Page 22 of The Sinner and the Scholar
Unless saintly people really are in short supply.
Doesn’t matter. The point is the rest of the team are ring-ins. What help can they possibly offer except parlor tricks? An exploding card won’t save me from a demon. Unless we’re ordained and can conduct our own exorcisms, we have to find alternatives. What happened the other morning was a fluke. I don’t expect another demon to suddenly expel itself again.
“He’s not bad to look at,” Leila chimes in absently.
“Fuck off,” I growl and carve some more.
Wesley turns from his chalkboard. “Pardon?”
Leila laughs at my scowl and goes back to cleaning, but this time she rubs the cloth over her blade with lewd intentions, waggling her brows at me and mouthing,Enjoy the ride.
In other words, get my kicks in before I get to hell.
Heat licks up my neck from Wesley’s impatient gaze. Fine wrinkles appear at the edges of his eyes as they narrow. Call me crazy, but I like seeing the beginnings of those crow’s feet. They remind me he’s a man who’s lived. Someone up for a challenge. Someone who won’t buckle under pressure.
I glance down at the table. Wait… What the hell? I stand, knocking the chair back. My dagger clatters to the floor. The symbol I’d carved is the same one that was on my shoulder.
“Thea?” Tawny asks, and suddenly the weight of a thousand eyes lands on me. She leans across the table to inspect. “That looks kinda like—”
But I don’t stick around to hear more. I mumble an excuse and leave.
Nine
Wesley
“This is ridiculous,” I grumble and toss my jacket onto the cot in Cisco’s room. Dom and Zeke have also squeezed in.
“I agree,” Zeke mutters, his lip curling as he surveys the tiny room. “Living here will drive us nuts.”
“You have a warm bed, clothes on your back, and food,” Cisco reminds him. “We’ve all had worse.”
I sense the eye roll coming from Zeke, but he holds it in.
“I meant that working with these infuriating women is ridiculous.” I clench my jaw and force myself to relax. “I’ve tried being their friend. I’ve tried offering help. I spent the morning teaching them, but only the psychic seemed to care. The rest spent the class joking. One cleaned knives, and another walked out.”
They distrust us. I can’t blame them. We are, after all, here to eventually dismantle them. But first, we’re supposed to learn everything, including their processes and history. On top of that, there’s the other reason for being here. Only Zeke knows how I orchestrated events for our team to be picked to come here. If Dom and Cisco learn I’ve manipulated them, they won’t be happy, but I hope the end justifies the means, and once we get there, I’ll be absolved.
“Si. Something ismoltowrong in this place,” Dom says.
Their disdain for Sinners is palpable. But after catching the scars on Thea’s back and hearing her words when she shoved me against the bathroom wall… I can’t help thinking there’s more to these women than we were led to believe.
You think predators should be free to roam the streets and group homes where little girls are vulnerable?
She haunts me. I replayed that moment all night, tossing and turning on my lumpy cot. The tremor in her tone. The pain in her eyes. The desperation. Maybe I’m making it up, but I couldn’t get past the notion she was talking about herself. A part of me sympathized with her pain. A demon influenced me in the asylum and tried to get me to do things… evil things.
That fleeting, lost look in her eyes was the first moment of truth I’ve had from her, or any of the Sinners. That was… until she shuttered it all behind a cold facade and told me to fuck off.
It’s not like I expected these deadly women to welcome us with open arms or to blurt out all their secrets. It’s just that none of this is what I expected. I was prepared for evil sinners—an easy target to ruin—but I wasn’t prepared to see the toll of those sins or the righteous reasons for making them.
Her back had fresh flogging marks. I was there on the steps when the Reverend Mother reminded her about penance. Thea left to see the resident priest, which meant he was the one who hurt her. My gut twists when I visualize a man bringing down a leather cord, marking her skin, and her flinching beneath the judgment.
I consider confiding in Cisco, but I don’t want to betray Thea’s trust for some reason. Those desperate brown eyes flash in my mind again.
I rub my hands and clear my throat.
Dom claps my shoulder and squeezes. “Pazienza, Wesley. Patience.”
“Easy for you to say,” I grumble.
