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“You’re a vampire,” snapped Brother Diaz. “Of course you hate the Church.” “On the contrary, I am a great admirer of the tenets of your religion. I merely find it a shame that the Saved are, as a rule, so little like their Saviour.”
Every step was painful, but every step had been painful for two lifetimes, now. Jakob kept taking them. The paces don’t have to be quick, or long, or pretty. They just have to keep going.
Lying was a sin, apparently, unless you did it outrageously and persistently enough, in which case it qualified as scripture.
Sunny would’ve liked to ask her if she was all right but there was no way now and probably it would’ve gone wrong somehow. She’d practise in the mirror for hours but her face was all pointy and just wouldn’t twist the same ways as everyone else’s. When she tried to be sincere, she’d come over sarcastic. When she tried to be generous, she’d come over superior. When she tried to be friendly, she’d come over as a dirty elf bitch.
She had this way of talking that made people like her somehow. Always seemed much more like magic to Sunny than just disappearing.
Perhaps, as Cardinal Zizka said, one must sometimes use the weapons of the enemy against them, but if the righteous will stoop to any depths, what separates them from the wicked? Where was the line? Was there a line?
She was furious, and no one noticed, and she was terrified, and no one noticed, and she was miserable, and no one noticed, or would’ve cared if they had.
Which left Jakob, one more time, where all men will ultimately find themselves. Alone, with the consequences of what they’ve done.
An owl hooted somewhere, off in the trees, low and lonely. “I never can make friends.”
But Alex had a soft spot for hard-used, unlovely things. Came from being one, maybe.
“You need to stop clinging to the notion that there’s only one right path. You’ll waste half your time panicking you’re not on it, and the rest backtracking to find it.
