The Blessed

Sebastian tuned in to the angry sounds of the storm outside as he waited for Lucy to come out of the confessional, certain she would be filled with questions. Questions he wasn’t yet able to answer. Answers she wasn’t ready to hear.

13 A rumbling outside the church door, definitely not from the gale-force winds as far as he could tell, startled him. Three loud thuds announced a visitor—unwelcome or not, he didn’t know, but Sebastian was ready either way.

A soaking-wet silhouette slipped through the doorway, its image flickering in the bolts of lightning that were striking ever more frequently.

“Damn!”

He recognized the voice from the emergency room.

Cecilia.

Still, he didn’t say a word.

She pulled the door shut behind her, shaking the rain off. The darkness before her was thick and intimidating, but no more so than the wuthering wind outside. She peeled off her black ostrich feather coat, which was drenched and weighed a ton, and stripped down to a wife-beater she was wearing underneath. Her black leather panel leggings clung close to her body. She looked the part of a rock-and-roll renegade—dark kohl running eyeliner, glittery midnight blue shadow, and nude glossed lips.

“Anybody home?”

She wasn’t hoping just anyone was.

She was hoping he was.

A spark in the distance surprised her. She wasn’t alone. She thought about removing her Fender from its case for protection. On stage it was an affectation but now it might be a matter of life and death. She fumbled for the latches on the case, eyes on her shadowy target.

Sebastian raised a woodstick he’d lit from the first votive head high, silently revealing himself to her. She could barely make him out in the dim light from that distance, but she felt his presence, just as she had in the hospital room, and relaxed just a little. Her disappointment from earlier in the night was totally gone. Replaced by disbelief of the best possible kind. It’s magic, she thought. Answered prayers.

As she approached him, she could see that he was bare from the waist up and everything she’d imagined.

He lit a second votive off the flame from the first.

“This is a surprise,” she said.

“Is it?”

“Well, I was hoping, I thought, I might see you.”

“You hoped.”

“Sort of.”

Sebastian chuckled. “How did you find me?”

“I remembered the smell of frankincense from some gigs I played here. I’ll never forget ’em. Best gigs I ever did. You smell exactly like this place. That and the charm on the bracelet you gave me. The exact sword that’s etched above the door. A sign, I guess.”

“A good one or a bad one?”

“We’ll see.”

“I’m glad you’re here.” He couldn’t help but notice that she looked like a supermodel who had just been hosed down for a high-fashion shoot. Whether in a sickbed or soaked to the bone, he thought, Cecilia had undeniable natural beauty and edge. “How are you feeling?”

“Wet. Unemployed. Homeless . . . you know, better. So, this is what you were in a massive rush to get back to the other night?” she asked.

“No, I haven’t been here long,” he said. “But it’s safe. Mostly. I come here sometimes.” Sebastian walked toward her, with only his jeans on. His long, muscled arms accentuated by the candlelight, keeping his eyes fixed on hers all the while.

“Slow down, sailor,” Cecilia said worriedly, but only half-joking.

He smiled, balled up an altar cloth, and tossed it to her.

“Dry off,” he said.

“Tease,” she jibed, turning away and wiping the droplets of cloudburst from her face, neck, and arms.

Cecilia stood there for a moment, gathered herself, and pulled a Clove cigarette out of her wet bag and tried to light it with her soaking-wet matches. Sebastian took it away from her, put it in his mouth, leaned over the candle, and lit it for her. He slowly took a drag, inhaled it, closed his eyes, took the cigarette from his lips, and held it to her lips, gently rubbing it from side to side until she relaxed and let it in. He tilted his head upward and exhaled. He wore the satisfied look, she observed, of a man who’d been trapped on a desert island or a maximum-security inmate with his hour outside.

“Amazing how quiet it is in here,” Cecilia said, straining to see as much of the space as she could. “You can barely hear that insanity outside.”

“Yeah, it’s peaceful,” Sebastian agreed, looking completely at ease to her.

“So now we know why I’m here, but what about you?”

She stepped in closer to him, removed the cigarette from her mouth, and brought it to his lips, waiting for his answer.

Lucy was taken aback at the sound of chatter outside the confessional booth and cracked the door. She peeked out and saw Sebastian with a stranger and watched for a while. She was curious at first, then jealous, and suddenly furious.

Lucy charged out of the confessional loudly, holding Sebastian’s sweater, drawing as much attention to herself as she could. Cecilia barely knew this guy, but her face flushed as if she’d been caught cheating, or had caught him.

“Oh, so this is what you’re doing here,” Cecilia said.

“What’s going on here?” Lucy huffed as she sidled in closer to them.

“It’s not how it looks,” Sebastian tried to explain to both of them before CeCe cut him off.

“Sloppy seconds taste terrible, don’t they?” Lucy snarked.

“Only on a cheap date,” Cecilia replied.

“Honey, there’s nothing cheap about me.”

Sebastian didn’t say a word.

“So, not only do you cruise hospitals, but you cruise churches, too?” Cecilia said, stomping out her cigarette and gathering her things to leave. “Classy.”

Sebastian moved toward her, but Cecilia backed away. He couldn’t get a word in edgewise as Cecilia rambled on angrily, dropping her matches and then her cigarettes in her haste.

“The confessional?” Cecilia sniped. “Definitely rock-star points for creativity, though—baring your body and soul. Screams ‘hot and steamy’ to me.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Lucy snapped.

“I didn’t know you went trends gender,” CeCe said with a laugh. “And just out of the closet, too. I bet you don’t even know her name. Oh, but then maybe you got it off the clipboard on the edge of her hospital bed. Like mine.”

“Hospital bed?” Lucy asked. “Wait, what’s going on here?”

Coming closer, Lucy got a better look and was surprised. This girl didn’t look like the jealous type to her. She was cool and gorgeous and, judging from her outfit, tough.

“You know each other?” Lucy asked, her heels clicking louder against the marble floor the closer she got.

“From Perpetual Help,” CeCe explained. “I was there last weekend. No big deal.”

“So was I,” Lucy chimed in.

Lucy rolled up her cardigan sleeves and Cecilia spied her chaplet.

Cecilia shot Sebastian an angry, disgusted look.

“You got one too?”

“Found it on my nightstand in the ER,” Lucy admitted.

“I really thought I’d seen it all,” CeCe huffed. “This guy was fishing. In the ER, no less! Spread a few lovely little parting gifts to see who he could reel in. I mean, I was only kidding when I asked if you had a thing for sick girls.”

The girls looked at each other, feeling humiliated, shaking their heads in unison, as if to acknowledge their astoundingly bad judgment when it came to guys. They made a good team, he thought, even if they had suddenly turned on him.

“I didn’t drag you here,” Sebastian said, pushing back. “Either of you.”

“No, you just planted a few seeds,” Lucy said, feeling deceived as well.

“Don’t turn this around,” Cecilia interjected.

“You came of your own free will, didn’t you?” Sebastian said. “And you can leave of your own free will.”

“Good idea. There are other Dumpsters to crash in. With smaller rats.”

Cecilia was hurt. Lucy was crushed.

“I thought this was special!” Lucy shouted while removing the chaplet, and then threw it back at him.

Cecilia followed, taking off her chaplet and tossing it casually to Sebastian. “This was a big mistake. Let’s go.”

Lucy paused, giving him one last chance to explain, but he didn’t. She joined Cecilia, reluctantly.

“They are special,” he called after them in the darkness. “You are special. It wasn’t a mistake.”

They stopped and turned.

“They brought you here. Both of you. Here,” he said. “To me.”

“What are they, freakin’ homing devices?” CeCe remarked.

“The charms, they’re called milagros. That means miracles,” he said, handing them back to their respective owners. “They are used to ground you. Heal you. Lead you home.”

“Well, fail!” Cecilia said, throwing up her arms. “I’m not home. I don’t have a home!”

“Why don’t you just listen for a second,” Lucy snapped at Cecilia.

“I ain’t into threesomes,” Cecilia said, pissed at Lucy’s indecisiveness. “Have fun.”

Lucy grabbed her arm. “It’s going to get really bad out there. Let it pass.”

Cecilia felt a bit of reverse psychology at play in Lucy’s tone. Like she didn’t really mean it. Lucy wanted her out of there. She wanted Sebastian to herself.

“Pass? You mean like a kidney stone? No, thanks.” Cecilia huffed, breaking Lucy’s grip and eyeing Sebastian. “I didn’t come here to play Bachelor. Besides, it couldn’t be any worse out there than it is in here.”

Cecilia grabbed her guitar and her heavy coat and made her way through the darkness to the door. She opened it and was almost immediately blown backward by an angry gust that nearly blasted the enormous wooden door from its hinges. She could barely see, but what she could make out was horrific. The sheet metal and scaffolding rattled and groaned in the wind and large branches snapped from tree trunks, littering the street, crushing parked cars beneath them, blocking the sidewalk below the stone staircase and down the brownstoned block farther than she could see. The downpour had already overwhelmed the sewers, flooding over curbs and into cellars. Plastic supermarket bags, wrappers, and rubbers clogged sewer drains as the smelly contents of overturned trash cans floated by under the straining street lamps. To CeCe, the entire area had the noxious odor of a backed-up dive-bar bathroom.

She held tightly on to the side of the large arched doorway and braced herself; the brutal wind pushed against her cheeks, turning her face into a virtual skull mask and her arms and legs into reddened ripples of wet, quivering flesh. The decision about whether to stay or go was moot.

“Shut the door!” Lucy shouted. “You’re letting it in.”

The door that had proven so difficult to open when they first arrived was now proving equally challenging to close. Lucy rushed to the entrance and got her back into it as well, the sudden pressure drop of the thickening storm spiking the pain in her head.



Cecilia and Lucy pushed against the gusts, but not before a high-pitched whimper found its way through the ungodly din and reached their ears.

“There’s something out there,” Cecilia said.

It was coming from right near the doorstep, as far as CeCe could tell. A stray cat trying to survive the storm on the steps? she wondered. She braved the impossible wind and poked her head outside and around the door and cried out in shock.

“Son of a bitch!” CeCe yelled.

“What?” Lucy screamed. “What is it?”

Cecilia was dumbfounded.

It was a girl, barefoot, weeping, face buried in her hands, her long auburn hair barely contained inside the lambswool-lined cowl of her poncho. Both were drenched. She was curled up in a ball, shivering from cold and from fear. Crashed and washed-up, like debris from a shipwreck, in the doorway.

Cecilia stepped out and was instantly blown back against the church door. She knelt and reached for the girl, who tightened her pose, making her difficult to move. She was nearly catatonic but still resisting, immovable, as if she were nailed to the spot.

“C’mon,” Cecilia begged. “You will catch your death out here.”

Lucy stood unsteadily in the vestibule, frustrated, watching the one-sided negotiation.

“Hurry up!” she screamed. “If she wants to be stubborn, let her. I’m closing the door.”

Cecilia turned back, looking to Lucy for help, nodding her over.

“Weren’t you just leaving?” Lucy reminded her.

“I can’t do this alone! . . . ” Cecilia yelled, realizing she didn’t have a name to go along with the urgent request.

“Lucy. My name is Lucy.”

“Cecilia,” she replied warily. “Please, Lucy. Help me.”

Lucy reluctantly complied, edging over with her back to the door as the two girls fought the elements and the girl, standing her up, and dragging her into the partially open doorway, where they huddled.

“You’d better be appreciating this,” Lucy raged at the stranger, holding both girls tightly. “This outfit cost more than your house.”

As Cecilia and Lucy tugged at the girl, her sleeves rode up, revealing bandaged wrists and a bracelet. A bracelet almost identical to theirs. The two of them stared at each other in disbelief.

“It’s okay,” Lucy said to the girl, showing her own chaplet.

The sight of it seemed to calm the girl.

“I saw it,” she said quietly, “outside.”

“I know,” Lucy replied.

An unexpected flash of lightning, an earsplitting crack of thunder, a torrential downpour and explosion of darkness suddenly assaulted them.

“Blackout!” Cecilia shouted.

“I can’t see a thing!” Lucy screamed.

The three girls teetered at the edge of the staircase, completely disoriented by the fast-changing conditions, and nearly carried one another over the railing. Cecilia was losing her grip and Lucy her balance. A second before they tumbled, Sebastian reached out for them with both hands, steadying them, and dragged them inside. He looked up at the greenish black sky showing through the rent overhang and kicked the door closed.

Sebastian ran to them and immediately attended to the stranger, walking her gently to the votive stand where the flames of the other two red glass candles were still flickering.

“You’re okay,” he said, taking her hand in his.

He lit the third votive.

“Thank you,” she whispered to him.

“What’s your name?” Cecilia asked.

Sebastian pulled the girl’s cowl back and brushed the long, wet hair from her pale, luminous face. Her skin almost gave the appearance of being lit from within.

“Agnes.”

Lucy helped her take off her shearling poncho and replaced it with her now-dry trench coat. She was raw and battered by the night, wincing at even the most delicate touch.

“Are we going to die?” she asked through tears.

“You are safe here,” he promised her, smiling.

Overcome with relief and regret,

Agnes wept.





“Tell us what’s going on,” Cecilia said as the candles blazed, all three of them and Sebastian, cold and wet, huddled around the votive stand as they might a campfire, listening to the horror outside the church walls. Strangers, but oddly not.

“That’s a big question.” Sebastian studied them silently as the storm raged all around them, taking each of them in, their looks, their style, personalities, their quirks, strengths, and vulnerabilities. Cecilia nervously drumming on her thigh, Lucy obsessively examining each cuticle on her fingers, and Agnes huddled with her knees up, her shiver beginning to subside.

“We have time. Three days, in fact, according to the weather dudes,” Lucy said. “If we don’t kill each other first.”

Agnes and Cecilia looked over at Lucy, signaling that could be a distinct possibility. Without a change of clothes and any real food except for the junk food crap that Sebastian had in his backpack, all bets were off.

“Three days,” Sebastian echoed. “That will be enough time.”

“Enough time for what?” Cecilia prodded.

“For you to understand.”

Cecilia was spooked. “Now I’m not sure I really want to know.”

“I do,” Agnes said quietly.

“I’m really appreciative of the gift, but where did you get these bracelets?” Lucy asked. “I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“They were given to me,” Sebastian said.

Lucy was skeptical that the boy in front of her came from such a moneyed line. He’d have to be from royalty, aristocracy of some kind, to receive such an inheritance. “Passed down to you? These are, like, ancient, museum quality.”

“Why give them away?” CeCe pressed.

“Because they aren’t mine.”

“Okay, they were given to you, but they aren’t yours. I don’t get it. Is this some kind of Robin Hood thing?” Lucy asked.

“That’s all I can tell you right now.”

Sebastian sat back and leaned his head against the wall behind him. Their view of him was still distorted by the light and shadow from the flickering candles and lightning flashes, but they could see he had become suddenly pensive, the expression on his face pained. All of them were curious, but none of them dared pry any further. They were safe. For the moment.

Agnes looked up at the burst of light flashing through the apertures where stained glass was once fitted. The bolts were more frequent and violent now, and the thunder was getting louder. “Did you know that you can tell how close a storm is by counting the amount of time between a lightning flash and thunderclap?”

“I don’t need to count,” Cecilia answered.

“It’s close,” Sebastian said.

“So beautiful,” Agnes said, looking upward. “A living lava lamp.”

“Cosmic. Literally,” Cecilia noted, in appreciation. “You couldn’t buy a light show like that with all the money in the world.”

Lucy disagreed. “Probably could, if you ask me.”

“Nobody asked, buzzkill,” Cecilia huffed.

Lucy wondered aloud as arcs of electricity crackled overhead and spread outward against the starless sky, lighting it up like a mad-scientist laboratory. Streaks of cool white, red-orange, and phosphorescent blue blinking as they enervated the canopy of clouds.

“Looks like a spiderweb to me,” she said. “A trap.”

“That’s comforting,” Cecilia said.

“Or a CAT scan,” Agnes continued. “Veins and arteries of the sky. A CAT scan of heaven.”

“So romantic.” CeCe laughed.

“Thanks,” Agnes replied, without the least bit of irony.

Lucy suddenly felt the downy hair she resented having to bleach begin to stand on end. She looked up and around, as if for a ghost, and then to the others for verification that something had changed inside the room. She watched them open and close their jaws in a futile effort to fight the sudden pressure drop in their ears, and she did likewise. Lucy reached for her brow and Agnes for her bandaged wrists, the swelling becoming infinitely more painful. The air was electric and they tingled like antennae.

Wave upon wave of thunderclouds broke directly over the church, heaving grapefruit-size hail down without and within. The temperature in the building dropped almost instantly and the girls curled into tight balls, under assault from the frozen sleet, which was falling down around them.

A fierce rattle hummed through the building. They could feel the vibrations creep up their feet and into their legs. Another thundercrack and they shuddered, instinctively reaching for their ears. The candle flames waxed brightly, fed by the influx of oxygen, then waned almost to nothing, nearly extinguished in a fusillade of wind. One more lightning strike, stronger, brighter, and closer than before, was followed by the distant sound of shattering glass that almost seemed to come from behind the altar. And just as quickly as it came, the hail expended itself, replaced by a hard and cold rain.

“Wait here,” Sebastian ordered, leaping to his feet. “I’m going to check that out.”

“I’ll come with you,” Cecilia said.

“No,” Sebastian said firmly, taking them aback.

“I want to help you.”

“I’ll be back.”

“Be careful,” Agnes called after him.

Sebastian disappeared into the darkness. They could hear him walking and then lost him in the sounds of the stormy night. A door creaked at the front of the church and the familiar sound of a latch catching and then silence. He was gone.

“Help him?” Lucy scoffed, mocking Cecilia. “You were just looking to be alone with him.”

Cecilia rolled her eyes and changed the subject. There was more joke than spite in the comment and there was a noticeable thaw in the chilly distance between them.

With Sebastian gone, the girls felt more compelled to speak their minds, the dark, the cold, the uncertainty scratching at their stubbornness, wearing on them like a hair shirt.

“Do you think he stole these?” CeCe asked, fondling her bracelet.

“I don’t really care,” Lucy said. “I love it.”

“Okay, but why us?” CeCe asked. “We don’t know one another or him.”

They each gave it some quiet consideration until Agnes piped up. “But what about what he said? About them leading us here? I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve never been to this church before in my life. And suddenly, it seemed like the exact right place to go.”

“Maybe he’s a freak,” Cecilia said. “Probably just gave these out to the first three chicks he came across at the hospital.”

“You don’t really think that,” Agnes said.

“People do all kinds of crazy shit,” Lucy responded.

“Like sneaking into churches at night?” Agnes quipped.

“Why are you defending him?” Cecilia asked.

“I’m not,” Agnes said. “I just don’t see why we shouldn’t believe him.”

“Why?” Lucy barked. “How about he’s a total stranger, for a start.”

“That doesn’t make him a liar. I don’t know you, either, but I’m listening.”

“He’s not being up-front, Agnes,” Cecilia challenged. “I mean, what’s he doing here? Really?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Agnes answered. “I’m sure there’s no great mystery.”

“I might give him a pass on that one for now,” Lucy countered. “We don’t even know why we’re here.”

Agnes raised her arm and brandished her chaplet proudly, like some fresh ink. “This is why.”

“Do you just believe everything a guy tells you without questioning anything?” Cecilia asked.

“I’m just saying, maybe they are really meant for us.”

“And I’m just saying I’m here for—what was it, three days?”

“Three Days of Darkness,” Lucy said, mocking the weatherman from the radio.

“Ye of little faith,” Agnes said sharply.

“Ye of little maturity,” Cecilia spit back.

They both looked at each other, overtired, oversensitive, and over the conversation for the moment.

“Anybody know what time it is?” CeCe asked.

“No idea,” Lucy said. “Very late. Or early.”

“Whichever, I can’t sit anymore,” CeCe said.

“Let’s check this place out,” Lucy suggested.

“Sebastian said to wait here,” Agnes reminded them.

“Suit yourself.” Lucy grabbed a handful of long tapers that had been left in a small pile on the floor near the votive stand. She offered one to Agnes. Agnes took it. They each lit theirs, fitted it with a foil bobeche, and walked slowly from the side altar at the back down the center aisle of the Church, wax dripping down the side with each step and hardening as it hit their knuckles. The light was just enough to guide them, for them to be able to see one another, but not so much as to draw attention from the world outside, if there was even a world left. The flames blew sideways despite their best efforts to shield them, useless against the stiff breeze that had managed to make its way through the broken windowpanes.

There was little to see. Lucy, Agnes, and Cecilia placed their tapers in the candleholders at the foot of the altar. CeCe lit a cigarette off the flaming stalk and inhaled.

“It’s like an end-stage cancer patient, you know.” Cecilia observed the surroundings, exhaling billows of smoke upward as she spoke. “A shell of something that was once so alive.”

“With a Do Not Resuscitate order,” Lucy nodded, waving the smoke away.

Streams of rainwater dropping through the damaged roof got Cecilia’s attention. She grabbed a few rusted holy water buckets stacked up next to the marble altar rail and handed them to Lucy and Agnes to place under the leaks.

Agnes chafed a little at the analogy, her own brush with death still fresh in her mind. “It’s not something to joke about.”

“No offense, but you get my point, right?” Cecilia groused. “This place was dying way before the developers bought it.”

“When you needed shelter from the storm, you came here. You get my point, right?” Agnes said.

“No need to get all self-righteous,” Lucy sniped. “Agnes is right. We all know why we’re here, whether we want to admit it to one another or not.”

“Speak for yourself,” CeCe said. “Why are you here?”

The tiff brought them right back to the earlier conversation they’d been dancing around. Sebastian argued that they were there by choice, but were they? The chaplets said otherwise.

“Same reason you are,” Lucy said tersely. “Not a lot of other options right now.”

“Is that right? You don’t look like much of a couch surfer to me,” CeCe observed.

“Spoiler alert,” Lucy said. “That’s because I don’t sleep around.”

“Sucks to be you,” CeCe shot back.

“Slide to unlock, huh?” Lucy cracked, swiping her imaginary touch screen sarcastically with unfettered ease.

Agnes eyed Cecilia sympathetically and shook her head.

The voices were getting louder as the argument descended ever deeper into pettiness. The vaulted ceiling captured the cacophony and ricocheted it back to them, amplifying the angst until their own voices became so echo-delayed and distorted they could barely understand one another.

“What are you looking at?” Lucy barked at Agnes, her irritation overcoming whatever sympathy she initially had for the girl. “You’ve been staring at me since you got here.”

“Nothing,” Agnes replied sheepishly. “You just look familiar.”

“Yeah, you do,” Cecilia concurred. “In fact, I think I know you.”

“Believe me,” Lucy assured her. “You don’t know me.”

“I mean, I know of you.”

Lucy was mortified, the blood draining from her face like an underage clubhopper busted for flashing a fake ID. She braced for attack.

“Usually so meticulously groomed, well-dressed, and imperious-looking.” Cecilia scrutinized her. “Mascot of the rich and shameless.”

Lucy stood her ground, taking the punishment like a shock absorber. Glaring silently back at CeCe. A little mocking was nothing new to her.

“Oh, I’m sorry, aren’t I allowed to look you directly in the eye?”

“Wow,” Lucy chided in faux disbelief. “I never knew you could make toxic friends so fast.”

“Friends already?” Cecilia sniffed. “Maybe in your world.”

“Hard to believe that such a skinny slut can stand up straight with such a big chip on her shoulder.”

“I haven’t gotten any complaints,” CeCe huffed. “What’s your excuse?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lucy hissed. “I have guys lining up, for your information.”

“Photographers don’t count,” CeCe countered. “They’re paid to line up for you.”

“I don’t need to pay for my dates,” Lucy bristled. “And they don’t pay me, either.”

“No, you use each other for the photo, sell the rights, and split. You don’t date. You fund-raise.”

“I’m proud to sign my checks on the back. Not the front.”

Agnes was mystified at how venomous the bickering had turned. Just like the fights between her and her mother. She knew full well where this was headed.

Cecilia wouldn’t let it go. “Well, you look nothing like your pictures, but I won’t hold it against you in this weather.”

Suddenly, it dawned on Agnes as well. She gasped. “Lucky Lucy.”

“Brooklyn’s very own Miss Teen Famewhore,” Cecilia scoffed.

“Like it or love it.” Lucy shrugged, gladly embracing her reputation. “You can take your finger off the jealous button now.”

“Hardly,” CeCe said, dropping her cigarette to the floor. “But at least you’re self-aware.”

“Bitch,” Lucy said.

“God, when will they legalize medicinal murder?” Cecilia said out loud to herself, while looking up to the heavens.

“You’re making my head hurt!” Agnes was wearing down and it was beginning to show. They all were.

“Stay out of it, Rapunzel,” Cecilia said, a little irritated at both her long mane and her faux-bohemianism.

Lucy’s wasn’t the only familiar face to Agnes. The longer she listened to CeCe peck at her, the more she realized Cecilia had a familiar face as well.

“And I know you,” Agnes said to CeCe. “You opened for that band at my school a few months ago.”

“That can’t be true,” Lucy cracked. “You are an artiste. An indie goddess. An original.”

“It was for charity,” Cecilia explained sheepishly.

“Rockin’ the school gym,” Lucy snarked. “How desperate.”

“I rock anywhere I am,” Cecilia quipped.

“Something we have in common, then,” Lucy said.

“No, I actually do something.”

“Stop,” Agnes demanded. With points scored on each side, Lucy and Cecilia finally took Agnes’s advice and took a deep breath. They each plunked themselves down in separate pews and stared at the burning wicks, seated near to one another but each left alone with her own thoughts. All thinking the worst was yet to come, as the tension between them was growing, like they were passengers stuck in a stalled elevator car. “We’re all just tense. Let’s be silent. Be still.”

“I was just looking for a way out,” Lucy blurted. “That’s really why I’m here.”

“I get that you’re hiding,” CeCe said.

“Who isn’t?” Agnes agreed. “But there are other places to disappear.”

“Doesn’t everybody look for a shuttered church with a hot guy to hide in?” Lucy replied, trying to tamp down Agnes’s magical thinking.

The sudden sound of banging, nails being driven into wood, startled them and ended the conversation for the moment.

“Sebastian?” Cecilia called out to no reply, just more hammering.

“Actually, there is a long history of people seeking sanctuary in churches. To avoid persecution,” Agnes cut in. “Brooklyn is known as the Borough of Churches.”

Cecilia and Lucy just looked at her skeptically.

“Makes sense,” Lucy added. “I’m constantly feeling persecuted.”

“You and your first-world injuries,” Cecilia pushed back, lighting another cigarette from an altar candle. “It still doesn’t answer the basic question. Why were we all drawn here, to this place, with him, specifically?”

“I guess the honest answer is, I don’t know,” Lucy said. “I’m not religious or anything. I don’t even say God bless you when someone sneezes. What about you?” she asked Cecilia. “And yelling ‘Oh God’ early on a Sunday morning doesn’t count as religious.”

“I am a total ecclesiophobe,” CeCe responded.

“Wait, you’re afraid of churches?” Agnes asked.

“For good reason, I’ll bet,” Lucy added snidely.

“I just prefer preaching to come from an amp, not an altar,” CeCe said.

“So postmodern,” Lucy scoffed.

CeCe ignored her, lost momentarily in thought. She wasn’t feeling at all uncomfortable, to her surprise. “The majesty, the rituals, the history, the art. A lot of it is really cool,” she went on. “I get it. But it’s hard for me to believe in anything I can’t really feel.”

“I don’t go to church much, mostly because my mom makes such a big deal out of it,” Agnes admitted. “But I do go to Catholic school.”

“Those are the worst. I’d drop out if I were you,” Lucy snarked. “Oh wait, I did drop out.”

“My mom thought it would be a better environment for me.”

Lucy translated. “More disciplined, she meant.”

“Is that so bad?” Agnes asked.

“You tell me,” Lucy answered, pointing to Agnes’s wrists. “How’s it working out for you?”

“My parents tried that on me, too, but I told them I would run away before I went,” CeCe confided.

Agnes admired her backbone. “So they made you go?”

“No, I ran away,” CeCe said. “Public or parochial school wasn’t really my main issue. Going to school at all was.”

“So here we are: a squatter and a runaway, a dropout, and a would-be suicide. Four sinners in a giant church, and none of us knows why?” Lucy summed up. “Is that it?”

“One of us knows why,” Cecilia croaked, her voice getting hoarse from the dusty dampness.

“Knows what?” Sebastian said, emerging from the darkness.

“Eavesdropping?” Lucy asked.

“No need,” Sebastian said. “I’m surprised they didn’t hear that catfight outside.”

“So, what was it?” Agnes asked.

“A huge tree snapped in half, pushed through one of the windows. Glass everywhere. I did the best I could to board it up. You can’t keep it outside forever.”

“The storm?” Lucy asked.

Sebastian was once again silent.

“We were just asking each other how we all wound up here,” Agnes added calmly. “None of us has a clue.”

“How about you?” Lucy asked.

Sebastian sat down in their grouping.

“Me and this place go way back,” he began. “I was an altar boy here when I was a kid.”

“Overshare!” Lucy gulped.

“Nothing like that,” Sebastian pushed back. “I learned a lot about myself here.”

“Is that why you know your way around so well?” Cecilia asked.

“Sort of,” he said haltingly. “My grandmother raised me and used to bring me here on Sundays. When she died a few years ago, I stopped coming.”

“Did you lose your faith or something?” Agnes asked.

“No, I think maybe some other people lost theirs.”

“Have you been on your own since then?”

“I got bounced around to a few foster homes in the neighborhood, but that didn’t last long.”

Sebastian was clearly uncomfortable revealing details of his personal life.

“Well, we’re all here now,” CeCe observed.

Agnes was settling down but Sebastian could see she was still pale and shaky. “Are you okay?” he asked gently.

“No,” she said.

He walked over to her pew, helped her up, and moved her to the back of the church where he sat down next to her, leaving Lucy and Cecilia alone together.

“That was convenient,” Lucy whispered to CeCe as Sebastian led Agnes away. “She’s really working that whole little miss vulnerable thing, and he’s totally falling for it. Well, he doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

“His life is really none of our business, and vice versa,” Cecilia whispered. “Once the storm passes, we’ll go back to our lives like none of this ever happened.”

“Yeah, but all I’m saying is the altar boy thing sounds a little shady,” Lucy pressed. “I think he lives here and he’s too embarrassed to say it.”

“So what if he does?”

“I hate wasted potential. He’s smart, cool, amazing-looking. The sky is the limit,” Lucy said.

“Not everybody wants what you want. Maybe he’s got other plans for himself. Better things than just getting his picture in the paper or on some blogger’s home page.”

“Like what? Playing dives and pretending to be happy?” Lucy railed snidely. “We live in a headline world and he’s a headline guy. In fact, he kind of reminds me of myself. The things I like, anyway.”

“Are you bipolar or something?” CeCe rasped.

“Tell me you don’t feel that way too?” Lucy asked. “He’s sensitive with Agnes, inspiring with you, reassuring with me. He doesn’t even know us but he knows what we want. What we need.”

“Your theories are making me tired.” Cecilia yawned, standing. “Besides, why do you care?”

“I don’t really. . . . But I do,” Lucy said. “Don’t you?”

Cecilia went silent as they walked toward a pew at the front of the church, sneaking peeks back at Sebastian comforting Agnes.

“Yeah, I guess I do,” she admitted.

“Whatever. It will be a good story someday,” Lucy said, putting her “promotional cap” on, as she was trained to do in difficult situations. “Maybe he’s just a religious fanatic or a Bible-banger or something.”

“I really hope not.”

“Why?”

CeCe flashed a smile.

“I don’t do Bible-bangers.”

“I bet you do.” Lucy laughed.

“We’re in a church for Christ’s sake,” Cecilia said, feigning indignance.

“Look who’s talking,” Lucy reminded her.

Cecilia felt her knees buckle slightly. “I don’t know what it is but my head is spinning. I need to chill for a while.”

“Okay, yeah,” Lucy agreed, her head still smarting. “I‘m not feeling like myself either.”

“I think you need some sleep,” Cecilia said. “We all do.”