Human (10 page)

I finally caught a glimpse of the crucifix under a pile of socks. If I was really half-demon like Devin claimed, would I get burned or something? Taking a deep, steadying breath, I slowly reached for the crucifix. Nothing happened when my fingers touched its shiny surface, which was, in my mind, a proof that I wasn't a demon.

Sitting down on my bed, I placed the crucifix next to my laptop and immediately started googling for any information that could help me kill the demon. It turned out that wasn't very productive since I kept getting a bunch of stupid pages about evil spirits and possessions. Devin wasn't exactly possessing anyone's body, as far as I could tell, so exorcism was out of the question. My search for a special knife was equally useless since most of those knives were in fact movie props or replicas.

I closed the lid of my laptop, unsure what to do. There was no one I knew who could actually give me tips on how to find a special sacred knife. Except... what if I could 'make' my own sacred knife? I'd only have to find a knife, take it to a church and soak it in the holy water. Wait, the holy water itself might be able to do him some harm, so I could bottle it and use it on him when I got the chance. What really bothered me was how was I supposed to steal the holy water. It was a sin to steal, especially from a church, but I would be doing it for the right cause, or at least that was what I kept telling myself.

I can barely discern the features of two men
, who are in something that resembles a bedroom. The only source of light is a torch in one corner, but it seems so far away. I blink, and my vision clears a fraction. One man is sitting on the bed, which has black covers. His hair is straight, long and blond, and he probably has the most beautiful face I have ever seen. He is wearing a purple shirt and dark gray jeans. Even though I can see much better now, I still can't tell the color of his eyes.

The other man is standing with his back turned to the blond man. He is very tall and has short black hair.
The angry expression on his pale face scares me a bit, even more than his black obsidian eyes. I'm almost sure I'm seeing demons again.

"The girl should have been here already, Leonard," the black-haired man sa
ys, clenching his big fists, his black shirt straining across his shoulders with each breath.

"She will be," Leonard gets up and walks over to him, placing his hand gently on the man's upper arm. "You just have to be patient."

"Patient? No! I've been waiting for this too long."

"What are
a few days more, Maliadades?" Leonard trails his finger up and down Maliadades' arm. I can finally see his eyes, and they are black too. Maliadades turns around, putting his hands on each side of Leonard's face. No matter how strong and threatening the bigger man looks, his touch seems tender. I feel like I'm interrupting something intimate, but I can't pull out of the vision.

"Fine. I'll wait," Maliadades said. "But he has
until the end of the week and not a day more."

My vision disappeared almost as fast as it had come. I was back in my room, wondering what had that been about. So that demon, Maliadades, was the one who wanted my sister. Just what kind of a name was Maliadades? It didn't sound scary or demonic but ridiculous. The thing was, there was nothing ridiculous about that man. I was slightly annoyed that I always got some unimportant fragments which told me nothing about any hidden plans. Knowing what that demon looked like was completely irrelevant because I certainly wasn't going to Hell to meet him.

It took me a moment to remember what I'd been doing. These visions were really distracting, but I hadn't found a way to stop them yet. Lying down on the bed, I stared at the ceiling, which seemed to clear my mind a bit. Oh yeah, I had a great plan how to solve my demon problem.

"I need you to come with me," I said to Italia when the bell announced our last period was over.

"Come where?" she asked, collecting her notebooks from her desk, only a hint of surprise in her voice.

"To a church," I said, watching her face carefully. She looked confused for a moment, but then her lips widened into a smile.

"Whoa, are you suddenly becoming extra religious?" She put her backpack over one shoulder, and we walked out of the class, pushing through the crowd. Devin was nowhere in sight, and I was grateful for that. Actually, he hadn't shown up for school today at all. Maybe he realized it wasn't such a fun and happy place as they tried to portray in the ads for our school.

"No, but my grandma wants me to get her crucifix blessed," I said as we walked out into the cold winter air. The snow had mostly melted, and the mud was the only thing left of it.

"And you're taking me with you because...?"

"Hey, churches and priests scare me." I grinned. "I thought you would defend me if some nun tried to steal my grandma's precious crucifix."

"Precious you say?" Italia rubbed her palms together, raising her eyebrows, an evil smirk on her face. I laughed so hard, tears blurring my vision, and nearly bumped into Amadeo. He looked from me to her and just shook his head.

"No, I couldn't." Italia batted her dark, mascara-covered eyelashes, probably to annoy him more. "Ariel just told me she needed a new dress."

"Umm, let's go." I grabbed Italia's arm, and we started walking away. She turned around and quickly waved to her brother, who was undoubtedly staring at us. I wondered would he follow us.

"What was that about?" I whispered angrily to Italia. "You didn't have to tell him about the dress! I don't want to wear one and now I'll have to!"

"Why? I don't need a dress. Really." Something dark in the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I looked around, searching the shadows and every possible hiding spot for a glimpse of a blue wing. I couldn't see anything suspicious. Maybe Amadeo wasn't following us after all.

"Yes, you do. Trust me." Her dark brown eyes met mine. "He asked me about you yesterday. I think he likes you."

"What?" I stared at her in shock. Amadeo had asked her something about me? I didn't know should I be flattered or just wary.

"Yeah." Italia smiled. "He asked me what you liked to do in your spare time, what your favorite color was and things like that. I don't want to spoil a surprise if he's planning something for you."

I was out of words. Was it even possible that Amadeo actually liked me? It could all be a ploy to get to my sister, but maybe he had just gotten the opportunity to get to know me better and started to think of me differently.

"Do you think he...?" I barely managed to say.

"Yeah, I believe he's really interested in you."

"Did he ask anything about my sister?" Because if he had, I wasn't even going to think about looking pretty at the party this weekend.

"No, why would he?" Italia frowned, her heavy backpack nearly sliding off her shoulder. She just pulled it up, her back hunched a little under its weight.

"Why didn't you just give that thing to your brother?" I pointed at the backpack. Of course, I couldn't have given mine to anyone because I was hiding a huge silver knife I had stolen this morning from the kitchen. There were high chances my mom would never realize it was missing because she rarely used it. Besides, there were tons of other knives, but this one seemed to be easy for me to hold and big enough to go through a demon's heart... if I was lucky, that is.

"I won't let him go anywhere near my backpack," she scoffed. "I caught him searching something inside without my permission. He didn't even have the grace to tell me what he was looking for."

"Why would he do that?" Oh, I had a good idea why Amadeo had felt the need to search his little sister's backpack. He was probably looking for something that could belong to Devin; a composition or a research paper. Would it be of any use if I gave Amadeo that paper which had magically appeared in my notebook? Could he track Devin somehow? I dismissed that thought because it was easier to simply call Devin on his new cell phone and ask him to come. Maybe he wouldn't answer or want to come, but it was worth a try. Besides, he came to me so often that I almost didn't have to look for him at all.

"I don't know!" she said, grabbing my arm and pulling me to a stop. I was just about to ask her what was wrong when I realized I'd been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn't seen the church on my left. How had we gotten here that fast?

"Are you going inside?" Italia asked. "Or you're too busy thinking of my brother?"

"Umm, I'm going inside." I watched Italia as she climbed the two stone stairs in front of the entrance. What if I really was part-demon? I had been to church before and nothing weird had happened, but I hadn't had visions back then. Italia glanced back at me and just smiled, probably wondering what took me so long. I took a deep breath and went towards the entrance. Nothing happened.

"So do we just sprinkle it with the holy water or what?" Italia said as I took the crucifix out of my backpack and handed it to her. Luckily, there weren't any people in sight, but I had to hurry if I was planning to actually pull out a knife in here. I didn't want to scare to death any of the old ladies who regularly came here. Especially not the ones who knew my parents.

"I kind of find churches creepy," I said and that was the truth. They were always so huge, cold, silent, and filled with the musty smell and those weird-looking statues of saints.

"Why don't we go together?"

"Don't tell me you're afraid too," I teased, hoping she'd take the bait and decide to go by herself. Maybe I should have simply said I wanted to stay here and admire the statues. Yeah, like she'd believe that.

"I'm not!" She turned on her heel, the strands of her long black hair nearly hitting me in the face, and went for the brown door. I watched as she hesitantly opened it and peeked inside. A male voice asked her what she needed, and she quickly explained. I couldn't hear anything else, but she winked at me and closed the door behind her. Ok, it was the time to do my job.

I put my backpack on the floor and carefully took out my knife. Glancing around to check if anyone could see me, I inched closer to the holy water font and dipped the knife in it. My fingers grazed the water, but nothing special happened. The tiny droplets of the holy water glistened on the blade as I pulled it out. I was a little bit disappointed it didn't start glowing white. Oh, well. They didn't actually have the fake holy water in churches, did they? Because that would be unfortunate.

I placed the knife back into my backpack, not even caring about my notebooks and books getting wet. So what if my homework got the white splotches in the middle of it? I had more important things to do. The brown door opened with a loud creak, and I could hear Italia apologizing for making noise. I grabbed my empty bottle and filled it with the holy water, my heart beating like crazy. Italia was getting closer and closer, and I nearly dropped the bottle. Somehow I managed to get it into my backpack without Italia noticing it.

"All done." She smiled, giving me back my crucifix. "The priest was really nice."

"Thanks," I said, trying to appear as if I hadn't done anything special, but my voice was unsteady. My backpack was suddenly even heavier with all those blessed things in it.

"Are you ok?" Italia's dark eyes narrowed.

"Yeah," I said. "It's just this air... It's making me lightheaded."

"Oh, then let's get out of here," she said. The feeling of relief when we were finally out was so great that I nearly started jumping around like an idiot. I couldn't believe I had actually done it.

"Are we going shopping?" She gave me a look under her eyebrows.

"Of course!" I nearly squealed. Not only did I feel like going shopping, but I also felt like I could conquer the world... or maybe just one extremely cute angel.

As Italia and I were walking out of one shop, we ran into my sister and her friend, Miley or something; my sister had too many friends to remember them all. It didn't surprise me even a tiny bit that Christina's hands were already full of shopping bags. She must have left her backpack at her friend's place.