"Oh, come on, Peter!" Hector threw his hands in the air.

Peter turned his cold stare on Hector, as if threatening him as next on the ignore list. "I don't know what you're talking-"

"Would you knock it off?" Hector barked. "You're creeping me out. We all know you're pissed at Bridge, but get over it, okay?"

"He's pissed at Liu?" Brad asked.

She so did not want this topic of conversation resurrected. Bridget bolted to her feet and whisked her tray with its half-eaten sandwich off the table. "Guys, I've . . . um . . . got to go check on my . . . er . . . choir music for rehearsal."

"Huh?" Hector said.

"Yeah." She shoved the contents of her tray into the nearby trash can and grabbed her backpack. "See you later."

Bridget dodged small packs of students eating in the hallway as she hurried away from the cafeteria. Freshmen, mostly. They sat huddled together on the floor, laughing and joking without a care in the world. Bastards.

Her excuse to bail on lunch was total crap, but with fifteen minutes left before the warning bell, she needed something to do with her time. Going over her music for the upcoming show choir winter concert was as good an excuse as any, and maybe it would keep her mind off . . . everything. Bridget turned a corner, thankful the hall was free from giggling freshmen, grabbed her music notebook from her backpack, and plopped down on the floor to study.

She only made it a page into Mozart's "Ave verum corpus" before a shadow passed in front of the light. Bridget glanced up to find the deep green eyes and snarling smile of Alexa Darlington towering above her.

"Well, if it isn't Bridget Liu."

Bridget leaned her head back against the row of lockers. She so wasn't in the mood. "What do you want, Alexa?"

"With you?" Alexa sneered. "Nothing."

Bridget casually returned to her music notebook. "Then piss off, okay? I've got work to do."

"I just think it's interesting that you're picking up my hand-me-downs now. That's all."

"What?"

Alexa took a step back and folded her arms across her chest. "You asked Matt Quinn to the Winter Formal, didn't you?"

"I didn't ask-"

"So I think it's funny." Alexa barreled on. "I mean, I always knew you were jealous of me. Just didn't think you'd go so far as to steal my-"

Okay. That's it. Bridget shot to her feet. "Jealous of you? Are you kidding me?"

Alexa laughed, light and airy. "Duh. Ever since you assaulted me back in the sixth grade. Sister Ursula said you hit me because you were jealous."

Bridget hated Sister Ursula, their old principal at St. Cecilia's, almost as much as she hated Alexa.

"You should thank me, really," Alexa said with a thin smile.

"Thank you?"

"Sister Ursula wanted to expel you, but I told my father that I forgave you so they let you stay."

Getting expelled from St. Cecilia's would have been the single greatest day of Bridget's life. "I'm supposed to thank you for that?"

Alexa ignored her. "And now I guess I'm returning the favor."

"Huh?"

"I should thank you for getting Matt Quinn out of my hair."

"Out of your hair?"

Alexa shook her crown of red ringlets as if to emphasize her point. "Matt's just never gotten over our breakup. He can't seem to let me go."

All right. Time to stop the crazy train. "Really? Because from what I saw, he totally ditched you after school the other day to take me home."

"Is that what you think happened?"

Bridget took a step toward Alexa. "That's what I know happened. And in front of your little posse of sycophants. That must have sucked for you."

"I don't know what you're-"

"Sy-co-phants. I know, big words are hard for you. Sound it out and maybe Daddy will tell you what it means later."

Bridget felt the momentum swing her way, but Alexa wasn't about to back down.

"I guess it makes sense that you'd want to date Matt," Alexa said, jutting out her chin. "I mean, since his dad is at your house, like, every night of the week."

Bridget smiled. "Still not as often as your dad."

Alexa reared back her hand as if she was going to slap Bridget across the face. Bridget tensed, but just as Alexa started the down swing, she froze. Her eyes dropped, and instead of a bitch slap, Alexa ran her hand over ringlet curls.

"As least my dad didn't get yours murdered," Alexa said coolly.

Bridget flinched. "Bitch."

Alexa hitched her purse up on her shoulder and straightened her neck. "I see your anger-management counseling didn't do much good."

Bridget clenched her fists. She wanted to smash one into the side of Alexa's face, erasing that smug smile. She bit down hard on her lower lip instead. Alexa was intentionally baiting her, maybe to try and get her suspended before the Winter Formal so she couldn't go. She needed to resist temptation.

They stared at each other, Alexa's green eyes sparkling with her plastic smile while Bridget took deep, slow breaths, trying to cool her temper. After a minute, Alexa sighed, broke her eyes away, and sauntered down the hallway.

"You and Matt probably won't last very long anyway," Alexa said, glancing back over her shoulder. "The way people around you end up dead, who knows what might happen?"

Sixteen.

"HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH!

"Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hal-le-e-lujah!"

AT A VIGOROUS NOD FROM MS. TEMPLETON, Bridget leaned forward and flipped the top edge of the score; the pianist's nimble fingers didn't miss a single orchestrally transcribed note. Handel's famous chorus ticked along under Mr. Vincent's baton. The choirmaster bounced on his toes as he conducted, his baton pattern square and regular as a military band.

"For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"

Bridget yawned. She couldn't concentrate. Her mind kept drifting to the state mental institution in Sonoma County where Milton Undermeyer was confined. Why would her dad want her to see the man who killed him?

Rule Number Five: They lie. Yeah, yeah, she'd seen plenty of that. But the demonic presence of Penemuel was different, somehow. It was flying solo, clearly not a part of the chaotic infestation she'd been brought there to cleanse. "He calls you Pumpkin Bunny. He says you will know." Of course it was possible that a demon would know her dad's nickname for her; Monsignor had warned her that demons gain power over their victims by promising them visions of the future and knowledge of the unknown. But Penemuel was not like any demon she'd encountered before.

It had a message for her, and when the message had been delivered, Bridget could have sworn the painted features of the doll had changed, morphed into an expression of euphoria. "My penance is done. I am released!"

"Bridget!" Ms. Templeton hissed.

Bridget jumped up and turned the page. "Sorry."

"The kingdom of this world, Is become the kingdom of our Lord."

With the exception of Hector's bright tenor, the sparse male sections mumbled their words and missed the majority of their cues. The sopranos were flat and the altos sang the soprano part because they couldn't remember their own, but Mr. Vincent flailed his baton like he was James Levine at the Met, cuing singers who weren't even paying attention. Handel's finest had proved a bit beyond the St. Michael's show choir.

Another nod from Ms. Templeton brought another page turn from Bridget, and inside she cringed. Page seven was where Mr. Vincent's own creation took off.

Mr. Vincent's baton took a dramatic pause, and on the next downbeat the entire musical mood changed. Ms. Templeton's accompaniment was no longer Handel's jaunty composition, but an asymmetric pop track. From the front row of the choir, four sopranos spot-turned away from the risers, beginning a routine straight out of the last episode of So You Think You Can Dance. The rest of the singers parted down the middle, and Hector strutted between them onto the altar, picking up a hand mic from Mr. Vincent's music stand, and Christina Aguilera'd his way into "Hip-Hop-

Elujah," arranged by Blair Vincent, based on source material by G. F. Handel.

"King of kings and lord of lords.

And He shall reign forever and ever."

The choir kicked in as Hector crooned his way through the lead vocals, the show choir dancers pirouetting and gyrating around him.

Bridget was pretty sure Handel had just rolled over in his grave.

Disgusting as the entire display was, Bridget had to admit that Hector was a star. He exuded confidence, like he didn't care what anyone thought. Bridget envied him for that. She always felt at odds-with her mom, with her brother, with school. Even the piano, her refuge from everything in the world that bugged her, had become a burden after she'd been roped into this gig as second accompanist for the show choir. She felt like little pieces of her soul were dying while classical masterpieces were being turned into American Idol reject fodder and there was nothing she could . . .

"Bridget!"

Ms. Templeton turned the page so violently the whole score slipped out of the music holder and came crashing down on the Yamaha baby grand, producing one dissonant train wreck of a chord.

Bridget closed her eyes and scrunched up her face. How many page turns had she missed? She had no idea. Her brain was oatmeal.

Mr. Vincent's nasal voice cut through the silence. "Ms. Templeton, is there a problem?"

"Technical issue," she said, shooting a glance at Bridget. "With the page turning."

"It is the job of the second accompanist to be following along at all times." Mr. Vincent glared down her. "I must have your full attention, Bridget, as if you were playing the music yourself. Otherwise, I could have"-he waved his baton around his head-"anyone sitting there turning pages."

"I'm really sorry."

"Mr. Vincent?" Alexa's sickeningly sweet voice made Bridget's skin crawl. "If the second accompanist is having issues concentrating, I'd be more than happy to turn pages."

Mr. Vincent smiled. "That's very kind of you, Alexa, but I need your voice in the soprano section. There's no one else who can carry the obbligato in the chorus."

A murmur of agreement rippled through the choir. Alexa batted her long auburn lashes at Mr. Vincent and feigned a blush. "Of course. Whatever you need, Mr. Vincent."

Bitch.

Mr. Vincent sighed and turned back to Bridget. "Bridget, why don't you take a break before you play the second half of rehearsal today? I need your head in the game, with the winter concert a week away."

Bridget rolled her eyes as she stepped off the altar and down to the floor of the church. A "break" was hardly going to help her focus. She meandered down the aisle as Mr. Vincent tapped his baton to regain his choir's attention.

"We'll take it from measure two-fifty-eight, Ms. Templeton. And a one, two, three, four."

The click of Bridget's boots against the hard marble died under the booming acoustics of piano and choir. The Church of St. Michael wasn't nearly as shiny and ornate as her parish church at St. Cecilia's. It was half the size, older, dingier. Horrifying in a European kind of way, with dark stained glass windows depicting martyrs and saints enduring acts of brutality-stoned, shot full of arrows, burned at the stake-while angels looked on. Not the cherubic, benevolent angels with rosy cheeks and curly blond hair you'd find at other churches, but dark, ominous angels, their skin tinged with a pallor of gray, their expressions hard and completely devoid of compassion. Oh, and they each held a sword, some tipped with bright red blood. Not exactly a touchy-feely kind of church.

Her dad had taken the family to Mass there every year on September 29, the Feast of St. Michael, and Bridget had dreaded the day every year. Once, when she was a kid, she could have sworn the angels were looking at her. So. Not. Cool.

Ironic that Bridget ended up in school there, though as far as Catholic schools went, she could have gotten stuck at Mercy, the all-girls school. That would have been hell.

Bridget paused near the back of the sanctuary by an old confessional that had been transformed into an alcove to display the jewel of St. Michael's: mounted on the wall, in a Plexiglas display case, was a giant sword.

The Sword of St. Michael, a relic of the archangel, supposedly created from secret Vatican schematics of the angel's actual sword. Bridget had heard its history at least a dozen times in religion class, and each time she rolled her eyes. Secret Vatican sword blueprints? Ooooo. Was she really supposed to believe that crap?

The sword was the treasure of the Church of St. Michael, and special venerations were held in the sanctuary throughout the year. Bridget found the sword vaguely disturbing like the rest of the church. The golden blade was two feet long, thin with patches of tarnish, and marred as if it had actually been used at some point. The hilt was also gold and ornately carved with symbols and swirls she couldn't decipher.

Beneath the sword was perhaps the most disturbing thing of all-a plaque that read: Sword of St. Michael, Archangel Replica Donated by the Darlington Family at the dedication

of the Church of St. Michael, 1922