“Okay.” I nod, making every effort to remain calm. “I’m listening.”
She takes a deep breath, and begins. “I started showing signs of my powers around the age of fourteen,” she says. “I was terrified, and I told no one, because I would be killed if I was discovered. I also knew no one would ever suspect me of being a witch, because it’s very rare that a witch is born from two non-magical parents.”
“It is,” I say, since I do know that much.
“Keeping my true self from you and the rest of the family was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” she continues. “I wanted to trust you all—you’re my family—but Dad’s the Lord of Sector Six. His obligation is to Ezekiel and the continent. I feared he would turn me in if I told him. And even if I told you all and you kept my secret, if I was ever discovered and it was found out that my family was keeping the secret for me, you would all be killed as well. I couldn’t put you at risk like that. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did.”
“So why tell me now?” I ask. “What changed?”
“You did,” she says. “By asking about witches at all. I know you—you’re stubborn. If you’re determined to find a witch, you won’t stop until you do. Better that you talk to me than continue to search around the city and risk getting into trouble if the wrong people find out what you’re asking about.”
I nod, since I do agree with her there.
“You’re taking this much better than I thought you would,” she says. “I thought you would be mad.”
“What would you have done if I was mad?” I ask. “Put a spell on me so I forget this conversation?”
“It’s an option,” she says. “I won’t lie and say it isn’t. Although a memory spell requires a potion, not a chant.”
I take a few seconds to digest her words. “How am I supposed to trust anything you say?” I fling my arms down next to me in frustration. “How do I know you won’t use your magic—or a potion—to make me believe whatever you want me to believe?”
“Because you’re my sister,” she says, blinking away tears. “I love you. I would never do anything that isn’t in your best interest. If you want me to never use magic on you, tell me, and I won’t. Or if you want me to give you a potion so you forget this entire conversation and you’re free of the burden of knowing what I truly am, I can do that for you, too. Just tell me, and I’ll do it. I promise.”
“Don’t perform any magic on me,” I say sharply. “Don’t take away my free will.”
“Okay,” she says. “Understood.”
We sit there like that for a few seconds, both of us unsure how to continue.
But I know what I must do now. Teresa was honest with me about who she is, so I need to do the same and trust her with the truth of who I am.
But first, I have a few more questions.
“Does Marco know?” I ask. “Or did you keep this from him, too?”
“He knows,” she says. “You see… when I first realized what I am, I started sending anonymous notes to find out what others knew about witches. Of course, I was limited to the Golds who lived at the sector, but I was desperate to find someone I could talk to—someone who would understand what I was going through. Everyone ignored the notes—most destroyed them entirely, not wanting to be associated with anything regarding witchcraft. Then, when I was sixteen, Marco was stationed as a new guard. By that point, I expected that no one would acknowledge my notes, but I had to try. And you have no idea how happy I was when I found out that Marco was a witch, too. He promised to help me. At first, we pretended to date as a cover for when he would teach me how to use my powers. But soon, we fell in love for real. You know what happened from there—he proposed to me the day I turned eighteen. Unlike me, he was born into a family of witches, and I moved with him to the city so I could be part of their underground coven.”
“Wow,” I say, truly in awe of her bravery, even though I don’t particularly care for her kind. “But don’t you worry about getting caught? Wouldn’t it be easier if you stopped using your magic altogether?”
“It would,” she says. “But the more we practice, the stronger we are. And we can’t risk letting our kind die out. Because as witches, we’re not as affected by the curse as humans are. We don’t know why that is, but we suspect that the magic in our blood helps us resist.”
“I wish I could resist it.” I pull my legs to my chest and wrap my arms around them. “It would make everything easier.”
“It’s not your fault that you can’t,” she tells me. “There’s no spell or potion that can reverse the curse—trust me, we’ve tried. Someday, we hope to free everyone from Ezekiel’s control, but we’re so outnumbered, and we don’t know where to begin. The people in the labor camps are too weak to fight, and everyone else is so greedy that they turn a blind eye to the fact that most people here are kept in deplorable conditions, working to death to provide the resources that keep the minority living in luxury. But I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” She sighs and pushes her hair behind her ears. “You only wanted help with reversing a spell. I shouldn’t be burdening you with the talk of such treason, especially since there’s nothing you can do to help.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” I reach for her hand to stop her fidgeting, hoping to prepare her for the bomb I’m about to drop. “Because I can end this curse. But I need your help to do it.”
Chapter Thirteen
“What?” Teresa laughs. “How can you do anything to end this curse?”
“I have a lot to tell you,” I say. “It’s going to be a lot to take in at once, and I’m sorry for that. But you trusted me with your secret, and now it’s time for me to trust you with mine.”
“What secret?” she asks, more serious now. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not Adriana,” I begin. “My name’s Rebekah, and I’m an angel sent down by God to find Uriel’s Flaming Sword and use it to kill the demon Ezekiel, which will end the curse forever.”
“You what?” Teresa blinks, and her eyes flash with a myriad of emotions, eventually settling on anger. “Are you playing some kind of joke on me?”
“No,” I continue. “I’m completely serious. And I’m so relieved to find out that you’re a witch, because I need the help of a witch to help me succeed on this mission. You see, after Ezekiel stole the Flaming Sword from Uriel and used it to curse the continent, he hid the sword and had a witch create a boundary spell around it. The spell makes it impossible for angels to locate the sword. Only a powerful witch can locate it, and once it’s found, the boundary spell needs to be removed so I can steal the sword back and use it to kill Ezekiel. Now that I know you’re a witch, you must be the witch meant to help me do this.”
Teresa shakes her head, pressing her fingers to her temples. “Hold up,” she says, lowering her hands and looking straight at me. “If you’re here, where’s my sister? Is she still back at our parents’ house in Sector Six? It’s actually been you this entire time I thought she’s been living with me?”
“Not exactly.” I bite my lip, knowing how important it is to phrase this as delicately as possible. “I only arrived yesterday morning.”
“Arrived,” Teresa repeats, deadpan. “And how did you ‘arrive,’ exactly?”
“I was commanded by God to possess Adriana’s body.”
Teresa pulls her hand out of mine and leaps off the bed. She holds her palms out and chants in Latin, the words making my head pound like the worst migraine ever. The pain is blinding, and my ears ring at a deafeningly high pitch. I press my fingers to my temples, desperate to make it stop.
“What are you doing?” I ask, although since my hearing’s dimmed, it comes out as a scream. “You’re hurting me!”
“Damn right I’m hurting you.” Teresa stops chanting for a second to speak. “I’m forcing you out of my sister’s body.”
“You’re exorcising me?” I lower my arms in shock, but then she starts chanting again, and I keel over from the
pain. It’s like she’s ripping my soul from my body. I scream again, closing my eyes and doing everything in my power to cling to Adriana’s body. Angels have better holds on humans than demons do—which is why it’s far more dangerous to exorcise us—but I won’t be able to resist the spell forever.
“Stop!” I say, screaming again from the pain. I feel myself slipping away—I can’t hold on for much longer. “I was instructed to enter Adriana’s body by God himself! He wants to save this city. I don’t know the details of His plan—no one does—but He has reasons for everything. He wouldn’t have told me to enter Adriana’s body unless it was the best chance for success!”
Her only response is to chant louder and step closer to me, her palms inches away from my chest, sucking my soul right out of this body.
I scream again and keel over further, now curled in a ball on the floor next to the bed. “Don’t do this—to me or your sister,” I beg, tears flowing from my eyes. “It’s dangerous to force an angel from a human body. It harms the human.”
She continues to chant, and I scream again, the outer parts of my soul peeling away from Adriana’s body. I can’t hold on for much longer.
Then the door swings open, banging against the wall. Marco stands in the opening.
“What the hell is going on in here?” he yells.
Teresa pauses her chanting, lowering her hands as she looks at him. “Adriana’s possessed,” she says. “Help me force this demon from her body.”
“No!” I plead to Marco. I try to stand, but the pain cripples me, and I fall back to the floor. “I’m not a demon—I’m an angel, sent here by God to break the curse Ezekiel placed upon the continent. I’m telling the truth, I swear it.”
Marco studies me for a few seconds. Then he walks over to Teresa and wraps his hands around her wrists, gently lowering her arms.
I suck in a deep breath, the pain alleviating as my soul settles back into Adriana’s body.
“What are you doing?” Teresa asks him. “I need you to help me get rid of the demon.”
“If she’s who she says she is—an angel—we can’t do this,” he says, and I relax, grateful he’s on my side. “Not without possibly permanently harming Adriana.”
“And if she’s lying?” Teresa glares at me, and returns her gaze to Marco’s. “If she’s a demon?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Marco says, staring at me in challenge. “She needs to stand inside a demon trap.”
Chapter Fourteen
Teresa clenches her fists, and I have a feeling that it’s taking all of her willpower to stop herself from continuing to exorcise me. “Fine,” she eventually agrees. “You stay here and guard her. Make sure she doesn’t escape. I’ll find the materials we need.”
“She’ll be fine,” Marco says, and then he looks down at me, an eyebrow raised. “Won’t you?”
“Yes.” I can barely speak, and I don’t make a move to stand up—I’m still in too much pain to do so. “I am who I say I am. But I don’t blame you for wanting proof.”
Teresa glares at me, distrust splayed across her face. “We’ll see about that,” she says. “But Marco’s more skilled at exorcising than I am. So if you try anything funny on him, he’ll force you out in a second.” With that, she turns around, leaving the room.
Now that she’s gone, the silence between Marco and me hangs awkwardly in the air.
“Thanks,” I say to him, my voice shaking after what I just went through. The pain is ebbing away, and I feel like I can get up, but I worry that any sudden movement might make Marco attack. “Is it okay if I move to sit on the bed?” I ask. Better safe than sorry.
“Yeah,” he says. “But if you try to jump out the window or something, you’ll regret it.” He sounds tough, but he smiles, and I think he knows I have no intentions of trying to escape.
I move up to the bed, stretching out my limbs to make sure everything’s all in one piece. It is. “Thanks for coming in when you did,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t have been able to hold onto this body much longer.”
A shadow passes over his eyes. “The body you’re talking about is Adriana’s—Teresa’s sister,” he reminds me—as if I need reminding. “Did Adriana give you permission to possess her?”
“No.” I shake my head, taken aback by the question. “God ordered me to do it.”
“Directly?” Marco asks.
“No,” I tell him. “God doesn’t speak to messenger angels. He told Uriel—the seraph angel—and Uriel relayed the message to me.”
“And you don’t think Adriana had a right to be asked?”
“God didn’t tell me to ask her.” I clench my fists, irritation building at the audacity of his questions. “He told me to possess her. So that’s what I did.”
“Uriel told you to possess her,” he says.
“Same thing.”
“Not exactly.” He stands still, studying me. “Did you question what you’re doing at all?” he asks. “Or are you just following orders?”
“You speak about following orders as if it’s a bad thing,” I say. “And maybe following orders from some people is. But not from God. God wouldn’t order me to do something if it wasn’t the best way to go about the mission.”
“So you don’t think Adriana deserved a say in this?”
“It wasn’t my place to ask.” I hold his gaze, although guilt pangs in my chest, because I don’t entirely disagree with his statement.
Before we can continue the conversation, Teresa bursts back inside, carrying a large piece of poster board.
“What’s that?” I ask.
She says nothing, instead flipping over the poster so I can see.
I’m staring at a drawing of a demon trap. I’d recognize that circled pentagram with symbols inside the edges anywhere. She must have drawn it downstairs while Marco and I were up here talking.
She lays it on the ground near my feet. “Now’s the time of truth.” She looks at me in challenge and points to the trap. “Get up and stand in it.”
Chapter Fifteen
I want to point out that if I were a demon, I would have used my demonic powers to incinerate them or kill them in some other horrible way, but I doubt that would go over well. At this point, they must know I’m not a demon. But I understand needing definite proof, so I step inside the trap.
“Good.” Teresa nods. “Now step out of it.”
I hold her eyes and do as she says. I can’t stop myself from smiling once I’m out of the trap. Because if an actual demon—either possessing a human or in his natural form—were to step inside a trap, he wouldn’t be able to step out. He would be stuck there until whoever trapped him either vanquished him or broke one of the lines of the circle, setting him free.
“Do you believe me now?” I ask.
“I believe you’re not a demon,” she says. “I don’t have much of a choice. But am I happy that God asked you to possess my sister? No—not at all.”
“I understand,” I say. “But I promise that I’ll keep Adriana safe.”
“How do I know that?” she asks. “You’re just a spirit possessing her.”
“I’m more than just a spirit,” I tell her. “My name is Rebekah, and I have my own form. I’m an angel. God ordered me not to go about this mission in my form, but I still have one.”
“Okay,” Teresa says. “But if anything happens to Adriana—if, God forbids, she gets killed because of what you’re doing—you can just leave her body and float back up to Heaven in your true form. But my sister will be gone. Forever. Or at least, she’ll be gone until I see her again after death.”
“You make it sound so easy for me, but it’s not,” I say softly. “You see, I’m bound to remain in Adriana’s body until I complete my mission. If I fail, I won’t be allowed back into Heaven. I’ll be cast out.”
“You’ll become a fallen angel,” Marco realizes. “A demon.”
“Yes,” I say. “And I’ll remain one unless I’m given a chance to redeem myself. Not all f
allen angels are given such a chance—and sometimes when they are, they don’t know they’re being tested unless they pass.” I shiver at the possibility of suffering such a fate. “So you see, I must succeed. My life is tied to Adriana’s. If she dies, I’ll fail the mission, and I’ll be cursed to an eternity as a demon.”
Teresa still watches me with suspicion, although she seems less tense than earlier. “I just want you out of my sister’s body as quickly as possible,” she says.
“I want the same,” I agree. “Because leaving Adriana’s body means I’ve completed my task and ended the curse. The faster I can do that, the faster everyone living on this continent will be freed. And I don’t want anyone here to suffer for a second longer than they have to.”
“I want the same thing,” Teresa says. “But I don’t like my sister being involved. She’s an innocent in this war—a human.”
“I understand,” I say, because I do. “But God chose her. I don’t know His reasons, but I promise you that He has them. It’s all tied to a bigger plan. We have to have faith in Him and trust Him.”
“I know, I know—I heard you the first time.” Teresa glances down at the demon trap and huffs. She’s obviously frustrated, but at least she isn’t still trying to exorcise me, so I give her time to take this all in.
Finally, after a few moments of silence, she refocuses on me. “As much as I don’t like these circumstances, it sounds like we’re on the same side,” she admits. “We both want to end this curse and keep Adriana safe.”
“Yes.” I nod. “We do.”
“Okay.” She takes a deep breath, her eyes full of determination. “So… where should we start?”
Chapter Sixteen
“Uriel can normally sense where his Flaming Sword is, because he forged it with fire from his own soul,” I explain again, since I now have her full attention. “But the boundary spell the witch cast around it is strong. Uriel can no longer sense his sword.”
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