Darren! His name was Darren Bender, and he was—
Without waiting for her to reply, Darren put his tray on the table and dropped onto the chair across from her. “How come you didn’t sit with us? Melody saved you a seat.”
Sofia gazed uncertainly across the table. “Was I supposed to?”
Darren’s head cocked slightly as he gazed quizzically at her. “You always do.”
Sofia looked down at her salad and began to pick at it. If she always sat with Melody, why hadn’t she done it today?
“Are you okay?” Darren asked.
No, she wasn’t okay. She wasn’t okay at all. It was as if there were some kind of weird fog in her head that was hiding things from her.
“Sofia?”
She looked up at Darren, trying to figure out how to tell him what was happening, but no words came, and she felt tears of frustration begin to fill her eyes.
Darren leaned across the table, his voice dropping. “What did Father Sebastian do to you? All I got were four Hail Marys and four Our Fathers, and that was it. The whole thing took maybe five minutes.”
Sofia gazed blankly at him. What was he talking about? And then, very slowly, it started to come back to her. Darren wasn’t just someone she knew — he was her boyfriend.
But now, as she gazed across the table at him, she had a sudden urge to do something to him.
To hurt him.
He was looking at her again, his eyes fixed on her as if he knew what she was thinking. “What’s going on?” he asked. “What did Father Sebastian do to you last night?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, something sure happened to put you in the infirmary,” Darren said.
“I don’t know,” Sofia said, struggling against the threat of her unshed tears. “I can’t remember.”
“You want me to take you back?” Darren asked. “If something’s wrong—”
“No!” Sofia cut in. “I just need—” She frantically looked around the dining room as if searching for something — anything — that would help her, but there was nothing.
Then she saw the crucifix over the door, and a sharp pain stabbed through her abdomen. Her fingers automatically closed around the cross that hung from the string of rosary beads she always wore around her neck.
Impossibly, it seemed to writhe in her hand, squirming at her touch.
Her hand jerked away as if she had touched a hot iron, but her forefinger caught on the string of beads. Instantly broken, it tumbled onto the table.
Sofia stared at it in mute horror. What had she done? The beads had been given to her by her grandmother, who had had them all her life!
“What’s wrong?” Darren asked as he quickly began gathering the beads together before they could roll off onto the floor. “What’s going on with you?”
Sofia said nothing, but held out her hand for the beads.
Hesitating only a moment, Darren dropped them into her open palm.
She felt the rosary begin to move the instant it touched her skin and stared at it in horror as it began to writhe like a handful of snakes.
Red hot snakes.
She rose to her feet as her nostrils filled with the sickly odor of burning flesh, and a single word erupted from her throat. “Noooo!” she howled, hurling the beads and crucifix against the wall, where the decades of the rosary exploded and scattered across the floor.
Without so much as a glance toward Darren Bender or anyone else, Sofia Capelli fled.
CHAPTER 29
SIX MONTHS INTO his Papacy, His Holiness Innocent XIV was no more used to the splendor of his changed surroundings than he was to his changed name. When he had first come to the Vatican forty years ago and met John XXIII in these same rooms, it had never occurred to him that he himself might one day occupy them. Indeed, the thought hadn’t truly crossed his mind until the sixth vote of the last conclave, when he’d thought it must be a mistake when his name was read out as having received a single vote. On the seventh ballot, he’d received more than fifty votes, and had been elected on the tenth, an event that had stunned him even more than the world beyond the confines of the Sistine Chapel.
In his own mind he was still Pietro Vitali, from the Tuscan hills north of Rome.
And he still enjoyed eating a small and simple supper alone at his desk while he tried to complete the day’s work, even though that desk was now in the Papal apartment. The moment he put his fork down on the empty plate, both plate and fork were whisked away by an attendant who seemed to appear out of nowhere by the kind of magic of which the Church thoroughly disapproved. As the servant disappeared as silently as he’d appeared, the Pope sipped his tea and spent a quiet moment enjoying the exquisite art that decorated the walls.
As he was reflecting on the poverty of the priesthood, a soft rap at the door announced the arrival of his final appointment of the day.
“Cardinal Morisco to see you, Your Holiness,” the young Swiss priest, who served as his secretary, said as he opened the door.
With a sigh, the Pope rose from his desk chair. He didn’t especially want to see Morisco this evening; he was tired and had an enormous amount of reading still to do before retiring, but the Cardinal had been insistent and tomorrow’s schedule held no opportunities. He nodded his readiness to the secretary, and was already moving toward the door when Morisco appeared. The Cardinal kneeled to kiss the gold Fisherman’s ring on his hand, but the Pope waved him back to his feet as the secretary vanished as silently as had the servant before him. “No need for that this late in the day, Guillermo. What is so important that you gave up your supper at Gianni’s just to see the likes of me?” The Pope settled into a chair that had been especially built for his diminutive stature, and indicated that Morisco sit across from him.
“Seeing you is always a pleasure, Holiness,” Morisco began, but once again the Pope brushed the formality aside.
“Why don’t we just get to the point, so you can get to Gianni’s and I — since I can no longer go to Gianni’s with you — can get to my reading?”
“After you see what I’ve just seen,” Morisco replied, dropping back into the easy familiarity he and Pietro Vitali had enjoyed for the last twenty years, “you might just want to go to Gianni’s with me, or at least have a bottle of his best Sangrantino sent up here.” As the Pope raised a skeptical brow, Morisco handed him the fax of Father Laughlin’s report to Cardinal Rand in Boston.
The Pontiff scanned the document for no more than a few seconds. “Another exorcism?” he asked, groaning silently. When he had been established for a year or two, he would be able to brush off some of these things. But for now he’d do better to give up twenty minutes listening to Morisco than to spend those same twenty minutes arguing that he knew far too much about all the ancient rites to be impressed by yet another in what seemed to be a growing flood of reports on exorcisms that invariably proved to be nothing more than the fancies of some priest’s overactive imagination.
Morisco shook his head. “I think this is something different.” The Cardinal queued up the video clip and set the computer on the table next to the Pope’s chair, then returned to his own seat.
A moment later, an image appeared, and the Pontiff watched as the ritual unfolded, turning up the sound.
“I’m afraid it’s rather badly garb—” Morisco began, but the Pope held up a silencing hand, his eyes never
