inthewildwood | Fic: Hagiolatry (Chapter Six) (Reply)

She got the the shop at eight the next morning, just as Patty was pulling up the grid. It was overkill- she didn’t need to be in before nine-thirty, and neither did Donna. But Donna and Patty lived together, so they showed up at the same time, which left Frankie slinking in an hour and a half later, and it made her feel like a lazy asshole. So she showed up at eight.

Donna was already wiping down the counter when she came in, but she dropped the rag and came out front to pull Frankie into a hug when she saw her. “Hey! Are you feeling better?”

"I’m feeling fine,” Frankie said, hugging Donna before pulling back a bit. “What have we got on the schedule for today?”

“Lessee.” Donna pulled the appointment book out from under the counter and started to flip through it. “Mrs. Meir’s getting her nails done at three, and Alicia’s coming in to get her hair cut at noon. She said she might bring her little sister with her. So that’s three.”

Frankie’s spirits fell a bit. “Just three?”

Donna shrugged and shut the appointment book. “There’s always drop-ins.” She took a closer look at Frankie and frowned. “Are you sure you’re okay? You your face is all red.”

“Oh!” Frankie put a hand up to her cheek. “I fell asleep on the couch last night and the pillow left a mark.” Donna still looked skeptical, so Frankie gave her a smile. “I’m fine, I swear. Is there anything to do in the back? I’m kind of tired of lying around doing nothing.”

“You weren’t doing nothing,” Donna said, “you were getting better. But there’s a bunch of new shampoo bottles that need to be unpacked, if you want something to do.”

Frankie clapped her on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

She hadn’t been kidding, as it turned out, when she’d said “a bunch.” There were fifteen boxes, all piled haphazardly against the back wall, and they wobbled dangerously whenever she took a new one down. Petty had an intricate system in place for hair product sorting, involving alphabetical order by chemical components, so it took her the better part of an hour to finish filing them all away on the shelves. Out in the front room, she could hear Patty crank the music up- Dead Kennedys today- and Donna’s voice, indistinct under the bass line and drums. She smiled and hummed along to the music.

“Hey, Frankie?” Patty stuck her head through the beaded curtain. “Can you bring some of the hairspray out front?”

“Sure thing.” Frankie turned back to the shelf and grabbed a bottle in each hand. With Patty, whenever she said “some,” it usually meant “two or three.” Frankie grabbed another and tucked it under her arm, just to be safe, turned around, and was hit with a wave of vertigo so bad she nearly toppled over.

“What,” she said, blinking stupidly as the third bottle of hairspray tumbled out of her grip and into the box at her feet. She’d worn platform shoes to work- stupid, but she hated sneakers; they made her a head shorter than everyone else- and now she felt like she was going to fall off them any minute. She put the remaining bottles down- her hands were shaking, she noticed- and grabbed hold of the shelf with both hands, trying to steady herself. Another wave of vertigo hit, and she thought she might pass out.

She blinked furiously, shaking her head and immediately wishing she hadn’t. The spot behind her right eye was starting to throb, and her stomach was lurching like she was on a moving boat. The shelf wobbled dangerously, and she let go, stumbling back and crashing into the opposite wall.

“Frankie?” Donna poked her head through the curtain. “What’s going- oh.”

Frankie would have answered, but she was too busy clenching her hands into fists, the pain of nails against her palms anchoring her to the room. It was still spinning. She took a deep breath. “I- I don’t feel so good.”

Donna grabbed her arms and pulled her over to a chair against the back wall, pushing her into a sitting position. “Should I call Andrew?”

“Nnnrgh” Frankie muttered, letting her head loll against her shoulder. “It was supposed to be over.”

“I know, honey.” Donna knelt in front of her and put a hand on each of her knees, rubbing gently. “But I don’t think it is.”

“I don’t-” Frankie bit her tongue and swore. Shooting pains were traveling down her legs and into her feet. She could feel the cuts on her forehead splitting open, and the warm blood trickling down her face and into her eyes. “Feet comes next, right? Or-” Her eyes flew open. “Shit! The spear!”

“It’s feet,” Donna said quickly. She knelt down and pulled Frankie’s shoes off. “I’m gonna get a towel, okay? So we can keep you from bleeding too badly.”

“Won’t do any good,” Frankie muttered, closing her eyes again. But Donna was already gone.

It felt the same, and yet different at the same time- she could feel everything around her in a way she hadn’t been able to with the other wounds. The plastic edge of the chair was digging into her shoulder blades, and the air smelled like aerosol and floral shampoo. Before, when it had happened, she’d only been able to feel pain- and it was still there, licking at the edges of her consciousness, but she could also feel the stale air in her lungs and the floor under her feet. Her feet, which still felt like they were about to burst open. She leaned back in the chair and groaned.

Donna came bursting back through the curtain, with Patty at her heels. “I brought towels.” She dropped them on the floor. “Patty, grab one of the rinse buckets. We can put her feet in them.”

“I’m not,” Frankie struggled to sit up. “I’m not going to start bleeding. It’s not happening again.”

“Frankie,” Donna knelt down and started wrapping her feet in the towels. “You already are.”

Frankie couldn’t argue that- her back felt sticky and wet against her shirt, and the bandages on her wrists were turning bright red again. Even her mouth tasted wet and coppery. She closed her eyes.

The first blow of the nails against her foot- nails she really couldn’t see now, which made her feel even crazier- made her sit bolt upright in the chair, howling at the top of her lungs. Patty grabbed at her shoulders, trying to push her back down, but she shoved back, slapping ineffectually at her hands. “Let me go!”

“You’re going to hurt yourself!” Patty shouted, while Donna stayed kneeling at her feet and hanging determinedly on to her knees. The second blow hurt worse than the first, but she really couldn’t move now- Patty had moved around to the back of her chair and was holding her shoulders down, so she just thrashed against their hands and cursed loudly.

Being in the room, feeling her friends’ hands on her, anchoring her to the ground seemed to make it shorter- or maybe it was just because there were only so many times nails could be driven into a person’s feet before it became overkill. It still hurt like hell though, and Frankie jerked up and down in the chair with every blow, alternately swearing and sobbing. Donna was still rubbing her knees, and Patty stroked her hair clumsily, so she closed her eyes and tried to focus on that, but the pain was so all-consuming, she couldn’t feel anything else when the blows hit. She could taste blood and salt tears on her lips, and feel blood dripping down her back and sloshing around her ankles.

When a minute passed without another blow, she slumped down in the chair, and Patty let her go. Her whole body ached, like- well, like she’d been strung up on a cross. The cuts on her forehead and wrists had stopped bleeding, and the drying blood felt stiff and tacky on her skin. Her head was still spinning.

“We should call Andrew,” Patty murmured over her head. Frankie couldn’t find the strength to lift her head, so she let it loll on her chest while Donna replied “I already did,” and stood up, putting a hand on Frankie’s head. “Do you want to lie down, hon? He said he’d be here in fifteen minutes, but traffic might be bad.”

Frankie was spared from answering by the sound of the bell over the door ringing. Patty got to her feet and brushed her knees off. “We’re closed.”

“Frankie?” It was Andrew’s voice. “Are you all right?|

“We’re back here,” Donna called. She extended a hand to Frankie. “Can you get up?”

Frankie let her head roll back. “Not too likely.”

The bead curtain was pushed back, and Andrew appeared in the doorway, looking- if possible- more disheveled than usual. Frankie contemplated him from under heavy eyelids and wondered if he ever actually slept like a normal person, or just took catnaps whenever a crisis was about to pop up. He crossed the room and dropped down to his knees next to her. “Frankie? How are you feeling?”

She cracked an eye open. “Like shit, actually.”

His hands hovered over her like he was thinking about stroking her hair or patting her knee, but couldn’t summon up the courage for it. Frankie settled the matter for him by tilting forward, and he caught her as she slumped down against his shoulder. He was considerably more comfortable to lean against than the chair, so she closed her eyes again and tucked her head into his collarbone. His breath stuttered for a moment, and then smoothed out again as he brought a hand up to rest against her cheek. “You should go to a hospital. The blood loss-”

“Ughhh,” Frankie said. She’d meant to say “please no; you’re kind of the only reason I’m not passing out right now, and I can’t promise not to if someone breaks out the needles,” but she was too wrung-out to talk, so all she did was tuck her face in closer and mutter “m’okay.” She let out a long breath. “I want to go home.” Specifically, she wanted to go home, crawl into bed, pull the blankets over her head, and sleep until her life managed to get less fucking insane. Maybe she’d wake up and discover that the whole thing had been a bad dream. Maybe she’d wake up and discover that she’d won the lottery. She could dream.

Andrew hesitated a moment, then curled his free arm under her knees and stood up. “I can take you there, if you’d like.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled against his shoulder. “I would.”

She slept- or passed out- for most of the drive home, only waking up when Andrew shook her to as for keys to the apartment. She let herself doze again as he crossed the threshold, then stirred as he gently set her down on her bed. Her feet were still wrapped in the towels from the store, now blooming a deep crimson colour. She stretched her legs out, wincing, and sat up to undo the knots Donna had tied. The towels fell off, and she winced- she hadn’t had a proper look at the wounds before, but each one went all the way through her foot, shredding blood vessels and muscles as it went. Maybe she should go to the hospital- but then, she’d survived the other wounds without doctors poking more holes in her, so she let it be and leaned back on the pillows.

Andrew came back into the room with a bowl of water in one hand, and a towel slung over the other. He set the bowl down on the floor and wet the towel in it before glancing up. “May I?”

She nodded, and he touched the towel to her foot. It stung like hell- probably he’d put peroxide into the water- and she bit her lip and looked away, blinking furiously to keep her eyes from watering. She was sick of crying. She was sick of being sick. If Andrew noticed her fighting a losing battle with her tear ducts, though, he didn’t say anything, just kept gently wiping the blood away in silence.

Frankie was the one who broke it. “There’s one more wound.”

Andrew stayed silent for a moment as he dipped the towel again. “Yes.”

“The spear wound.”

He dabbed at her foot again. “Yes.”

“The one that killed Jesus.” Frankie said. “I’ve been getting these wounds almost every day. So if this keeps up the way it’s been going, I’ll be dead by Wednesday.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he said sharply, looking up at her. “There’s never been a stigmatic who died of their wounds. Never.”

Frankie met his eyes. “You also said most stigmatics only get a few wounds. I have four.”

He gave her a long look, then looked down at his hands. “That’s right, I did.”

“So. Wednesday.” She took a deep breath. A strange calm had settled over her, like she was already backing away from the real world- the world where she got up for work in the morning and cut hair and went out dancing with Patty and Donna- and fading into a world that she couldn’t quite see yet. But that didn’t mean she was ready to let go. “I don’t- there’s no real way to prepare for it, is there? I mean I could go to the hospital, but they wouldn’t believe that I was about to get stabbed with an invisible spear. I could go to the church, but there’s nothing they could really do. I mean, he didn’t die from blood loss, right?”

Andrew was staring at her like she wasn’t even speaking English anymore. “I- no. At least, that’s the theory, but as his body was taken up into Heaven, we don’t really have empirical data.”

“So he could have bled to death,” she said, still calm. This- making plans- she could work with. She didn’t know if the plans would work, but it was better than waiting to keel over. “If he did- if I would- stopping the bleeding would be pretty easy. If the problem is that my lung’s getting pierced, I don’t really know how to stop that, unless maybe the doctors cracked me open and then sewed it back up as it happened.” She rolled her shoulders. “But I don’t think they’d go for that.”

“No,” Andrew said, sounding slightly dazed, “I doubt it.” There was a pause, and then he cleared his throat. “I did hear back from my contact at the Vatican this morning- he did some research into the man who owned that rosary, Father Alameida. I don’t know how much help it will be, but it’s a start.”

Frankie sat up. “Tell me.”

Andrew pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket and smoothed it across his knee. “Paul Alameida, born April 26, 1932 in Fatima, Portugal. He joined the church at the age of nineteen, and travelled to Rome after five years in the priesthood. He was a respected member of the Vatican, and some theorized that he would be elected cardinal, but he left the Vatican- and Rome- in 1979, and wasn’t heard from again by any church authorities until 1999, when he died in Bela Quinto, Brazil.” Andrew folded the paper back up and cleared his throat. “Father Delmonico speculated that there may have been an excommunication- he remembers Father Alameida working on a project that caused considerable controversy within the Vatican, some sort of gospel translation- but the details of this project were never made public, and there are no official records. Whatever he was doing, it was discontinued after he left.”

“And he had stigmata,” Frankie said.

“And he had stigmata.” Andrew unfolded the paper again. “He manifested the wounds starting around 1967, and his parishioners in Bela Quinto reported that he wore bandages on his hands. He didn’t have any wounds when his body was discovered, however.”

Frankie held out a hand. “Can I see that?”

Andrew passed her the paper, and she stared at it. Parts were so scribbly that she could barely make out the words, but other parts were legible, and her lips moved silently as she read. “What’s mortification of the flesh?”

Andrew pushed his glasses up his nose. “It’s the practice of putting oneself in pain in order to atone for one’s sins. There were rumours that Father Alameida practiced it, though nothing was ever proved, and he never spoke about it publicly.”

“Huh.” Frankie set the paper down. “So . . . any information on why I’d suddenly start getting his symptoms just because my mom accidentally sent me his rosary?”

“No,” Andrew sighed, “there isn’t.” He stood up. “You should get some rest. I’ll wake you if I hear anything more.”

Frankie nodded, and rolled over on her side, tucking both hands under her head and closing her eyes. Her feet had mostly stopped stinging, but they were still bleeding against the towels Andrew had wrapped around them. She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped an arm around them. Everything felt like it was going to fly into pieces any second.

She didn’t remember closing her eyes, but she must have, because when she opened them again it was dark. Andrew had turned the lights off when he left, but the door was open, and the light in the kitchen was still on. The curtains were half-drawn, and she could see the faint glow of streetlights outside.

She rolled over and sat up, blinking sleep out of her eyes and rolling the kinks out of her shoulders. She looked down. Her feet were still wrapped in towels, but the bloodstains hadn’t gotten much bigger in the interim, and when she swung a foot off the bed and set it tentatively on the ground, there wasn’t much more than a dull ache.

Gingerly, she set both feet on the floor and stood up. Her ankles hurt a bit, too, but it was still at a manageable level. She wrapped the duvet around her shoulders, shivering slightly. The room had gotten cold while she slept, and a draft was coming in from the window.

Something white fluttered by her foot, and she bent to pick it up. The paper from earlier- Andrew must have left it on the table, where it’d fallen off in the breeze. She picked it up, and smoothed it out against her hand. The writing was harder to read in the dim light, and she squinted as she scanned the page. It said the same thing it had when she’s read it the first time- mortification of the flesh, Bela Quinto, Vatican- all scribbled in Andrew’s inelegant handwriting. She turned the page over. More scribbles, most of them illegible in the dim light. A few words stood out- Communion of Saints, sanctity, Marian apparition. And then, at the very bottom of the page, a single word followed with a question mark- possession?

Frankie froze in place, fingers clenching tighter around the paper. She was mentally cataloging everything that had happened over the past few days- the dizziness, the visions, the feeling that she was somehow out of her own body. The sensation of looking through someone else’s eyes and the strange conviction of things that she couldn’t possibly know. The paper written in her handwriting with words she didn’t recognize.

Just because my mom accidentally sent me his rosary-

The rosary wouldn’t have given her the stigmata. It couldn’t. But possession- if he was in her body somehow, if he was taking her over-

She dropped the paper and stumbled backwards, knees colliding with the bed. She sat down hard, head spinning. She felt like she was going to be sick. He was inside her. He’d always been inside her. For days, he’d been lurking, sucking on her like a parasite, and now he was killing her from the inside out. Had he been reading her mind? Did he know what she was thinking?

She fucking hoped so. Because now that she knew, she could let him know how much she hated him, how much she wanted him the fuck out of her head. She wanted to slam against walls, rip her hair out, do anything that would make being in her body so uncomfortable that he would leave her alone. “Can you hear me? Get out! Get the fuck out!” She slammed her hand down on the bedside table, hard enough that her knuckles started to bleed. Good. See how he liked it when she was the one doing the wounding, not the other way around. She slammed her fist against the table over and over again as her cracked skin bled freely, gushing over the table and her sleeves, soaking everything bright red. “Is this what you want? You like hurting me? You sick fuck, you think this is in your bible when you don’t know everything, you should be burning in hell-”

“Frankie?”

She stopped pounding her knuckles raw and looked up. Andrew was standing in the doorway, staring at her, brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

Hand trembling, she grabbed the paper and held it out to him. “This says,” she said, voice shaking, “that I’m possessed. That all of this is happening because of some kind of fucked-up Exorcist shit, like my head is going to start spinning around, and- you didn’t tell me.” She swallowed. Her throat was on fire, eyes stinging with an unaccountable sense of betrayal. “Why?”

He sighed, crossing the room and taking the paper from her hand. “I didn’t tell you,” he said slowly, “because I don’t think it’s true. By the Church’s own doctrine and history, possession is almost always caused by demonic forces- not ghosts.”

“And ghosts can’t be demons?”

“No.” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Demons, within the Christian- or at least, the Catholic- tradition, are lesser fallen angels who serve under Lucifer. For Father Alameida-” he swallowed hard- “to be a demon would make no doctrinal sense. He was never an angel. Men can’t become angels or demons.”

“Doctrinally, me having stigmata at all makes no sense,” she pointed out. “And here we are.”

He didn’t say anything. His hand curled around the paper, and he looked at it, swallowing hard again. Frankie stared at him, unflinching. “With something this big, you need to tell me. Even if it might not be true.”

“You’re right,” he said softly, after a pause. He raised his hand like he was going to touch her, then shook his head. “You’re right,” he said again, a little louder. “I’m sorry.”

She nodded. “Is there any point doing research into possession? I mean, if the Church doesn’t think ghosts can possess people, there won’t be any books about it.”

“I tried already,” he said. She raised her eyebrows. “When Johnny- Father Delmonico- suggested it to me, I looked through the books I had on the subject. They were all in agreement on the impossibility of it. As I said, there’s no precedent. And-” He stopped suddenly, a muscle twitching in his cheek.

And a priest could never be a demon, she thought. That was what it was about, wasn’t it? She’s all but kicked his ideas about the way God was supposed to work in the face, and now he’d come up against something that went so far against what he believed, he couldn’t accept it. Even if it was possible. Even if it was true.

“I’m going to get something to eat,” she said finally, just to fill the silence. “Do you want anything?”

He shook his head. “I ate earlier.”

She brushed past him on her way out the door, letting her hand lightly graze his arm, a sort of offhand reassurance. He shifted slightly towards her, breathing heavier, but she was gone in the next second.

In the kitchen, she filled a mug with ramen noodles and water, then stuck it in the microwave before drifting back out into the main room. Andrew was sitting in the armchair, where he’d most likely been all afternoon, head bent over a book. She hesitated, not sure whether or not to approach- what would she say?- before deciding against it and fishing a cigarette out of her pocket while heading over to the window. Throwing it open, she lifted the cigarette to her lips and lit it, inhaling deeply as she looked up at the night sky. It was unusually clear- normally she couldn’t see anything but a thick blanket of smog, but tonight there was a faint sprinkling of stars peeking through the gloom. It felt like they- or whoever was hanging out behind the, if anyone was hanging out behind them- were saying hello. It was an oddly comforting thought. She hadn’t expected it- couldn’t, really- but having another person inhabiting her body was one of the loneliest fucking experiences of her life. She wondered if God was watching the whole thing.

“Hello?” she said, experimenting. She felt like a dumbass. “Anybody up there?”

No answer.

“If you are, I want you to know . . .” She let the sentence trail off. What could she possibly say? “You’re an asshole for doing this to me?” “Call off your demon rosary?” “Tell me what you want from me?”

“I could really use some help,” she said finally. She wasn’t quite sure what she expected- a burning bush, a lightning bolt, Mufasa’s silhouette in the smog. What happened was . . . nothing. The stars kept on twinkling. There was no cutout in the sky or big booming voice telling her to lead her people out of the desert or give birth to the saviour. Just radio silence.

“Figures.” she muttered.

“Who are you talking to?”

She started, then turned around. Andrew was standing in the hallway looking vaguely confused, a blanket draped over his shoulders. He frowned at her. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.” She stepped away from the window and closed it. “I tried talking to God, but I guess I just got his voicemail. You ever hear from him?”

He smiled a little. “Not in so many words. God rarely speak to His followers in a language we can understand, Frankie. He uses subtler means.”

“Funny,” she said. “I wouldn’t have called nailing holes through my hands and feet ‘subtle.’” She brushed past him on the way to the kitchen. “Why, how did he talk to you?”

Andrew followed her, still holding the blanket around his shoulders. “It’s not as simple as speaking the way you or I would. When God calls on someone, He doesn’t employ words. He can’t. It’s not how He Works.”

“Really?” Frankie popped the microwave door open and took the mug out. “You’d think he could do whatever he wants, considering he’s supposed to be all-powerful.”

“He-”

“Works in mysterious ways, I know.” She leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “So how did he speak to you? You said he called you to the priesthood; you must have heard something.”

Andrew hesitated, rubbing a hand over his face. “I . . .” He sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs. “I doubt you’d be interested.”

“I am,” she insisted. “You must have had a reason. I want to know.”

He blinked and rubbed a hand over his face again, apparently just realizing that his glasses were back on the table in the sitting room. “I entered seminary school in 1994, but it was at the end of a long period of personal crisis. I doubt you’d remember the Cold War-”

“I’m not that young,” she interrupted, smiling a little. “I remember the news broadcasts.”

“Right.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I told you I was an organic chemist before I joined the priesthood. We didn’t work on nuclear weaponry- that’s a physicist’s job- but everyone in those days was talking about the bombs. I looked at my work, and I looked at the damage we had already done during the second world war, and I thought-” He took a deep breath. “Was this worthwhile? Was my pride in my work worth killing thousands of people, maybe millions? I couldn’t justify it.”

She nodded slowly, absorbing what he’d said. “But how did that lead you to the priesthood?”

He smiled. “There was a church a few blocks away from where I worked in those days, and when I went home for the day, I got into the habit of stopping there to sit for awhile, or talk with the priests.” He chuckled. “I asked them so many questions about how they understood God’s plan for us when the world seemed to be going to hell that eventually one of them told me I should go into the seminary to get my questions answered. I laughed at the idea at first, but it became- a fixation, almost. I wanted to understand. I’d always wanted to understand, but now I needed to know what God wanted from us rather than how to break down an organic compound. One of the priests I’d met recommended me to a seminary school in Rome. So I went.”

Frankie nodded, contemplative. “And did you find what you were looking for?” She twirled a fork in the mug and raised a mouthful of noodles to her lips.

He shook his head. “One of the first things we were taught is that we cannot hope to understand God’s plan. He works in His own ways, and our job was to try and carry out His work on earth.”

Frankie frowned. “But how can you carry it out if you don’t know what he wants?”

Andrew laughed. There was an undercurrent of weariness to it. “Guesswork, mostly. Guesswork and the Gospels.”

“Seems like a pretty uncertain way to live,” she said, “considering you tell everyone what to do so God will let them through the pearly gates.”

He shrugged. “We’re more of a work in progress than some of my superiors might like to admit.”

“Mmmhmm.” Frankie set the mug down on the counter and tilted her head, turning over what he’d said. She hadn’t expected it- well, truth be told, she hadn’t expected anything. She didn’t know what made anyone want to go into the priesthood, or into science, or anything else. She’d gone into hairdressing school because she liked cutting her dolls’ hair as a kid, and it made her happy, but it wasn’t a calling. Maybe this was her calling, if she had one. Maybe she was just shit out of luck enough to have a calling that was going to kill her.

“So if you’re a work in progress,” she said carefully, “that means you might not . . . Know everything, right? About who can possess people?”

He hesitated for a moment. “That’s . . . logical, yes.”

“So he could be possessing me,” she said. “And the church just wouldn’t realize.”

He hesitated for another, longer moment. “I suppose it’s possible. But-”

“But,” she finished for him, “you don’t want to believe it.” She watched his face for a reaction. He didn’t deny it.

“No,” he said. “I don’t. I’ve been reading about Father Alameida’s life, and whatever else he was- whatever lead him to leave the Vatican- he was a devout believer in God and his works. The idea of him not only possessing another human being but doing this to them . . .”

“You don’t want to believe it,” she said. “That’s- I get that. But honestly, how much choice have we got at this point? Time’s running out.” She felt like she was spouting movie trailer cliches- time’s running out, we don’t have a choice- but it was true, so she kept pushing forward. “Can we at least- I don’t know, pretend? Act like we do believe it until a better option comes along?” Privately, she thought a better option wasn’t very likely. She felt- or thought she felt- Alameida creeping under her skin, an oily slithering sensation that made her want to scrub herself until she was raw. But Andrew couldn’t feel that, and it didn’t matter how many times she told him so.

“We need to at least try,” she said softly. He took his glasses off again, and rubbed his eyes.

“All right.” he said.

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