Wayne whistled through his teeth. “He was a little bit lost. You’d have to be real observant to see that because he’s so reserved. But he was lost. I’m kind of chatty.” He winked at me. I loved when he did that. “You might have noticed? My father was mayor of the town. My mother stayed home to raise me, but she’d been a schoolteacher. Told me to watch out for the fishermen’s kids when they came into town because they didn’t have the benefit of being with everyone else since birth. He was a fisherman’s kid. I decided we’d be best friends.”
Neil snorted. “That’s literally what he did. Let me know it, right there outside the school hall. Hey you, we’re best friends. And I thought, okay. Why not? Then I met Gordon.”
Gordon grinned broadly. “As reserved as that one is there, he picks up people kind of regularly. Does most of the talking in business. My mother died when I was born. My dad is a shoemaker. He worked out of the house, and I basically stayed under foot—no pun intended—until it was time for me to go to school. We lived in town, but we never went anywhere. I didn’t meet the other kids. Dad’s shy.”
Neil interrupted. “Shy, but so nice. So Gordon was sitting alone. Wayne and I just joined him. Sat down.”
Gordon grinned. “Wayne let me know we were all best friends. It was the three of us for half a second. Maybe a week. And then Ren came to school.”
Ren sighed. “I wasn’t going to go to school. How to put this? There is a side of the island that is a little more… risqué than the regular township. Nudity. Lots of changing spouses. Living in tents. The authorities come and check out the circumstances every so often because the way most of those folks support themselves is selling hashish. It’s not illegal, per se, but they watch it. That trip, they discovered me. Told my parents I had to go to school whether they like it or not. So I was a week late. The kids all stared. I didn’t have shoes.”
“But,” Neil said and pointed at Gordon, “look whose father made them for a living.”
I was loving this. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever loved anything so much as listening to them share their experiences. “You gave him shoes.”
“Shoes at first, somewhere to live many years later when my parents went to bed and never woke up. They’d managed to poison themselves on the wrong mushrooms.” Ren sighed. “Funny, the story of how the five of us met feels closer in time to me than my parents’ dying.”
Lennon leaned forward. “So it’s the four of them, and they entirely leave me out.”
“Bullshit.” Neil hit Lennon on the back. “This boy here was from the right family, so to speak. A few families in town are slightly richer than the others. Lennon came to school, but he had a group already. Or so we thought.”
“By divinity, I hated those kids. I used to spend recess staring at the four of them wishing they’d ask me to join them. But they never did. Not for a whole six months.”
Neil nodded. “When Gordon, Wayne, and I were talking to the teacher after class, some kids decided to try to pick on Ren. He took two of them down. The third would have hurt him though if Lennon hadn’t grabbed a big stick and conked the guy over the head. Then he was with us.”
“Wayne let me know we were best friends.”
They all laughed at that, and I did, too. I wished I could have been there, just to watch, to hide behind a tree and just… see them. They still had that time in their hearts, I could feel it in the room with us. Simpler, easier. Not perfect, but real. Not drenched in evil.
From across the table, Wayne took my hand. “You can be our best friend, too, Mika.”
“Okay.” I squeezed his fingers. “Thank you. I can be an honorary member of your crew. Took me thirty years, but I made friends.”
Lennon sipped his water. “How did you get here? I mean, we heard in town that Anne is starting a new Sisterhood. Did you just follow her? How did you get out of that other place? The Guards, when they talk to us at all, are pretty angry about how things went there.”
It was my turn to share. “I don’t know, exactly. I stood against Katrina, because I wanted to follow Anne. I didn’t like how things were being done there. It felt…” How to describe the sense of utter wrongness that had been every day there? “Like it should be different. I stood up, told her so. The last thing I remember is her saying some words in a language I didn’t understand. I woke up here. I’d been cursed. Lost in my own mind, on a dark road to nowhere that I ran day after day, never to return. I’d still be there if Teagan, who you haven’t met yet, hadn’t brought me to the light.” I pointed at each of them with my index finger. “I like your stories better. Let’s have more of them. Please. First girlfriend stories. Go.”
Neil held up his hands. “No way. Those are stories we will take to the grave. I… It never worked, and mostly, it was just awful. I, personally, have never wanted to see a woman more than once. I guess that makes me kind of… terrible.”
“I like that you’re honest about it.” That was true. Wayne shook his head. He wasn’t going to share his stories either. Fine, I supposed that was for the best. “Most embarrassing moment.”
“Oh.” Lennon pointed at Gordon. “The incident with the cat.”
“There was an incident with a cat?”
Gordon groaned and dropped his head on the table. “I swear I thought there was a monster in the house.”
I wandered outside from the guesthouse. None of them had let me clean, even though it only seemed fair that I should. The temperature had cooled considerably. I wondered if it was about to rain again.
“Hey.” Neil slung an arm around my shoulder like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. “The stars are really out tonight.”
I lifted my head to look at them. “They seem to be. I never look at them.”
He sucked in his breath. “I always look. It’s how fishermen navigate, for one. But beyond that, I used to think they were calling to me, like they were giving me a roadmap.”
“Maybe they were. Stranger things have happened. Trust me.”
He pulled me against him. “Let me walk you home.”
I pointed at the house. “Right there?”
“Sure. A guy walks a girl home.”
I hated to tell him, but in this place, it was more likely I’d protect him from whatever could happen then the other way around. Still, I let him walk me the few steps. When we got there, he spoke again. “You don’t have to go there. You could stay in the guesthouse with us.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?” He brushed a piece of hair off my face. “I stay up late. We could talk all night.”
“I heard that you don’t sleep.” His hair was pulled back in a ponytail. It made him look younger. His gaze met mine, so I finished my thought. “I can’t fall in love with you. With any of you. You’re leaving, and I never am. How on earth would I get over that broken heart? You’re not for here.”
He took my hand in his. “You could love all of us, couldn’t you?” He didn’t ask that as a question. It was like he already knew. “The Sisters are married to five guys. I don’t know if that is what the others want. We haven’t talked about it. But you’re reading me right for sure. I want you. Come with me. Leave here. We’ll live on the road. Really see the world before we have to say goodbye to it. Let someone else handle these problems. I just want you. I swear I’d make you happy.”
That was sweet. “The thing is I made a promise to divinity. I said I would put myself in front of evil until I could no more. I would never ask you to be who you weren’t, and I don’t think you’d ask that of me. You’re a wanderer. When you finish here, get back to it. I’m a Sister. I am fully planted in my spot until divinity calls me somewhere else. Then I return here. This isn’t just what I do. It’s who I am. I dream of elsewhere, but that’s all it is: a dream.”
He took my cheeks in his hands and drew me to him. Right then, with only the stars watching, he kissed me. His breath was sweet, and his lips were soft. The calluses on his hands from days—years—of
working contrasted those first feelings. All of it was heady and alluring. This was my first kiss. It might be my only kiss. I held onto the moment so I could memorize it, store the feelings, and pull them out whenever I needed them.
“Mika, how am I ever going to get over you?” He leaned his forehead to mine. “From the moment I saw you… I knew I had to do that.”
“Goodnight, Neil.” I didn’t invite him upstairs even though I wanted to. There was no rule against it. Sex had been encouraged in Katrina’s Sisterhood. But I had to protect myself. As far as I went, if I gave him my body, it would mean my heart. I couldn’t let it be shredded. I needed it to carry me through the long nights of my life.
A knock sounded, and I knew it was Neil before I called, “Come in.” Who else would be awake in the middle of the night?
He stepped into my bedroom. His hair was loose now, falling to his shoulders.
“I’ll keep my hands to myself. I just can’t stay away. Unless you tell me to. Then I’ll go.”
I patted the bed next to me. So far, I had slept platonically next to Wayne and Lennon. Since it was a night, to be honest with myself, I was attracted to all of them. Neil would be no different in that regard. He set his shoes aside and climbed in next to me.
He didn’t speak, and neither did I. Instead, he tugged me closer to him under the blankets, and wrapped his arm around me tightly. “Tell me about your earliest memory.”
The storytelling from dinner wasn’t over. I had to think before I could answer him. “I was lost in the hallways of the Sisterhood. I shouldn’t have been out of the nursery. There must have been something big going on. The Sisters were rushing around with their hoods on. No one paid me any mind. Then a man came…”
I stopped talking because I hadn’t thought about this in so long. I had a whole different understanding of it now.
“What happened?” Neil’s voice was a whisper in my ear.
“A man picked me up and carried me back to the schoolroom. He was a Guard. They always looked scary. He said, Sister Mika, you’re very important. Reed says you are to stay where you are and not wander around just yet. Someday, but not now.”
He laced our fingers together on my stomach. “And Reed’s important?”
“He’s part of the divinity. I’m lucky he was looking that day, I guess. Who knows what would have happened?” But remembering that confirmed my fears. If I was important, it was likely that Bob wasn’t wrong. I was the Oracle.
I needed new thoughts. I couldn’t let myself travel down that road. “What’s your earliest memory?”
“My mother used to go visit this woman who lost her daughter to the Sisterhood. Ms. Miranda. She was never the same after they took her daughter. I took her hand in mine and told her that all would be well. I remember that. I must have been three. The woman started weeping, and it scared me half to death. My mom hurried me away and never brought me back there.”
I tried to picture him at three. Bright blond hair, intense blue eyes. Maybe he had dimples. “That was sweet you wanted to make her feel better.”
“I guess.” His voice had lowered. “Go to sleep, Mika. I think I might actually be able to, lying here with you. I feel… calm. My mind is never that way. Even if I seem relaxed, my thoughts are churning all the time. Driving me forward. Not tonight. Right here, I am… shutting down. Sorry. I’m rambling.”
I squeezed his hand in mine. “Sleep then, Neil. I’m not going anywhere.”
He didn’t answer me, but just a few seconds later, the sound of his breathing changed. I held onto him. This might be the only night I had Neil, like the night with Wayne and the one with Lennon were probably one time only evenings. I wanted to remember what it felt like to be surrounded by him. But sure enough, I drifted into dreamless sleep, holding tight to this man I had known for such a brief time. Yet it felt like so much longer.
I woke still held by Neil. He hadn’t moved, nor had I. Light streamed into the room, and Ren stared down at both of us. He raised his eyebrows then grinned at me. “Sorry to intrude, but it’s past the point we’d be up and working. Neil is a bit of a stickler with schedules. I had to find him and make sure he was okay.” Ren bent over and kissed my cheek. “Good morning, by the way.”
“Good morning.” My face tingled where he’d done that. I wasn’t a huggy, kissy person naturally. And yet… lately? I sort of was. I was also having no trouble speaking. I seemed to be able to talk day and night with no shortage of words. Lots of things to consider…
Neil moaned. “How many mornings have I left you alone and let you sleep in?”
He was clearly not a morning person. Neil still hadn’t opened his eyes. Instead, he pulled me closer and dug deeper into the pillow. “Ren,” Neil didn’t enunciate his words so much as mutter them, “go the hell away. I’m comfy. Mika is like the best sleep giver ever.”
Ren laughed. “How many times have you let me sleep in? How many times have you woken my ass up and dragged me out of bed? I’d say the latter more than the former.” He grinned wider. “Sorry, Mika.”
What was he apologizing for? A second later, he dragged Neil by the feet out of the bed. With his arms still around me, I went with him until Neil’s eyes flew open and he let go of me just in time. He hit the floor with a thump.
A second later, he was on his feet. “Sorry, Mika.” They were both apologizing. “I am going to kick your ass to Peter’s and back, Ren.”
“Yeah?” Ren walked backward out of the room. “Good luck with that.”
Neil bent over to kiss my cheek. “We need to talk again. About that idea of you coming with us. There has to be a way for you to come with me and still be you.”
If I even attempted that, I’d get him killed. “We’d be overrun with demons.”
“Hate this.” He kissed me square on the lips. “Not this, per se. The whole circumstance. Oh, I get what you said last night. I… I don’t have a problem if you end up liking them, too. I mean, I know you don’t need my permission to feel how you feel. I guess I thought I’d be jealous. I thought I’d feel… a certain way. But I don’t. And I told you, I’m not great about wanting to continue to see women after seeing them once. Only, this morning all I want is to know you even better. The other guys. I… I don’t know… I wouldn’t have a jealousy problem if they did, too. The whole thing works here, somehow. Like the rules are different in the Sisterhood.”
He had no idea how right he was.
I took another lukewarm bath, thanks to Ren’s machine he’d put together for me. It wasn’t the utter heat from the other Sisterhood, but it was so much better than it had been. When I was clean, I made my way outside. I’d find the kids and get them back on track with their studies. Alexander burst through the gate, and I caught sight of him rushing toward me, a small girl in his arms. My powers rushed to life, and I knew what was about to happen before it did.
Alexander had found a possessed child. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I wasn’t as good at this as Teagan. She could clear anyone of a demon. Where was Anne? Daniella? I looked, but I was the only one around.
My time off was officially over.
“Sister Mika.” His voice was high pitched. “Help her. I found her outside.”
I nodded to him. “Place her down.”
I knelt over the girl. She was possessed. Cold fury roiled through me, and I shoved it away. I couldn’t burn out again. The ravens cawed above my head, and I ignored them. If they, or the spirits they traveled with, had something to say, they could come down here and say it in a way I understood. Otherwise, they could keep their distractions in moments of import to themselves.
I knew before I touched her that she was dead. Or close to it. I would take the filth out of her, I would give her back her body, but she would not be saved. She was too far gone.
I looked at Alexander. “You know the truth here.” I’d have loved to sugarcoat things for the boy, but both he and I had seen too much for that kind of falsehood. “It’s too far.”
r /> He grabbed onto my arm. “Not for you. Sister Mika, you make miracles.”
I absolutely did not. I couldn’t think of one such thing I had ever done. Yet, as he stared at me with his wide eyes and hopeful expression, the best I could do was try. Maybe, maybe there was a way to save her. It would mean giving her energy. I’d never done it. I didn’t know if I could. Sisters had very different powers from one another. Where was Anne? She could do this.
“Alexander, Sister Anne…”
He grabbed my arm. “Sister Mika, is there time for us to find her?”
No, there wasn’t. I was just going to have to figure out how to do this as I did it. If it was even possible. I dug deep inside of myself. Somewhere, I carried the divine.
First things first, I had to pull out the demon. Low level, they lived only to possess, kill, and possess again. They were barely the same creatures as their more intense cohorts. Still, it took energy—almost more than a regular banishment—to get the demon out. I reached for her energy, found the demon, and I tugged. A yell sounded from my lips. The foul creature was heavy in its sadness.
“Be forgiven.” I spoke the words because they sounded from my tongue without conscious thought, either from habit or power that came from beyond me.
Let others figure that out.
I had no time.
This child needed to be healed. My hands were warm. I placed them on her, and I let her have all that she needed. I fed her organs, her brain, her soul. I warmed what had been cold.
“Mika.” Anne was by my side, tugging on me. “That’s enough. You’ve saved her, darling. You saved her. Stop. You will kill yourself. She can heal from this now. Her body can. Stop.”
I heard her, and yet it was as though I couldn’t let go. She wasn’t better. She needed me. Maybe this was what I was here to do, save this girl and then move on…
Not yet…