Don't forget to read the Prologue first!

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Chapter One

Ness Parazzi was violently jerked awake by the noise of the bell that announced the end of her art class. She gasped loudly and grabbed on to the edge of the table to catch her balance. A few people glanced at her and rolled their eyes, but she dismissed it.

What just happened here? she asked herself, her right hand on her chest. She could feel her heart beating a mile a minute, and her skin felt hot.

So hot, in fact, that it was like she had been in the fires of Hell.

Which, she realized suddenly, might have been where she just came from.

“Ness? Are you okay?” the gentle voice of the art teacher, Mrs. Bailey, asked. She rushed over and put a hand on Ness’s arm. “Oh my gosh, you’re burning up.”

“I’m fine,” Ness replied, trying to slide away from the young teacher’s hand.

“No, Ness, you aren’t. You have a horrible fever. How are you feeling?”

“Uh—well—a little lightheaded, I guess,” she answered, and that was the truth. Her whole body felt strange, almost as if a part of her had been in a different place.

“Well, it’s a good thing the day’s over,” Mrs. Bailey remarked. “Now, don’t worry about cleaning up your paints; I’ll do it for you. Just go on and get home. You need to rest—and drink plenty of fluids.”

Ness nodded and stood shakily. “Thank you.”

She was almost out the door when the teacher called her name. Ness turned to hear what she had to say. “Did you do this in class today?”

Mrs. Bailey was holding up the canvas that Ness had been painting on, and Ness felt her heart freeze.

It featured a disturbingly beautiful scene that was almost completely made of fire. There was a black and scarlet throne on one side with a handsome—yet horrifying—man sitting upon it. He had black wings coming out of his back and large, coal-colored eyes. There were two other men in the painting: one with burning red eyes that stood to the left of the man on the throne, and another that stood in front of both of them, his head looking down.

The third man was wearing long black robes that brushed the floor. He had a shock of red hair on his head and he held his hands behind his back.

It was almost exactly the place that she’d woken up from when the bell rang—except she had been standing where the red-haired man was.

“I—I did,” Ness told her, even though she didn’t remember making the painting. But what else was she supposed to say? It had been sitting in front of her; it was on the canvas she’d prepared the day before…

“It’s…” Mrs. Bailey stared at the painting, and her voice seemed to search for the correct word to use. “It’s…very…different.”

“I know.”

“I’m not sure if this is something we can display in a Catholic school, Ness. I mean, the art is beautiful—your best yet, I’d have to say…”

“I know.”

“Would you like to take it home, then?”

“Um. Sure.” Ness walked forward and took the painting off her teacher. “Thanks.”

She rushed out of the room.

As she walked through the hallway, she tried to conceal the canvas as best as she could. It was hard though, since the paint was still wet. She didn’t want someone to see it, especially not one of the nuns or the principal.

Because Mrs. Bailey had been right. It wasn’t something that should be in a Catholic school.

When she was halfway to her locker, she bumped into someone. “Whoa,” he said. “What’s the matter, Ness?”

“Landon,” she breathed, silently thanking God that it hadn’t been someone else. “I’m sorry.”

She found herself looking into the silvery-gray eyes of one of her best friends, Landon Jameson. Her nerves felt calmed just from his presence, but her knees suddenly felt weak.

Landon tended to do that to her.

“It’s okay. You seem worried—did something happen?” he asked.

The corner of Ness’s mouth turned upward into a small smile. He had a way of sensing things, and that was something she was very grateful for: it was a rare thing to have to explain an emotion to Landon, because he picked up on everything so easily.

I guess that’s one of the benefits to having a telepathic friend, she thought.

“I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you,” she said, even though she knew he’d believe her no matter what.

“Should I wait ‘til we find Jonas and Max?” he asked, and Ness answered with a nod.

He walked with her the rest of the way to her locker. “Look at this,” she said, and she handed him the canvas she was carrying. “Careful, it’s wet.”

“Wow,” Landon said as Ness pulled on her coat and wrapped a scarf around her neck—something she never had to even think about doing back in California, where she had lived her entire life…before this summer, anyway. “This is…pretty creepy, Ness. You didn’t paint it, did you?”

“Actually, I did. Only I don’t remember doing it, because I was having a vision while I painted.”

Landon looked at her with raised eyebrows. “But I thought you only have vision when you sleep.”

“I felt like I was asleep, though. I could swear that I was.”

They started to walk to the front entrance of the school where they normally met their other best friends, Jonas Gonzales and Max McCloud. They always rode home together, partly because it was a lot better than taking the bus (or, in Ness’s case, riding with her stepsister, Claire), and partly because strange things always seemed to happen after school.

But that’s how everything works out when you happen to be one of the four Mortal Angels.

They’d only discovered that fact about a month earlier, sometime in the middle of November. They each knew that they had a strange power—something that completely separated them from everyone else most of their lives—but they never would have guessed that the power was supposed to help them fight a whole world of demons and Dark angels they had been oblivious to for years.

Ness thought it was even more odd that she just happened to move right across the street from Landon, a boy that she never would have met in a hundred years otherwise. Landon, the first person in so long that she felt she could trust completely. The person who introduced her to Jonas and Max, which, of course, opened up the doorway to the secret life they now shared.

The world had a strange way of working things out, but Ness knew it was more than just fate. After all, they were working for God. That’s what the Mortal Angels do: they had to help the real angels fight off Evil.

There had been other Mortal Angels in the past, but Landon, Jonas, Ness, and Max had one of the hardest jobs. Lucifer, the Lord of the Underworld, was pushing the threat of an early end to the world…and the Mortal Angels had to stop it.

That was why Ness’s strange vision worried her so much. Obviously, there was another plot that they had to stop. But why did Ness feel like she was a part of it…?

“This is going to be really bad, isn’t it?” Landon asked, looking into Ness’s eyes.

Ness tore her gaze away and pushed through the school’s front doors. “I’m broadcasting, aren’t I?”

“Yeah. A little,” Landon admitted.

“I’m sorry. Being in school with all those roaring minds is bad enough.”

“No…it’s okay, really. I’m starting to get it all under control, I promise,” he assured her, tapping his head. Landon’s power of telepathy was the hardest of all to control: not only did he have to deal with his own thoughts, but the thoughts of everyone around him, too.

“I hope so—oh, God.” Ness stopped suddenly when she spotted Max leaning against a stair railing outside of the school. His eyes were locked on the skirt of a pretty blonde girl a few feet away from him.

Ness and Landon exchanged eye-rolling glances and closed in on Max. Ness snapped her fingers in front of his face, and he jumped.

“Jeeze!” he exclaimed, narrowing his eyes through his glasses. “D’you have to do that?” His pale cheeks began to redden, and then his whole body began to fade away.

“Hey, watch it,” Landon whispered, shifting his body so that the crowd of teenagers around them couldn’t see.

“I can’t help it—”

“Well, if you weren’t trying to look up girls’ skirts, then you could just avoid the whole getting-caught aspect of it all together,” Ness said.

“Hey, sorry I’m late,” Jonas greeted from behind them. “Let’s get going.”

“Give Max a minute,” Landon told him.

Jonas laughed. “What did they catch you doing now?”

Max shot another narrow-eyed glance at Jonas, but he didn’t answer him. The other three knew him too well, he realized as he tried to make his body solid again.

“Well, since we’re all sort of clumped here,” Ness said, “you guys should look at this.” She took her canvas off of Landon and showed it to Jonas and Max.

“Whoa,” Jonas breathed. “Did you paint this?”

“Yeah, only I don’t remember doing it.” She lowered her voice. “I was having a vision when I painted it.”

“But you only get them when you sleep,” Max remarked, repeating what Landon had said earlier.

“But I kind of was sleeping. I swear that the last bell of the day shook me awake.”

“That guy next to the throne—that’s Moloch,” Jonas said.

“I know. He was in the vision I had. I wasn’t just watching it, though. I was in it. Right where this guy is standing, actually,” Ness told him, pointing to the red-haired man.

“And I guess that’s Lucifer?” Max asked, pointing to the winged man on the throne.

“Yeah. But…there’s someone missing…” Ness scrunched up her face, trying to remember the quickly fading vision.

“C’mon, let’s get in the car so no one can hear us,” Max suggested now that his body was no longer translucent.

The four of them walked through the black slush that covered the path to the parking lot. White snowflakes were lazily drifting down from the sky and melting when they hit the ground. Ness took in a deep breath of cool air that slid down her throat like liquid nitrogen. It was cold outside. She had a feeling that all of the slush would be frozen over by the next morning, and she crossed her fingers in hope of her first snow day ever.

When they reached the parking lot, they quickly found Jonas’s white Subaru and piled in. It was just as cold inside the car as it was outside.

“It’s already so hard to remember what happened,” Ness said after she slammed the front passenger door shut. “But when the bell woke me up, my skin was burning hot—like I’d actually been in the fire.”

“That’s so weird,” Landon said quietly. “You don’t think that you were actually there, do you?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Ness muttered. Then, louder, “But how could I have been there? I was sitting in class painting the whole time.”

Jonas steered the car out of the parking lot and headed toward Ness and Landon’s houses. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that if you suddenly disappeared during class, someone would notice,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” Ness wailed. “I really hate this power. What good is it? I mean, seriously. It only confuses us more than it helps us.”

“I think we should ask Camael,” Max said. “He might be able to help.”

“Yeah, but he won’t be able to tell us if it’s real or not. I’m supposed to be able to figure that one out.”

“Oh—well, let’s try, then,” Landon suggested. “Can you remember what really happened?”

Ness shrugged. “I was just walking down this corridor that had fire for walls,” she began. “I was really afraid of the fire. I mean, it was everywhere, and it was so hot that I swear my skin started to boil. And when I got to the end of the hallway, I had to walk through the flames at the end in order to get to Lucifer. I think he put it there because of how I was afraid of the fire—”

“I think everyone in Hell’s afraid of fire,” Jonas said. “Remember how they were all running from it when we were getting the Candle last month?”

Ness nodded, picturing the small glass ball that was Eve’s Candle. The tiny sphere with a floating green flame in it is what determined whether or not Good or Evil was in power—and the four of them had to save it from Evil just a few weeks before.

“They were talking about that in my vision—but what else is new? They’re going to be going after that thing until it doesn’t exist anymore.” Ness sighed.

“I can take care of that,” Max said.

“No,” Landon told him. “And even if you did want to destroy it, you wouldn’t be able to find it.”

“Anyway,” Ness interrupted, trying her best to stick to her role as peacekeeper—where the Candle was concerned, anyway. “They know that they need the Key in order to use the Candle’s power,” she explained, looking pointedly at Jonas.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to use it,” Jonas assured her.

“That’s what you say now, but what would you do if the Candle was right in front of you?” Max asked. “What then? Or what if it was in your hands?”

Jonas shrugged and fell silent.

“We just have to be careful. Especially you, Jonas.”

Soon, Jonas pulled the car in front of Ness’s house, and both she and Landon got out. “Thanks for the ride,” Landon said, and slammed the door shut.

“Yeah, see you later,” Ness said, holding the door so that Max could move into the front seat. “Try to keep an eye on him,” she whispered to Max before heading up the stone walkway that led to her house.

“Will do!” he called after her, and they drove off.

Right before Ness went in the front door, she noticed another car parked in the driveway that wasn’t her mother’s, Cliff’s, or Claire’s. It was a pretty car, too: a sporty red Mitsubishi Eclipse, complete with sunroof and tinted windows. It looked like fun to ride in.

She shrugged and walked inside, slipping off her heavy coat to hang it up.

In the living room, her stepsister Claire was sitting on the couch talking to two other girls from Saint Catherine’s: Britney and Mackenzie. They were laughing loudly together, but when Claire looked up to see Ness come in the door, she stopped.

The two girls looked at each other with skeptical expressions. “Um, Claire?” Mackenzie said, tossing back her curly blonde hair. “What is she doing here?”

Ness gripped the painting in her hands harder. “Are you telling me,” she said, rolling her eyes, “that you haven’t told them our parents got married yet?” However, she knew that her stepsister was trying to keep this information unknown to her friends for as long as possible.

Mackenzie and Britney’s mouths fell open and they stared back and forth from Claire to Ness. Claire looked like she was ready to try and tackle Ness despite the fact that she was about seven inches shorter.

“I take it you haven’t,” Ness continued, shrugging. “But hey, that’s okay. I really didn’t want anyone to know that you were my stepsister, either.”

“Stepsister?” Britney repeated, her voice higher than normal. “Oh, God, Claire, I never knew you had it that bad.”

“Is this the reason you’ve been so stressed out lately and haven’t been able to tell us?” Mackenzie asked, putting a hand on Claire’s shoulder to comfort her as though she had lost a relative instead of gained one.

“You people are pathetic,” Ness muttered, turning on her heel to go upstairs and change out of her uniform. However, she collided with someone mid-spin. The canvas she was holding flew out of her arms and fell to the ground, face-up.