Chapter 20
The church sits wedged between two modern apartment buildings like something the city forgot to demolish. Sections of the roof are missing, covered in scaffolding. Graffiti creeps across the stone walls.
We stop across the street, rain drumming on our shoulders.
"Wait out here for me," I say. "I don't want to spook him."
Paul doesn't like the idea of me going in alone. But that was the agreement I struck with Dominik.
Thunder peals overhead. I pull out my phone and text: I'm here. Walking in now.
I head for the entrance, my hand finding the crucifix at my throat.
And just like that, I'm back in the hospice ward with my dying mother. It’s another rainy night, two years earlier. My mother small in the bed, smaller than mothers are supposed to be. She reached up, unclasped the silver crucifix she'd worn my whole life, and placed it around my neck.
"Whatever happens," she said, "you don't have to carry it alone."
She smiled. Weak, but real. It was one of the last times I saw her smile.
I try not to dwell on the image as I push the church door open.
Inside, the church is in even worse disrepair.
Rain leaks through the fractured ceiling. Saints stare down through the darkness, their faces eroded by decades of water damage. Candles flicker near the altar.
Dominik stands beside them, my text still glowing on his phone.
He watches me come up the aisle.
"Why meet at your old church?" I ask.
"It's my home now. The only place I feel safe."
I look at the boarded windows and don't ask what he feels safe from.
"The church never recovered from the scandal," he says. "This is what Eleanor took from me. What she took from this community."
"So this thing... it's been living above me all this time?"
"The roof of the Overton became its nest."
"What am I up against? What kind of demon is this?"
Dominik finally looks at me. His eyes are exhausted. There are years of fear behind them.
"Not a fallen angel. A familiar. A thing born when a witch makes a pact with the Devil."
The word lands the way witch landed in Marian's apartment. Like something I should laugh at and can't.
"If my grandmother was a witch," I say, "what does that make me?"
"Her blood. Her inheritance. You carry the same dark potential inside you."
"So I'm supposed to become her?"
"No. But the thing on your roof believes you can. Wants you to. But as long as you guard your soul... refuse its power..."
He doesn't finish. He doesn't have to.
Something loosens in my chest, just slightly. Family isn't destiny.
"Eleanor didn't start out evil," Dominik says.
"In the beginning, she wanted what we all want.
To never feel powerless again. She was young.
Abandoned. Angry at the world. And then she found a way to make the world afraid of her instead.
" He pauses. "But once she welcomed that darkness into her life, it consumed her. The familiar needs to be fed."
"Fed?"
"Pain. Suffering. Souls. Eleanor made sure it never went hungry."
"I've seen them," I say. "In the building."
His expression darkens.
"The victims. Marian."
"It doesn't just kill, Sara. It keeps the souls it takes."
Thunder booms, rattling what's left of the windows.
"Eleanor's dead," I say. "So why is it still murdering people?"
A long silence. Dominik studies me, and I get the feeling he's deciding how much truth I can hold.
"Eleanor kept a leash on it. Channeled its darkness. Its power. After her death, it began starving." He pauses. "But then you arrived. And it woke up again."
Dominik’s words feel like a dark confirmation of something I was beginning to suspect. There is a connection between me and this winged monster.
"The familiar is bound to Eleanor's bloodline,” I say, my voice drained of all emotion.
Dominik nods.
"The witch needs the familiar," he says, "and the familiar..."
"...needs a witch."
I don’t question any of it. It feels true. It’s the only thing that makes sense given what I’ve experienced over the last few days.
But there has to be a way out of this situation. A way to wake from this nightmare.
"So I leave," I say. "Let the beast starve again."
Dominik shakes his head.
"It won't matter now. The bond has formed. It's attached itself to you. If you don't accept the bond, it'll destroy you too. Follow you to the ends of the earth."
I take a half step back.
"No. There has to be a way to stop it."
"Perhaps there is."
Dominik moves toward me. Deliberate.
"Your grandmother had a pendant. A silver eye with a black stone at its center."
My mind turns back to the jewelry box. The silver eye pendant. The stone that seemed to drink the light.
"I've seen it," I say.
And worn it, I mentally add but wisely decide not to share this detail with Dominik. I have a feeling the fallen priest wouldn’t receive it well.
"She wore it whenever she called the familiar. Whenever one of her enemies disappeared. I believe it anchors the familiar to our reality."
I say nothing.
"Bring the pendant to me. Together, we can destroy it. Sever the creature's ties to this world and send it back where it belongs."
Thunder detonates above the broken roof. The candles gutter.
I turn away from Dominik, promising I’ll be back soon.
I leave the church with a new sense of mission.
Perhaps there is a way to end this.
I don’t know if it will work but I’m determined to give it a go and desperate enough to try anything that makes even halfway sense.
Paul is where I left him, across the street, hunched in his jacket against the rain. He straightens when I push through the church door, reading my face before I say anything.
"Well?" he says.
I start walking. "I'll explain on the way."