Devil Smoke by C. J. Lyons Read Free Book Online

whole week.
    Nellie scrunched up her face, blinking back tears. Everyone was gone. Everyone always left her behind.
    She thought of walking into class, Sister Agnes yanking her by the hand, giving her that “you’re wasting my time, young lady” look while she told everyone, including Miss Cortez—who was so nice and who Nellie wanted so much to like her—that Nellie had broken the rules and come in late from morning recess and disrespected her teacher and classmates and needed to apologize and promise not to disrespect again even though it hadn’t been Nellie’s fault, and why were grownups in charge of what she did, anyway?
    They were all stupid, stupid, stupid. They left and didn’t say goodbye and they didn’t do what they were supposed to do like save people or not leave or not go missing and they were just…
    “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
    The sound of her voice startled her. But she felt better. And the girl in the mirror-door looking back at her seemed to approve. Nellie hunched her shoulders hard, tightening up her elbows and fists, stomping around in a circle. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
    The forbidden word filled her with power. No wonder grownups said it was a bad word. “We don’t use that word,” they said, but they lied—she heard them use it all the time.
    “Stu- pid , stu-pid, stu -pid.” Oh, she liked that last way: it felt like she was spitting out something yucky. Another thing “we don’t do.”
    Well, Nellie was going to do what she wanted, go where she wanted, and she was most certainly not going to walk into Sister Agnes’s office and say sorry for being late because she was the only one skinny enough to slip between the fence bars and chase after the ball. Her breath whooshed out of her and she reeled against the sandstone wall, dizzy with rebellion.
    She glanced across the playground to the building that towered over everything, even Sister Agnes’s school. The church. It was older than the school—older than her Papa Callabrese, even. It had been here forever, built of stones that were slick and cold to touch and as big around as she was tall. Tall and quiet and solid and peaceful. The church wasn’t going anywhere. It was here to stay.
    Plus, soon, Nellie thought, Miss Cortez would be leading all the K-1 students to morning Mass. Nellie could hide in the church and rejoin them—and no one would ever have to know. Especially Sister Agnes.
    It took both hands and all her strength to haul open the towering wooden door to the church. Inside, it was dark, though not like at night when she couldn’t see, more like shadows stacked on top of each other. She shivered. Kinda spooky.
    The door swung shut behind her with a thud, sealing her in, and she jumped. Then she dragged in a breath, inhaling vaporized beeswax and incense and all sorts of holy stuff that tickled her nose. She strode forward. It was church. Safe haven from evil—that’s what Father Stravinsky said.
    Dipping her fingers in the holy water and dripping it as she made the sign of the cross, she stepped from the little room in the front past two more massive doors that were always open to the real inside. Here the ceiling went up and up and up until large wooden beams met like Noah’s ark turned upside down. Stained glass lined the walls, casting sparkly splashes of color across the gray marble floor and the dark wooden pews.
    She stepped forward, feeling bold, ignoring the skittery feeling dancing inside her stomach. She crept past the alcove where the Lady of Sorrows was, making sure not to look at the larger than life statue of the young mother cradling her dead son, a big sword piercing her heart. If she looked at it too long, the Lady looked like Mommy, and she couldn’t even think about Mommy with a sword sticking out of her heart.
    Where to go? Should she crawl into a pew and hide? Or behind the curtain that led behind the altar? Maybe hide in the back corner?
    Glancing around at possibilities, she made the