"You're gonna unite the nasties and kill off all the good guys like Grandma and Grandpa. I mean, anyone who's friends with vampires and trannies is messed up."
My forehead pinched. "Trannies?" I had no idea how cross-dressers entered the mix.
"Yeah, the ones who transform into cats and wolves." She made a vague shape with her fingers.
I laughed. "Ivy, it's not what you are that makes you good or bad, it's what you do."
She opened and closed her fingers and thumb like a mouth as she had earlier. "Blah, blah, blah."
Her mind was sewn tight against my arguments, glued shut with the bigoted lies the Conroys had told her. I wondered if Mom had helped taint my little sister's mind with their propaganda as well.
"You've already corrupted the Templars," Ivy said, interrupting my thoughts. "A whole organization dedicated to the Brilliance and you somehow come along and corrupt it with the Murk."
"Brilliance? Murk?"
"Yeah. Light and Dark. Whatevs."
"First of all, I didn't corrupt anyone. The Divinity did. And once the Templars found out, you might say they saw the light." I grinned at my clever comeback.
"Ha, ha." Ivy glanced to her right.
I glanced in the same direction and saw nothing but headstones and tombs.
Obviously, I wasn't going to change my sister's mind about anything, at least not today. But my goal all this time had been to save her from the Conroys. I looked closer at our surroundings and saw no sign of our grandparents or my mom. Unless they were invisible, Ivy was here alone. She was tall, but thin and willowy. She couldn't possibly match me physically. As an added bonus, nearly a hundred Templars stood a scant fifty yards away. I supposed I could grab Ivy and stow her on the Templar compound. Maybe Elyssa and I could figure out how to undo the mind-twisting my dear grandparents had wreaked on her.
"If you think I've really corrupted the Templars, why don't you ask them?" I said, leaning against the Conroy headstone and inching forward with a casual stretch.
"I'm not stupid. The Templars betrayed their sweet angel and she'll make them pay for it, believe me."
A cold spike pierced my spleen. "Angel?" She already knew?
She smirked. "Of course. Daelissa."
I staggered back, losing the few inches I'd closed between the two of us. "Do you realize how dangerous that woman is? She's the real evil behind everything. Did you know she let a very dangerous demon spawn named Vadaemos loose and he killed over a dozen Templars a week ago?" I pounded the bottom of my fist against the tombstone. The blow splintered the marble, sending a crack diagonally up to the edge. "Daelissa may claim to be an angel, but she's a demon."
Ivy shrugged, her eyes exploring the crack I'd opened in the tombstone. "I don't know anything about this Vadaemos man, but when the Templars turned their backs on Daelissa, they got what they deserved."
I gritted my teeth to keep back an angry response. Ivy wasn't in her right mind. Good god, if Daelissa had her claws into her, no wonder she was so messed up. Had the twisted angel also done something to Mom? She must have. It totally explained Mom's behavior the last time I'd seen her in the church parking lot across from the school, telling me she never wanted to see me or Dad again. Sigh. Talk about a dysfunctional family. Since then, I'd been transported to Colombia by a malfunctioning magical arch, fought vampiric drug lords, and finally cornered Vadaemos, an evil spawn, in El Dorado, a city where these so-called angels like Daelissa had ruled as gods.
Nightliss was also one of them. Except, she seemed to be good, or at least she'd helped me so far. If it hadn't been for her, Vadaemos would have killed me. He and I had manifested into our demon forms and fought. It hadn't been a contest. Vadaemos's strength and cunning dwarfed my own and only intervention from the dark angel had saved me.
"You look scared," Ivy said. "You should be."
I snapped out of my recollections. Enough was enough. Maybe Nightliss could figure out what to do with my errant little sister. Maybe she could clear her mind of Daelissa's touch just like she'd done for Elyssa. I blurred toward Ivy. Wrapped my arms around—thin air. Ivy's nose was practically touching mine. Except it wasn't. It couldn't. Her body flickered where my hands touched it. A breeze kicked