Passionaries by Tonya Hurley

Author:Tonya Hurley [Hurley, Tonya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative
ISBN: 9781442429543
Google: AOE0nQEACAAJ
Amazon: B00DA9FTN6
Published: 2013-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

15

BOHEMIAN SABBATH

Agnes left the room in silence. Through the doorway at the end of the long walk, she spied a girl facing the doors, waiting. “Lucy.”

Agnes hurried to her. “Are you okay?” she said, embracing her. “I’ve been texting you!”

“I know, I’m sorry. I needed to talk to you face to face. I have something to tell you.”

“And I have something to tell you,” Agnes said.

“You go first. I’m going to take a while.”

Agnes smiled. “I met this guy.”

“Oh,” Lucy interjected.

“No, not like that,” Agnes replied. “A boy in my class who recently came out of Frey’s ward at the hospital.”

“Another one?”

“He’s nothing like Sebastian,” Agnes said.

“No one will ever be.”

“He said that there’s some crazy stuff going on up there. Real hard cases Frey is getting released into halfway houses and then out to the streets. One after another. It’s like an assembly line of wackos.”

“Did your friend have any idea why?”

“No, but I’m pretty sure I do.”

“Vandals?”

“Vandals,” Agnes replied. “Looking for us.”

Lucy shook her head and looked over both shoulders, fearful they might be being watched.

“It all makes a sadistic kind of sense,” Lucy said. “Especially with what I have to tell you.”

“What is it?” Agnes said with a lump in her throat.

“Let’s find Cecilia.”

Jesse scrolled through his phone’s photo app, studying the pictures he’d taken at Perpetua’s house. Creepy didn’t begin to describe it. Sebastian’s heart. Sitting there on display. It hadn’t decomposed so far as he could see. But then again, that didn’t prove anything. He’d gotten press releases about fast food burgers with cheese that hadn’t grown mold and didn’t even smell after a year on a windowsill.

Still, he had to admit, there was something incredibly powerful and yet undignified about it. He could see both sides of it. To the faithful, it was a material, anatomical, actual symbol of courage, of strength, of faith. A holy relic. To the skeptics, perverse at least, a horrible crime at worst, evidence of organ piracy. Grave robbing.

On trips to Europe he’d seen such things visiting churches and cathedrals. Hair, teeth, bone, extremities, all manner of body parts enshrined. A constant reminder of mortality and immortality. The fact that these items were now more interesting to tourists than pilgrims was not lost on him. He wished that the “Saints of Sackett Street,” as he’d coined them, would become such a novelty as well, its fifteen minute shelf life nearly spent, but the fascination with Lucy, Cecilia, and Agnes was growing more intense, not less, and becoming increasingly disconcerting to him. And terrifying.

He scrolled through file after file of photos and videos chronicling Lucy’s transformation from high school hellcat to table-dancing party princess extraordinaire. He reached for a cigarette and a beer, toasting her success. Their success.

“To the bad old days,” he mumbled, cracking a sinister smile.

Reminiscing, however, only led him back to a less celebratory place. The present.

What has she gotten herself into? The girls had been lucky to escape Precious Blood and Frey with their lives. Jesse, too.

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