“I don’t care what you believe. It’s all a lie anyway. And God knows!” Devota said. “He sees you for what you are and the rest of them, too, when their vows got too difficult. All of them were ready to jump into the first handsome priest’s bed.” She leaned closer, her spit touching the shell of Charity’s ear, her rancor oozing through the old tombs. “I saw them, Reverend Mother, and so did you, but you allowed it, didn’t you? You let them flirt. You let them dream. You let them fantasize and imagine sleeping with him. Because you knew of their hunger, their desire, their evil, vile desire.”

This was going so badly. And Valerie . . . Holy Father, please make her leave. Don’t let her blood be spilled. “They . . . they may have had fantasies, but—”

“But they were supposed to be devoted to Jesus, the son of the Holy Father!” Devota nearly screamed, her voice cracking, the depth of her fanaticism showing.

Charity remembered her as she was: Darlene, a half-crippled, unwanted, and never adopted child, and the girl had embraced the life of the convent with open arms. There had been a darkness to her, too, a cancer in her soul that Charity had hoped would shrivel with her faith. She’d renounced her given name of Darlene and taken Devota, but the cancer, that blackness planted by Satan, had taken over, and the woman before her, a monster bent on her own vision of righteousness, was no better than Lucifer himself.

Fear pounded through Charity’s brain as the blood trickled from her neck. Despite her pain, she stared straight at her only daughter and silently prayed that Valerie would have the good sense to run into the darkness, to never look back at this monster Charity had helped create. “Leave,” she ordered desperately. “Leave now!”

Val only took another step to that same side, as if to get a better angle for her shot, as if she hadn’t heard a word Charity said. With incredible calm, she stood in the wavering light. “I said, let her go.” Valerie was firm, her eyes trained on the sick woman holding the knife.

“No.”

“I’ll shoot.”

“Of course you won’t! You can’t shoot that in here,” Devota said in disgust, as if Val were a complete moron. “You’ll miss and hit your mother, or the bullet will ricochet and kill you both.” She paused a moment, taking in little short breaths, as if a finger of excitement had slid down her spine, a new, thrilling energy passing from her body to Charity’s. “I think there’s someone you both might want to meet.”

Oh, dear God! Charity, the blood from her neck spilling onto her shoulder, felt a new dread. The tone in Devota’s voice was triumphant.

Smug.