Possess

right.” Father Santos clapped his hands together. “Let’s start with the missing grimoire and work backward from there, shall we?”
    With careful steps, making sure he didn’t so much as nudge one of the books strewn across the floor, Father Santos made his way to the set of grimoires. He didn’t touch them, merely bent at the waist and peered down.
    “Bael, Paymon, Beleth, Gaap . . .” His voice trailed off, but his lips continued to articulate unspoken words as he ticked through the volumes. Then, with a start, he straightened up. “Oh my.”
    “What?” Bridget asked.
    Father Santos paced in a tight circle. “My, my, my.”
    “What?” Bridget and Matt said together.
    Father Santos turned to Bridget, his face draining of color. “Amaymon.”
    “Amaymon? That’s the missing volume?”
    Father Santos nodded. “The demon master from Mrs. Long’s exorcism.”
    Matt leaned in to look at the grimoires. “Is that the demon king Undermeyer told you about?”
    Father Santos’s eyes practically popped out of his head. “What? What?”
    “Oh, right.” Bridget bit her lip. “You didn’t know about that.”
    “You spoke with Milton Undermeyer?”
    “Um, yeah. Yesterday.”
    “And?”
    Bridget’s eyes flicked toward Matt with an unspoken question: Can we trust him? Matt’s brows drew together. He was clearly thrown by the odd, fumbly little figure of Father Santos. It took a moment before Matt slowly nodded.
    Father Santos scratched absently at his neck. Her dad trusted this guy. Bizarre as it seemed. He was on their side. Time to take the plunge.
    “Don’t trust the priest. Those nonsense lines you gave me from the doll shop? It was an anagram for ‘Don’t trust the priest.’ And Mrs. Long, she basically said it too, told me not to trust either of you.”
    Father Santos plopped down on the edge of the desk. “I see.”
    “And after what happened, I figured it meant you.”
    “W-what happened?”
    “Yeah. You know. First you freaked out about my charm bracelet, then you didn’t finish securing the door of the doll shop with salt. It seemed like you were trying to work against us.”
    Father Santos smiled wanly. “I was trying to protect you. I thought the doll shop might be a trap, and I was trying to leave a means of escape.”
    “Oh.” Bridget hadn’t thought of that. “And the bracelet?”
    “A St. Benedict’s medal without the image of St. Benedict? You don’t understand how rare that is. It serves a very . . . specific purpose.”
    “An exorcist’s amulet,” Bridget said, clasping the charm between her fingers.
    “Er, yes. Sort of.” Father Santos hurried on. “What else have you kept from me??”
    “I went to see Mr. Undermeyer, and he gave me the same message he gave my dad. That the Emim were using a priest—a priest wielding a sword—to try and raise Amaymon, to give him a human form so he could stay in our world and, well, I don’t know. Do whatever it is demons do.”
    “Cause rampant destruction and suffering,” Father Santos muttered.
    “I guess.”
    “Shit,” Matt said.
    “Indeed.” Father Santos started to stand up, then sat back down again. Then, after a pause, he leaped to his feet. “Indeed. It all makes sense!”
    “It does?”
    “Absolutely. It’s funny, really.”
    Bridget didn’t see the humor in any of this. “You’re kidding, right?”
    Father Santos cleared his throat. “Oh, yes, I see what you mean. Catholic doctrine is just b-blown to bits, isn’t it? It completely destroys the belief that fallen angels can think only of evil if they are attempting to warn us about . . . about one of their own.”
    “Um, that’s not what I meant at all.”
    Father Santos angled his head, surprised that Bridget wasn’t thinking about Catholic doctrine.
    Matt slapped his forehead. “Tell us how it all makes sense.” Even his infinite patience was failing the Father Santos endurance test.
    “Oh, yes, of . . . of course,” Father Santos twittered. He rolled back on the desk and lifted a volume from the set of grimoires. “The rise in infestations and possessions. Undermeyer breaking into the church. Your father’s murder. It all makes sense now.”
    “Dude,” Matt said. “No, it doesn’t.”
    “Of course it does.” Father Santos flipped through the volume. “You just haven’t been paying attention.”
    The confused look on Matt’s face begged Bridget for some sort of explanation, but all she could do was shrug. She was as lost as