Page 97 of The Sinner and the Priest: Part Two

“Not quite catching your drift.” I let my gaze shift to the flies on the canvas crates behind her. Weren’t they on the mural behind me before?

“Jasmine, the poor fool.” Hannah raises her voice to get my attention. When I drag my attention back to her, she’s leaning her hips on the rickety sword table. “The woman had a righteous stick up her arse, so of course I needed to give her something real to protect, an anchor for murder. Once she did, every other perception was easy to nudge.”

An anchor.

“The rosary beads,” I mutter. Cisco never goes anywhere without those beads.

A serpentine smile curves her lips. “Perhaps if you stopped wasting time pretending to be a dumb slut, you would have come to this realization sooner.”

“I only pretend about one of those things.”

I part my thighs and give the men a saucy wink. The gangly one gets a lascivious look in his eye. The other blushes and tugs at his collar.

Hannah slams her palm on the table, rattling the sword. “This isn’t a game! It’s not a mission. You can’t fuck your way out of this. You’re going to die. Don’t you get that?”

“Fine,” I admit. “You’re right. I think with my cunt instead of my head. Otherwise, I’d have noticed you directing the briefing in the archives after Spain. I’d have noticed you testing the sword’s efficacy. I’d have avoided coming to Rome because it was obviously going to fail. The sword doesn’t work for me. I’m a dud. Happy now?”

“Not even close,” she sneers.

I stare at her, nostrils flaring, eyes stinging. Everything I said was true. That’s the fucked up part. The sword still isn’t working for me. I don’t know how I keep thinking otherwise, why I keep pushing, keep fighting.

But I can’t stop.

I lift my chin and meet her eyes. “You could have taken the sword after Jasmine died, but you disappeared and let us come to Rome anyway. Why?”

“I wanted to know what the Vatican knew.” She shrugs. “It’s hard enough getting in unnoticed, but manipulating minds into not seeing me and also giving up their secrets is even harder. Much easier to watch other people do it.”

Lies.

She’s still working Cisco for something.

One by one, the flies lift off the crate and buzz around nearby. I look at Hannah, then at them. The food began to rot only when Hannah returned to the abbey. It rotted on the plane. And then in the secret Vatican apartments, the food hadn’t been rotten before I went into the steam room.

But afterward, when we came out . . .

“You were there with us in the Vatican apartments, weren’t you?” I accuse, then immediately feel sick at the memory of what Cisco and I did after the steam room. Disgust covers my face. “Does Cisco know his sister is a pervert?”

Thirty-Four

Mercy

Crack!

Hannah’s palm meets the side of my face, and my head whips to the side with jaw-popping force. Ringing in my ears. Fire on my skin. But a sliver of triumph builds within my soul.

No one likes being called a pervert. My mother taught me that.

Whether Hannah watched Cisco and me is irrelevant. The time for playing games is over. I need this bitch gone to improve my chances of escape. For that, I need her riled up or fed up, so I ignore her by keeping my face to the side, hair over my face.

Two seconds later, a weight lands on my head. Sharp pain spikes as Hannah’s fingers clench and my hair rips. She forces me to face her.

Something dark and insidious peers out from behind her eyes and crawls over my skin like phantom bugs. Her hair lifts on a wind that’s not there.

This is the true face of her darkness, and it’s exactly like Cisco’s without the spiked shadow ribbons.

The thugs behind her are a blur right now, but I hear their intake of breath being held. They’re afraid.

Hannah opens her mouth to speak, but I get there first.