Page 4 of Of Sinners & Salvation
“Did Little Boy Blue lose his sheep?”
“Do you know where she is?”
She sucks on her cigarette and then grins. “Who?”
Woman or not, I’d shake her if I thought it would knock an answer out of her. “My sister,” I grit out instead.
“You have a sister?”
“Yes,” I say, scowling at her. “Mercy. She came to your party and beat the shit out of y’all. You can’t have forgotten already.”
“Oh,” she says slowly, nodding and sucking on her cigarette again before speaking through a cloud of smoke that curls out of her mouth and nose at once. “I thought that was your girlfriend.”
She turns to face me over the railing, resting one elbow on the top of it, as she waits for my reaction.
“She’s my sister,” I snap. I’m unsettled that even a stranger thinks we’re dating. I tried to keep space between us, but sometimes I couldn’t resist putting Mercy in her place inpublic. I should never have touched her. I can hear my father’s voice in my head, his words replaying on a loop with the boy’s cries of pain and pleas to be let go, like they always do.
Sexual deviants.
“The only one?” Salem asks, twirling her cigarette in the air. I notice a camera mounted above her front door. If they brought Mercy here, there would be footage. Even if they erased it, Nate could tell. He could probably restore it too.
I need to find him.
“Yes, she’s my only sister,” I snap at Salem, distracted by her weirdness and random questions, like she’s trying to have a fucking conversation here. “Have you seen her?”
“Not lately,” Salem says, puffing on her smoke. “Have you?”
“We’re going to find her,” I say, raising my gaze to the camera. “We won’t stop until we do.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“Me and all the Hellhounds.”
“What about your parents?” she asks. “They must be worried.”
“Them too,” I say, deciding it doesn’t matter. If they’re going to use that information to hold her for ransom, I’ll make damn sure the ransom is paid. Anything to get her back.
“Must be nice to have a dad who gives a shit about you,” she says, flicking her cigarette over the railing at me.
I have to duck so it doesn’t put out an eye. I straighten and scowl at Salem. “Did you take her?”
“I’m as innocent as a lamb,” she says, baring her teeth.
“More like a shark,” I mutter.
Something in her grey eyes lights up. “Exactly like a shark,” she says, putting emphasis on the words like I’m supposed to find some great meaning in them.
I sigh. “What about Nate? Have you seen him?”
“No,” she says. “But I’d find him if I were you. Unless he’s the one who took her. You want a suspect, I’d look at him. Kid’s the main freak on campus.”
“I’ve been trying to find him,” I say, turning away. “But thanks for wasting my time.”
She cackles with laughter as I walk away.
“And Saint?” she calls just before I step past the gargoyles. “You can tell him I said that.”
I hurry away, increasing my pace until I’m almost running. I know Father Salvatore would have texted if he found anything, but I pretend his phone was dead, pretend she’ll be waiting at the rectory when I get there, pretend she’ll be happy to see me.
