“And Charly needs to pray.” Bobby said.
“I have to pray for my mama and I have to pray to God to make me well. Mama made me promise.”
Which went straight through to my heart like a silver-tipped stake and woke me up. “Crap,” I mumbled. I wrenched my hands free and braced myself on the mattress, shoving my hair out of the way. “I didn’t bring a dress. All I have are my fighting clothes.”
“Miss Esmee has a skirt you can use,” Bobby said. “She said it’s purple. And you can wear a T-shirt. Like you did in Bethel.”
Bethel. The children’s home. He’d used the Bethel card. I blew out a breath. I knew when I was beaten. “Okay. Get dressed. I’ll find a church.” The kids left, and I groaned out of bed and to my feet. I braided my hair in the bathroom and smeared on a bit of red lipstick.
Out of curiosity, I peeked into Bruiser’s room; it was empty and—by the lack of fresh scent—had been for some time. The chores for his master were time consuming, even though the relationship had undergone a fundamental change. I closed the door and looked over my meager clothing. “Black, black, and more black,” I said, putting on a bra and black tee and green Lucchese boots over the leggings. I’d look stupid. But Charly needed to pray. And maybe I did too.
Still, I packed a nine mil in its box, loaded, safety on and no round in the chamber. Locked the box. Carrying it, I stopped and looked at myself in the mirror hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Black hair, amber eyes, copper skin, black circles under my eyes to match the black tee, the black leggings. The only colors were in my irises and the green snakeskin boots. Which clashed. And I didn’t have a Bible. I hadn’t brought it. I couldn’t remember the last time I hadn’t brought a Bible out of town. I was going to church, and I packed a gun. How sick was that? I was so going to hell, and not for my sex life or the vamps I killed. But for the slow wandering away from God, from prayer, from any kind of spirituality. I hadn’t even remembered it was Sunday. Yeah. Hell.
I went online and found a nondenominational church in town. It was way bigger than any I’d ever attended, and from its Web site, it looked like a male-dominated church, probably one where the little ladies sat with their hands primly clasped and wore little tatted head coverings. But it was the only one close by that looked like something Misha would want her daughter to attend. I saved the directions on my cell phone and left the room, making my way down the stairs.
Esmee met me at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in paisley silk pajamas of a particularly hideous green color and a sunflower-yellow silk robe and matching ballerina bedroom slippers, holding a decidedly plain—for her—purple skirt. It had two layers; the underlayer a heavy, dark purple cotton, and the upper layer a lighter shade of purple, full and gauzy. The waist was elastic, and when I pulled it on, the hem fell to the tops of my boots. On Esmee, it must have dragged the floor.
“It looks lovely on you, dear,” she said, patting my hand. “But you’ll need some color. This amethyst necklace and the matching bracelet will bring out the darker colors of the underskirt.”
I tried to say no, but she drew my head down and snapped the amethyst choker to my throat, and opened the cuff bracelet and slid it onto my wrist. Both were ridiculously heavy and probably cost a fortune. “They go beautifully with your coloring,” she said. “You are such a striking girl.”
She patted my cheek, her eyes glowing with pleasure at my wearing her baubles. I felt my heart go all mushy.
“And this black shawl will keep you warm in the church.” She wrapped me up in the knitted shawl as if I were a little girl, and I let her, feeling all teary-eyed. I am such a dweeb.
I smiled down at her, bent, and kissed her forehead. “Thank you, Miz Esmee. I’ll take good care of them.
“I know you will, dear. Here’s a Bible.” She placed a worn Bible in my hands, her name in gold gilt lettering on the embossed leather cover. I was deeply touched that she would share her own Bible with me. “You are full of woe and darkness and anger,” she said, her tone sad. I snapped my eyes to hers. “So go to church and give all that to God. He’s big enough to take care of it all.”
I shoved down my reaction. I got my best advice from the tribal elders I’d met in my life, and while Esmee appeared to be a dotty old woman, tottering around in a big empty house, hoping for interaction from the outside world, she had seen the darkness inside me as clearly as Aggie One Feather, my Cherokee elder. Esmee wasn’t tribal, but she was a woman rich in years and likely rich in wisdom as well, and had insights I hadn’t considered. “Ummm,” I said.
“It’s very simple,” she said, reading my thoughts on my face. “It isn’t hard or painful or violent or learned or scary. It’s just you and the Almighty talking.”
Something bright and icy shivered through me. “Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“The children are waiting in the car, which that nice young man has turned on and gotten warm for you. Go pray, my dear.”
I leaned down and kissed her forehead again before leaving the house, a gun in one hand, a Bible in the other. Charly and Bobby were in the backseat; Eli was sitting behind the wheel in the SUV, drinking from an insulated cup and reading a newspaper—another paper one. It was odd seeing real newspapers twice, like a glimpse back in time. Another cup was in the cup holder in the dash, and when I opened the door, it smelled of tea and spices and milk. I was tired, and more tears pooled in my eyes at his kindness.
Eli took one look at me and his lips quirked up ever so slightly.
“I know,” I said. “I look like a well-dressed street person.”
“A twelve-year-old playing dress-up. Get in. I’m driving.”
I didn’t protest. Unexpectedly emotional, I didn’t want the responsibility of driving and parking a vehicle larger than a two-wheeler. Balancing three people on Bitsa was out too.
• • •
I’m not a big organized-religion person. I was a baptized Christian, dunked in a river one night, and I’m a Cherokee too. I had taken Bible classes all through my time at the children’s home, and a comparative-religion course in high school. I’d learned a bit about Buddhism and Taoism and Islam and several other major religions. I’d even taken a course about the Greek and Roman gods. But I was raised to put all that comparative stuff aside and just read the Bible, and if something differed from the Bible to not let it offend me and just to walk away from it. Nothing in that philosophy was offended by my Cherokee spirituality, which was something other than and different from organized religion. It was about the health of the spirit, the body, the home, the clan, and the tribe, more so than about God. So I can be Cherokee and a Christian and go to church anywhere, at least for a while. Or almost anywhere.
But . . . this church was huge. Not huge like some Roman Catholic places of worship. Not huge and painted and gilded like Saint Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square, but way bigger than any church I attended when I was a kid. Or since, for that matter. The building was brick, the windows and the doors were pointed arches—Gothic, I think they’re called—and though the windows weren’t stained glass, they were etched glass and made the interior look removed, isolated, and sequestered. We arrived just in time for the early service, and the man at the front door didn’t look askance at my odd clothing or at my companions, but instead guided us to an empty pew and gave me a paper with the scriptures and the music and the theme of the day’s sermon photocopied on it. The preacher’s name was on the bottom. Preacher Herman Hosenfeld, which made me smile for no reason that made sense.
We sat midway back, and I studied the cross that hung high on the wall at the front. In this church, two smaller crosses hung, one to each side, to represent the thief and the murderer who died with Christ. Ever since I had learned the origination story of the vamps—how they were created with the wood of the three crosses—it had struck me as strange that Christians would hang three crosses, of which only one was holy, in their churches. Somehow now three crosses felt wrong, as if vamps should worship the three and Christians only the one. It also felt strange that vampires and Christians shared the same origination event, the yin and the yang of sacrifice and deceit, of hope and death and life eternal.