“Believe it or not, once upon a time, I was an altar boy.”

With one earbud in my ear so that I could hear Jennie’s voice over the radio, I walked down the center aisle between the chapel’s pews toward the altar. “We need something that Father Fahey either owns or handles a lot,” I reminded Trey and Violet.

“The sacristy,” Trey said, and gestured for us to follow him.

Violet flashed a smirk at me, impressed and amused by Trey’s totally unexpected familiarity with St. Monica’s. Sure enough, when we passed through a doorway at the back of the sanctuary, we entered into a narrow carpeted hallway. Trey reached into the first open doorway along it and flipped on the light switch. He led us into a small, cramped room containing a mahogany wardrobe and two desks. There was a small crucifix hanging on the wall and a cork bulletin board over the desks, to which Easter greeting cards and palm crosses were held in place with pushpins.

“This is where they keep the vestments,” Trey told us.

He reached into the wardrobe and pulled out a vibrant purple tunic on a hanger. “He would have worn this one to say mass today. Purple, for Easter.”

I ran my hand over the smooth fabric and asked Jennie, “Will this work?”

Violet mumbled, “Do you think we’ll all go to hell for blackmailing a priest?”

“We haven’t blackmailed anyone yet,” Trey reminded her.

I shushed them so that I could hear Jennie better. “It’s good enough,” she told me. “Just keep your hand on it in one place long enough for me to get a sense of him.”

I pressed my hand against the purple fabric. We were there because we had agreed that confronting Father Fahey at the rectory about his involvement in spell-casting probably wouldn’t get us anywhere. There was no reason for him to tell us the truth, and nothing to stop him from calling the police and telling them that Trey was back in town. We needed to better understand why he’d helped Violet’s grandmother, and we needed evidence of just how far his interest in the occult reached. Basically, we needed leverage to make him agree to help us conduct an exorcism on Mischa.

So yes. As much as I preferred to think of it under different terms, we were essentially there, at the church, using Jennie’s help to gather information for the purpose of blackmailing a priest.

“What’s she saying?” Violet asked.

“It’s outside,” Jennie told me. “Something outside, on a brick? There’s writing.”

I listened for more.

“It has to do with Ann Simmons and the rosebushes.”

“Okay,” I said, avoiding Trey and Violet’s eager eyes. “What about other people? Has Father Fahey ever cast spells for other people in town?”

Behind us, something struck the carpeted floor with a muffled sound. All three of us flinched at the sudden, unexpected motion, and Violet clapped her hand over her heart. “Jesus!” she exclaimed.