She could feel their energy from blocks away, so she used her powers to lift the door. they came storming in.

“What did you find out,” she asked, without looking up from her book.

“Uh, we found out a lot of shit, none of it good,” Hector said, standing over her. “The lady was ducking useless. Her brain is complete mush.”

Sister Lou scoffed. “She’s not useless, you just scared her!”

“She couldn’t help us find snow in Antartica, she’s fried,” he said, before turning back to Ramie. “We need a plan b. Like a serious one, because that old lady said some disturbing shit before this one over here knocked her out with some nun version of the Vulcan death grip. How are you still reading?”

Ramie put her book down and stood up.

“So you did not find out anything,” she asked.

“Yeah, we found out old ladies are dangerous, and some seriously bad mystical shit is going down!” Hector said.

“So you didn’t find out anything useful,” Ramie said, smirking slightly.

“Oh, great, this shit gets real and she find her sense of humor,” he rolled his eyes.

“She can help, I know she can, she just needs… She just needs time,” Lou said. “She may be the only person who can help us… others didn’t survive.”

“Well, we don’t have time, Sister,” Hector said. “So it looks like we won’t survive either.”

Ramie’s eyes glittered.

“I may have a plan.”

—

“Your friend lives here,” Ramie asked.

“I told you, the information she knows, it’s not a blessing,” Sister Lou said, climbing the front steps to “ring” the buzzer.

The demon stirred. A warning.

“Wait,” Ramie said. “Somethings not right.”

“Because this is building is a death trap, or just because there’s a magic serial killer somewhere in the city?” Hector said.

“No, I mean, we’re in danger,” silently, she unhooked her knives from their holsters on each of her hips.

“Oh gosh,” Lou said, quickly backing away from the door. “Do you think-is sister Mary ok?”

Ramie reached out, pushing her abilities to go up through the building, looking for any signs of life.

She frowned. “There’s no one in there.”

Sister Lou’s face dropped. “No…”

“Wait a second,” Hector said, stepping up to Ramie’s side and pushing Lou behind them, where she’d be safe. “There were other people in there, not just this whacked out nun.”

Ramie stared up at the building. “They’re not in there now.”

As soon as she said it, a light went on in a 4th floor window.

“Looks like you were wrong, SuperBabe.”

Ramie growled. “There’s a first time for everything. And stop calling me that.”

She started up the steps to the building. Hector and Lou followed.

“Both of you stay here,” she said. “Or better yet, get to safety. Go to St. Margaret’s.”

“No way, I need to go in there.” Sister Lou pushed her way forward and faced Ramie. “If anyone’s hurt in there, I can help.”

“If anyone is in there, they can’t be helped,” Ramie said.

“As a nun, I can help in a variety of ways,” Lou said with steeliness.

“I’ll protect her,” Hector said, moving as if you put his arm around her and then changing his mind, coughing and stretching.

“I don’t know what’s up there, I can’t guarantee i can protect either of you. This could be dangerous, even deadly. Do you understand?”

Hector laughed. “It could also be a raccoon. Or a bunch of pigeons in a raincoat. Or that chick from The Ring. What does it matter? What does any of this matter?”

Ramie turned and started walking inside. “Do whatever you want.”

Hector looked at Sister Lou, hoping she’d want to stay back, but her eyes were dark and determined. She stormed inside behind Ramie.

Hector sighed and followed them both inside.

The building had always been creepy, but now it was a different level of creepy entirely.

From a corner came the sound of scratching or scurrying. On another floor, a creaking sound.

Sister Lou began to pray under breath. As she did, the demon began to panic, and something in Ramie’s memory was awoken. She stopped, squeezing her eyes shut to gain control, but the memories came flooding back.

Priests standing over her, burning her body with holy water. The pain as they merely waved a cross over her body, willing the demon to pull itself from her. Her parents faces almost hidden, but not quite, looking on from the corner. Doing nothing.

“Stop!” She said, louder than she should have, the demons voice echoing her own.

Hector and Lou froze, eyes wide.

“Please,” ramie said, her sweating starting to subside. “No praying… Out loud.”

The she started to move forward again, but Hector stopped her.

“You hear that?”

Ramie listened, her extra sensory hearing hearing more than his human ears could.

“I hear nothing,” she finally said.

“Exactly. What happened to the mice in the walls and the, the weird creaking and all that?”

He was right: it was like the whole building was frozen on time.

Again ramie reached out to see if she could sense anyone else in there with them. Again, she sensed nothing.

“Let’s go,” she said, moving forward the stairs to the 4th floor.

At the far end of the hall, the door to Sister Mary Frances’s apartment was open, the light emanating from inside. There was clearly someone on there; shadows danced in the hallway, and there was a sound of rustling.

Ramie could sense that whoever it was, whatever it was, it wasn’t friendly.

The demon growled. Ramie gripped her knives tighter.

Slowly, carefully, the group moved together towards the door. As they approached, Ramie pushed the door further open with her powers. It creaked. The rustling sound and movement stopped.

Entering the apartment, they began to look around. It was not a big place, especially with the floor to ceiling piles of garbage and junk. Even the curtain Hector had looked behind was torn down, so they had a complete view of the entire apartment.

Except for the bathroom.

The room was dark. It was clear that it was tiny, but there was also plenty of space for someone to hide in the shower or bath.

Signaling for them to get behind her, Ramie stepped inside the pitch black room.

There was nothing. Not even a shower or tub, which looked like it had been ripped out long ago. Just a toilet without a seat and sink.

“Nothing,” she said, coming back out.

“What the-how is that possible?” Hector said.

“How is any of this possible,” ramie said as she did a more through scan of inside cabinets and under furniture.

“All her paper are still here,” Lou said as she knelt down and starting picking up the piles of papers strewn everywhere.

“Let’s take it all and get out of here,” Ramie said, sheathing her knives and picking up a stack of books.

“How are we going to take all of this,” Hector motioned at the room, “all the way back downtown?”

Looking up at him annoyed, but never stopping, ramie floated a pile on front of her as she began another stack.

“Got it,” he said, starting another pile.

Just then, Sister Lou gasped.

“Look at this,” she stood up, and Hector and Ramie came and stood beside her.

She was holding a yellowing piece of three-hole punch notebook paper, covered completely in weird charts and a ton of latin.

“What is it?” Hector asked.

“I don’t know! But can you believe Sister Mary Frances drew this?” She beamed like a proud parent.

“Hey brother,” a voice said from the doorway.

Standing there was a tall man, slender, with a shaved head. He looked exactly like his missing persons poster.

“Alex?” Hector said, barely above whisper.

Hector started to move forward to embrace him, but Ramie threw her arm out to hold him back.

“That’s not Alex.”

Hector’s face dropped. “Who is it?”

Never taking her eyes off the man in the doorway, she said, “Not sure.”

The Alex in the doorway smiled. “C’mon brother… you know it’s me. How’s mama? Maritza? I been missing them so much.”

Ramie laid her hand on the hilt of her knife.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Alex Herrera, Hector’s brother. Did he ask you to help find me? He was always smart.”

“Ask him something,” Lou said. “Ask him something only your brother would know.”

Something clicked in Ramie’s brain. The demon laughed, a guttural sound like a house settling.

“That won’t work,” she told them. “Whatever he is could have read your brother’s mind, so he’d know everything you’d know.”

Hector looked deeply hurt, and deeply conflicted.

“What did you do with Sister Mary!” Lou shouted.

The Alex in the doorway’s body language changed.

Ramie had her knife out now. Behind them, she was pulling junk and papers and dust and anything else she could reach out to to create a barricade around them.

“You really are as powerful as he says you are,” he said, placing his hands behind his back and walking slowly – painfully slowly – towards them.

Ramie got a funny feeling in her stomach, like being weightless.

“Who,” she said.

“Father Jon. He’s been helping me. He wants to help you, too, Ramie.”

“I don’t need any help,” she said, pulling the barricade she’d made behind them around in front, and sending it right towards him.

He bent down to shield himself from the blow, but all of a sudden, everything flew apart, became separate like a diagram showing all the unpacked parts of a machine side by side. The Alex stood up, laughing.

“You really thought that would work?” he said, walking towards them, the debris hanging all around them parting like water to let him through. “I can’t read your mind, but I can see what’s coming right for my face.”

“It worked well enough for me to do this,” she said as a barrage of junk from the front of the apartment and some from out in the hall blasted him right in the back, knocking him over.

Flipping around, she pushed Hector and Lou towards the window.

“Give me permission to kill your brother!”

“What the f- no!” Hector shouted.

She growled. “Fine. Get ready to jump!”

And with that, she shoved them both out the window.

Whirling around, Ramie and The Alex faced each other in the tiny, decrepit apartment.

“You could be amazing, you know. He could make you amazing.”

Ramie spins the knives in her hands. “Your brother says I can’t kill you.”

“He was always soft.”

“I’m not,” she said.