Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(42)

“Psst.”

He swung to the side and saw Leticia sitting alone in a back row to the right. True to her word, she was dressed casually in the same pink hoodie she’d been wearing the first time they met, with her hair twisted up in those messy Princess Leia buns. And when she flashed him a big white smile, he forgot all about his visions of human sacrifice.

He ducked into a seat next to her and dropped his backpack onto the floor. Holy crap, she was way prettier than he remembered—and he’d been remembering her a lot. On the bus ride into Morella, he’d tried to think up something suave and classy to say to her this time, but all he could manage was “Uuhh, what’s up?”

Ugh.

“We can’t talk when the ritual starts,” she whispered. “Here. Read this. It’ll tell you what’s going on.” She shoved one of the programs in front of him. When he took it, her hand touched his. Goose bumps spread up his arm.

“Thanks,” he said, feeling a new kind of breathlessness coming on that had nothing to do with his race to the lodge. His hand was tingling where she’d touched him, and she smelled like strawberry jam. He wondered if that was her lip gloss, because she had a lot of it on this time, and she hadn’t before.

For some reason, that only made him more nervous. His eyes skimmed over the front of the program. Sophic Mass. Some diagrams of a man in ritual robes posing like he was doing lame karate moves. A bunch of poems. A list of saints he’d never heard of. Wasn’t William Blake a writer? And since when was King Arthur a saint? This was some crazy shit, and whoa, hold on. Right in the middle of the list was a name that jumped off the page: Saint Sélène the Moonchild.

Cady was a saint?

Jupe opened his mouth to ask Leticia if she knew about Cady, but when he glanced up, he caught her staring. And that made his chest feel warm. It also made him forget what he was going to ask.

“Any questions?” she whispered.

“Are we going to have to sing any hymns?”

She grinned. “You volunteering?”

“You don’t want to hear me sing, believe me,” Jupe whispered. “The only time I sing is in the car with my dad’s girlfriend, and only because her voice is worse than mine.”

For some reason, this made her laugh quietly. Then she whispered, “My sister’s a good singer. I’m not bad, but I’m not good, either.”

The recorded music stopped, and a man in blue robes sat down at an organ near the altar. When he put his hands on the keyboard, a startlingly loud opening chord reverberated through the room.

A soft spotlight in the ceiling flicked on behind them. Jupe looked over his shoulder to see a procession of three robed magicians walking up the front aisle—super-slowly, as if they were in a wedding. The one in the middle was a Latina woman in a wine-colored robe embroidered with symbols. Beneath a weird pointy hat, dark hair cascaded down her back. Between the robe and the funny hat and the tall wooden staff in her hand, she sort of looked like a bishop crossed with Dumbledore. She also looked like the leader, and when she passed by, he glanced back at Leticia and mouthed, “Mom?”

She smiled proudly and nodded. Jupe gave her a thumbs-up before turning his attention back to the procession. Two of the robed people flanked the altar. They looked a few years older than him. Leticia’s mom stood in front and said something in a foreign language. Definitely not Spanish. Maybe French. Whatever it was, the entire congregation repeated it. Leticia’s mom made a gesture. Everyone stood and repeated the gesture. Jupe scrambled to his feet as a dull panic throbbed inside his stomach. He wished he’d read the stupid program.

The next few minutes were a blur. Leticia’s mom switched to English and called out for a bunch of stuff—the names of some pillars, angels, elements. Everyone got up and sat down a billion times. It got a little monotonous, and Jupe’s gaze was drifting down to Leticia’s breasts. Then the spotlight in the back of the room began moving, and everyone’s head swiveled to watch two more people coming down the aisle.

A man holding a spear and a dark-haired woman who was dressed like some sort of Arabian princess or a belly dancer, with a belt of golden coins and a lot of long necklaces. He could almost see through her robe, which was super-distracting. She parted the curtains at the altar and closed them behind her. Now he could just see the shape of her standing behind the curtains. What was she doing back there?

After more ceremonial stuff, the guy used his spear to part the curtain around the altar, and the spotlight fell on the belly-dancer chick. She sat among the pillows on the red table with her legs dangling off, knees spread.

Naked.

Oh.

My.

God.

Naked chick on the altar! Breasts, belly, dark triangle of hair between her legs. As if she didn’t even give two shits about the fact that an entire room of people were staring up at her. And the guy with the spear was kneeling in front of her, praying, it looked like, with his face right at crotch level. The bead of sweat that had trickled down Jupe’s back earlier suddenly became a waterfall, and—oh, God, no—he felt himself getting hard.

Don’t look at the naked girl. Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look. How could he not look? It was the first naked chick he’d seen in person. Ever. Well, he once accidentally saw Mrs. Holiday come out of the guest shower naked, but that was horrifying.

This was not.