Possess

when she was a kid, but Bridget was relatively sure that her mom would leave her alone. It was easier to “give Bridget her space” than to confront the demon of her temper head-on.
    Demon. Crappy choice of words. This whole exorcism business had seeped into the core of her soul, affecting every thought she had, every aspect of her life. A cat she couldn’t see, the empty stare in Peter’s eyes, demonic possessions around every corner. And then there were Father Santos’s theory and his obsession with her bracelet.
    Bridget slumped to the floor and rested her head against the bed. There was a logical explanation for all of it. There had to be.
    She held up her right arm and watched as the dangling square cross on her bracelet twisted back and forth. The once-sharp edges were dulled with wear and the raised scrollwork was not quite as defined as it had been when she first put it on. But the lettering, as Father Santos had shown, was clearly legible. Two bars crossed in the middle, with the letters C S P B in each of its quadrants, all encompassed by a circle of letters that had never made any sense.
    What had Father Santos read? She peered at the charm and read the letters out loud, clockwise. “V R S N S M V.”
    Beneath her fingers, the charm jumped.
    That damn charm! Bridget pulled her laptop out from under her bed and fired it up. It had to be connected to what was happening to her. Either that, or her body had suddenly gone magnetic. She strummed her fingers impatiently on her leg as she waited for the internet portal to load, then typed each of the letters from the charm in order.
    V R S N S M V—S M Q L I V B
    Google didn’t fail her. Bridget had an answer within seconds.
    “The St. Benedict medal?” she read from an encyclopedia entry. “A Catholic emblem dating back to the fifteenth century, used by laypeople to protect against spirits, witchcraft, and other diabolical influences.” She scanned the entry and found an illustration of a typical St. Benedict medal: on the front, the image of the saint in question holding a cross in one hand and a book in the other; on the back, the same lettering Bridget had on her charm.
    Huh. How come her charm only had one side?
    She continued to read. “The lettering remained a mystery until a manuscript was discovered at Metten Abbey in Bavaria in 1647. The letters were found to correspond to the Vade retro satana prayer.”
    As if to punctuate that statement, her charm shuddered.
    Vade retro satana . Again? It was a prayer?
Vade retro satana
Numquam suade mihi vana
Sunt mala quae libas
Ipse venana bibas.
    The passage was helpfully translated:
Step back, Satan
Never tempt me with vain things
What you offer me is evil
You drink the poison yourself.
    So her father had given her an exorcist’s good-luck charm when she was seven, a charm that had caught Father Santos so off guard he’d promptly lost his cool, a charm that moved by itself when its prayer was read out loud.
    Coincidence? Could it have been a weird twist of fate that this charm just happened to catch her dad’s eye in a store window? No. That was too ridiculous for even Bridget to buy. But the alternative was even more disturbing: Her dad had known exactly what that medal meant when he gave it
to her.
    How?
    She snapped her laptop closed and shoved it back under the bed. Nothing but questions that had no answers. That was her life now: one giant question mark.
    Why her? Why was all of this happening to her? She felt like a baton getting passed along in a relay race, completely devoid of any control over her own destiny. She hadn’t asked for this power, and now she was expected to “help” people like it was her nine-to-five job.
    What if she didn’t want to? What if she didn’t go with Monsignor tomorrow? The world wouldn’t end. He’d be disappointed, sure, but he’d do the banishment himself, as he’d done hundreds and hundreds of times before. It wouldn’t be a big deal.
    That was it. She was taking control. She wasn’t going to be anybody’s pawn. If she didn’t want to do the banishment tomorrow, then that was that.
    Bridget’s temples throbbed. The stress of the last few days was taking its toll. Matt was right; she needed someone to confide in.
    Her dad would have understood. He would have listened to her, calmly and without judgment. He’d always been like that. Where her mom was emotional with a wicked temper, her dad had been quiet, serene, unflappable. He had always