The rat-faced kid’s eyes met mine. A spark flared in their tainted depths, swirling now he had revealed himself. His skin began to look gray too, the Chaldean twisting his tongue and staining his body.

Wait a second. He isn’t even an Acolyte. What’s he doing out of a House? “Ungag him.”

Saul hesitated.

“Christ, Saul, ungag him.”

The boy jerked. Leather slipped free. But Saul was tense, and I saw his right hand relax from a fist into a loose claw, nails sliding free and lengthening, turning razor-sharp. If the Sorrow made a move, my Were would open his throat.

“What are you out here for, Neophym? Who’s holding your leash?”

He had apparently decided to talk. “Sister,” he choked, gurgling. “My… sister… please…”

I bit my lip, weighing it. On the one hand, the Sorrows were trained to lie to outsiders.

And on the other, no Sorrow would ever use the word sister. The only word permitted for female within the House was mistress. Or occasionally, bitch.

Just like the only word for man was slave.

I considered this, staring into the Sorrow’s eyes. “What’s a Sorrow doing in my town, huh? You’ve been warned.”

“Fleeing… chutsharak.” His breath rattled in his throat.

Chutsharak? I’ve never heard of that. “The what?”

It was too late. He crunched down hard with his teeth, bone cracking in his jaw; I whipped my head back and Saul did the same, scrambling away from the body in a flurry of Were-fast motion. I found myself between the body and the priests, watching as bones creaked, the neurotoxin forcing muscles to contract until only the crown of the head and the back of the heels touched the floor. A fine mist of blood burst out of the capillaries of his right eye.

Poison tooth. He’d committed suicide, cracking the false tooth embedded in his jaw.

Just as his heels slammed back, smashing into the back of his head, his sphincters released. Then the body slumped over on its side.

“Dammit.” I rubbed at the cuff over my right wrist, reflectively. “Damn it.”

“What’s a chutsharak?” Saul’s voice was hushed. Behind us, Father Rourke took in a deep endless breath.

I shook my head, the charms in my hair shifting and tinkling uneasily. “I don’t know.” My throat was full. “Gods above. Why are they sending children? I hate the Sorrows.”

“It’s probably mutual.” Saul approached the body carefully, then began to mutter under his breath, the Were’s prayer in the face of needless death. I left it alone. The poison was virulent, but it lost its potency on contact with a roomful of oxygen. He was in no danger.

“Jillian?” Father Guillermo sounded pale. He was pale, when I checked him. Two bright spots of color stood out on his cheeks. “What do we do next?”

“Any other transfers in the last year? Priest, worker, student, anyone?”

“N-no.” He shook his head. “J-just K-Kit. Him.” His eyes flickered past me to the body on the floor. The stink was incredible.

Father Rourke kept crossing himself. He was praying too. His rubbery lips moved slightly, wet with saliva. Probably an Our Father.

Sometimes I wished I was still wholly Catholic. The guilt sucks, but the comfort of rote prayer is nothing to sneeze at. There’s nothing like prepackaged answers to make a human psyche feel nice and secure. “I’ll need to go over the transfer records. Why would a Sorrow want to infiltrate a seminary? Are you holding anything?”

His face drained of color like wine spilling out of a cup.

“Gui? You’re not holding anything I should know about, are you?” I watched him, he said nothing. “Guillermo?” My tone sharpened.

He flinched, almost guiltily. “It is… Jillian, I…”

“Oh, for God’s sake. I can’t protect you if you don’t tell me what I need to know!”

“Sister Jillian—”

“What are you holding?”

“Jillian—”

I snapped. I grabbed the priest by the front of his cassock, lifted him up, and shook him before his shoulders hit the wall. “Guillermo.” My mouth was dry, fine tremors of rage sliding through my hands. The scar on my wrist turned to molten lead. Behind me there was a whisper of cloth, and Rourke let out a blasphemy I never thought to hear from a priest.

“Take one more step and I hit you,” Saul said, quietly, but with an edge.

“I could have died.” I said each word clearly, enunciating each consonant. “Saul could have died. If I’d known you were holding something I could have questioned him far more effectively. You cannot keep information from me and expect me to protect you!”

“He’s a Jesuit. He can’t tell you anything.” Rourke spat the words as if they’d personally offended him. “He took a vow.”

I dropped Guillermo. Fuck. I’m about to beat up a priest. Man, this is getting ridiculous. “If you don’t start talking in fifteen seconds, Gui, I’m going to start searching. I’m going to tear this place apart from altar to graveyard until I find whatever you’re holding. You might as well tell me now. What is it? What are the Sorrows looking for?”

“It’s nothing of any use to them.” Gui rubbed at his throat. He was still pale, and the smell swirling in the air was beginning to be thick and choking. I was used to smelling death, but he wasn’t. “Merely an artifact—”

“What. Are. You. Holding?” The scar pulsed in time to each word, and I was close to doing something unforgivable, like hauling off and slugging a priest. Dammit. This disturbed me more than I wanted to admit.

“The Spear of—” Rourke almost yelled.

“No!” Gui all but screamed.

“—Saint Anthony!” Rourke bellowed, his face turning crimson. Gui sagged.

I turned on my heel, eyed Rourke. Come on, I used to be Catholic. Don’t pull this shit on me. “Saint Anthony didn’t have a spear. He gave his staff to Saint Macarius.”

“It is the spear he blessed with his blood when the citizens of a small town were overwhelmed with the hordes of Hell. He didn’t use it; Marcus Silvacus used it.” Father Rourke’s flabby cheeks quivered, and he was pale too. I couldn’t tell if I was smelling the stink of a lie on him, or the reek of fear.

I am going to have to check that out. As far as I knew, Marcus Silvacus never met Saint Anthony, and Saint Anthony didn’t have a fucking spear. I could feel my teeth grind together. I tipped my head back, my jaw working.

“I’m sorry, Guillermo. But you took a vow.” For once, Rourke’s tone wasn’t blustering.

“An artifact here, and it somehow slipped your mind to tell me? This isn’t looking good, Gui. Years and years I’ve trusted you, and I’ve done the Church’s dirty work peeling demons out of people before I was even fully trained. This is how you repay me?”

“The Sorrow said he was fleeing,” Saul’s voice cut across mine. “It might be unrelated.”

I wasn’t mollified, but he did have a point. “Still, that’s something I needed to know.”

“Agreed.” His hand curled around my shoulder. “It stinks of death in here. And we have work to do.”

Damn the man. He was right again.

I shook out my right hand, my fingers popping as tendons loosened. “All right.” I sounded strange even to myself. “Fine. But I won’t forget this, Guillermo.” I will not ever forget this.

“I would have told you everything, Jillian. When I was released from my vow.” Gui slumped against the wall, rubbing his throat, though I hadn’t held him by anything than his cassock. “I swear it, I would have. I didn’t think the two were connected, and I can’t speak of it.”

I waved it away. The charms tinkled in my hair, uneasily. “Get that cleaned up. And give him a decent burial; he was only a kid.”

“Not in consecra—” Rourke stopped when my eyes rested on him. I felt my face harden. My blue eye began to burn, and I knew it was glowing, a single pinprick of red in the center of my pupil.