“A few years ago, I was approached by a group of witches—the last members of what was once an incredibly powerful coven.” Ximena turns her gaze out the window, arms crossed at her waist. “They said that they were looking for certain elementals with extraordinary potential, and that they believed I might be the earth witch they needed to complete their circle.”

“For what?” I ask, because I already know this story eventually comes back to me, my mind filled with terrifying images. An arcane ritual.

“They told me a story,” she answers after a moment, “about an entity that appears on Earth once in a generation, finding a host and taking it over. They showed me a prophecy foretelling just such an event within my lifetime … and they told me where the Corrupter came from. The thing inside you isn’t a monster or a ghost, Auggie.” She turns to face me again, her eyes hollow and razor-edged. “It’s an angel.”

23

I blink for what must be a full minute. “It’s a what, now?”

“An angel?” Adriana’s jaw drops open so wide I’m afraid it’s dislocated.

“You mean, like, with wings and a halo and…” I fumble for what I know about angels, but I’m panicking. “And a line of greeting cards?”

“An angel,” Ximena confirms, “but not some rosy-cheeked cupid from a Christmas pageant. We’re talking about real angels—warriors—beings of incredible strength and power, capable of raising the dead and shaking the earth with their voices.”

“I didn’t think you believed in angels. Or anything from the Bible.” Adriana is having almost as much trouble wrapping her brain around all of this as I am.

“Since they were first written down, the scriptures have been edited, curated, and reinterpreted, over and over, by men with an agenda,” Ximena states flatly. “But what I believe in is complicated. I think humans have become arrogant creatures with little respect for the natural world—and Wicca provides a path in the opposite direction.”

“At the risk of sounding like an arrogant creature,” I interject, “can we talk about me some more? Because you just said my body is going to crack open and spew out an actual angel!”

Ximena crosses back to her chair and sits down, leaning over her knees. “His name is Azazel. He was thrown out of heaven alongside Lucifer—the Morning Star—for rebelling against God. But while Lucifer and his demons claimed dominion over hell, Azazel—the Dark Star—ended up here, in this realm. So, in a sense, he and the entity you know as Satan are colleagues. Equals, in a manner of speaking.”

“Cool, cool.” My mouth makes a dry, clicking sound when I speak. “Fun information.”

“What he’s known for is ‘corrupting the Earth.’” She gives me a meaningful look. “But what those accounts don’t spell out in so many words is the form that corruption took.”