“Jared ... Don’t you get it? She likes you.Thatway. And she thought you liked her that way too.”
“Oh.” He sat there for a moment. “Oh. Yeah. Well. I guess that’s awkward.”
I exhaled. Beside me, Eddie looked like he was about to burst into laughter. I shot him a hard glare, and he immediately sobered. With a sigh I turned my attention back to Jared. “Look, just ... just give us some time, okay? Do you have a phone number?”
“Um, yeah, of course.”
Now, Eddie did snort. “He’s a vampire, not a Luddite.”
The sharp blare of a horn interrupted the conversation before I could tell Eddie that I wasn’t actually questioning whether or not the boy was attuned to technology.
“That’s my ride,” Eddie said. “You fill me in later. Normally, I wouldn’t want to miss a bit of this drama, except tonight I’ve got plans for some drama of my own.” He waggled his brows as he stood.
As he patted himself down, checking for his wallet and keys, I turned my attention back to Jared. “You should go too,” I said. “I’ll be in touch. I need to talk to Allie. And I need to talk to my husband. And then I need to talk to her father. You get that, right?”
He nodded.
“And after all that, I need to talk to the Vatican.” I flashed him the kind of smile that could either be an invitation or a threat. “I guess I’m just one of those overprotective moms.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But I think most moms don’t vet teenage boys through the Vatican...”
“I have not worked directly with this vampire,” Father Corletti told me. “But I am aware of him. Over the years, Father Donnelly has cultivated a network of spies. This boy—this vampire—is among them. Apparently he even helped your Mr. Duvall—the demon version—smuggle the key from California to Rome.”
“Really?” We’d encountered the Thomas Duvall demon in Rome, only learning that he’d been aligned with the good side after he’d been impaled through the eye by one of the bad guys. His mission, though, had been to hide the key that could open the gate to hell from the demonic minions who were tryingto do exactly that. “He really worked with Duvall and that contingent?”
“So Father Donnelly has told me.”
“Father Donnelly?” I repeated, feeling a hard rock form in my gut.
I didn’t trust Father Donnelly. Father Donnelly was the man who worked with Eric’s parents with the crazy goal of breeding the ultimate Demon Hunter. Frankly, I would have thought a priest would know better than to play God, and the fact that he played that role with my husband and daughter just pissed me off all the more.
“I know you do not trust him,mia cara,but we must all be forgiven our missteps. His heart was in the right place, and his goal, as is all of ours, is to hold back the evil that wants to invade this world.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Honestly, where that man is concerned, sometimes I’m not so sure.”
“I am.”
I said nothing.
“Katherine?”
“I trust you, Father. You know that. But I think you’re wrong on this.”
“Then we will have to agree to disagree. But if you trust me, I hope that you will at least give him the benefit of the doubt.”
I closed my eyes, not liking the direction of this conversation. Because I did trust Father Corletti. The gentle priest was the closest thing in the world I had to a parent, and I loved him with all my heart.
If he said I could trust Father Donnelly, then I would do my very best to find a way to do that. But that didn’t mean it was going to be easy.
“But what about this vampire?” I pressed. “You don’t know him at all? He’s just one of Father Donnelly’s spies? How can I trusthim? For all I know, he has Father Donnelly duped.”
Father Corletti’s low chuckle washed over me. “I know that you do not think highly of Father Donnelly. I wish that were different,mia cara. But again, I must tell you that you can trust the boy because Father Donnelly trusts him.”
I didn’t mean to, but I actually snorted in disbelief. “I don’t know, Father. I don’t think I can.”
“That is one of your best qualities, Katherine. You have faith, and yet you do not take the world on faith. But, my child, at some point, we must make the choice to not only believe that good exists, but to see it when we look at the world. Everyone has the capacity for good, no matter what is in them.”
“You really believe that?”
