Everything was neatly placed on bookshelves that lined the room—books, candles, crucifixes, a healthy amaryllis with a heavy white bloom, and a solitary picture of the Pope. Lucia rounded the big, worn desk, where far too many times she had sat on one of the uncomfortable visitor chairs, her hands clenched in anxiety, as the mother superior had lectured her across the expanse of lacquered walnut. She reached for the telephone with its heavy receiver, a black dinosaur left over from the sixties or seventies, and dialed quickly, nervously waiting for the rotary dial to click into place.

“Nine-one-one. What’s the nature of your emergency?” a woman’s voice answered.

“Sister Camille is dead! There was some kind of accident here at St. Marguerite’s Convent—no, in the chapel—and she’s dead! I . . . I think she was killed. Please, please send someone quickly!” Her voice, already tremulous, was elevating with each word.

“What is the address?”

Lucia rattled off the street address and, when asked, her name and the phone number.

“What kind of an accident?”

“I don’t know. Maybe . . . maybe she was strangled. All I really know is that she’s dead, and the mother superior is with her now.”

“A homicide.”

“Oh, I don’t know! We need help. Please, please send help!”

“We are. Officers have been dispatched. You need to stay on the line.”

“I can’t . . . I have to tell Father Paul.”

“Please, Miss Costa, do not hang up. Stay on the line—”

Ignoring the dispatcher, Lucia dropped the phone, letting it dangle as she took off at a full run through the back door of the office, one only Sister Charity used.

Lucia’s heart was a drum as she sprinted through the dark hallways with their gleaming floors, down the stairs, and out the double doors to a courtyard. As if Lucifer himself were chasing her, she raced through the rain-splattered cloister and past a fountain. Wind scuttled across the flagstones, kicking up wet leaves and tugging at the sodden hem of her nightgown.

She couldn’t tell anyone about how she was awakened so abruptly in the middle of the night. What would she say? Anyone who heard about the voice that directed her, the beast she’d somehow unleashed, would think she was certifiable. As she did herself. She figured that voice in her head was between her and God. No one else. Not even Father Paul or Father Frank. They might think she was possessed by a demon, and maybe she was, but she just didn’t want any attention drawn to her.

It’s not about you! Camille is dead! Dead! Someone killed her and left her lifeless body in the chapel.

And somehow the voice knew. And awoke her.

Oh, it was all so disturbing.

Through another door and under a dripping portico, she flew to Father Paul’s door, where she pounded desperately.