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crying inside the room.
The sound broke his heart and tore through the hope that his sister
would live. Pain and panic built back up in his chest, tearing at
him. What if he’d been wrong? What if it hadn’t worked? He put his
hand on the door, unable to wait any longer, and tried to compose
himself. This was it. Either Grace would be alive or she’d be
dead.
    He pushed the door open and limped
inside. What he saw there stopped him dead in his tracks. His
sister was sitting up in bed, her hair disheveled and her skin
pale. Her bright blue eyes were filled with tears. But she was
looking at him, and very much alive.
    He fell to the ground, overcome. Grace
looked over and gave him a tense smile, tears rolling down her
cheeks. Both of his parents laughed with joy. His dad strode over
to him, pulling him off the ground and toward his sister’s
bed.
    “ It’s okay, son,” he said.
“It’s going to be okay.”
    Just then a doctor walked in. He
checked Grace’s vitals, dumbstruck, and shook his head. Ash
staggered closer to Grace, amazed, and held out his hands. His
sister looked up and smiled tenderly at him, but there was sadness
and pain in her eyes. Guilt flashed through him, made worse by her
words.
    “ Ash,” she whispered,
pulling him against her. “I must talk to you.”
    Before he could respond, a black cloud
of smoke rose just behind her bed, a set of red eyes appearing in
the cloud to glare at him in anger. The burning pain in his chest
flared, and his heart skipped in his chest. Gasping, he fell to the
ground.
    His mom ran to his side, calling for
the doctors. There was a swirl of confusion as nurses and the
doctor came running back in the room. They put Ash back into his
bed, and hooked him up to an IV drip. But Ash’s attention never
left the demon in the corner.
    “ It’s just the stress,”
the nurse reassured his parents.
    “ He needs to rest,” the
doctor added. “He’ll be fine. It’s a lot to take in, and he’s still
recovering from his own injuries.”
    Ash watched the doctor walk away, and
saw everyone return to Grace’s bedside, but turned back to the
demon, terrified. Had he returned to take Grace? Had Ash’s soul not
been enough?
    “ My end of the deal is
done,” the demon’s cold voice said, breaking into Ash’s thoughts.
Whatever drug the nurse had given him was starting to pull him down
into unconsciousness, yet the pain of the voice coursed through him
as if his veins were on fire. The pain killers weren’t helping.
Then his mother was at his side, whispering something into his ear,
but it was drowned out. He couldn’t hear anything above the demon’s
voice in his head.
    “ Now it’s time for you to
hold up your side
of our bargain. You have one year to say goodbye to your friends
and family.” The voice echoed in his throbbing skull, rattling
through his bones. “Then I’ll be back to collect your soul. Your
debt to me …”
    My soul! Ash thought, terrified. Before he could think any
further, though, his eyes closed, and he drifted to
sleep.

 
     
     
    Adrian was definitely up
to something, and from what Kali could
see, it wasn’t good. She’d been warned, of course, but she hadn’t
believed – not really. This was Adrian, her friend and the
highest-ranking angel in Heaven. The idea of him doing something
this outrageous … When Michael first approached her about it, she’d
thought he was being overly cautious. Paranoid.
    Ridiculous.
    After what she’d just heard, though,
she was starting to think otherwise. And that was … dangerous. To
say the least.
    As she closed her eyes and
focused on her flight to Earth, her wings tucked against her sides,
she thought back over the last hours. Michael had come to her with
another angel, Seraphine, who claimed that Adrian was plotting a
revolution. Adrian is holding secret
meetings with others, making plans against the Creator, Seraphine told her, with urgency and ferocity in
her voice. He’s promising a new order