Precious Blood

  “It’s really hard to hear anything in there,” Agnes protested a little too much.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Lucy said, instantly distracted by a glittering item poking out from a partially opened drawer she spied in the sacristy. “What is that?”

  “It’s a vestment cabinet,” Sebastian explained.

  “No, not the cabinet. Inside the drawer.”

  She wasn’t absolutely sure it wasn’t floaties from the blow she’d taken to the head earlier, so she pointed, hoping the others saw it as well.

  “Priest clothes?” he asked.

  Lucy walked to the drawer and slid it open, revealing a neatly folded pile of the most elaborate garb she’d ever seen. Approaching the cabinet, she spied all manner of majestically embroidered linens in white, red, green, purple, and gold that had been left behind. Sewn with spun silver and gold thread. She admired their beauty even in the darkness, running her fingers over the fabric to feel the heft and detailed stitching. She beckoned the other girls over for a closer look.

  “They don’t make ’em like this anymore,” she said. “These have got to be vintage.”

  “Holy haute couture,” CeCe added, equally enthralled. “This is so tempting.”

  “Bad girl,” Lucy said, flirtatiously thrusting her chest forward. “Good girl!” arching her back and recoiling.

  “Is there a difference?” Cecilia said, unconsciously echoing her dreamspeak.

  Sebastian smiled at her, as if he knew what she was thinking. Like he did in the hospital when they met.

  Lucy pulled out the chasuble and swung it over her head and let it fall onto her shoulders and almost to the floor, striking holier poses. A beautiful, hand-sewn image of a young girl, crowned, holding a palm branch in one hand and a plate in the other, took up the entire back of the garment. The care in making and storing such a piece left them to wonder why anyone would ever leave it behind.

  “What do you think of my Sunday best, girls?” Lucy smirked, sucking her cheeks in and posing. “Too much?”

  “A wolf in shepard’s clothing,” CeCe said as both she and Agnes daintily air-clapped their approval like stone-faced fashion editors in the front row of a fashion show.

  Sebastian smiled, carried along by their enthusiasm and the first truly lighthearted moment any of them had experienced since arriving.

  “Fashion The Passion,” Lucy announced, gesturing at the cabinet like a game show spokesmodel, before throwing gorgeous ponchos to each of the other girls.

  Cecilia tossed the heavy, woolen, deep purple and gold garment over her shoulder like a tunic and fastened it at the waist with one of the scapulars that had been hanging from a hook behind the door. She tied Agnes’s long hair up in a ponytail with another and helped her put the vestment on.

  “Mother Cecilia!” Lucy laughed.

  “And Sister Agnes,” Cecilia said as Agnes slid her arms through the gold-accented side holes of the garment and her slight frame disappeared beneath the white cloth.

  Sebastian looked on, a little more preoccupied. Agnes looked up at the framed portraits and biblical paintings hanging around them. Images of faith and devotion she had seen at school but had little personal experience with.

  “I have an idea,” Lucy said. “We’ve got the coolest runway ever out there. Any takers?”

  “I’m always up for a show,” Cecilia added.

  “The altar?” Agnes asked. “I don’t know. Inappropriate?”

  “Sebastian?” Lucy squawked.

  They turned to Sebastian looking for his approval but he’d already turned away, staring out a small cracked and dirty window at the deluge outside. He had barely heard the question.

  “I guess that’s a no,” Cecilia concluded.

  “Well, it was just an idea,” Lucy added defensively.

  Sebastian didn’t react. He was miles away.

  “These are heavy,” Agnes said wearily, putting an end to the festivities. She didn’t look well. Sebastian took her arm.

  “Last call,” Cecilia barked, as the girls relinquished the clerical attire, dropping it hastily and transforming the sacristy floor into a chain-store fitting room.

  “We should grab some of these,” Sebastian said, taking a handful of stoles and oils to use as bandages and salves for Agnes if needed, with Lucy and Cecilia following suit.

  “Thank you for taking care of me,” Agnes whispered.

  Sebastian squeezed her arm tenderly.

  Agnes eyed the accessories as they carried them back into the church.

  “I feel kind of funny about taking this stuff on my account,” she said. “Like we’re stealing from a church.”

  “We’re not stealing,” Sebastian said. “I only took what we needed.”

  3 “Line one,” the secretary said. “It’s Captain Murphy.”

  Dr. Frey closed his office door and sat forward in his chair. He took a deep breath and picked up the phone.

  “Yes, Officer.”

  “Captain,” he corrected.

  “My mistake. What can I do for you?”

  The relationship between the doctor and the captain was contentious at best, Frey having successfully testified as an expert witness on behalf of defendants to the chagrin of the NYPD and prosecutors on many occasions. It was superficially cordial, but neither was inclined to help the other much beyond what was required professionally.

  “I’m surprised to find you at the hospital, Doctor.”

  “We are on lockdown and running on generators, and I am needed.”

  “I’m practically the only one at the precinct house.”

  “I’m quite short-staffed today myself, as you can imagine, and very busy. Are you calling with news?”

  “Not the news you are waiting for. I’m calling about another patient of yours who’s been reported missing.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Agnes Fremont. Her mother walked into an empty bedroom this morning after an argument the night before.”

  “I see,” Dr. Frey said, fingering his files.

  “I understand that she was recently admitted to the emergency room there after a possible suicide attempt and was kept overnight under observation, under your care?”

  “Yes, that’s right. She was released to her mother’s custody the next day, and that’s the last I’ve seen or heard from her, I’m afraid.”

  “So that was November first?”

  Frey hesitated and checked his desk calendar as he pondered the date.

  “Doctor? Are you there?”

  “Yes,” he replied, uncharacteristically bemused. “She was admitted on the night of October thirty-first, Halloween, and discharged on November first.”

  “All Saints Day,” Murphy observed.

  “What?” Frey asked, still distracted. “Ah, yes, it appears so.”

  “In a sinner and out a saint, huh?” the cop joked.

  “Are you trying to be clever?”

  “Hey, Doctor, if a person with multiple personalities attempts suicide, would you consider that a hostage situation? Now, that’s clever.”

  “Like I said, I’m very busy.” Frey’s reputation for humorlessness was well known. “Especially so now.”

  “Okay, any indications she might take off? The mother is beside herself. You know, with this weather and with all that, you know, happened.”

  “None.”

  “Anything unusual that you noticed or may have discussed with her in your evaluation?”

  “No, but I couldn’t tell you even if there were. Patient confidentiality, Captain. I presume you know the law.”

  The line went silent for a few seconds while the captain pondered how offended he should be by the doctor’s comments.

  “This is a young girl out on the street, for all we know. If someone out there doesn’t get her, the storm will.”

  “The relationship with the mother seemed frayed, as I recall. Couldn’t she be with a friend? She didn’t present to me as a flight risk.”

  “Did she ha
ve any awareness of what transpired the other night?”

  “Not that she discussed with me. Why?”

  “She was in the emergency room when that boy, your patient, escaped.”

  “So?”

  “The video cameras in the building were tampered with so we can’t be sure, but our best guess is that he came out of the hospital through the emergency room.”

  “And you think they might have had some contact?”

  “It’s a long shot, but we have to track down every lead. We’re getting a lot of pressure to find this girl. I don’t want this leaking out and the papers making a connection before we do.”

  “I wouldn’t be too concerned yet,” Frey said, playing it off somewhat dismissively. “What is the status of the investigation into Sebastian’s disappearance?”

  “The status? Ongoing. I assigned a few men to the case who’ve been pulled off on storm duty.”

  Frey wasn’t pleased. “Have you checked the churches yet?”

  “First place we looked. Nothing.”

  “This is an urgent matter. A public-safety issue. Is your department in the habit of letting killers run wild? New York’s Finest, indeed.”

  “What is it with you and this kid?”

  “I know him, Captain. That’s all. Without proper care, he could be a danger to himself and others.”

  “With all due respect, Doctor, your lack of cooperation hasn’t exactly helped move the investigation forward. He isn’t the only suspect.”

  “If you want to speak to other patients under my care, in this ward, you will have to follow procedure. I have a job to do and patient rights to protect.”

  “One of your orderlies is found at the bottom of the elevator shaft, and you are making me get a court order to talk to that bunch of lunatics?”

  “These lunatics are human beings.”

  “I arrested one of your current patients, Sicarius, myself. He’s a soulless, bloodthirsty bastard. What he’s doing up there with you in a minimum-security ward instead of in solitary is a travesty of justice.”

  “I don’t make the laws. Besides, he is medicated, controlled. Hardly any trouble at all.”

  “He is a sick fuck. What he did to those little girls. His own goddamn kids. If you want me to guess who tossed your orderly down the chute, I’d put my money on him.”

  “I don’t want you to guess. I want you to find Sebastian.”

  “The kid has no history of violence.”

  “The fact that he just happened to disappear the night before the orderly was found notwithstanding?”

  “You don’t need to tell me my job, Doctor.”

  “I wouldn’t presume, Captain,” said Dr. Frey, condescension dripping from his voice.

  “For now, the orderly’s death has been reported as accidental. We don’t want to panic the city with wild headlines about escaped mental patients and kidnapped teenagers. Especially not with this weather insanity going on. You understand? We’ll find him.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “I’ll be by to interview Sicarius and a few of the others as soon as this blows over.”

  “You’ll bring the court order, of course?”

  “Thanks for your time, Doctor. If anything occurs to you on the Fremont girl, give me a call.”

  “Good-bye, Captain.”

  Dr. Frey lingered over the calendar and Agnes’s file, reviewing his notes, reconstructing his impressions of her and of their meeting. Of the unstable patients he’d seen recently, she was the most stable, her wounds more a mission statement than mental imbalance. Not being one to take unnecessary chances, he decided to take a closer look.

  “Nurse,” he called. “Get the patient log for the ER from last weekend.”

  “I don’t think anyone is down in records, Doctor,” the nurse advised. “Is it urgent?”

  “Now!”

  13 Cecilia found it difficult to shake off her dream and began to recover only when the sounds of the street began to make their way through the church walls. Agnes was seated nearby, but not too close. She noticed Cecilia’s agitation.

  “Can I get you some water?” Agnes offered, ignoring her own distress.

  “I’m okay,” she snapped. “I just need to be by myself for a minute.”

  CeCe got up and walked toward the back of the church and into the vestibule and paused, looking back at Agnes.

  Sorry, she mouthed to Agnes. Thank you.

  Sebastian, Lucy, and Agnes watched and waited for her to approach the front doors of the church, but she disappeared from their sight before she did. They did hear a door open, however, and the scrape of Cecilia’s boot soles along a staircase. She reappeared above them, in the balcony in front of a massive pipe organ, like some waifish phantom of the rock opera. She looked down at them as if scanning an audience from the stage, then turned her back and sat on the bench before the keyboard.

  She swayed as she touched the keys, which produced a faint sound muted by dust and age, but loud enough for each in the tiny audience below to hear her music. Cecilia broke out into song and a cold sweat. She seemed overtaken, dazed. It was a minor-chord plainsong, mournful and bittersweet. A chant, almost, with a lilting, ethereal melody.

  It was easy for Cecilia to lose herself, but never more than in this place. Empty and in partial disrepair, it resembled nothing so much as a theater set in the process of being built, or maybe taken down—she couldn’t be sure which—but there was so much more embedded in it.

  Lean out your window, golden hair

  I heard you singing in the midnight air

  My book is closed, I read no more

  Watching the fire dance, on the floor

  It was a musical arrangement of a James Joyce poem that she loved. It was like nothing she’d ever played in public before or for anyone but herself. Her own music was aggressive, confrontational, but these were the sounds of acquiescence, of resignation.

  Full of grace.

  “Auditions for choir are next week,” Lucy groused.

  The tinge of jealousy in Lucy’s tone was obvious, as she eyed Sebastian and Agnes enthralled with Cecilia’s performance.

  “Let’s just listen, okay?” Agnes shot back, irritated by Lucy’s pettiness.

  I’ve left my book, I’ve left my room

  For I heard you singing through the gloom

  Singing and singing, a merry air

  Lean out the window, golden hair

  Her voice echoed through the chamber, reverberating through the wooden and metal fixtures placed, stacked, and hung throughout the church.

  When she finished, Cecilia stood quietly and made her way back downstairs to the others.

  “That was beautiful,” Sebastian said. “Spiritual.”

  “Thanks,” she said shyly.

  “Syd Barrett,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Cecilia acknowledged. “A real hero of mine. How did you know?”

  All the strongest connections she’d ever made were through music. Who you listened to, what moved you, told her everything about who you were. It was like a secret language. One she felt she now shared with him.

  “A legend in his own time,” Sebastian added. “And a troubled soul.”

  CeCe nodded.

  “I don’t know where that came from,” Cecilia said, examining her hands in wonder. “I’ve never played anything like that before.”

  “Maybe you’re just . . . inspired,” he said, smiling, grabbing her arms tight.

  Cecilia’s faced flushed and she looked away. She wasn’t easily embarrassed or moved by a guy’s touch, but this felt different. Especially now. Her dream had frightened her, but it also thrilled her in a way she had never been. She only barely knew him, but she felt herself falling for Sebastian.

  Cecilia looked up at him and smiled a little, crossed her arms, which were bare and had turned to gooseflesh from him and the damp interior. She walked over to Lucy and Agnes, where she was greeted with a gentle hug from Agnes and grudging compliments
from Lucy.

  They were all moved, whether they wanted to admit it or not. They each felt like she was singing directly to them and about them. For them.

  “Nice, but it didn’t sound like a hit to me,” Lucy said defensively.

  “What is your obsession with being the biggest and the best?” Agnes asked.

  “I wasn’t completely serious, but think about it, why bother pursuing anything unless you shoot for the top?” Lucy spat.

  “What about really moving just a few people?” Cecilia said, joining the fray in her own defense. “I’d rather just reach a few people who really get it.”

  “How arrogant,” Lucy chided. “People who get it? It’s your job to make them get it.”

  “A little sensitive about the whole selling-out thing, aren’t we?” CeCe pushed back. “Art is not a job, or shouldn’t be.”

  “Please,” Lucy countered. “If you wanted to be musician, you can do that in your parents’ basement or in front of your bedroom mirror. The minute you put your music out there, charge for a download or a ticket at some old-man bar, you are in the music business. You are asking people to make a purchasing decision, to choose.”

  “And what are you selling?” Cecilia asked.

  “A fantasy.” Lucy said. “Me.”

  “You’d rather be a fantasy?” Agnes asked.

  “It’s all about the numbers, about outreach. There is only one of me,” Lucy said, “but everybody has a fantasy.”

  “Well, before you hit send, it might be a good idea to think about what you are putting out there first,” Cecilia said.

  “Womp. Resentful much?” Lucy scoffed. “Maybe I’d feel the same if I was playing those toilet bowls you headline.”

  “I’m trying to reach people,” CeCe said. “Not rape people or whore myself out to the highest bidder.”

  “Whoring? You must have us confused.”

  “Not really. I guess I just prefer to bare my soul than sell it.”

  “Well, I say go big, or don’t go. Anything else is a bust.”

  “She reached me,” Agnes said quietly. “She played how I’ve always felt inside.”

  Sebastian watched the argument go down and listened carefully to each girl make her case. What they were saying and what they meant to say.