It was silly to think that anything evil lurked here, Val knew, especially with all the patrons filling the building. Wasn’t there safety in numbers?

You’re nexxxxt, the gargoyle situated on the corner of the nave seemed to hiss from his roost. There is no esssscape.

“Bull,” she said under her breath, refusing to freak herself out.

“What?” Slade leaned forward, obviously trying to hear her over the rush of the wind.

“Nothing,” she said as they walked through the hallways lined with tables covered with items that were available for bidding, the silent part of the auction that would last until the verbal auction ended. The bigger items like the trips, a vintage carousel horse, and the Wembleys’ piano would be offered once the silent auction was declared over, in this case in two hours.

People were already bidding on items, signing their names to bidding sheets, adding amounts to the dollar column. Around each table, someone from St. Elsinore’s or St. Marguerite’s was stationed.

Sister Simone and Sister Georgia, the reverend mother for St. Elsinore’s, were already in the building, but Val also glimpsed several of the nuns who were in the St. Marguerite’s choir. Sister Maura, Sister Devota, and Sister Zita were walking around the hallways and gymnasium, though she didn’t see Sister Edwina. She told herself not to worry, that Edwina had been in the choir less than an hour earlier and that her theory that CALLED, the message left in Camille’s notes, wasn’t anything. Even if the notation indicated that the sopranos were half in love with Father Frank, it all had been just in Camille’s mind.

Right?

At that moment, she saw Sister Edwina appear, walking swiftly out of the restroom.

Nothing to worry about other than her own case of nerves.

And what she had planned.

More and more people arrived, and the throng became louder, the halls more packed, the fever of bidding running hot through the crowd. Val felt her nerves tightening. Just being here brought back unwanted memories, and every time she caught a glimpse of Father Frank, she felt the pain and loss of Camille’s death all over again . . . Camille’s and her unborn child’s deaths.

Bastard, she thought when she caught him leaning forward and talking to a little girl who was with her parents. It was nothing, a friendly gesture priests did all the time, but it made Val sick. The man was a fraud.

As if Father Frank felt her gaze, he turned his head and looked at her. She expected to see a smarmy, smug smile; instead she saw eyes without life, dead and haunted.

She turned away.