Page 9 of Wayward Daughter

Caleb and I spent the day holed up in the rectory trying to research his hex. We’d prayed and prayed for it to be lifted, but we were missing something. We didn’t even know what the hex did. Every time his heart rate got up, so would his rage. It wasn’t like him. He was always calm and collected. We knew it was a hex because the witch marked him before she died. A tattoo of a nail wrapped in thorns appeared on his wrist and the thorns had been creeping up every time he lost it.

We just couldn’t figure out what the hex was or what was going to happen when the thorns covered his entire body.

“I have news!” Saul announced.

“Proceed.”

“Logan LeDoux found me and we had a chat.”

Caleb and I both groaned. For different reasons. That girl was confusing. She said the weirdest, most offensive things and her mutant dog peed on me most of the time, but I found myself looking for her at jobs and getting upset when she wasn’t there.

Caleb had to hear all about it in my confessions. If he hadn’t decided he didn’t like her after she spanked him when they first met, he certainly did after I unloaded about how she was invading my dreams.

I was certain it was witchcraft. It was always the same dream. I’d found myself sketching her all the time. I didn’t really have time to paint anymore, but my sketchbooks were filled with Logan LeDoux.

“If you see that girl again, you throw holy water at her and leave. We still haven’t tested her to see if she’s a demon or supernatural,” Caleb said.

Exactly. We should have done that ages ago. It would have saved me a lot of sleepless nights. Saul just rolled his eyes and looked annoyed with us.

“She’s trying to help us. She said it might not just be demons at the house. Logan said the Flame has their own versions of the Esoteric Texts and theirs says that many demons should never get out at once and when they do, they start gathering other supernaturals. Her books don’t say what the goal is, but she wants to work together and see if ours do. A share of information, if you will.”

Caleb might not be up for it, but I wanted to get my hands on those books. Knowledge was power and you should always know your enemy. The Flame had been around longer than Venatio Daemonum. Our methods completely differed, but it would be foolish to think they might have information we didn’t. Venatio Daemonum had been around since the Dark Ages, but there was no reason our methods had to stay that way. They could be updated.

Was it really such a bad thing to share information with Logan? Instead of fighting the Flame, we should be trying to save them and turning them from their pagan ways.

“We can’t give her access to those texts,” Caleb said. “I’m not sure we should work with her either. She likes to bewitch priests.”

“No, she doesn’t. She can’t stand any of us and gives us a hard time because we act like we know better because we are men,” Saul said.

“That’s not⁠—”

“How many of our jobs would have gone easier if we had a trained female on our team? One might have a completely different interpretation of the Esoteric Texts. She explained it to me. They aren’t invoking Satan. It’s just a peanut allergy.”

“Explain,” I demanded.

Because Saul wasn’t wrong. Some of our jobs would have been less messy with a woman. All the texts had been translated from Latin by men in a completely different era, but some of them were written by nuns. I was working on new translations from a modern lens, but having the female gaze on it would be beneficial.

But I had no idea what Saul meant by peanut allergy because I was pretty sure he was still high. When he launched into a rambling explanation, it made a lot of sense. Exorcisms were brutal. People sometimes didn’t make it. A long time ago, they happened when there was no demon there, they just didn’t know what psychosis was and just made things worse.

If there was a way that spared the human, we should at least entertain looking into it. I wanted to know more. And she was right. Most of the time, when we ended up at a demonic possession and the Flame wasn’t trying to stop us, it was two at most.

Caleb was in charge though. We could talk about it, but the decision was his. We could all get into trouble for this, but this could also bring the entire organization in a new era.

“I’d have to give approval and they aren’t going to give it. I’d love to get my hands on their books and find out more about their methods when she’s not in the mood to spank me and bewitch my priests, but there’s no way we’ll get permission to collaborate with the Flame. So, we’re going to find out everything we can about that house and deal with it without her.”

“She said she might know something about your hex and would be willing to look into it,” Saul said.

Sadly, we were getting nowhere with that and the thorns spread every time we went on a job. It was close to his heart now. We could really use any help available on that. Caleb was a friend and mentor. I had a feeling whatever the hex was, it was going to kill him. I didn’t want to lose him.

Her methods were probably completely unorthodox and the Church would have found them repugnant. They might actually save his life.

Logan LeDoux could have known exactly what the hex was and how to lift it and our superiors still wouldn’t have given us permission to work with her.

These utter fuck nuts. Saul grabbed my phone and programmed his number in while a bunch of drag queens performed My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors by Moxy Früvous. He said he’d contact me with an update. The giant sent me a sad cat meme and nothing else.

And I hated that I knew what that meant. Those idiotic priests were going to get themselves killed. Pan made me take a big brown eyes sad puppy pic and send it. Saul replied right away.

Saul-So you’re thinking what I’m thinking.