I’m aware that Brixia is reading my thoughts like ticker tape, absorbing them as quickly as they come to me, and despite her placid expression I squirm. “How do I even know this is possible? I mean, you’ve been following him around like groupies for thousands of years—if you can actually do this, then why haven’t you zapped him already?”

“We’ve never had the chance,” the alabaster witch answers simply. “When Azazel Rises, even when he takes over a body completely, he still shares it with a human soul. Mortality limits his power, prevents him from fulfilling his design for a hell on Earth—but it also shields him. Right now, your spirit and his are tangled together.”

“If we were to reach into you and tear him free, we would uproot your soul as well,” Ket elaborates, her tone reasonable. “And were we to then cast Azazel into hell, you would go with him, damned to a lake of fire for an eternity of incomprehensible suffering.”

“Oh.” My mouth tastes like cardboard and battery acid.

“‘Vengeance is mine … saith the Lord,’” Sulis quotes with a wistful aspect. “We could take your life easily enough, but we cannot decide the everlasting fate of a mortal soul—even if we wished. Even if we judged your unjust damnation an acceptable cost. There are mystical boundaries on this plane that even the strongest magic cannot transgress.”

“But this is the Ascension.” Brixia’s eyes inflame, a low, kindling light. “For the first time, Azazel will at last divorce himself from his host’s humanity—he will finally become his own for a single, indefensible instant.”

“All of this is foretold, though. I’ve got four different cults on my ass, and then you guys playing mind games, all because some prophecies say I’m the guy and the time is now.” This is the heart of it—the thing I can’t escape from—and my voice shrinks. “You obviously believe them, and it’s not like any of the writings have been wrong, either. So … so why should I believe you’re here to stop it, or that it can even be stopped at all?”

“Only a fool believes in fate,” Brixia replies. “The future is a web, August Pfeiffer, not a line, and its construction changes all the time. Every day, some strands are built and some are plucked, and it is we who create the so-called inevitable.”

“A week ago, you knew exactly where I was going to be this morning,” I point out in disbelief. “But even I didn’t know that! I didn’t stop on that corner for any reason—it was totally random. It wasn’t even on my usual route to school!”