Possess

was pretty sure Handel had just rolled over in his grave.
    Disgusting as the entire display was, Bridget had to admit that Hector was a star. He exuded confidence, like he didn’t care what anyone thought. Bridget envied him for that. She always felt at odds—with her mom, with her brother, with school. Even the piano, her refuge from everything in the world that bugged her, had become a burden after she’d been roped into this gig as second accompanist for the show choir. She felt like little pieces of her soul were dying while classical masterpieces were being turned into American Idol reject fodder and there was nothing she could . . .
    “Bridget!”
    Ms. Templeton turned the page so violently the whole score slipped out of the music holder and came crashing down on the Yamaha baby grand, producing one dissonant train wreck of a chord.
    Bridget closed her eyes and scrunched up her face. How many page turns had she missed? She had no idea. Her brain was oatmeal.
    Mr. Vincent’s nasal voice cut through the silence. “Ms. Templeton, is there a problem?”
    “Technical issue,” she said, shooting a glance at Bridget. “With the page turning.”
    “It is the job of the second accompanist to be following along at all times.” Mr. Vincent glared down her. “I must have your full attention, Bridget, as if you were playing the music yourself. Otherwise, I could have”—he waved his baton around his head—“anyone sitting there turning pages.”
    “I’m really sorry.”
    “Mr. Vincent?” Alexa’s sickeningly sweet voice made Bridget’s skin crawl. “If the second accompanist is having issues concentrating, I’d be more than happy to turn pages.”
    Mr. Vincent smiled. “That’s very kind of you, Alexa, but I need your voice in the soprano section. There’s no one else who can carry the obbligato in the chorus.”
    A murmur of agreement rippled through the choir. Alexa batted her long auburn lashes at Mr. Vincent and feigned a blush. “Of course. Whatever you need, Mr. Vincent.”
    Bitch.
    Mr. Vincent sighed and turned back to Bridget. “Bridget, why don’t you take a break before you play the second half of rehearsal today? I need your head in the game, with the winter concert a week away.”
    Bridget rolled her eyes as she stepped off the altar and down to the floor of the church. A “break” was hardly going to help her focus. She meandered down the aisle as Mr. Vincent tapped his baton to regain his choir’s attention.
    “We’ll take it from measure two-fifty-eight, Ms. Templeton. And a one, two, three, four.”
    The click of Bridget’s boots against the hard marble died under the booming acoustics of piano and choir. The Church of St. Michael wasn’t nearly as shiny and ornate as her parish church at St. Cecilia’s. It was half the size, older, dingier. Horrifying in a European kind of way, with dark stained glass windows depicting martyrs and saints enduring acts of brutality—stoned, shot full of arrows, burned at the stake—while angels looked on. Not the cherubic, benevolent angels with rosy cheeks and curly blond hair you’d find at other churches, but dark, ominous angels, their skin tinged with a pallor of gray, their expressions hard and completely devoid of compassion. Oh, and they each held a sword, some tipped with bright red blood. Not exactly a touchy-feely kind of church.
    Her dad had taken the family to Mass there every year on September 29, the Feast of St. Michael, and Bridget had dreaded the day every year. Once, when she was a kid, she could have sworn the angels were looking at her. So. Not. Cool.
    Ironic that Bridget ended up in school there, though as far as Catholic schools went, she could have gotten stuck at Mercy, the all-girls school. That would have been hell.
    Bridget paused near the back of the sanctuary by an old confessional that had been transformed into an alcove to display the jewel of St. Michael’s: mounted on the wall, in a Plexiglas display case, was a giant sword.
    The Sword of St. Michael, a relic of the archangel, supposedly created from secret Vatican schematics of the angel’s actual sword. Bridget had heard its history at least a dozen times in religion class, and each time she rolled her eyes. Secret Vatican sword blueprints? Ooooo. Was she really supposed to believe that crap?
    The sword was the treasure of the Church of St. Michael, and special venerations were held in the sanctuary throughout the year. Bridget found the sword