He inhaled hard, and everything in his soul tumbled out to her.“You’ve seenwhat I can do.You’ve seenwhat it’s like when I read the Gospel or preach a homily. That mustmeansomething. Itcan’tjust be a parlor trick.”
She shook her head. “No one who has seen you preach thinks it’s a parlor trick. Sister Mariam’s religious friends went to Mass that morning foryou.I was amused at first because I thought they were going just to ogle you, but they went tohearyou, not look at you.”
“Thenwhycan I do it? What is thatlightthat blows through me, thatpressurethat happens when Ifeelsomething, and then I can convince people of almost anything? It can’t be anaccident.It has to bein mefor a reason.”
Dree was listening to him, biting her plush lip and staring at the corner of the ceiling while she considered what he’d said. “But it’s not only religious.”
“But it’ssomething—”
“But that time at the Castle of Versailles, at the party—when you convinced Sir Marvin Meriwether-Stone to invest in the company that your friend, Micah Shine, the guy with the pretty eyes, was founding—you did it then.”
Maxence tried not to let his jaw drop. “You remember their names?”
She shrugged. “Nurses have to remember which patient is which and what drugs they were given and when. You need to know right away when a patient is crashing. A decent memory is part of the job. But the point is, you did it at Versailles, and you were doing it again at supper last night. It’s notjustin church. And you said you’ve been able to do it for a long time, like, when you were a kid.”
“Yes, but—”
She pressed her lips together and nodded like she’d added something else to a list in her head. “How long have you been able to convince people of stuff?”
He shook his head. “I convinced the kidnappers to give me a boat and let me go because they believed I was one of them.”
“Right. So it’snotjust about religion. Why do youwantto be a priest?”
It was all too confusing. “It’s my whole life.”
“Have anyone ever asked you if you were sure about your vocation?”
He squeezed his eyes shut and laughed a tortured chuckle. “Every priest I’ve ever met has questioned me about it. Father Moses, Father Xavier, Father Gustavo Merino—”
“Who’s that guy?”
“He took the pontifical name of Pope Vincent de Paul when he was elected pope.”
“Oh,yeah,yourbuddy,thePope.Wait,hold ona frickin’ second.The Popeasked you whether you really want to be a priest?”
He shrugged.
Dree shook her head.“Dude.”
“But I’vealwayswanted to be a priest.”
She ducked and growled at him, “But you‘slip’every chance you get.”
“Surely, notevery—”He stopped talking because her blond eyebrows raised in disbelief. “But Ishouldn’t.”
“You keep asking God to grant you sobriety and chastity,but not yet.”
“It’s a joke,” Maxence muttered.
“I think it’s one of those jokes where you’re actually telling the truth. Would it be better forMonacoif you walked away from the throne?”
That caught Maxence under his rib cage like a meat hook, and he couldn’t answer.
She said, “You’ve said that you want to be a priest because you want to make the world a better place. Would theworldbe better if you allowed your uncle Jules to be the Prince of Monaco?”
Maxence’s teeth grated in his mouth. “No. The world would be very much worse if Jules had complete authority over forty thousand people and the power and wealth of the Principality of Monaco. He’s evil.”
Dree was staring right into Max’s eyes, unblinking, not like a snake but like an angel, one of the cherubim whose righteous eyes could see everything but had no pity for flawed mortals. “You say you want to be a priest. Aren’t priests supposed to, like, fight evil?”
