He tilted his head, listening.

“Something changed when you did that. I have no idea why or what, but something changed.”

“So, if you die,” he said, filling in the pieces, “the world will end?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not sure what the catalyst will be, but it’s going to happen soon. I have to get back home. I have to figure this out.”

“If you aren’t the most arrogant thing. Won’t my parents be disappointed.”

“I’m not saying that. I have no idea what set the wheels in motion. I’m just saying that they are in motion. Now. As we speak.”

“But if the demon inside you is inside me, then I can live through anything.”

“Wade, it doesn’t work like that. Humans can’t survive a demon possession.”

“Pfft, you did,” he said as though I’d insulted him.

“Yes, and I don’t know how. If you do this, Malak will kill you.”

“Malak?” he said, his eyes glittering hungrily. “Its name is Malak?”

“Malak-Tuke, Lucifer’s second-in-command. Or at least he used to be. And trust me, he is not something you want traipsing about your insides. He’ll rip you apart.”

“Then why didn’t he rip you apart?”

Fair question. If only I knew. “We became fast friends,” I said, having no idea what else to say. “But he’s already made it clear to me he doesn’t like you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And how did he do that?”

“We have a connection. A bond. We think very much alike, and since I’d like to rip you apart right now, I’m pretty sure he would, too.”

“Unfortunately,” he said, stepping closer, “that’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

There was going to be no reasoning with him. I was hoping that if we stood in the cold long enough, another guard would come or a student would pass by, but hope was dwindling by the second. He was getting impatient. My talk of Malak only whetted his appetite for the raw power the demon possessed. He was a fool, but most psychopaths were.

I decided to play off it, to keep him wanting more, keep him talking. I was shaking uncontrollably now, from both fear and the cold. “He’s tall,” I said as though reminiscing with a friend over ice cream. “As tall as the trees. His shoulders as wide as a building. And his claws are razor sharp. I’ve seen them slice open a chest in the blink of an eye.”

Admittedly the one I’d seen slice open a chest was not the demon inside me. That happened in a vision I’d had before I’d actually met Jared, when he brushed up against me in a dark hallway. It was my only vision, in fact, involving the Angel of Death. In it, he fought a towering demon with a sword in a strange land with a desolate landscape, scorched clouds, and a roiling, violet sky.

I’d heard the clanging of metal after our arms touched in that narrow passageway and turned to watch in horror when the vision crashed into me. A boy no more than sixteen or seventeen, fierce and somehow not quite human, struggled with a dark, monstrous beast. The boy’s arms corded as tendon and muscle strained against the weight of the sword he wielded. He slashed again and again, but the monster was fast, with razorlike talons and sharp, shimmering teeth, and the boy knew what those teeth felt like when they sank into flesh, knew the blinding pain that accompanied defeat. But he also knew the power he himself wielded, the raw strength that saturated every molecule of his body.

Another herculean effort landed in the monster’s shoulder and continued through its thick chest. The monster sank under the boy’s sword with a guttural scream. He looked on while the beast writhed in pain, watched it grow still as the life drained out of it, and somewhere in the back of the boy’s mind, he allowed himself to register the burning of his lungs as he struggled to fill them with air.

Blood trickled between his fingers, down the length of his blade, and dripped to the powdery earth beneath his feet. I followed the trail of blood up to three huge gashes across his chest. Clearly the monster’s claws had met their mark, laying the flesh of its enemy open. I gasped and covered my mouth with both hands as the boy spun toward me, sword at the ready. Squinting against the low sun, I could almost make out his features, but the vision evaporated before I got the chance. A heartbeat later, I was back in the dark hallway, gasping for air, one palm pressed against my temple, the other against the wall for balance.

And that had been my introduction to angels and demons. I met Jared later and recognized him from that vision, but it was so surreal, so impossible, I had a hard time believing what I’d seen. I thought it was a metaphor for something, like when one dreams and it really means something else. I found out later the vision did happen. It was as real as I was. As Wade was. As the knife was that he grasped so palpably close to me.

Wade stared, mesmerized. “How do you feel with it inside you?”

I shrugged. No need to start lying now. “I don’t even know he’s there. I feel a ripple every once in a while, but that’s about it.”

Surprised, he asked, “Doesn’t he make you feel more powerful? Able to do anything?”

“Wade, I can’t do anything. With or without him, I’m just a human. He doesn’t give me superpowers.”

He sneered at me. “That’s because you’ve never used what you have at your fingertips. I knew you were stupid, but come on. You have one of the most powerful beings in the universe inside you and he does nothing? Are you for real?”