“Sacristy?”
Eli shot me a glance and removed his glasses, the gloom too much even for the loss of cool factor. With them he indicated the room we were in. “Narthex.” He glasses-pointed ahead. “Nave. The center area is the crossing with the transcepts as the cross’ arms. The head of the cross shape is the apse, with the chancel and the altar. Behind that wall is the sacristy. This church is built on the classic, historical, cruciform architecture.”
I was pretty sure I was goggling. “Are you Catholic?”
He tapped his chest with the glasses. “Ranger. We know everything.”
“What can I do for you, my children?”
The man who was speaking was standing in the crossing, half-hidden in a shadow cast by a plaster statue, bloody and clawed, with a lion rampant, about to bite him. The statue. Not the priest. Beast peered out from my eyes, amused at the statues. Small teeth and claws. Beast’s are bigger, she thought. The priest was a middle-aged, pink-skinned, redheaded man, slight of build and serious-looking, his hands in the pockets of his long black robes.
Eli murmured, “The black robes make him an old-school Jesuit.” He narrowed his eyes as if that was important somehow and spoke louder. “Father.”
We started down the center aisle, our boots loud on the wood floor, echoing up into the rafters. The air inside was still, the way an empty house feels when its people have been on an extended vacation. It smelled of cleansers and lemon oil and ashes, and the stink of Silvadene. The silver-based cream was used for second-and third-degree burns on humans. On vamps, it would be a poison.
The priest repeated, “What can I do for you, my children?”
Before Eli could reply, I said, “The Mithran Master of the City of New Orleans, Leo Pellissier, sent us to see what was going on in Bayou Oiseau between the suc—the vampires and the witches.”
He didn’t change posture, but I smelled the priest’s interest and the shot of pure adrenaline that pumped into his bloodstream. I had an instant certainty that the priest wasn’t just a priest. At my side, I felt Eli shift a step to my left, his body slightly left-side-forward, right hand at his side. That was a fighting position, and I caught a whiff of gun oil. Eli had drawn a weapon. Not good. Now that we were closer to the priest, he stank of old fire and cooked meat and frustration tightly controlled. I studied the priest, his black robes and sash unrelieved by color except for the splotch of red above his waist on his left side and the white around his collar.
The priest said, “A vampire sent you to this town?”
“Yeah. At the request of the local Clan blood-master.”
His voice soft a breeze, Eli said, “We understand that you had control of the wreath, what the Mithrans call la corona in Latin, or le breloque, in French.”
I didn’t react, but . . . how did my partner know that was Latin? No way could he blame that on being a Ranger.
The priest said, “The wreath is spelled, hiding what it is. Spells are of the devil.”
“Not all of them,” I said.
“Yes. All.”
“Powers and principalities are not all from Satan.”
“You wish to bandy Scripture and Church history with me?” Something in the emphasis suggested that I was out of my league in that department, that he could squash me under his metaphorical, verbal, scholarly boot. I decided on another tack.
I said, “Is the vine of the true crown still in the Vatican? Or did it go missing?” The priest removed his hands from his pockets, and Eli tensed, not that anyone else would have noted the minute changes in his body. It was more a scent change than motion, and it eased when the priest appeared to clasp his white-gloved hands behind his back. The stink of burned meat and Silvadene was instantly stronger on the air.
I knew my partner needed something, so I went on the offensive, drawing the priest’s attention to me with a single step forward and what little I had gained from the Kid’s info. “Or should I say, one of the many vines of the crown of thorns. Several are in France, one in Germany, one in Belgium. Spain and Italy have pieces of it, even the Ukraine. And the thorns are everywhere. For the Church to send an important guy like you, it must be possible that the real one has gone missing, and they thought it might be here, sealed into the corona.