Page 47 of Of Sinners & Salvation
I break off, shaking my head. That was the last time he ever laid a finger on her. I can still feel it. The thud of the car, the body on the hood… I can still feel it, and I’m still not sorry. That’s what makes me a bad priest, a bad man.
Thou shalt not kill.
“What?” Walker presses. “You protected her, and he beat you instead?”
“Oh, he did that plenty,” I said. “But the one time I put a stop to it, she hated me for it. She didn’t want protecting. She took his side.”
“Maybe she thought he’d take it out on you, that you’d make it worse for yourself.”
“Maybe.” I shake my head. “No. It wasn’t that. It’s like she saw what the community saw, even though she knew better. She still believed he was that man because she wanted to believe it. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t believe something I knew to be untrue. There are things in the church like that. But a priest doesn’t get to make that judgment.”
“And yet, you do.”
“And yet, I do.”
We sit in silence for a long while, as the moon disappears, and the sky begins to lighten to the darkest midnight blue, and the stars fade.
“Should we get going?” Walker asks, standing and brushing off the seat of his pants. “Looks like the tide’s coming in, and we don’t want to be here for that.”
“Good idea,” I say, standing too. “We can make it to the dock and keep watch to make sure no guards are looking for us there before we board a boat.”
Mercy twists around from where she’s sitting huddled together with her boys. “I was thinking about that,” she says. “I can’t do it.”
“What can’t you do, lamb?” I ask, watching her in the scant light, her hair tumbling around her shoulders, eyes luminous, as ethereal and untouchable as a goddess.
“I can’t leave the island with you,” she says. “I’m going back.”
fifteen
The Merciless
“What do you mean, you’re going back?” my brother thunders, his voice louder than even the surf.
I climb to my feet, extricating myself from the group. “I mean, I came here for a reason.”
“Is the reason called kidnap?” Walker Delacroix asks. “Because, same. Dab me up, Kidnap Club.”
He holds out his hand, but I ignore it and face the boys, my boys. The Quint, Cinco de Mercy—or what remains of it.
“I’m grateful you found me, so grateful. You have no idea. But when they grabbed me at Thorncrown, I didn’t fight back. I went with them because I wanted to find Eternity.”
“Did you?” Heath asks quietly, with none of the anger I expected.
“No,” I say, my throat tightening. “I need more time. I haven’t seen her, but there are more rooms in the asylum, floors I haven’t even been on. I asked around every chance I got, but it’s hard to get answers when there are guards standing over you every second. There was a girl I asked, and I think she was about to answer, but they made us shut up. A boy overheard me asking another time, and he said ‘there are ghosts in the attic.’ I know how that sounds, but I have to know. I can’t get this close and then walk away. I have to know if she’s here.”
“Or if she was,” Heath says, standing and brushing off his jeans.
“So, none of y’all are leaving?” Walker asks. “I got you here for nothing?”
“It wasn’t for nothing,” Saint says, standing too.
“Oh, that’s right,” Walker says. “It was for Mercy. So y’all could ride in like white knights and rescue your damsel. Except it doesn’t look like she needs or wants rescuing. She said it herself. She came here willingly. You made me think my family was sex trafficking, and it wasn’t even true.”
“Hey, we didn’t make you believe that,” Angel says. “You believed it without question. You must have already had doubts if you didn’t outright think it to begin with.”
“The fucking audacity,” Walker says, shaking his head. “And you, especially, North. Up there on your high horse acting like your family is one single grain of sand better.”
He picks up a handful of sand and tosses it at Angel before turning and striding off down the beach in disgust. “You might check the Boneyard for your friend,” he calls back over his shoulder, and then he’s stepping past the turn in the rocks, out of sight of the hidden alcove where we huddle.
