I frowned. “Your emails? Have we met?”
“No,” she said, a soft giggle floating toward me, “but I know who you are. I just wanted to meet you.”
“Who I am?” I asked warily.
She leaned in and whispered with a conspiratorial smile, “The grim reaper.”
Besides the fact that I almost fell over, I handled her statement pretty well. I glanced at a wide-eyed Cookie, who was too busy gawking to notice she’d knocked over her coffee cup. I cleared my throat and gestured toward the cup. Fortunately, she’d downed most of its contents. She grabbed a tissue to see to the small spill as I led the sister into my office.
“Can I get you some coffee?” I asked, heading in that general direction. It’d been minutes since my last cup.
She shook her head.
“Well, God knows I need some,” I said as I poured.
“He probably does,” she said, and with an inward cringe I realized what I’d said. “I like your paintings.”
Cookie took another cup as well and sat beside my desk while the nun sat across from it.
“Thank you. So, can I ask your name?”
“Of course,” she said with another giggle. “I’m Sister Mary Elizabeth. But you know me as Mistress Marigold.”
I paused in the middle of sitting, looked her over again, then continued to sit. “You’re Mistress Marigold?”
She offered a patient smile and a nod.
“You’re not what I was expecting,” I said after taking a long sip. I was expecting a New Age kind of woman with love beads, tarot cards, and scented oils. Mistress Marigold was the woman with the angels and demons website. Quite frankly, it surprised me she knew how to build a website in the first place.
“I’m sure. I’m sorry for the illusion. I just don’t want the others to know I’ve actually found you. Not yet,” she said, holding up her palms. “I wanted to make sure it was you before I told them.”
“Them?” I asked. This could get ugly. Only a handful of people on the planet knew what I was.
“The Sisters of the Immaculate Cross. We’re right down the street.”
“Of course.” I examined her a long moment. She let me. “Look, it’s not that I don’t believe in the Big Kahuna, it’s just, how the hell do you know what I am?”
“Well—”
“And how did you find me?”
“Oh—”
“And how do you know about the son of Satan?” I asked, remembering that when Garrett had emailed her pretending to be the grim reaper, she’d written back, If you are the grim reaper, I’m the son of Satan.
Cookie nodded as she sipped from her cup, her eyes large with curiosity.
She smiled patiently, waiting for me to finish, then started again. “Okay, well, before we get too far into this, you might want to know a couple of things about me.”
“Fair enough.” I leaned back and took another sip.
She sat up straight, her knees pressed together, her hands folded in her lap. “I hear angels.”
I blinked, waiting for the punch line. When none seemed forthcoming, I asked, “And?”
“Oh, well, that’s pretty much it. I hear angels.”
“Okay, well, that explains everything.”
She blew out a breath of air in relief. “Thank goodness. I was worried—”
“Seriously?”
“I’m sorry?”
“That doesn’t explain a freaking thing,” I put my coffee down and leaned forward. “I was being sarcastic.”
“Oh, I see.” She frowned and shook her head. “I miss that sometimes.”
“So, that whole website, that How to Detect Demons, that’s yours?”
She nodded, her smile genuine. “It’s not a sin, strictly speaking.”
“You’re Mistress Marigold for real?”
Another nod. I think she was giving me time to let it sink in. Time I apparently needed.
“Okay, let’s go over this.”
Nod.
“Cookie emailed you, and you knew it wasn’t her. Then Garrett emailed you saying he was the grim reaper, and you knew it wasn’t him. Then, and let me make this clear,” I said, holding up an index finger, “I email you, under a fake name Cookie set up for me, ask what you want with the grim reaper, and you knew it was me.”
Nod.
“How—? What—?”
She took pity on me and spoke. “It was the name she picked.” She glanced at Cookie, who was just as boggled as I. “Jason Voorhees.”
I rolled my eyes. “I told you not to pick the guy from Friday the Thirteenth.”
“It was either that or Michael Myers,” she said defensively.
“No, I was the one who wanted the guy from Halloween. You wanted to call me Freddy Krueger at first.” I looked at Sister Mary Elizabeth. “Really? Freddy? Have you seen his skin condition?”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” she said with a confident shake of her head. “The angels would have known eons before she chose a name which one she’d go with. That’s the name they said you’d use.”
“The angels. They really talk to you.”
She snorted and her hands covered her mouth self-consciously. “I apologize. Sometimes my manners are not what they should be.”
“Not at all.”
“Actually, the angels don’t talk to me. I’m not even sure they know I can hear them.” When I raised my brows in question, she said, “What I do is more like eavesdropping.”
“On angels?” I asked.
“I’ve just always been able to hear them. Ever since I can remember.”
“Wow, that’s really interesting. You know, my friend Pari did something similar when she had been pronounced legally dead for a few minutes. On her way back to Earth, she heard the angels talking.”
Mary Elizabeth giggled. “That happens. It’s the same thing, only I hear them constantly.” She leaned in as if to trust us with some sacred secret. “It’s actually quite annoying at times. They never shut up.”
“Yeah, I guess it would be,” I said with a grin. “So, you knew what name I’d use, but how did you find me from there?”
“Um, connections.” She scooted back in her chair, a guilty expression on her face.