Chapter 5: The Church at Midnight (2)

Iris looked at him. The candlelight from the church fell across his jaw, and for the first time she noticed the way he held his left arm slightly away from his body, the way you hold a broken rib. A thousand years. A thousand years of that.

"Then we don't let him pull it," she said.

"Darling." Rex's tail gave one nervous flick. "He put the leash on. He knows how to pull the leash."

"Irrelevant." Iris walked up the steps. "I'm a forensic scientist. Leashes leave evidence. And tonight, I'm taking his statement."

Jasper Cole was standing in the open doorway.

He had his sheriff's uniform on — the star, the belt, the sidearm — and his sheriff's face on, the saintly smile she'd known since she was eight. He didn't step aside for them. He didn't invite them in. He just stood there, filling the doorframe, and when Iris met his eyes, his smile flickered and came back a degree warmer and a degree less sincere.

"Jasper." Iris said his name like she was reading it off a body. "You're working late."

"Always on duty, Iris." He stepped aside at last, sweeping a hand toward the candlelight inside. "He's expecting you. Don't keep him."

She walked past him. Their shoulders didn't brush. She made sure of it. Behind her, she heard Kael stop, and she heard the two most dangerous men she knew — one with a badge, one with a thousand years of killing, have a quiet, thirty-second standoff in a church doorway. She didn't look back. She already knew who'd win.

Kael walked in behind her.

The church had been remodeled since she'd last been in it — or rather, it had been unremodeled. The fluorescent lights were gone. The folding chairs were gone. Instead, there were hardwood pews, polished to a glow, and candles on every surface, and at the far end, where the altar should have been, there was a round oak table set for three.

Victor sat at the head of it.

He was smaller than she'd expected. Silver hair, cut short. Wire-rimmed glasses. A tweed jacket with a leather elbow patch on the right that was wearing through. He looked like a tenured professor of something no one wanted to major in, and he looked up from a book he was reading with the mild, slightly surprised expression of a man who'd been interrupted mid-essay.

"Iris." He closed the book. It was a leather-bound copy of something in Latin. "You look just like her. Come in. Sit. I made coffee."

Iris sat. Kael stood behind her chair, arms folded, a wall of black coat and silver-eyed menace that Victor glanced at the way you glance at a houseplant that might bite.

"Kael." Victor nodded. "You're looking well. For a man who's been on his knees for a thousand years."

"I'm standing."

"On a leash." Victor smiled gently. "Drink your coffee, Iris. It's not poisoned. Poison would be rude. We have things to discuss."

Iris drank the coffee. It was excellent. She hated that it was excellent. "You texted me. You said she's awake. I'm assuming 'she' is the thing under the mountain."

"I'm assuming 'it' is a pronoun you've been told to use." Victor leaned back in his chair. "Let me save us three hours of posturing. The thing under the mountain is not a monster. It's a man. Or rather, it's the soul of a man — the first priest, the one your bloodline descends from. He went into the mountain a thousand years ago to seal something older than him, and he never came out. Over the centuries, his soul curdled. It forgot it was a man. It remembers only that it was locked in the dark, and that it wants out."

"That's a very pretty speech." Iris set her cup down. "But you texted 'bring her to the church at midnight, or we'll come to you.' That's not a discussion. That's a threat."

"It was an invitation with urgency." Victor adjusted his glasses. "I'm old, Iris. I've been doing this for a very long time. I've learned that invitations work better than summonses, but both get the job done."

"Doing what, exactly?"

"Keeping it locked." Victor spread his hands. "That's all I've ever done. The priests who came before me — your ancestors, the ones Kael will tell you were monsters — they didn't sacrifice his clan for power. They sacrificed his clan to seal the dark. The contract was never a cage on the wolves. It was a lid on something that would, if it got out, end every living thing on this continent. Your bloodline has held that lid for a thousand years. My line has policed it. His line has suffered it." He glanced at Kael. "And I am sorry about that. Truly. But sorrow doesn't open doors."

Iris watched him. Forensic eye on. She catalogued him: the way his left hand rested flat on the table, the way his eyes tracked Kael, not her, when he said the word suffered, the way the book he'd been reading was open to a page he'd marked with a ribbon he'd chosen because it matched his jacket. This was a man who curated. Everything about him was a choice.

"Let me get this straight." She leaned back. "You're telling me that the covenant — the thousand-year contract between your people and his — was never a peace treaty. It was a lid. And the lid is held down by my bloodline. And the thing under the lid is a ghost that wants out. And you, Victor, are the man holding the nail."