Page 71 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
“I don’t have issues,” Joe snapped.
“You do, though,” Percy grinned.
“And so he should,” Althea cut in. “It’s the blood she’s after.”
Joe paled. “What now?”
“What?” asked Percy.
“One night, after I’d been there for months, she had me taken downstairs, to a basement of some sort. And she had this room I’d never seen before. It was hidden behind a fake wall. She had me lie in the middle of this sort of…” She studied the men, Joe with his lips slightly parted in riveted attention, Percy’s eyes troubled and serious in the rearview mirror. “Okay, I don’t think you’re going to believe me.”
“Try us.” Joe’s face was so open, so ready to trust. All at once, it warmed Percy’s heart and made him want to shake him.
Even so, Percy’s curiosity was piqued, and as Althea still seemed a little reluctant, he tried his own brand of encouragement. “He’s Catholic. He’ll believe just about anything you say.”
“Right now, Percy?” Joe rounded. “You want to do this right now?”
“A pregnant virgin? Really?”
“It’s a long and complicated histo?—”
“And she had magical breastmilk?”
“Ew,” said Althea.
“Isn’t it?” agreed Percy.
“It’s just medieval mythology,” Joe tried. “No one really?—”
“People carrying their own heads about the place?” Percy prodded.
“You’re the one with a magical sheath in the trunk!”
“I wish.”
“Percy!”
“Joe?”
“You know,” Joe turned to Althea, perfectly, beautifully flustered, “he likes to act as though he’s the rational one, but he’s completely insane, actually.”
“Thank you, Joe,” Percy replied. “I’m sure that’s gone some way to helping our guest feel at ease in the car I’m driving.”
But indeed, it had, because even as they sniped at one another, neither could quite hide the smiles they each tried to force down, particularly Percy, and there was a palpable warmth between them that, measure by measure, had already made Althea comfortable enough to trust them.
“Okay, okay,” she ventured after Joe informed Percy that he couldn’t just pick and choose which bits of the religion suited him, to which Percy retorted that it was all horse shit anyway and he would choose what he liked. “So we went downstairs, like I said, and she had this weird satanic set up.”
“Satanic how?” Joe asked, with a searching intensity that surprised her more than the question itself.
“I don’t know… Um. So, candles?—”
“Nothing satanic about candles,” Percy said.
“Sshhht,” hissed Joe.
“And a pentagram,” Althea announced with a touch a triumph.
“Sounds perfectly satanic,” Joe confirmed, adding a smug twist of the lips.
