Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) (4 page)

“… secured in a straitjacket and pending shipment to a cushy psychiatric facility?”

She crossed her arms and grimaced, wondering suddenly if the hex she’d learned to give demons jock itch would work on humans. “Look,
you
walk through the steel wall of a meat locker and try to explain it to the police in a way that doesn’t get you 5150’ed, and then you can talk. But, I mean, a
priest
?
Isn’t the Catholic Church, you know, kind of not kosher with the whole magical powers and battling goblins thing?”

“Technically, the Catholic Church isn’t kosher with anything,” he returned. “Kosher’s a Jewish thing, not that I think the people of the book are anymore approving of mortal combat with the spawn of Hell. I was born into it. Magic is a birthright, you know. It shows up in my family every couple of generations. Just like being a priest — like my father before me, and his father before him.”

He gave her a sly little wink as he sipped up the last of his iced tea.

“Hardy-har, har,” Riona snapped back.

“What about you? You didn’t know this was in your gene pool?”

It was the first time Marc had ever asked her anything so personal. The feeling clutched at her, like a new sweater in the store that just didn’t fit right.

“Must have been from my father’s side,” she returned with a shrug, studying her half-empty mug o’ Miller. “Mom never said anything much about him. He’s sort of a big question mark.”

“I see.”

The silence fell between them. She was glad for it, glad that he didn’t ask any more details about the whys and why-nots. But she wasn’t quite ready to let a more-easy-going Marc slip away so soon. “You’re joking about your father being a priest, right? I mean, aren’t priests supposed to be celibate?”

He leaned in and spoke across the table in a conspiratorial tone that made heat boil beneath the surface of her skin. “Interested, Keystone?”

Quickly, she moved to distance her demeanor. “I don’t do virgins, Father. Okay, back to you. So, it’s hereditary, but when did you know? How did you find out you could do all this?”

With a sigh, he leaned back in the booth and crossed his arms over his chest. “The first parish I was ever assigned to was in this tiny backwoods town in Alabama. Let me tell you, on a scale of one to fucked up, backwoods
Bammer
ranks at about an episode-of-Jerry-Springer-during-sweeps. My congregation was only about fifty people, most of them not so bad beyond a few premarital shaggings and petty blasphemies. There was this one woman though, old and wrinkled. Had an attitude like a pig poked with a popsicle stick. I’ll never forget her name: Evangeline DuBoux. Is that not a classic Cajun belle? Anyways, come Ash Wednesday my second year there, Evie comes to the front of the church, and leans into me and says, ‘I know what you are, and I know what you need.’ She invited me over for dinner about a week later.”

“Ew, I asked how you became a Pure Soul, not how you had your innocence stolen in the throes of horny granny sex.” Riona’s lips curled in disgust. “You didn’t…
you know
…
jiggle your prunes for her, did you?”

Marc looked insulted by the very idea. “No, and gross. Anyways, she drags out all these weird voodoo trinkets and totems, and I’m like a Jehovah Witness at an atheist convention because I’m all green and young and think I can save her mortal soul and all that shit. So I start talking to her about the wonders of God and the glories of Heaven and how faith can lead her away from Lucifer’s snares, and she just goes about her business, mixing up something that smelled like a cat pissed after eating a crate of broccoli.”

“And you know this is an apt comparison… how?”

He had the gall to look ashamed of her ignorance. “Some things, even a priest won’t confess, Keystone. But I was just about to give up for the day, and Evie pours this
stuff
in a big dish and sets it on fire. Next thing you know, I’m looking at a three-foot-high wall of purple smoke in front of me, and I start to see people’s faces in the smoke. And I think I’m fucked, because all my education at the seminary has taught me that I’ve somehow fallen for one of Satan’s tricks. Turns out, Evie was an old wood sprite, could see the magic welling up in me. I’d had a few sparks of magic before, but I always hid it, suppressed it, was embarrassed. But Evie,,, She showed me a whole bunch of other stuff I couldn’t…. Well, I had no way of knowing then. You know, things that
would
c
ome to be, but hadn’t. People I’d meet. Like him.”

He pointed across the room to where Dee brushed a fallen strand of hair from the face of one seriously flushed waitress.

“When I saw Dee for the first time in real life, that sealed it for me. I felt it. Inside. Dee was already working for the Seven, brought me into the fray. Bastard’s been through a lot with me. He’s the best friend I got this side of Heaven and Hell.”

“Dee?” Riona questioned with an incredulous smirk. “Ah, yes. Our friend, Dionysus Zitka. The half-human/half-deity brought a priest into a wiccan assault force. Just curiously, his father is the head of the Greek pantheon. How does that square with the whole ‘thou shalt have no other gods before me’ dogma?”

“Didn’t say anything about after Him, though, did He?” Marc looked pleased as punch with his quip. “You have to read the fine print, Keystone. Especially in cases of politics and religion.”

“Why don’t you ever call me by my name?”

That fact had been driving her mad for weeks. Only on one occasion, on their initial meeting in the psychiatric ward, did Marc actually utter, “Riona,” and then only as a way of confirming he had the right psycho. Since, her fated role, Keystone, had been the only moniker he employed. Even after months, Marc remained an enigma to her. He wasn’t a complete jerk; she’d witnessed his compassion when priestly duties called. Once when Dee and she met him at a small parish church in South Boston, he demonstrated a gentle demeanor and comforting spirit with his parishioners. But with her? At the best of times, he was merely standoffish. In the worst of times, he was a certifiable prick, worthy of an honorary PhD in Assholery.

“You
are
t
he Keystone, Keystone. You wouldn’t fault me for calling a cop, ‘officer,’ would you?”

Fidgeting with her straw, she glared at him. “And shall I call you priest?”

“Or Father. Whatever zooms your broom.”

Studying his features, Riona realized something that had somehow eluded her before. Sitting back just as Blondie took enough of a breather from Dee to haphazardly toss the pizza on to the table, Riona crossed her arms over her chest and nodded her understanding.

“Oh, I think I get it.”

Marc’s right eyebrow rose to attention.

“You don’t like the fact that you’re a Pure Soul.” His fidget suggested she’d tapped into something. “Oh, sure, you accept your duties because that’s the good, pious nature you have, but you don’t jive with this. You think you’re being punished somehow, or maybe,
will
be punished later for it. So this is your way of keeping it impersonal.”

He leaned forward, shoving the pie to the side, his eyes burning her in effigy. “Is that what you think, Keystone?”

She answered, boasting her psychology minor in college, that it was
precisely
what she thought.

Marc reached inside his coat and withdrew a worn, brown leather wallet. Taking a meager collection of greenbacks from it, he let them fall to the table.

“You know what they say about making assumptions, don’t you?” He was out of his seat before the words were fully out of his mouth. “Just a bit of friendly advice from a priest: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Something in his look, his
glare,
gave her a fright. Riona hadn’t led an existence filled with debauchery and depravity, but there was one rather particular detail of her nature — other than being a witch — that she knew the more pious members of the church would frown upon.

As Marc turned away from their booth, Dee rushed over like someone had just handed her a grenade and he was the bomb squad.

“What’s up?”

Watching Marc’s little frankly-my-dear,-I-don’t-give-a-damn strut out of Paolo’s made her wonder the same thing.

Chapter 4

Nicotine. Damn it, he needed nicotine and stat.

Marcello Angeletti picked up his nasty addiction at the age of fourteen. Currently boasting twenty-nine years, half of his life had been partnered to the habit. Several attempts to kick the cancer sticks amounted to little; he always gave into temptation about the third day in and made up for lost time by sucking down half a pack in no time flat. His inability to toss out a self-destructive behavior was just one piece of evidence toward proving his worst flaw: when Marc tasted something he liked, he was too weak and obedient to his desires to give it up. Magic and religion were two tastes that suited his palate. The combination was a difficult one, like trying to serve two masters, each demanding total exclusivity and submission.

A rough-and-tumble street punk from Back Bay, he wasn’t the only one surprised when he heeded the call of the cloth. His free-loving, nonconformist mother had proclaimed him the black sheep of the family ever since. Coming from an upbringing where anything goes and self-destructive behavior was written off as self-determination, religion served as his form of teenage rebellion.

It wasn’t like Marc had gone looking for Jesus. The first time he attended a mass at St. Brigit’s at the age of sixteen, he’d been scouting for a hide-out to ditch some loser looking to pound him flat. He hadn’t expected to be drawn into the sermon, or to be filled with a sense of purpose the way he was that night. The priest at the pulpit, Father Hermosa, preached of redemption and the repudiation of evil. Marc was a punk kid, but he wasn’t a criminal. Oh, but even he recognized he was stepping on the edge of an abyss heading straight for Hell if he kept to the streets in the same way. When Cecilia Angeletti discovered her son’s affection for the faith and voiced her disappointment with his “willingness to be brainwashed by the corrupt Catholic ninnies,” it only increased the appeal. One thing Marc knew from early on: if his mother disapproved, it was usually the right decision to make.

Luckily, that same lesson had also led to his doing exceptionally well in school, despite his careless street-strutting outside of the bell schedule. Cecilia just didn’t get her son’s need to conform to the social norms and excel in the defunct system of public indoctrination. It wasn’t as though Marc was the valedictorian, or even an honor student. Still, he pulled a good enough GPA to get into UMass.

College came across as an institution purposefully designed to woo a well-intentioned divinity student away from priestly ways. Behind every corner stood any number of temptations: booze, sex, drugs, parties.

The Anime Club.

But if there was one thing Marcello Angeletti was not, it was a quitter. Obstacles only made him more obstinate; he didn’t try to find a way around things, he freaking dropped a nuclear bomb on anything in his path. So, in the time span of one semester, Marc went from happenstance seminary groupie to the reincarnation of Reverend Parris, and the UMass campus was his Salem Village. Picking up a few acolytes of like persuasion, his little campus crew quickly developed a reputation as religious fanatics, and were dubbed “The Zealies.” He took out his fervor — and lack of normal social functions — in study, finishing his BD in three years, instead of four. Shortly before graduation, he and his posse picked up on the rumor of a wiccan group meeting just off campus. The Zealies considered the opportunity to crash it the perfect send off for Marc before he entered the seminary.

The rundown Victorian-manse-turned-tiny-rentals didn’t look from the outside like a coven’s keep. Still, Marc knew that plain looks could conceal evil realities. Just look at his mother, for crying out loud. When he entered the top-floor apartment from the open door, crucifix in hand and damnation on his tongue, the last thing he expected was to have a blast of energy thrown at him. The last thing the witch doing the throwing expected was for Marc suddenly to conjure up his own latent magic abilities and rebound back at her.

In the weeks that followed, ripples of his magical talents manifested further, spreading like a rash over his whole aura and body. At first, he thought himself cursed, but admitted to himself that he rather liked the ability to reheat cold coffee just by staring at it. The Zealies declared him possessed, a theory he couldn’t entirely discredit. Unease and unfounded guilt inspired another round of hyperactive study, letting him take on his work at the seminary in abbreviated time. The attention his herculean efforts garnered fed his ego. When he became a priest at the relatively young age of twenty-four, he hit the ground running in Alabama, trying his best to subdue the side of his nature that told him he could do more, be more, and acquire
power
.

T
he church came first. He made his vows, and he was going to stick to them come Hell or — well, Hell. Magic? If one believed that all things came from God, then surely that could be attributed to the divine as well, couldn’t it? And anything given by God couldn’t be bad.

Now, staring down the barrel of thirty, firm in purpose, if not in product, there was a shift again in his world. Marc sucked in the taste of his Marlboro as his thoughts turned to Riona Dade.

God also gave hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues, and humans the ability to create disco. Clearly, the theory that all His gifts were good was one cup size short of a Kardashian.

Riona Dade — she was just too…
ungh.
Marc had never thought about what his perfect woman would be like; being a man of the cloth didn’t give him much of a reason to speculate. Yet, if he
had
been pressed to outline such a creature roughly, Riona would fill out that sketch pretty well. She had just the right balance of street smarts, sophistication, and I-don’t-give-a-damn-what-the-hell-you-think for his taste. Not to mention she was freaking hot. As a priest, he knew true beauty lay within, but he was willing to bet becoming intimate with Riona’s
inner
beauty would be one hell of a joy ride. 

Treating her like trash wasn’t exactly copacetic for team spirit, but a Pure Souls office romance could have serious consequences. It had happened before, and the results weren’t pretty. Not to mention that whole cardinal sin thing on his end, which would be expected if he were to lay one of the laymen.

After fishing his keys from his pocket, Marc unlocked the deadbolt to his studio apartment. Priests living solo in such an urban area definitely weren’t the norm, but the rectory wasn’t for him. Communal living was way overrated. Living alone gave him a space to meditate, pray, and hang out his tighty-whities to drip dry without embarrassment. Plus, no one ever gave him crooked looks about books on his shelves with titles like
A Dictionary of Angels: Including the Fallen Angels
and
Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner
.