Misha watches me for a second before nodding. That’s why he’s the only one I’ll ever trust to stand at my shoulder when I start taking people apart. He knows when to argue and when to start loading magazines.
My phone buzzes and I pull it from my pocket.
A notification from Cressida lights the screen, so I tap my thumb on it to bring up the thread.
CRESSIDA
Clinic back lot. WED. 1am. No men. We’re going. Tell me you’ll be smart about it.
My mouth tightens as I read over it multiple times. The bond answers her before I do, heat sliding under my skin in a waveshe’ll feel as permission or warning depending on where she stands when it hits.
ME
You will take L and S. You will wear the blade L gave you because I know she did. You will keep your phone on. I will not be seen. But I will be there.
Three dots appear then vanish, then reappear again only for her to leave me with a single word.
CRESSIDA
Deal.
The single word makes me smile in a way that I don’t like people to see. Soft and intimate, reserved only for my little fox.
The sacristan is an old man whose spine looks like the inside of a question mark. He keeps a brass key on a chain around his neck and a rosary in his pocket worn thin. He knows exactly who I am but refuses to ask me to leave.
“You can’t arm a church, Mr. Kirovsky,” he murmurs in his small office, his voice papery thin.
“I can arm me.”
“That, I believe,” he says, sliding the blueprint across the desk. He traces the transept with a tremor. “This door sticks from the humidity. You’ll think it’s locked when it isn’t.”
“Thank you.”
He studies my hands as if the answers were stamped into the ink and scars. “Do you love her?”
“Yes.”
It costs me nothing to say it, but it sure in the hell costs me everything to mean it. Everything like the black heart inside my chest that I never expected to hand over willingly to anyone.
He nods like that was all that he wanted to know. “The brides who come in white assume the dress wards off the monsters,” he says sagely. “It is the ones in colors who have already made arrangements with them.”
“Cressi will wear black,” I assure him.
That I have no doubt. Rebellion should be my little fox’s name. She will punch tradition in the face and wave with her middle finger afterward.
“Then she will be fine,” the old man says.
We walk the aisles as I scope out the areas where I believe have the weakest points, pointing them out with a head nod to Misha so that he can get it handled.
In three nights, I will bind Cressida to me so thoroughly that even possession will choke on its own meaning. She will live inside my blood, my breath, my violence. She will be mine in a way no definition could ever cage.
Across from me are rows of votive flames guttered in the shadows. Each one a whisper of penance, each wick burning down a promise someone was desperate to keep. There’s one near the stained-glass window that catches my eyes. Something about it pulls me in, daring me to come closer. Corrupt and toxic, the energy wraps itself around me. Sourness coats the back ofmy throat when I realize it’s the same kind of thread from the battle where we found her scythe calling card.
I gaze down at the one that has the black aura around it and there, pressed into the soft wax, is another small, black scythe charm.
She was here.
“She?” the old man asks and I realize I must have spoken out loud.
