The First Sacrament (The Demons of Stone Chapel Book 1) by Duncan Lex

Author:Duncan, Lex [Duncan, Lex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lex Duncan
Published: 2016-01-04T18:30:00+00:00

Nineteen

The night shift at Sawyer's wasn't prepared for Aralia's appetite. She insisted on pancakes, seeing as it was three in the morning, and the cooks were taking too long to oblige.

“I'm going to talk to the manager,” she said.

“It's only been ten minutes,” Max pointed out.

She drummed her fingers on the table, nails clicking the linoleum. “We're the only people in here. It doesn't take that long to make pancakes.”

“You ordered two stacks.”

“Is that a problem, Max? Does my hunger offend you?”

“No, but―”

Dante sighed. “I'm sure they'll be done soon.”

“Easy for you to say,” Aralia mumbled. “You ordered oatmeal. Who orders oatmeal at a diner?”

While they bickered over proper breakfast foods, I focused on things that actually mattered. Like the missing diary we'd been looking for for weeks. It was a delicate piece of history, its leather cover made soft by time and dust and darkness. The binding was stamped with four numbers in faded gold. 1800.

All our hopes were riding on this one book. Our greatest chance of unraveling what was happening in this God forsaken town was hidden somewhere in these yellowed, wrinkled pages. It had to be. If not? I didn't know what we'd do.

Carefully, I opened it.

The entries were completely tame, written in the even, elegant hand of Elias himself. He described Stone Chapel’s progress at the time, how new citizens flocked here every day, how the church was slowly but surely being built. It was cool because it was a piece of history and all, but it didn’t have much to do with anything going on in the present day.

“Anything in there?” Dante asked, breaking from his breakfast debate.

“Not really,” I said. “Nothing we didn’t learn in history class in fifth grade.” I turned the page. It was dated April 15th, 1800. Elias waxed on and on about how great his wife was, compared her to the Virgin Mary, which was probably blasphemous somehow, and that was it. I turned the page again. It was blank. As were the rest of the pages after it. After some frantic flipping to find anything useful, I noticed something near the middle of the book. Some of the pages had been torn out. I pushed the book across the table at Dante and showed him.

He ran his fingers along the jagged places where the pages should have been. “Hm. We need to find these.”

I reached for the book again, flipping through every blank page until I made it to the back cover. Nothing. Not even a dear diary, I blessed someone’s cat today.

Aralia clapped her hands as the waitress arrived with our food. “Finally,” she unwrapped her silverware from her napkin and wielded her fork like a weapon. “Really, darling, you must learn to be more punctual.”

“Sorry,” the waitress said, setting Aralia's pancakes down. “We weren't really expecting anyone.”

Aralia snorted, but that was the extent of her answer. Pancakes trumped her usual condescension.

The waitress hoisted my omlette up with one hand and balanced the rest of the tray on the other.

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