“Can you feel it, Sammy?” I asked softly. “Can you feel it when you think of someone you believe in?”
“Yes.” His response was immediate. “My mum. My best friend, Loulou. My friend Zeus.” He paused, looked out the stained-glass window across from him and gave a pained little shrug. “Loulou said my best friend, Mute, is an angel now and he watches over us. I believe in him.”
My voice box had fallen out of my throat, plummeting to the floor like a broken elevator careening down the shaft. I swallowed compulsively to get it back in working order so I could respond to the boy and his lovely words. “That’s how faith works, Sammy. Exactly like that. ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,’” I quoted from Hebrews 11:1. “It’s having an inexplicable connection with someone or thing other than yourself. For a lot of people, they feel that way about God. He might not always be benevolent, but in the end, He cares about those who believe in him.”
Sammy’s lips twisted up as he considered this, one leg kicking back and forth through the legs of the chair compulsively. “Okay.”
How that one word could feel like a benediction was beyond me, but when I smiled at him, it was an expression of gratitude.
This was how I felt about faith too.
Faith in some higher power.
Faith in Loulou to come around to my point of view.
Faith in The Fallen to keep me safe from the serial killer with an eye for me.
Faith in Priest.
Always faith in him.
In fact, if anyone had taught me about devotion, it was the redheaded enforcer.
For years, I’d loved him from afar, investing myself in an idea more than the man just hoping that he might be who I believed him to be.
Now, my faith was being rewarded in ways I never could have known. Because he was not just the man in my shadowed fantasies. He was more. He was better than anything my brain had the capacity to conjure. Infinitely complex and mysterious, much like God.
I snorted under my breath and amended my statement.
Much like the God of the Old Testament: cruel and ruthless, a God who smote and struck nonbelievers down with unparalleled savagery and rewarded only a precious few with priceless recompenses.
This was also the God the serial killer seemed to follow. He was killing his victims, it occurred to me, the way God had killed sinners in the Bible.
The concubine was raped and consumed by a pack of dogs.
Jezebel murdered and was divided into twelve pieces.
I frowned, staring off into space as I followed the trail of the thought, wondering if I should give Lion and Officer Hutchinson a call to discuss it even though they probably knew.
“If I may?”
I startled as Tabitha appeared beside me with a soft smile, and then waved at her to continue.
She trained that lovely smile on my group, her own Bible clutched to her chest. “To add some debate to this conversation. I have a different theory on faith I would love to discuss. In James 2:20, it is written, ‘But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?’ What do you think this means?”
Billy stirred, his heavy lids widening with eagerness to prove his worth to pretty Tabitha Linely. “It means you have to prove your faith to God.”
She smiled warmly at him. “Exactly.”
“Why do we have to prove our faith in Him when He doesn’t have to do the same?” Sammy interjected with a frown. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Something flickered across Tabby’s face, a hesitation chased by something darker. I frowned at her, wondering for the first time if those placid waters hid something deeper. “You cannot maintain faith unless it is rewarded. God rewards us with His love, and in return, we show Him our love through action. Why do we pray? Why do we punish sinners?”
Sammy’s eyes went wide as twin coins. “We don’t punish sinners here, do we?”
“We should,” Billy declared, somewhat fiercely.
I wondered if it was Tabby’s good looks or his own association with his father’s condition that made him vehement.
“We don’t punish sinners here,” I agreed, sliding Tabby a side eye to slow her roll. “First Light Church is about acceptance and guidance, not rigorously following a set of rules.”
“Not all people who attend Church will go to Heaven,” Tabby announced. “Prayer is not enough to ensure passage to Heaven. You must pay tribute.”
“Tabby,” I said with a cautionary saccharine smile. She had always been a zealot, a topic we clashed on explosively though respectfully. This was not respect.
“How do you pay tribute?” Billy mused.
“In ancient Greece, they made sacrifices,” Sammy said helpfully.
“We do not sacrifice now,” I said firmly.
But they were young and unruly, puppies let loose in the yard of theological discussion. I’d lost the reins, and the conversation turned over to them.