Six

Ash Wednesday, February 28

1

"Remember, man, you are dust, and to dust you will return."

Grace dwelled on the priest's words as he dipped his thumb in the ashes of last year's palms and dabbed them on her forehead in the form of a tiny cross. She crossed herself and walked down the center aisle of St. John's toward the front entrance.

Outside, she jumped at the touch on her arm as she stood atop the stone steps.

"You're Grace Nevins, aren't you?"

She turned and saw a thin, intense-looking young man perhaps half her age. His face was very pale; his blond hair was so thin and wispy she could see his scalp right through it; his pallor was accentuated by the dark smudge of ash in the center of his forehead. His mouth seemed too large for his face, his nose seemed too small. Two of him could have fit inside the stadium coat he clutched around him. It was of good quality, but he was too thin for it.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Martin Spano. We've been looking for you."

Grace was immediately uneasy. Why should anyone be looking for her?

"You've found me."

"It wasn't easy. I waited outside every Mass at St. Pat's last Sunday. You weren't there. The Holy Spirit led me back downtown. This happens to be my parish."

"What do you want?"

"Brother Robert heard about what happened at choir practice at St. Patrick's last week."

Grace turned away and started down the steps.

"I don't want to talk about it!"

She had not been back to St. Patrick's since that awful night. She now attended Mass at St. John's instead. It was closer to her apartment. And besides, what was there to go back for? The choir director obviously could not trust her with the solo. She had pleaded with him that she didn't know what had come over her, that she hadn't meant to sing those horrid words, but that only seemed to bolster his decision: If she could not help it, how could she guarantee it wouldn't happen on Easter?

He was right, of course. She had rushed out of the cathedral in shame.

The young man followed her down the steps to Thirty-first Street.

"It wasn't easy to find you, Grace. You've got to listen to me. You're one of us!"

That stopped her.

"I don't even know who you are, Mr. Spano—"

"Martin, please."

"—so how can I be one of you?"

"Brother Robert says that what happened to you at choir practice is proof. You've felt the presence of the Evil One. You know that he is among us!"

Grace tensed. "Are you a Devil worshiper? I want nothing to do with—"

"No-no! I'm just the opposite! I'm one of the Chosen."

The Chosen? Hadn't she seen that title in bookstores on the cover of a best-seller?

"Chosen by whom?"

"By the Lord, of course. By the Holy Spirit. We have received the knowledge that the Antichrist is coming. We are to spread the warning among the nations of the earth. We are to expose the Evil One when he appears!"

This was crazy!

"I'm not interested."

Martin gently took her hand. "You're afraid. I myself was afraid when I first realized the responsibility God was placing on my shoulders. But it's a responsibility neither of us can shirk. Brother Robert will explain it to you."

"Who is this Brother Robert you keep talking about? I've never heard of him."

Martin's eyes glowed. "A wise and holy man. He wants to meet you. Come."

Something about the younger man's intensity frightened her.

"I… I don't know."

He gripped her arm insistently. "Please. It will only take a minute."

Grace wanted to run from this man, yet he was offering her answers to the questions that had plagued her since that awful night in St. Patrick's when she had begun singing about Satan instead of the Blessed Virgin. She had not had a good night's sleep since.

"All right. But only for a minute."

"Good! It's this way."

He led her up Fifth Avenue past the Art Deco splendor of the Empire State Building, then east on Thirty-seventh Street into the Murray Hill district with its procession of stately brown-stones in various states of repair. Halfway between Lexington and Park they stopped before a three-story brownstone.

"This is it," Martin said.

Brownstone steps ran up to the front door on the first floor. A shorter flight curved down to the right to the basement. A hand-printed sign on the basement door read chapter house. A slim, leafless tree stood to the left. Naked vines clung to the stucco front.

"Which floor is your apartment?"

"All of them—this is my house."

It occurred to Grace then that if she was getting involved with a crazy man, at least he was a well-to-do crazy man.

He led her up to the heavy glass-and-oak front door and into the blessed warmth of the foyer, then down a narrow hall to a sitting room. Their footsteps echoed on the highly polished bare hardwood floor; the walls and ceilings were painted a stark, flat white. Grace followed him into a brightly lit sitting room—as stark and white and bare as the hallway except for some sparse ultramodern furniture and abstract paintings on the walls.

And a man standing at the window, looking out at the street.

She recognized him immediately as a Cistercian monk by his beige habit, wide leather belt, and long, brown, cowled scapular. The cowl was down. He stood bareheaded and tonsured, a striking anachronism amid the glass-and-chrome and abstractions, yet he appeared to be perfectly at home. His graying hair was on the long side, falling from the glistening bareness of his tonsure over the tops of his ears and trailing to the base of his neck. He was of average height but very lean. As he turned to face her Grace saw that he had a neat, full, dark beard, salted with gray. For all his leanness, he had a round, cherubic face. His eyes were deep brown and kind; the weathered skin around his eyes crinkled with his smile as he stepped toward her.

"Miss Nevins," he said. His voice was deep, chocolate-smooth, and French-accented. "How good of you to come. I'm Brother Robert."

He pronounced it Ro-bair.

"I can only stay a minute," Grace said.

"Of course. I simply wanted an opportunity to personally invite you into our little circle. And to impress upon you how special you are."

His eyes… so wise… so gentle and kind…

"Special? I don't understand."

"God chose you to announce the warning in His own house. You must be destined to play an important part in His plan to defeat the Antichrist."

Me? Why would God choose me?

"The Antichrist?"

"Yes. Your words in that song were a warning for all of us from the Lord. The Spirit touched you and made you aware— as He has Martin and myself and a few select others—that the devil has been made flesh and dwells among us."

Grace didn't think she knew any such thing.

"Why me?"

Brother Robert shrugged inside his robes. "Who would be so bold as to explain why the Lord moves in the ways He does?"

"Won't you come to the service tonight?" Martin said, his pale face eager.

Grace hesitated. Then, in a burst of revelation, she realized that this might be the chance she had been praying for, the chance to atone for her past, to make right all the sins of her youth. All those lives. Was God offering her salvation?

This would explain the horrid corruption of that lovely hymn, and the malaise she had felt lately. Satan had entered the world, and God had chosen her as a soldier in His army to battle him.

Yet still she hung back. She wasn't worthy!

"I…I don't know."

"If not tonight," Brother Robert said, "then Sunday afternoons, here, at three o'clock."

"Here?"

"Martin has given us the use of his basement for our prayer meetings."