Sacrificed in Shadow by S.M. Reine Page B

“Green, huh? Teaching him to be an exorcist, too?”
    His hand looped around the wooden cross at his neck. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ve met. You’re not one of my usual parishioners.”
    Elise removed the sunglasses and tucked one of the arms into the neck of her shirt. Father Night hadn’t changed one bit in eleven years. There were a few more lines on his face, and a little more weight to his belly, but he was still every inch the uptight priest she remembered. The fact that he didn’t recognize her probably meant that he hadn’t been the one circulating her image.
    “Eleven years ago,” she said, flipping her hair over one shoulder to bare the hilt of her falchion. “The haunting in the Cascades. You got pissed at me for performing exorcisms without getting permission from a cardinal first. I told you that I was a freelancer, and you said—what was it?” She drew the falchion and held it between them, not threateningly. Just to let him see the flat of the blade.
    “Even freelancers can burn in Hell,” Father Night finished for her. Recognition sparked in his eyes. “Elise.” He took a second look at her, and a third. His gaze was incredulous. “How?”
    “Long story. I need to talk to you.”
    “Father?” asked the young priest, poking his head through the door.
    Elise dropped the sword to her side. Father Night moved to conceal her with his body. “I’m sorry. This is important. Can you…?”
    “Sure,” Father Armstrong said. “I’ll do the mass.”
    The new priest ducked out again, and Father Night turned back to Elise.
    “My office,” he said. “Now.”

    Elise used to be a traveling exorcist. In many ways, Father Night had been her church-ordained counterpart. But while her nomadic ways had given her a habit of keeping no personal possessions, the priest had many keepsakes from his wandering youth. They decorated his office like an athlete might decorate his study with trophies: the horn of a chisav in a glass case, a basket gifted to him by the Washoe tribe on the bookshelf, and even the relic that had caused the haunting in the Cascades.
    She picked up the relic with a faint smile. It was a bundle of twigs wrapped with twine, which had petrified into something resembling bone. Hard to believe that it could have harbored such an angry spirit. It felt powerless now.
    “Don’t touch that,” Father Night said.
    “Why? Worried about the spirit coming back?”
    “No. I just don’t want you interfering with my personal effects.”
    “Do I need to remind you who exorcised this thing?” Elise asked, fingering a gouge in the sticks. In the heat of the exorcism ritual, she had almost chopped the bundle in half. Her ears had been ringing from the explosion for weeks.
    “Officially speaking, as far as the church is aware, I did the exorcism,” Father Night said. “And I went back to recover it, not you. Please.”
    Elise set it back on his shelf.
    Father Night’s windows were stained glass, too; they depicted stories from the Old Testament, like the great flood, Moses, and—much to Elise’s irritation—the Tree from Eden. The window behind his desk showed only a glossy red apple dangling from a leafy branch.
    “How did you end up here?” she asked, edging around a beam of colored sunlight to perch on the edge of his desk. She meant Northgate in general, not the church in specific, although the building was definitelyimpressive. His office had been built into the bottom of the tower. An open spiral staircase led to the bell, presumably, but she couldn’t see it from the floor.
    “I could ask the same of you,” he said.
    “I’m here to investigate the murders.”
    Father Night tensed, nostrils flaring. “The animal attacks?”
    “Some people believe it’s a serial killer.” She lifted a hand to prevent him from making further protests. “It’s probably a werewolf, not demonic. It’s not in your wheelhouse. I’ll be gone again as soon as the threat is