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“Okay” She stayed on the floor, working on her illustrations

I moved to one of the seats, where Laura spoke to Nadine They were the only ones in the church, but other angels would coether, at least in private We had the right to travel the grounds and go where ished, but was it worth it when those weirdos stared at us the entire time? “Hey”

Laura grabbed my wrist and raised my hand toward her face “What happened to your palm?”

There was a distinct scar across the skin, a wound that hadn’t quite healed properly, a gash that would probably always be visible “I had to cut it for so ceremony with my demon…” My life felt like an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except I wasn’t some kick-ass heroine and there were no hot vaether…some shit like that”

“That was fast” Laura returned h “He’s already bound himself to you for eternity”

“He’s going to hell, and I’ to heaven So…not eternity”

“You knohat I mean,” she said “He’s convinced that you’re the real deal, that you can make him ascend”

Ascend…attain humanity…it was all a bunch of weird-ass shit that I didn’t understand

“Guess you’re a daood actress” Nadine watchedagainst the white gown she wore The rest of us just looked washed-out “What are you saying to him?”

I shrugged “I honestly uess it’s easy to speak freak”

Nadine nodded to Claire on the other side of the church “Where’s Beatrice?”

“Indisposed…so I’hter for a while”

“Shit, what happened?” Laura asked

“She ht Tripped her out on LSD and wasn’t convinced she was a real angel, so he carved into her back looking for her wings”

Without saying a word, they showed how appalled they both were Sometimes an expression could say it all

“Yeah, we gotta get the hell out of here”

“How is she now?” Laura asked

“In a lot of pain…depressed” She lay in bed, always on her side because it hurt too much to lie directly on her wounds “She’s in no state ofto keep her busy” I glanced at Claire across the room, as both oblivious to us and the shadows in the room “When they took Beatrice…” I lowered my voice “The Malevolent came inside and tried to feed Claire LSD”