"We shouldn't have done that," Eugene said eventually, around the knot of anxiety in his throat.

Johnny rolled his head to the side to look at him. "Regretting it already?"

“I thought the Irish were all very Catholic. Doing that here, over the Bible—that doesn’t bother you?”

“They weren’t always Catholic. I never was." Johnny let his legs fall open wider, knocking the side of Eugene's shoe with his boot. "The land belonged to the aes sídhe, first. Even after the Irish converted, they never forgot the old ways."

"Aes sídhe?" Eugene echoed, his pronunciation clumsy.

Johnny just flashed him a smile in response, baring his teeth.

“You said you're Irish, but you talk like you’re not one of them.”

“You’ve already asked me if I'm the devil,” Johnny reminded him teasingly.

“Aren’t you?”

Nothing was real anymore. If Eugene had engaged in congress with the devil in the very church where he grew up, he doubted it much mattered. Not with Chanlarivyè the way it was. The sun would blink out soon enough, a great pale eye shutting amid the clouds, and then it would all be over. A quiet, lonely sort of apocalypse.

“I’m not the devil,” Johnny repeated, and stretched out long, his arms over his head. “The devil is just the word you give to humanity’s darker impulses. You’ve seen the devil, but it was never me. And it’s not you, either.”

“I used to see a man," Eugene said hesitantly. "A spirit, maybe, when I was a boy. The priest said it was the devil playing tricks.”

Johnny tipped his head back to lean against the pulpit and looked at him, saying nothing.

“When I saw you earlier, when you stood up here and the light hit you just so, I could have sworn— You looked just like I remember him from that day.”

“The day you found Mary Beth Byrne in the water.”

Something caught in Eugene’s chest. “What?”

“When you found Mary Beth,” Johnny repeated. His eyes were dark like coals, but when the dying light caught them at just the right angle, they glowed like honey whiskey. “I remember. You played together in the yard. You made daisy chains before he killed her.”

The world tilted as Eugene pushed himself to his feet, clinging to the pulpit for support. Johnny rose with him, as graceful as a serpent.

“I predate the devil, Eugene. I’ve been alive for eons, born long before the hills of Ireland rolled into shape. I came to America with the Byrnes; I was tethered to that family for generations, wings clipped. I would have watched Mary Beth grow up, and then I would have watched her children, and her children's children, if she hadn't died so young and set me free. It's easy to get used to such constant companionship, no matter how unwilling, and I was so lonely after she died. Even the company of a child is better than being alone." He slunk closer. "I took my eye from her for a second, and then it was too late. But you know what that priest did to her. You saw it. You were there.”