Mary Nealy - Ten Plagues

“It was obviously wrong.” Paul didn’t think he quite managed neutrality with that comment.

“Obviously.” Keren nodded. “I really didn’t think he’d be put off by it. He produced the ring and I said yes.”

Paul could hear the bewilderment and hurt in her voice.

“We spent hours that night talking about the future. He owned a house, but he offered to sell it, and we’d buy one together. We talked about me being a cop, and he wasn’t real thrilled with it, but I’d told him it was a calling and I expected to make a career of it and he seemed okay with it. We talked a lot about our faith and wanting to raise our children the way we’d been raised, and somehow we worked our way around to that story I just told you.”

“Fourth grade.”

Nodding, Keren said, “He was really taken aback by it. He started asking a lot of questions, really detailed stuff, because by then I’d already confronted a lot of people in trouble. The questions took a turn that was weird, accusatory. Honestly, it reminded me a little of that mess in fourth grade, and I kept expecting him to call the principal and my parents.”

“I wonder why he reacted so strongly. It seems strange that he would.”

“He changed the subject back to my work, and suddenly we were having a fight. The first real fight we’d ever had. We were so compatible. The whole thing was shocking. By the time the date came to an end, the engagement was over.”

“How long had you been dating?”

“Close to a year.”

“And that was it? You couldn’t work things out?”

“I couldn’t even get him to talk to me. I phoned a few times and he wouldn’t answer. I still thought it was about being a cop at that point. After a couple of weeks of him ducking me, I went to his house and waited for him one night, and when he came home, he had another woman with him.”

“In two weeks he’d found someone else?”

“When they walked up to me, the woman he was with said, ‘Is this the exorcist cop?’ “

Paul flinched.

“He asked me if I was going to add stalking to everything else.”

“You dated him for a year and never saw this side of him?”

“Not helping, Paul.” “Sorry.”

“It was a betrayal like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Not just that he was so… repulsed. But that he’d obviously told this woman. Made a joke out of it.” She shook her head silently for a while. “I felt like God gave me a choice right there and then to serve Him or to have a man in my life. Well, I couldn’t believe it was right not to serve Him. So I decided marriage just wasn’t for me. Not in God’s plan for me. If I was called to be a police officer and given a gift that was so hard to understand, God’s will must be for me to remain alone. And that was it. I walked away. I haven’t dated. I certainly haven’t kissed a man since. And I’ve never talked about my gift to anyone again.”

“I’m glad you walked away. What did he want you to do? Ignore a gift that could help so many people?”

“No, I think he just wanted me to get away from him and stay away.” She pulled herself out of her dark mood enough to glare at Paul. “And there’s no could about it. I do help people.”

“Sorry.” Paul was glad to hear her temper, much better than the hurt. “I didn’t mean you didn’t. I’m honored that you felt like you could talk about it with me.”

“You should be.”

“I’d like you to come over to the mission. If I knew there was something more than simple human weakness involved with some of my people, maybe I could help them more.”

“There’s more.”

Paul said cautiously, “More gifts?”

“No… well, sort of. My gift is discerning spirits—that’s not only demons. I can also discern when the Holy Spirit is flowing strongly in someone.”

Paul looked at her for a long time. “That would be such a wonderful thing to see.”

“It is. I sensed the Holy Spirit in you the first time I saw you lying there all beat up in that hospital. You have a spirit of courage and joy that is so strong.”

“Was that before or after you started yelling at me?”

Keren was silent for a few seconds. Sheepishly, she said, “Before.”

Paul looked at her.

She gave him a quick glance then went back to staring out the windshield. “Your spirit, your love for the people who come to your mission, it has an unusually powerful effect on me, Paul. I’m afraid I’m letting it confuse me.”

She rested her elbow on the open window and propped her head up with her fist. “That kiss—it shouldn’t have happened, but there’s something…” Keren shrugged.

“Let’s deal with the kiss later.”

Keren gave him a dry look, like she knew he didn’t want to deal with it at all, and she agreed; but they were still going to have to deal with it.

“So if you saw the Holy Spirit in me, why did you get so angry?”

Keren gave him a disgruntled look. “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

Paul sat straighter in his seat. With all the other revelations tonight, he had a feeling this was the one she wanted to talk about least, and therefore was the one that he needed to hear most. “I asked you if we met. We did. I knew it. But I can’t remember when.”

Keren shook her head and crossed her arms. She said in a disgusted voice, “We didn’t exactly meet. But you didn’t like the way I handled a case and tried to have me busted out of the police force. All I can guess is you must have done it so much that one little incident doesn’t carry much weight.”

“I did what?”

“You heard me.”

“When? What happened?”

“Let’s leave it for now,” Keren said. “I’m sorry I brought it up. You tried to paint me as an incompetent little girl who was too softhearted to arrest the bad guys, and I was tough enough to survive the suspension, plus the harassment from every cop who knew what happened.”

“You can’t make a statement like that and then let it drop.”

“You dropped the kiss. Now it’s my turn to drop something.”

“Keren,” Paul said, doing his best to sound threatening. He’d been good at threatening at one time. She gave him a You-don’t-scare-me look.

Finally, Paul said, “All right, fine. But I’m going to find out what it is. I’m a cop—”

“You were a cop,” Keren corrected him.

“I’ll track it down. Or maybe I’ll just pry it out of you.”

“Why don’t you just reread some of your old press clippings? You had enough of those.”

Paul heard the venom in her voice and wondered how they’d gotten from a kiss to this. He studied her mulish profile and tapped his foot on the floorboard irritably, then he decided to change the subject. For now. “You reacted so strongly when I told you Pravus was Latin for ‘demon’ because you sensed this about him?”

“It’s bad.” Keren nodded. “Evil is permeating every aspect of this case. Nothing bothers O’Shea, but the crime scene, the blood… it really shook him. And I’ve never seen Dr. Schaefer lose her cool. They don’t know it, but they’re sensing the demon in this, too.”

Paul thought of the ME’s unsteady voice during the autopsy.

“I’ve never had an experience like this,” Keren said. “Where I could feel the demonic presence even when the person hosting the demon isn’t around. I felt it at the explosion, at the fountain where we found Juanita, at the autopsy, in LaToya’s apartment…”

“Do you think you could sense him if he were near?”

“I don’t know. Whatever is inside of him is incredibly powerful. If I could focus on him with some internal radar, it would be the first time I ever have.”

“Are you sure?”