“Mafioso.”
“Murderer.”
The murmured whispers made me laugh. I glanced around, but no one dared to meet my gaze.
“Enough!” Mrs. Vasco snapped, her positive, sunny attitude fading for a moment.
A mask-slip moment where I could see how much it cost her to stand in front of this class of lost souls every day and pretend so hard that they were going to be anything but losers when they were older. More than half were headed to prison; the rest would be in gangs, on welfare, or sponging off family for the rest of their days.
Me? I had no intention of doing any of that.
“Now, you see, I might not have learned much this year in this shithole, but even I know that you need to get paid from a job... so murderer is out.”
Mrs. Vasco let out a long sigh, not even trying to hide her relief.
I twirled my knife between my fingers.
“But you did get me thinking,” I continued. “Sicario. That sounds much more like me.”
Sicario. Hitman.
“That sounds about perfect.”
Maybe Mrs. Vasco would be proud to know that her career day had helped at least one of her students find his profession. I doubted it, however. She was too good of a person to be able to stomach that a kid she’d once taught had really grown up to be a killer for hire. A mercenary, an assassin. A dark mark on the world.
She was good and kind and godly, like none of the men in robes at Hallow Hall. Real goodness. No, God had no place here at Hallow Hall. There were only men and the evil they did. The place reeked of it. God had forsaken Hallow Hall and all the souls within. Maybe I’d finally found a place to belong. I’d been forsaken by the world for longer than I could remember.
I placed the brief back in my bag.
It had taken a while to track Vargas down. Hallow Hall wasn’t exactly well-known. In fact, far too many people went out of their way to keep it secret, which only made me more curious about the company that was funding this place. It wasn’t the Church, that was for sure. There was no way they would. But someone was. That was clear.
Still, I didn’t need to get involved with any of that. I was only here to carry out a contract. Kill Vargas and get out of here, throw salt behind me and try to forget that such a place existed.
I couldn’t help. I’d given up trying. No matter what I did, someone innocent got hurt. I’d learned that the hard way, and not getting involved was the only answer.
Still, if I were going to get involved... I’d start with her.
The girl who spoke to the voices in her head.
The one who’d stared at me like she knew every single bad thing I’d ever done, like it was written across my face.
The one who’d called me Lucifer.
I chuckled as I remembered her wide eyes, gaze fastened on me, and her look of pure certainty. Tipping my head back, I exhaled a plume of smoke up to the ceiling. It had been too long since someone hadseenme. The real me. I’d gotten good at hiding in plain sight. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, and these robes should have made me invisible. Beyond reproach. But not to her. One glance and she’d known. Maybe she really did have an angel on her shoulder. But if she did, it was a shitty one if she’d ended up here.
That fucker, Father Pavol, was a new level of low when it came to humanity. Subjecting a poor young woman to his bullshit therapy just to get turned on, so he could go to his bathroom and jerk off over the john, was depraved, and not in a fun way.
Maybe the good father could have an accident while I was here. Why not? Accidents happened all the time.
Katarina Dmitrova.
Her name was beautiful, just like her. She was distant, elusive, living in a world in her head, speaking with spirits, or voices. She didn’t seem of this world. With her white clothes, long, tumbling blond locks, and serene expression... she was the fallen angel, not me. Otherworldly beauty.
She wasn’t the first woman I’d met who believed she was talking to angels.
My bag was gaping open, and I spied the top of a notebook calling to me from the depths. It was in my hand before I could question it.
It was the only thing that the hospital where my mother had died had bothered to send me, along with a letter informing me that she’d passed. I carried it with me everywhere. My last remaining artifact of the life I’d lost. Once upon a time, when there had been a person in this world who’d loved me.