“I can’t move,” I said. “I can’t. Oh God, why didn’t it stop to put on some freaking shoes? I’ll never get up that hill.”

In the green of the dashboard light, Ex smiled wearily.

“It’s all right,” he said. “If I have to, I can carry you.”

I lay back on the car seat, letting the engine murmur to me, and thought about how nice it would be to have somebody to carry me safely home.

Chapter 11

“This is good,” Chapin said. For the first time since I’d met him, he seemed really happy. “Its fear is a good sign.”

“Plus which, we brought more donut,” I said, a little bitterly. “Chocolate, even.”

The night hadn’t been much kinder to Chapin than it had to us. His skin was still pale. The darkness under his eyes looked less like a bruise, but it was still there. The other four looked a little better, though Tamblen’s hair was standing up awkwardly in the back, like he’d just gotten up from his pillow. Outside, the snow had stopped and the clouds thinned to a colorless haze. The whole world from my little place up near the ski valley down to Taos proper and out to San Esteban was wedding-cake white, and where it wasn’t—bark, asphalt, the crows that huddled on the branches and wheeled across the sky—it was utterly black by contrast. All shades of gray were gone.

My feet still hurt. When we’d gotten back to the hill, I had felt a little better. Ex and I sat in the car at the bottom of the hill for a while, letting the heater run. I’d thought about asking him to go up and get me some shoes, but I was pretty sure that leaving me alone in a running car wasn’t going to be high on his to-do list. Rather than put him on the spot, I’d gotten out of the car and done my best sprint for warmth. In the little kitchen, I sat on the counter running warm water over my ankles and feet until the cold stopped hurting. Once I saw that I’d avoided frostbite, I started feeling a little better. Ex went upstairs and came back with a first aid kit. We’d dabbed the cuts and scrapes with antibacterial goop, and Ex used an Ace bandage to press the little silver medallion against my arm, the metal securely against my skin.

Twice in the night, the magical icon had woken me up, burning, but I’d managed to steal a couple of solid, dreamless hours before dawn. Sinking into the gray couch at the sanctuary now, I’d have been perfectly happy to tip over and sleep away the morning. Except, of course, that wasn’t going to happen.

“Did you learn anything about the demon?” Tomás asked in his lovely whiskey voice.

“Hints, maybe,” Ex said. “One thing that stood out was—“

Chapin made a sharp sound somewhere between a cough and a shout.

“Not before it!” he said. Then, to me: “Miss Jayné, you will excuse us. We are about to enter a very dangerous place in our battle. We must know all that we can, and we must allow the devil no entrance into our council.”

“None taken,” I said. “You guys figure out what you need to do, and I’ll wait here. I just want to get this over.”

“Very soon,” Chapin said, nodding solemnly. “Miguel, please sit with Miss Jayné.”

“Yes, Father,” Miguel said.

The others followed Chapin out, closing the doors behind them. I lay my head against the back of the couch and groaned. Miguel chuckled.

“It’s been a rough week?” he asked.

“Has,” I said. “And I haven’t even started my Christmas shopping.”

“There will be time.”

“You’re sure about that?” I said. “Because that last rite looked like it was aiming for days. And I dot think the thing inside me is weak.”

“Different demons take different times to mature. The thing in the girl—“

“Dolores,” I said. “Her name’s Dolores.”

“In Dolores,” he said with a gentle smile. “It was very old and very sure of itself. The devil within you is still young. Your soul is, for the most part, intact.”

I looked at him, sitting at the little table. His eyes were dark enough to pass for black, his face sharp at the edges but round in the cheeks.

“Meaning hers wasn’t?” I asked.

“Not entirely, no,” he said. “We saved her and the others the devil inflicted with his power, but exorcism doesn’t leave anyone entirely whole. She will be vulnerable for the rest of her life. There will be scars upon her that only God can heal.”

He must have read my expression, because he nodded as if I’d spoken.

“I forgot,” he said. “You haven’t accepted Christ.”

“That’s not exactly right,” I said.

“No?”

“I spent most of my life accepting Him. It just didn’t take. I probably clocked as many church hours as you when I was a kid, and I held on to my faith as long as I could. And then …”

I shrugged.

“Can I ask you what happened?” Miguel said, speaking each words softly, like a doctor probing at a wound.

“I stopped believing in hell,” I said. “I wanted to. But I couldn’t square up a God that loves us and cares for us and a place of eternal damnation without the hope of being redeemed.”

“There are many people who consider themselves Christians who agree with you,” Miguel said. “You weren’t brought up in the Catholic Church?”

“Evangelical,” I said. “Evangelical but pro-Hellfire. But when I started doubting Hell, that was just the first part. I started wondering about that, and then everything sort of came into question, you know? And the more I looked at it, the more it seemed like there were problems. I mean, did you know there’s no archaeological evidence for exodus of the Jews from Egypt? You’d think if a whole nation of slaves decamped after a bunch of serious God’s-wrath plagues, there’d be some record. There’s not.”

“And that’s important to you,” he said. His voice didn’t make it a question.

“Yeah, it is. It’s kind of the difference between truth and a pretty story. Doesn’t it matter to you? I mean seriously, you’ve given your life over to this. What if it turned out that the Bible was all third-century political metaphor and propaganda?”

“That would be disappointing,” he said. “But I have seen too much with my own eyes that confirms my faith. I have felt the presence of God, and I have seen His work in the world. The evidence of Providence is all through my , and I can’t doubt it any more than I could doubt the sunshine. Take you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. We lost Chewy years ago. He was the best of us, but his soul was tested and he suffered. It was terrible for him, and it was terrible for all of us. We couldn’t help him.”

“You mean with Isabel,” I said.

“You know, then?”

“A little,” I said. “She came to you guys for help. Ex fell for her. When it all went pear-shaped, he blamed himself. Felt like he’d let down God.”

Miguel’s gaze focused on the empty air, and he crossed his arms. Outside, the crows called to one another. The little refrigerator hummed to itself.

“It was a terrible thing,” he said. “She took her own life. He was with her when she did. After that, he couldn’t stay with us. Father Chapin only asked that he renew his vows and never again transgress against them. Did he tell you this?”

“No.”

“I was there when he was to take his vows again. He couldn’t. Father Chapin led him in it, but the words would not come from his lips. He wept silently, but he could not dedicate himself to the purpose again. Ever since, I wondered why God would have permitted it to happen. We are His loyal servants, and Chewy most of all. What reason could there be for him to suffer what he did? Chewy cast himself into the world. And then he returned. With you.”

I shifted, the couch springs creaking under me.

“So you think this was part of a plan?” I said. “That this other girl died so that Ex would drive himself out of the group here, go work with my uncle, and be around to find me?”

“Chewy brought you here. You look so much like her, she could have been your sister. You are in need of our help, and you would not have found us if things had not happened exactly as they did,” Miguel said, spreading his hands as if offering something invisible to me. “What is that if not providence? I don’t know what God meant by bringing you here. I may never know. But I cannot doubt that He intended it.”

“Really? Because I can doubt the hell out of it,” I said. “If it hadn’t happened that way, something else would have, and then that would be God’s will. With that kind of logic, any coincidence is evidence of God.”

Miguel’s smile was bright as sunlight on snow.

“Yes,” he said, and without intending to, I laughed.

“We’re just not going to agree about this, are we?” I said.

“I have some hope,” Miguel said. “I believe that Hell is the absence of God. God doesn’t cast us into the fire. We cast ourselves there. And we hold ourselves there. It is not His fault that we burn, but the consequence of our own choices. I think you have turned away from God, and you live in the living shadow of Hell. And so I am glad you came, and that you will let us help you. And that you’ve brought Chewy to us, even if it is only for a little while. I pray that casting Satan out of your flesh will change your mind about the merciful nature of God.”

“I don’t think it will,” I said. And then, “But thank you for helping me anyway.”

“Of course,” he said. “What virtue is there in helping only the people you agree with? Are there any donuts left?”

When, a few minutes later, the doors opened and Father Chapin led his cadre back in, Miguel and I had moved on to talking about the relative merits of the Swedish and American versions of Let the Right One In and breaking the last donut between us. The fatigue had fallen from the old man’s shoulders, and even Ex looked actively hopeful. I stood up.