Possess

will talk tomorrow at the regular time, all right?” He shot a backward glance at Father Santos. “We cannot speak freely right now. Do you understand?”
    So Monsignor didn’t want to talk in front of the new guy. Interesting. She’d noticed the tension between them, but something in Monsignor’s tone, something in the hawkish warning in his eyes, hinted at a more serious reason for his silence.
    “Do you understand?” Monsignor repeated in a whisper.
    Bridget nodded. She’d just have to wait until tomorrow for her bazillion and one questions to be answered.
    “Excellent.” Monsignor gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze, then ushered her into the hallway. “We’ll talk soon, Bridget,” he said in his normal, booming voice.
    “Okay.” She tried to sound natural in front of Father Santos. “Thanks, Monsignor.” Bridget walked down the hall, grabbed her backpack, and was gone.
    The fog still hung thick in the air, but it was no longer ominous, no longer a threat. Just the normal, depressing San Francisco fog that rolled into the Sunset District 350 out of 365 days a year. Every postcard of San Francisco showed brightly painted cable cars racing up and down sunbathed hills, the picturesque San Francisco Bay dotted with sailboats glistening in the distance. But that wasn’t Bridget’s San Francisco. Her side of the city—the ocean side—was an organized grid of row houses blanketed in the ever-present fog. It was damp. It was monotonous.
    And apparently, it was plagued with demons.
    First the Ferguson twins’ bedroom, now Mrs. Long. Even the Vatican thought it was odd if they’d sent Father Santos out to check on things. And here she was with this strange new power, smack dab in the middle of it.
    Had it really happened? Had she walked into a stranger’s house, confronted a possessed old lady, and forced a pack of demons out of her? Yes, yes, and yes. And what was more, the power she’d felt was . . . exhilarating.
    Flip side, she was now a bona fide freak. Not just in the normal “high school outcast” kind of way; more in the “institutionalized for life” kind of way. This wasn’t exactly something she could share with people, and last time she checked there was no Most Likely to Banish Demons category in the St. Michael’s yearbook. Hell, she couldn’t even talk to her mom about it. Telling your mom you’re a teenage exorcist wasn’t exactly the same as “Hey, Mom, I’m flunking Latin.” No, this was something Bridget had to keep on the down low until she could figure out how to get rid of it.
    The 28 Muni bus rushed past her as she waited to cross Nineteenth Avenue, but Bridget hardly noticed. Get rid of it. She closed her eyes and tried to recall the tingling on her skin, the crackling of energy pulsating through her in heavy, intoxicating waves. It was warm, almost comforting the way it enveloped her, and she’d only realized after it was gone how much she’d enjoyed the sensation.
    She needed to feel it again.
    Stop it. No, you don’t. It was weird. Weird and wrong. You’re not supposed to be jazzed about being able to commune with demons, dumbass. Besides, what if someone finds out? Bad enough she still had half the school whispering about her dad’s murder. If this got out, it would be a catastrophe.
    A new thought gripped her. What if it was all somehow connected? Could it really be just a coincidence that her new “talent” popped up at the same time the city was overrun with possessions? What if one was causing the other?
    Holy crap, that was so not good. She needed to get rid of her power. Go back to being normal, or as normal as she got. Maybe Monsignor could help her? He wanted what was best for her. He could light a candle, give her a blessing or—
    “Bridget Yueling Liu.”
    Bridget snapped out of her reverie. She was right in front of her house on Ulloa Street. She hardly remembered the walk.
    “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
    Bridget’s mom occupied the empty space of the doorway, one hand on the open door, one on her hip. The only time her mom used her full name was when she was in severe, “grounded till you’re eighteen” trouble.
    “Dammit,” Bridget said under her breath.
    “Well, do you?”
    Actually she didn’t. “I just lost track of—”
    “Why do I pay for you to have a cell phone? So you can ignore my calls?”
    Bridget tramped up the stairs like a death row prisoner on her last march down the cell block. “I didn’t hear