Page 4 of The Sinner and the Scholar
I crack the window. Air tasting like mist and pine gushes in. We’re headed upstate. Dawn peeks over the forest on either side of us, just enough to show deer grazing and wandering onto the road. They see us coming, freeze, and then bound away.
The driver’s eyes slide to me in the mirror again. This time, they hold an edge of fear. Maybe the deer have spiked his pulse. Or maybe the severed hand is starting to smell more than the pea soup vomit. He’s probably wondering if I’ll go all Urban Legend on his ass, lure him into the woods, and mate with him wearing a stag skull before eating his curly bits.
He’s lucky the limb hasn’t started to decompose because that smell, accompanied by the rest of the demon’s special sauce, would be impossible to ignore.
“Just up there, thanks.” I tap the window to my right. We’re approaching a gravel driveway that cuts into the forest.
His exhale is audible, but his eyes narrow. He must know that only one place exists down that way. He opens his mouth, shuts it, and then opens it again before finally saying, “Are you sure, Miss?”
“Yes, thank you. This is me.”
His brows lift, but he turns the car down the crunching gravel road until trees make way for a picture-perfect fairytale setting. The Hildegard Sisterhood Abbey is on a large, sprawling country estate between mountains. Drizzle never fails to fall from the sky. Pretty, poisonous plants fill the walled garden. Roosters crow in the coup. Ghosts haunt the old gothic church. It’s a regular wonderland.
He pulls up curbside and stares through the wrought iron gates at the estate. “You’re not going to prank them, are you?”
He hasn’t noticed the barbed wire running along the top of the limestone boundary walls.
“Nope. This is home.”
I pull that crumpled Benjamin from my bra and dangle it over his shoulder. Having his gaze still frozen on the abbey, he jolts when my hand snakes by his face. For a moment, he’s paralyzed, but then he takes the money.
I slide out of the cab, and because I can’t help myself, I shoot him my best beatific smile and say, “Peace be with you.”
I wave goodbye, intending to close the door, but the damned severed limb is so heavy and sweaty that I fumble and almost drop it. Tires spin, and he speeds off. The car hits the hand in passing, and congealed blood smears along the yellow quarter panel.
“Whoops.”
I want to care, but I’m exhausted and need a shower. I lift my chin to the camera over the gate. Within moments it buzzes open, just like it should. They know not to leave a Sinner out here. No one wants to havethatconversation if the public catch a blood-covered assassin welcomed at the gates of a nunnery, even in this isolated place.
The walk down the driveway is long. I cross a bridge over the lake and pass a decommissioned Gatling gun left from the Civil War.
Some time ago, this place was built by an aristocrat from England. The story goes that he came here for a better life, but his wife died of dysentery. He created a mausoleum beneath the oak trees for her, and the gothic church has angels instead of gargoyles as a sign of his love. Eventually, he went mad and deserted the place.
That’s when the Sisterhood moved in and brought it back to its former glory.
My legs ache, my back protests, and dried blood and vomit itches like a motherfucker. Cracking my neck releases tension, but it’s not enough. It’s never enough. All I want is to remove my contact lenses, complete my penance, and then study the pages of the latest holy manuscript pulled from the archives. It arrived a few weeks ago with a crate of other relics from a dwindling Sisterhood chapter in Spain.
I sigh as the morning sun crests the enormous wood and stone abbey. This may be my little corner of hell, but it sure looks pretty. It’s home.
I take the large stone steps two at a time and shoulder through the carved cedar and stained-glass doors. A Magpie almost knocks me over. Sister Margaret. The plump nun gasps and clutches her rosary beads before gathering her composure. She makes a hasty sign of the cross, squeezes my shoulder as if to say, “Welcome home,” and then continues out the door. Her black robes rustle like the wings of an angel.
The energy to grin leaves me.
Due to the nature and secrecy of the Hildegard Sisterhood, the nuns in this chapter lead a monastic life. Apart from us Sinners, the Reverend Mother and the priest, all here have taken a vow of silence to protect the secrets inside these gates. They protect us, the Sinners—the secret sanctioned assassins, seductresses, and general bad-doers of the Sisterhood.
All in the name of a better life for women.
All in the name of God and the Mother Mary.
When Destiny’s Child said, “Girls run the world,” they didn’t know the half of it. We do. From Joan of Arc to Margaret Thatcher. A clever woman is behind much of history, or a man who’s made history.
We put them there.
Sinners.
I should go straight to the Rev to debrief, but a niggling feeling sends me up the creaky staircase to the third-level dormitory. It’s eerily quiet in this wing of the house. Sinners should be awake and on their way to training.
At the landing, I take in the hallway and draw on every instinct drilled into me since my teenage years. Cold stone floors. Closed wooden doors on either side. No sounds.
