Claimed by Angels & Demons: Book 1 (4 page)

"Hoc loco spiritus," I said again, "hoc loco spiritus, hoc loco spiritus." The ghost started to disappear! I could see the doorway of Henry's room through him now. "Hoc loco spiritus," I said again, and kept saying it again and again and again.

The ghost noticed he was starting to disappear and looked at me, completely enraged, "stop that," he thundered, but I kept right on repeating the spell, backing up away from him as I did so. "No mere human can disperse me, what are you?" I ignored him and kept repeating the spell, kept backing up, but I was in the corner of the room, my butt against a dresser, the ghost inches from my face, his eyes starting to glow, "stop!" he thundered.

From somewhere inside of me came an instinct, and I put my hands right in to his luminous form and spoke the spell one last time, from deep in my chest, and I felt a pulse of energy travel through me, through my hands and in to him, and he flew apart with a cracking bang, sending a shock-wave throughout the room, knocking things over, like the world's biggest balloon being popped.

I looked over at Mrs. Barlow and Donald and Henry, who were all looking at me, utterly petrified. "Is it gone?" Mrs. Barlow asked, her voice shaking.

I looked around. I didn't see the ghost rematerializing anywhere, so I assumed that it was indeed gone. "I think so," I said, climbing down off of Henry's dresser. I had been very, very wrong about everything that had happened today. I really was a witch. Ghosts really did exist, and apparently they didn't like it too much when you dispersed them. But what the hell had that ghost done to me? I could still feel remnants of the intense love that had swept over me when I had gotten caught in his eyes, like the dying embers of a fire. And that look that he had given me. I had fallen in love with that look right there on the spot. Whoever Seffora had been, she had been truly and unconditionally loved. I envied her, that she had had someone that looked at her the way that ghost had looked at me for those few brief moments. They had been the greatest few seconds of my entire life.

Mrs. Barlow stood up a lamp that had fallen over and gave me a weak smile. She looked like she was in shock. "Well then," she said, straightening her sweater vest, "I suppose I'll go get my check book."

Chapter Three

I almost didn't go back to Spiritual Dispersion Services. I almost went home to forget the whole thing, to convince myself that it had all been some sort of weird waking dream. But I didn't, I went back. And the thing that made me go back was the thought that my Mom had done this job, and had kept it from us. Maybe she would have told us one day, maybe she was waiting for the right moment. But maybe not. Either way it was this whole weird world that she had been a part of and had kept from us, and now I was a part of it too. Trying to forget it wouldn't change that. So I went back to get answers, to try to see if I could find out what happened to my Mom four years ago. One last time.

I pulled up in front of the derelict warehouse and took my time walking over to the door, trying to think about what exactly I was going to say, how I was going to break the news that I had lied about pretty much everything, but now I would really like to know what the hell was going on. Quick like a bandaid always worked well.

I opened the door and hadn't even stepped through when, "Layla!" Henrietta spied me and came charging across the warehouse floor at a surprising pace for such an old woman. "Oh finally dear, you're back."

Shit, had the Barlow's squealed on me? "What's up?" I said.

"We're being audited," Henrietta said, coming to a stop in front of me, her breathing wheezy from her short waddle across the room.

That hardly seemed like the kind of thing to come charging across a room for all excited and out of breath. "Well... do you pay your taxes?"

"No dear, not that kind of audit, the
other
kind of audit."

What other kind of audit was there? I needed to come clean before I got in any deeper with my lies. "Henrietta there's something I need to tell you."

"Oh I knew it," Henrietta wailed, "something happened didn't it?"

"Well of course it did," Thomas barked from his desk, "you don't think the big man himself comes unless something seriously went wrong do you?" He took a quick shot of liquor and poured himself another from a half empty bottle.

"Oh dear," Henrietta was shaking her hands, "what happened Layla?"

"I'm not a witch," I blurted out, "at least, I wasn't before today." That got their attention.

"What do you mean dear?" Henrietta said.

"The girl's lost her senses," Thomas said, "here, give her a shot of this," and he held out his glass with an inch of brown liquid in it.

"My Mom doesn't work at a hotel, she went missing four years ago. She never told me about any of this witch stuff. And when I got your call I was curious about why my Mom had worked here, and even more than that I really needed the job. When you told me that we're witches and all the other stuff I just played along. I figured you were making it all up. And then I went to the house..."

Henrietta grasped both my arms, "what happened at the house?" She didn't even seem phased by everything I had just confessed.

"I... I don't know. What's all this stuff about an audit anyway?" I looked around for the first time. Really looked. There had been two other employees when I first came that morning, old women, toiling away at their own desks behind massive stacks of paper, but it was just Thomas and Henrietta now. "Where are the other employees?"

"Ran like the cowards they are," Thomas said, "and good riddance, not a spine between them. Don't know why they bothered, not like they'll get far anyway." He took another swig.

"It's very important that you start at the beginning dear," Henrietta said. "Tell me everything that happened."

"Okay," I said, focusing. I was beginning to get the feeling that something was very wrong here. "I showed up, told them who I was. The wife showed me to where the ghost stuff was happening. There was a husband and a little kid too. I was getting ready to do the spell and then there was this man. A ghost I guess, the other three couldn't see him. I didn't think ghosts were a real thing but then I tried to touch him and that didn't work out so well, so I tried to do the spell, the dispersion spell, but I couldn't remember it. But the ghost told me what the spell was."

"He
told
you the dispersion spell?" Henrietta said.

"Yea..." I said.

"Well that's a first. What happened next?"

"Well and then I did the spell, and said it a bunch of times and it was sort of working, and then I kind of touched the ghost and did the spell and I felt, I don't know, it was like a pulse of energy, and the ghost just disappeared. Dispersed. That's it."

"The fool's lost her wits," Thomas declared from his desk.

"Did the ghost say anything?" Henrietta asked, looking completely perplexed by my story.

"Well he did say he
wasn't
a ghost. But I just assumed he was lying."

"Well what was he?"

"How the hell should I know, I didn't think ghosts even existed an hour ago."

Henrietta turned and walked towards Thomas, "what do you think?" she said to Thomas. The alarm in her voice was really getting to me. If I had known this was going to turn into such a big deal I never would have come back.

"I had a bad feeling about her from the beginning. Shouldn't have hired her. Too late to do anything now though, just need to accept our fate."

"What fate," I said, "what's happening here?"

Henrietta turned back to me, "Gabriel is coming, and in his corporeal form too."

I was so tired of all this supernatural crap that I didn't understand. "I have no idea who that is or what that means."

"Death is coming you fool," Thomas yelled, "Death!"

"Gabriel is the angel of death," Henrietta added in a quieter voice.

Gabriel the archangel was coming, the same one from Sunday School. So much for being an atheist. An hour ago I would have laughed out loud at the idea that angels could be real, but if witches and ghosts were real, then why not angels too? "Well what's he going to do?"

Henrietta just gave me a worried look.

"I just dispersed some guy, that's not some giant supernatural crime is it?" What the hell had I done? What had I gotten myself in to? Ghosts and angels and witches, I wanted to just go back to being a college student, that was challenging enough.

"What you described doing isn't a dispersal spell dear," Henrietta said, "at least not one that I've ever heard of. I cant say for certain what you did, or who you did it to."

"But I just said the spell like you told me, hoc loco spiritus. Right?"

Henrietta just shrugged, "that
is
the dispersion spell dear, but the effect you described is something entirely different."

"Well should I just run for it?" Maybe the other two employees had had the right idea, whatever Thomas wanted to say about them.

Henrietta shook her head, "oh no that wouldn't be wise, if Gabriel wants you he will find you eventually, there's nowhere to hide. When he gets here you don't say anything, you just let me do the talking. I will try to reason with him. That goes for you too Thomas," she looked at her husband.

"If that bastard's going to kill me then I'm going to give him a piece of my mind first," Thomas said.

"Is that so?" a man's soft voice said behind me. I jumped and whirled around. Henrietta yelled. Thomas cursed. In the corner of the room a man was materializing in to being, like something right out of Star Trek.

"Welcome your lordship," Henrietta said, and did a full on curtsy. I thought about doing my own curtsy but figured I would just embarrass myself, so I settled for just standing there and trying to look contrite and respectful.

The man solidified and I recognized him immediately. He was the ghost I had dispersed. My stomach dropped away. The ghost, no Gabriel, had been furious when I dispersed him, and I knew instantly this wasn't going to end well. I thought about it for half a second, then figured to hell with it and I ran for it, made a beeline for the door. If it was a choice between dying where I was standing versus dying when Gabriel finally caught up to me then I would take the extra time. But just a few feet from the door I ran in to what I could only describe as a wall of air. I was sure there was nothing there, but I might as well have run in to concrete. After I had done some groaning and some checking myself for any broken bones I managed to haul myself back to my feet. Thomas was still sitting at his desk and looking at me, just shaking his head, and Henrietta had her eyes glued to the floor. Gabriel was looking away from me, at the spot where I had been standing beside Henrietta, impassive and patient. I sighed and went limping back to where I had been standing with as much dignity as possible, which wasn't much.

But despite the seriousness of the hole I had dug for myself it only took a second for my mind to go running back to the way Gabriel had looked at me when he thought I was Seffora. He was all coolness and control now, but I could still see that look of such intense heartbreak and love. That look had broken my heart, and I knew that somewhere underneath the cool exterior that he was putting on, my face, my resemblance to Seffora must be breaking his heart all over again. And there was a tiny, absurd, totally irrational voice in the back of my head that said maybe he would look at me again like that. Maybe being stopped from running would turn out to be a good thing.

"I thought I might find you here." The now very solid Gabriel touched his own arm. "It has been over a century since I took corporeal form," he said, then looked at me, and there was no hint of the way he had looked at me when he thought I was Seffora, "I trust that underlines the seriousness of the situation?"

I just kept my mouth shut like Henrietta had said and looked at the floor, and she spoke up, "whatever you require of us your lordship, we are here to obey and serve at--"

"Quiet human," Gabriel said, and Henrietta was quiet, "I wasn't speaking to you. What is your name?" Gabriel said, looking at me still.

"Layla Rowan."

"Layla Rowan, Gabriel murmured, crossing his arms and beginning to pace in front of me, "and how exactly were you able to disperse me Layla Rowan?"

Henrietta gasped and looked up from the floor at me, her eyes practically falling out of her head. Somewhere behind me Thomas grunted in surprise. Judging by their reactions I was in exactly as much trouble as I thought I was.

"I don't know," I said, "I didn't even know I was a witch this morning."

"Is that so," Gabriel paced. "Can I assume then that you don't understand the ramifications of what you did either?"

"I'm guessing it's not good," I said. Shit, this wasn't going well. Gabriel, the angel of death, was looking at me like I had killed his dog. I just hoped that I went to heaven when he killed me, but my guess was that when you pissed off the angel of death he sent you down, not up. I never should have stopped going to church.

"You guess right," Gabriel said. "In the two thousand years since humanity was foolishly taught magic by my kind, none of the sons and daughters of the Nephilim, or witches, as you so quaintly label yourselves, have been able to disperse an angel, let alone an archangel. However, that is no longer true." He stopped pacing and stepped up right in front of me, "so the question is, what are you?"

"She doesn't know who--" Henrietta began, but all it took was a look from Gabriel to make Henrietta close her mouth and stare at the floor some more. Gabriel looked back at me.

I thought about all the things I could say, all the ways I could try and bullshit my way out of this, but this wasn't an in-class test that I had missed, or a speeding ticket that I might be able to weasel my way out of, this was the angel of death, so I opted for the truth. "I don't know."

"You don't know, or you're not willing to say?"

"I don't know," I repeated.

"Who are you descended from?" he asked.

"Azazel from my mom," I said.