I shifted nervously on my pillow. “Why would the Church have a bunch of fake exorcists? What happened to the real ones?”

Finn shrugged, digging in the utensil box again. “You’re as qualified to answer that one as I am. You’re an exorcist. Why aren’t you down at the worship center right now, in line to get your cheek branded?”

“Because the only Church officials who know I’m an exorcist just aimed guns at my head!”

He finally pulled a plastic spoon from the box and used it to stir the stew. “Yeah, they tend to do that.”

“Doesn’t the Church need us if they don’t have any real exorcists?”

“Who knows what the Church thinks it needs?” He met my gaze over the camping lantern. “Humanity needs us. I know that much. Demons hunt us. The Church will take us. I know that for a fact. They took Carey James. I don’t know what they did with him, but I know they took him alive.”

“Who’s Carey? An exorcist? Your friend?”

“He is an exorcist, yes. Just like you.”

Like me? Why not like us?

“But I never met him,” Finn continued, stirring the stew again, and my stomach started to growl. I hadn’t eaten since lunch at school. That felt like ages ago. “I know his sister, though. Her name’s Grayson. You’ll like her. Everyone likes her.”

He pulled two paper bowls from a package and set them on the floor in front of the stove.

“What do you know about my mother?” I asked as Finn twisted a knob and the flame beneath the pot died.

When he turned away from the stove, he looked sad. “I know she was possessed and probably had been for quite a while.”

“Since the day she turned eighteen.” How could I not have known?

Finn poured beef stew from the pot into the first bowl. “This isn’t your fault, and you couldn’t have stopped it. There’s no way you could have known. You had no frame of reference, right?”

“What do you mean?” I took the bowl he pushed toward me and held it for warmth, even when the blanket slid off my shoulders.

Finn set the pot back on the burner and picked up his own bowl, then settled onto the pillow across from mine. “She’s been possessed your whole life, right? So you don’t have any experience with a normal mother to contrast yours with. There’s no way you could have known.”

Maybe not. But I should have known.