Possess

jutting out her chin. “I mean, since his dad is at your house, like, every night of the week.”
    Bridget smiled. “Still not as often as your dad.”
    Alexa reared back her hand as if she was going to slap Bridget across the face. Bridget tensed, but just as Alexa started the down swing, she froze. Her eyes dropped, and instead of a bitch slap, Alexa ran her hand over ringlet curls.
    “As least my dad didn’t get yours murdered,” Alexa said coolly.
    Bridget flinched. “Bitch.”
    Alexa hitched her purse up on her shoulder and straightened her neck. “I see your anger-management counseling didn’t do much good.”
    Bridget clenched her fists. She wanted to smash one into the side of Alexa’s face, erasing that smug smile. She bit down hard on her lower lip instead. Alexa was intentionally baiting her, maybe to try and get her suspended before the Winter Formal so she couldn’t go. She needed to resist temptation.
    They stared at each other, Alexa’s green eyes sparkling with her plastic smile while Bridget took deep, slow breaths, trying to cool her temper. After a minute, Alexa sighed, broke her eyes away, and sauntered down the hallway.
    “You and Matt probably won’t last very long anyway,” Alexa said, glancing back over her shoulder. “The way people around you end up dead, who knows what might happen?”

Sixteen
    “H ALLELUJAH ! H ALLELUJAH !
“Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hal-le-e-lujah!”
    A T A VIGOROUS NOD FROM M S. T EMPLETON, Bridget leaned forward and flipped the top edge of the score; the pianist’s nimble fingers didn’t miss a single orchestrally transcribed note. Handel’s famous chorus ticked along under Mr. Vincent’s baton. The choirmaster bounced on his toes as he conducted, his baton pattern square and regular as a military band.
“For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”
    Bridget yawned. She couldn’t concentrate. Her mind kept drifting to the state mental institution in Sonoma County where Milton Undermeyer was confined. Why would her dad want her to see the man who killed him?
    Rule Number Five: They lie. Yeah, yeah, she’d seen plenty of that. But the demonic presence of Penemuel was different, somehow. It was flying solo, clearly not a part of the chaotic infestation she’d been brought there to cleanse. “He calls you Pumpkin Bunny. He says you will know.” Of course it was possible that a demon would know her dad’s nickname for her; Monsignor had warned her that demons gain power over their victims by promising them visions of the future and knowledge of the unknown. But Penemuel was not like any demon she’d encountered before.
    It had a message for her, and when the message had been delivered, Bridget could have sworn the painted features of the doll had changed, morphed into an expression of euphoria. “My penance is done. I am released!”
    “Bridget!” Ms. Templeton hissed.
    Bridget jumped up and turned the page. “Sorry.”
“The kingdom of this world,
Is become the kingdom of our Lord.”
    With the exception of Hector’s bright tenor, the sparse male sections mumbled their words and missed the majority of their cues. The sopranos were flat and the altos sang the soprano part because they couldn’t remember their own, but Mr. Vincent flailed his baton like he was James Levine at the Met, cuing singers who weren’t even paying attention. Handel’s finest had proved a bit beyond the St. Michael’s show choir.
    Another nod from Ms. Templeton brought another page turn from Bridget, and inside she cringed. Page seven was where Mr. Vincent’s own creation took off.
    Mr. Vincent’s baton took a dramatic pause, and on the next downbeat the entire musical mood changed. Ms. Templeton’s accompaniment was no longer Handel’s jaunty composition, but an asymmetric pop track. From the front row of the choir, four sopranos spot-turned away from the risers, beginning a routine straight out of the last episode of So You Think You Can Dance . The rest of the singers parted down the middle, and Hector strutted between them onto the altar, picking up a hand mic from Mr. Vincent’s music stand, and Christina Aguilera’d his way into “Hip-Hop-
Elujah,” arranged by Blair Vincent, based on source material by G. F. Handel.
“King of kings and lord of lords.
And He shall reign forever and ever.”
    The choir kicked in as Hector crooned his way through the lead vocals, the show choir dancers pirouetting and gyrating around him.
    Bridget