I agree,” Raven says. “No more secrets.”
Fine. I meet the Rev’s pale eyes. “It’s the Lost Gospel According to Mary Magdalene.”
The Rev soaks it in without a word, so I continue.
“A few weeks ago, I found half a mostly blank manuscript in the new arrivals in the archive. The matching half was in Wesley’s trunk. We reunited the pieces, and they merged with unnatural magnetic force. A bright light blinded us, and we all passed out. It seems us five who touched the book as it joined are the only ones who can see the grotesque side of Prue—I’m guessing this is the demon’s true form.”
“Beatific Vision,” the Rev mumbles.
“What?” we all say.
“You see the true form of mystical entities.” She taps her cane softly on the floor, thinking. “They say if you look upon Christ’s true face, the glory of it can burn you to a crisp from the rapture. They also say that if you look upon a demon’s true face, its appearance will terrify you so much that you will lose your mind. But not you five. We hear about Beatific Vision in the saints of the old, but never in this era. Never with Sinners.”
“So let us embrace the outcasts and the sinners, for they may hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of the divine,” I mumble, repeating the words I’d recently translated.
“From the gospel?” the Rev asks.
I nod and palm my face. “Rapture is not a word I would use to describe this.”
“Perhaps not Beatific, but something else.”
We all let that truth bomb settle on us.
“Do they know?” the Rev whispers harshly, glancing at Team Saint.
“About the gospel?” I think of Wesley confronting me in the archives but shake my head. He might suspect, but he doesn’t know. “But they now know about the Sight.”
Prue’s wailing grows louder. She hurls herself against her invisible cage, dislocating her shoulder. Tawny breaks from our huddle to shout at Father, “You’re hurting her.”
His strained eyes glance at Tawny but return to Prue with determination. Every muscle in his body hardens with strain. Sweat pebbles on his forehead. But he paces the arcane circle, symbols glowing like embers, and continues his verse without fault.
“How long will the exorcism take?” Mercy asks.
Father’s a fit man, but how much of this can he handle?
The Monsignor rejoins the Rev as Wesley answers Mercy. His eyes betray his concern. I don’t think he would last five minutes in an exorcism.
“Sometimes it takes hours,” Wesley replies. “Sometimes minutes. Sometimes the demon kills the host, and that’s how it leaves.”
“Do you haveanygood news?” Tawny asks, desperation widening her eyes. “You can’t kill Prue. She’s been through enough.”
