Lennon shut the door to the inn we were staying in and raised his eyebrows. “Go ahead and link back to them.”

I was dizzy from holding off doing so. I took a breath and pushed open the block I had forced into my mind to keep them away. My other three rushed back in. It was such a relief. I collapsed right into Ren’s arms. I was glad he’d had the thought to be right there in case I lost it.

Lennon had been right. They weren’t angry, not at all. Worried, yes. Mad, no. Love flooded through the links so fast I closed my eyes to receive it. Ren set me down on the bed, coming next to me to hold me against him. Lennon walked over and kissed me, gently. “I’m going to go sleep on the floor outside the girls’ room. This is a new place. I won’t put them at risk.”

I may have thanked him. The door closed quietly, and all I did was breathe. They weren’t physically with me yet, but they were fine.

That was all that mattered.

Ren snuggled close against me. “I’m sorry I had to be the one to say the people on the island were going to come after you. I wouldn’t have let them get to you. They would have all died.”

I patted his arm. When the other three got to us, I’d hear what happened. “I’m glad you saw it before it happened.”

He closed his eyes. “You’re exhausted. You don’t know it, but it’s traveling through our link.”

“I don’t even notice anymore.” There was a clock in the room that ticked. Tick. Tick. Tick. Why did people put ticking clocks places where someone might want to sleep? That noise. It was going to drive me crazy. Tick. Tick. Tick.

I yanked out of Ren’s arms and covered my ears. “Why does it have to be so loud and all consuming?”

“Mika?” Ren got on his knees. “Something’s wrong.”

“What gave that away?” I pointed at the clock. “It’s ticking, and it’s making me crazy.”

He shook his head. “I’ll put the clock in the hall, but that’s not it. Look at me. Something is wrong.”

I tried to listen to Ren through the pounding in my head. He was right. This wasn’t normal. The way I was feeling wasn’t in any way appropriate to the small aggravation that was a ticking clock. Tick. Tick. Tick. By divinity, I wanted to break something.

Lennon opened the door slightly. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure.” Ren stayed very still, his eyes on me.

My vision clouded. One second I was in the room, and the next on that cursed black road. I cried out and was wrenched back into my body. No, this couldn’t happen again. Katrina was trying to get back in my head. The anger in this room wasn’t mine.

“It’s Katrina.”

Ren knee-walked over to me on the other side of the bed. “She can’t have you.”

“Well that’s good and fine to say, but I can feel her presence, like a bitter taste in my mouth all of a sudden, and she almost pulled me in.”

He extended his hand, and I put mine in it. If I was going to be lost to the curse again, then I wanted the last thing I felt to be the way they all loved me. “Get Devyn. She can blind me.”

Ren shook his head. “No.”

“Got this?” Lennon called from the doorway, and Ren nodded. Why was he saying yes? He didn’t have anything.

The door clicked quietly closed again, and Ren dropped my hand just to touch both sides of my face. “You’re vulnerable to her right now for three reasons. The first is we just left the island where she couldn’t get to you at all. So now she’s trying. The second is you’re frightened, and the third is you’re tired. But guess what? She can’t get in. She tried, and she was pushed out.”

I listened to his voice. It was very soothing. “Because Clara is with us.”

He shook his head. “You know all the reading I’ve been doing? Or maybe you don’t know because I did most of it on top of the carriage when you were inside. I read and read and read. Nothing magical can happen to you now. Nothing. Once we were all co-joined, you were protected. We take up all the space inside of you now. That thing that was happening with the blindness? How you were seeing light a little? That was as you co-joined. We were pushing out that magic. You would have seen again whether you wanted to or not.”

But I knew that wasn’t true. “Anne has been possessed since she was co-joined. Teagan had Katrina in her mind.”

“That’s a different thing. That’s not magic. That’s demon. Teagan had Katrina in her mind because she came through the demon. Nothing magic. She tried the curse, and it didn’t work. She can’t see through your eyes anymore. You’re safe.”

I was safe. I threw that phrase around in my mind a few times until it settled down on me. I was safe. He was right. She had pushed her energy at me, tried to get in my mind, and yet here I was, perfectly okay.

“I don’t have to ever go down that road again.”

He put his head on my shoulder, rubbing his forehead against the skin on my neck. “When you know, when you truly see how loved you are, none of her dark magic can touch you. Not ever. It floated on by.”

I held onto Ren. He didn’t try to move, just kept his head where it was on my shoulder. He was right. I was exhausted. His arms came around my waist, and he pulled me to him on the bed. We lay down, facing each other on the pillow.

“Tomorrow we’ll be all together. We have nowhere to be. Nothing to do. Not at the moment anyway.” Ren pulled the covers over us. He kissed me, once, then twice. “Sleep. I’m here, and you’re safe. It would be better for you if you had two of us with you in bed, but it’s more important to guard the girls. I’ll watch over you. I promise.”

I must have fallen asleep. I didn’t remember doing so, but soon a hand on my thigh had me opening my eyes. Neil’s gaze met mine. He was there. I grabbed him, and he laughed, and then I clutched onto Gordon and Wayne, too.

“Heya, sleepyhead.” Neil kissed my lips. “It’s almost lunchtime.”

It was? I sat up. My body was stiff. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept so long. Ren lay next to me on the bed. He had a book in his hand. He’d obviously not been sleeping the whole time. Was Lennon still with the girls?

I’d figure it all out soon. “Did a mob come for me?”

Wayne shrugged. “Small mob. I was glad you weren’t there. Gordon was still trying to talk them down. We were figuring how to get you out of the house but that proved unnecessary.” He nodded to Ren. “Good work.”

“Thanks.” Ren got off the bed and headed for the door. “I’m going to relieve Lennon. He’s going to be sick of sitting on the floor. I had her in the bed all night. I got the better end of the deal.” He leaned over and kissed my temple. “You hardly moved all night. Just what I wanted.”

Neil scooted into the place Ren vacated, and soon they were all squishing onto the bed. Gordon pulled me against him. “We’re going to close our eyes for a little bit. Long night. We collected all of the stuff and the people we were bringing with us. Took a little maneuvering. Plus, there was this long stretch of time when it hurt to breathe because you had cut us off.”

“For the record, I think it would have been okay for you to turn back on when you were on the ferry. We would have died rather than tell any irate people with a boat where you were.”

I was so glad they were back. I didn’t think I’d ever known as much peace as I did right then. “Why should you have had to battle? You didn’t know, you couldn’t say. You didn’t have to lie. You looked as shocked as they did. That was the idea. Did you say you collected people?”

Wayne rubbed my leg from where he lay at the end of the bed. “My father. Gordon’s father. Your mother. They’re going to stay here and follow us in a bit. We thought about Lennon’s parents but decided against grabbing them immediately. They know where we’re going. If they want to come, they can follow on their own. We didn’t have Lennon to ask. That was the best we could do.”

I wiped the tears from my eyes. They’d brought my mother. In all of the commotion, I’d hardly thought of her, or not let myself, because first and foremost I had to be a Sister; I had to fight the demons. But I was so relieved. Truly, deeply grateful. And I was so glad that Gordon and Wayne’s fathers were with us, too. Where would they live? What would they do? Anne’s mother came and went from the Sisterhood. It was amazing. We were supposed to be family-less, but like the woman I encouraged to bring her baby to the Sisterhood, we could be stronger if we weren’t so alone. I choked back my emotions even though I knew they could feel it. “Close your eyes, guys. I’ll take care of you.”

We’d been on the carriage—all of us on top of it—for four hours when the first demon hit my powers, turning them on. I groaned, and a second later so did my charges.

“Stop?” Neil turned around to ask me, and I nodded. I would not leave a demon to roam, not if I could stop it. He hit the lever, and the steam powered down the carriage.

I took a deep breath. I had no idea what I was about to face, but I looked at the three girls next to me. I was their teacher.

“Clara come with me.” She was the oldest of the group. At some point, we all faced our first demon. Mine had been in the basement of the old Sisterhood with a class watching me almost fail. If Clara faltered, I would catch her.

Devyn and Jayne both cried out, distress making them grip onto each other, but Clara stayed still, her gaze on my own. She nodded, no argument at all. She was going to be fourteen. It was time.

The guys watched, glances passing between them, but they otherwise didn’t comment. Neil scooted back. I guessed he was staying with Devyn and Jayne. That was interesting. Sometime I’d have to ask him why he’d chosen that spot. Wayne caught up to me, standing right behind Clara and myself. Gordon and Lennon spread out left and right. Ren jumped down and stayed next to the carriage.

Their alignment was different than I’d expected. It looked dissimilar to what other guards did. I’d not had my sight to see what they’d done the last time I encountered a demon, so I didn’t know if this was typical for them or not. I knew Neil hadn’t stayed in the carriage so that was different.

No matter.

Up ahead, the demon stepped in front of the carriage. I sighed. It was a level four demon. A big one. “Wayne can you see it?”

“I can,” he answered. “Big. Ugly. Not as scary as that chaos thing.”

That was a fairly good description of the demon in front of me. He was huge, greenish-brownish, and he had horns on his head. He wasn’t the strongest demon I’d faced. That didn’t mean we didn’t need to use an abundance of caution. Sisters died when they got careless and lazy. I would be neither. He was the perfect one to start Clara on her path.

I hoped Daniella didn’t kill me for this. It was one thing when she was never going to see Clara again, but now that we were breaking destiny, they would be reunited. Her mother might not like this.

That was fine.

She was my student.

Right at this moment, I trumped Mom.

“Clara, this is a stage four demon.” The beast roared, and I rolled my eyes. “They don’t like their categories. It’s an ego thing.”

He snickered. “Filthy Sister, I will eat your student’s brains.”

My hands itched. I’d done something new when I’d squished the last demon during my blindness. It was never too late to learn new things. I yearned to do it now, which was funny. I’d never given a thought to how hard it was for my teachers to not kill the demons during lessons.

“Clara, can you understand it when it speaks?”

She nodded. “I haven’t studied the old tongues yet, but for some reason I can.”

“I’m going to tell you a secret. Well, it’s not a secret. For some of us the tongues are natural. Like we already know them. Not everyone. Teagan had to study them. Don’t tell her I told you.” I was trying to keep her calm. “You’re like me. We just know them. That’s good.”

He charged us. If he hit us, I suspected it would burn. I didn’t know for sure. Every demon encounter was different. Horns usually meant burn.

I jolted him back a step, hitting him with energy yet resisting the urge to kill. “Foul creature, you will be dead soon enough. Don’t rush to your end. We have things we can teach her together. You by being you, and me by using you as an example. So you see the stupid thing you did today by getting in our way will make your death not so worthless. Thanks for that. Clara, raise your hand.”

She did. I noticed it shook just a little. That was normal. Nobody with a brain in their head could do this and not be nervous about it. My hands trembled all the time.

The demon charged again, and I pushed him back. If I could hold him still, that would be more useful.

“Can you feel your powers in the tips of your fingers?”

She nodded, and I touched her shoulder. “Let them out.”

It didn’t happen that very second. It was one thing for me to tell her to do it and another for it to actually happen. One second she wasn’t a demon-killing Sister and the next she was. The demon fell backward. Clara’s energy was different than my own. I squashed and assaulted, she drained. The demon started to fade. His eyes widened as he realized what was happening. I’d wanted to make him be still—Clara actually did. Caught in the web of her energy, he wasn’t going anywhere.

I took my hand off her just to watch. Her lips quivered, and her face was pale. This was taking a toll on her, which was to be expected. Nothing about what she did was easy nor should it be.

The horned creature shrank. He was practically nothing. I’d never seen this kind of reduction before. I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Clara opened her mouth, the words coming out in the old tongue that she and I could understand perfectly. “Foul creature, leave this place. I forgive you.”

Pop. The small demon exploded into a million pieces and drifted away, like dust in the wind.

Clara stumbled, and I caught her a second before Wayne had his hand on both our backs. “You okay, Sisters?”

He’d used the plural on purpose. Clara smiled then stared at me with huge, brown eyes. “Sister Mika, I did it.”

“Sister Clara”—I took a page from Wayne’s book—“you sure did.”

“I’m a little shaky.”

I put my arm around her. “That’s normal. Come sit on the carriage. You’ll feel better.”

She might pass out, but I didn’t want to put that idea in her head if she wasn’t going to. My powers still buzzed. I hadn’t really gotten to use them, and I expected to feel sort of disgruntled for a while until they calmed, but this was different. They’d start to cool without the presence of the demon. Neil extended his hand, and Clara took it to climb to the top of the carriage.

Goosebumps stood up on the back of my neck, and I whirled around. Standing on a hill looking down at us was a creature without form. Total darkness. A shadow that both was and wasn’t there.

“Mika?” Wayne was still behind me. “You okay?”

I shook my head. “Can you see what’s on the hill?”

Neil answered from on top of the carriage. “I don’t see anything, Mika.”

I always had to check. Sisters could view lots of things guards couldn’t see. The sky was empty. No ravens or spirits to guide me. “Girls?”

Jayne spoke for them this time. “No, Sister Mika.”

Then it was just me. We were alone on a road in the middle of nowhere, and we’d been attacked by an idiotic demon who hadn’t really known how to fight back. Why would he have done that? Well, because that thing on the hill had told it to.

I stepped toward it. My calling was to fight evil, even the things that frightened me. Fear rolled through my body, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

You should be afraid of me, Mika.

The shadow’s voice was like the wind, barely there, a whisper in my ear. “What are you?”

I asked, but I knew. What was worse was it knew that I knew.

What am I? There was laughter in its response.

“Mika?” Gordon called to me, but I held up my hand to stop him. I had to do this. They couldn’t see it or hear it. That didn’t make what was on that hill any less real.

“You are what always was. The shadow that tempted that first girl. You took her. You used her and then you took another and another until you got to now. You have Katrina, and you mean to destroy us all. You are unseen. And I can’t defeat you. Not here, not now, probably not ever. My gifts are many, but they do not touch you.”

You see me. Now I know that you do.

He vanished, and I still couldn’t move. I stood on that road, staring at the empty hill long after the shadow left.

Lennon touched my cheek, and Ren took my hand. It was the former who spoke. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Well”—I cleared my dry throat—“there are lots of things that are bad. The demon Clara took down qualifies as that. What I just saw on the hill goes beyond my ability to understand. What I just saw on the hill is why we live in the end of days, why we are spending our lives trying to battle back an apocalypse. Is it possible that one creature could cause all of this? Yes it is. And he just spoke to me.”

I was back by the fire. My guards behind me. These waking dreams I was pulled into did nothing to help me get any real rest. In the back of my head, I knew I was really asleep in an inn. Neil and Gordon next to me. Ren watching the girls, Lennon and Wayne in the room next door. None of that mattered. We were all together around this fire, which meant every one of us had fallen asleep. I hoped the girls were okay.

“As you pointed out today by teaching Clara, they are stronger than they seem. They have to be.”

The True Sister Superior appeared before me, her voice coming first.

I nodded at her. “Sister.”

This shouldn’t be surprising to me, I supposed. One did not simply encounter the root of the apocalypse and not expect to have a conversation with the divine.

“You have seen it.”

The guys were still, silent. I turned to look at them before I answered her. They were fine, just unmoving, more like statues, as though they were there but not really present.

“I did.”

She waited. “And?”

“And what? There is no beating that thing. Not as it is. I couldn’t touch it. Even with my powers on, I understood the battle would be futile. That is a creature that has for so long taken over people like me, used us against the world, and destroyed all in its path that I cannot begin to fathom what to do about it. I have to get back. I have to explain to Teagan why her visions can’t be used to dictate our lives, which I think she already knows deep inside. I have to tell Anne that Katrina is possessed. I have to… I have to…”

There were other things I had to do. They were all on the tip of my brain like I couldn’t quite reach them. “I have to be the Oracle. I have to find the Sisters. I have to teach.”

She waited again. The woman was endlessly patient. It was probably why she was who she was. “And?”

I didn’t want to speak this truth, but hiding from it didn’t make it go away. “That shadow. It’s not just a demon.”

“None of them are just demons.” She pointed at the sky where the ravens danced. I stared at them for a moment. There was a reason my guys weren’t moving. They were here but also not. Right at that moment, they were the birds, watching.

“Like none of my guards are really just guards. Like none of you are really just women.”

She pointed at me. “Like you are not really just a woman. To that matter, no one is just a woman. They can’t always fight demons, but every woman has magic.”

“That shadow used to be human. It takes many forms.” I knew this like I knew how to breathe. “That’s how it wins. No one sees it for what it is. In fact, not everyone can see it at all. Were all demons once humans?”

Sister Superior sighed. “Go back to the Sisterhood and see, Sister Mika. That is your gift. You can see what others can’t. The Oracle always can. Even when she’s blind. And you are like no Oracle I’ve ever known. I don’t know what will happen, Mika. Everything is changed. I never imagined the shadow would come to you. He is in play now, but I fear that while you are strong enough—maybe the only one right now capable of beating him—he is not yours to beat. With all that has changed, I just don’t know anymore.”

I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I wasn’t going to ask.