Page 168 of Sinister

Were they . . . I glance at Sin from the corner of my eye. He looks the same now as he did in my dreams. Everything is the same.

I squeeze my eyes shut and hug my arms to my chest, more confused than ever.

“Hey, are you all right?” Sin asks when he notices my discomfort.

“Yeah,” I lie. “Just a little spooked out, you know.” I offer a forced smile.

“Oh, Petra. Come here, sweetie,” he murmurs as he draws me in his arms.

“Do you think it’s real? That people could sell their souls to the devil or something like that?”

“Sell their souls?” he asks with a frown. “Nothing mentioned that.”

“Uhm,” I stammer. “But it’s implied, right? Summoning demons to fulfill wishes?”

“I suppose so,” he replies. “As to whether it’s real or not, some people definitely believed it to be real.”

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Believe that.”

He shrugs. “I think there are a lot of things out there beyond our comprehension,” he answers vaguely.

“What would you ask for? If you were to sell your soul to the devil. What is your deepest desire?” I press on. I’m not sure why I ask that question, except the scenes I witnessed in my dreams keep replaying in my mind, and I’m trying to make sense of how everything fits in: me, Sin, that creepy Society.

He snorts. “I would never sell my soul, Petra. How could I when it’s meant to belong to one person only?”

I blink and draw back to study his features.

His words ring in my mind, a strange familiarity to them.

“Would you? Sell your soul?” he asks in a languid voice, his face devoid of any of the previous jocularity.

“I . . . I don’t think so.”

“Enough about that demonic stuff,” he suddenly says, his lighthearted expression back on his face.

“Yeah, we should keep looking,” I agree, though I can’t help but question everything around me, including Sin—and how he is so deft at switching masks.

“We have a lot more to get through,” Sin adds, pointing at the other volumes heaped around us.

Again, we sift through the boxes. Perhaps this time, there’s more urgency in my movements. More than ever, I need to know.

It’s almost as if there’s a door in my mind waiting to be opened, for all the information to flow in and for the dots to be connected. But I’m missing the key to it.

“Here’s another,” I say, my finger tracing the faded ink in the yellowed pages of what looks like an old logbook of sorts.

“Someone’s jotted down timings for the meetings. And look here: a meeting near St. Anselm Hall. It’s from 1894. Says they were gathering to discuss the continuation of the pact.”

“See?” Sin murmurs, excitement bubbling in his voice. “You always dig up the best bits.”

“But how do we find out who they are now?” I ask, feeling both exhilarated and anxious.

While we are talking, something is tugging at the corner of my vision, something red . . .

“Sin, look at these!” I pull out a bundle of dusty papers bound together with a faded ribbon. “Darling love,” I read out loud before my eyes skim the contents of the missive jotted down on the aging parchment. “Sin, these are love letters!”