Page 299 of Sinister

“Yes.”

One word. The air becomes thick and suffocating. Frey Pedro’s lips curl in a malicious smile.

“As you wish,” he mentions. Using a knife, he makes a cut diagonally on his palm. He hands it to Sister Celine to do the same, and she does, without question.

As Frey Pedro extends his hand toward her, I get a strong feeling of fear in the pit of my stomach.

“Sister Celine,” I say as I reach for her. But she shies away from me.

She has her back to me, her attention wholly focused on Frey Pedro. And slowly, she shakes his hand, their blood mingling together.

And they are not the only ones.

Around the table, the other two friars do the same with Sister Mary and Sister Prudence before smiling sweetly and engaging the other sisters in conversation.

“What is going on here?” I demand, shooting to my feet.

Frey Antonio’s expression changes from a pleasant one to one filled with malice. He gets up from his place at the dinner table and comes to my side, taking a seat next to me.

“Sister Agatha, was it not?” There is a strange lull to his voice. The words are suspicious—the same questions have been posed to the other nuns before they gave in to this madness.

And yet, I cannot stop myself from replying.

“Yes, it is.”

“Lovely convent you have here,” he continues, and with each spoken word, my body relaxes more. My mind, too, stops questioning why this is wrong.

“Yes, very lovely,” I reply mechanically.

My mind is screaming at me that it is not lovely, that I should leave, but I cannot seem to do so.

“Ah, I see. You lost someone.”

I blink. H-how does he know?

“Yes,” I reply—once more without truly meaning to.

“Your child and your . . .” he pauses, “lover.”

“Yes.”

“You can get them back, you know.”

Fighting this maddening pull he has on me, I manage to say something that goes against what I should say, what he wants me to say.

“But they’re dead. I cannot get them back.”

He narrows his eyes.

“I can bring them back for you.”

“W-what? Impossible.”

He smiles and shakes his head. “Nothing is impossible for me. They—” he motions toward the other two friars—“can solve matters of the heart, cure illnesses, but only I can bring the dead back.”

“Surely that is against Christian doctrine.”

“Naïve child,” he laughs. “Did the Bible not speak of resurrection? I am merely precipitating the timeline.”