Rise of the Fallen by Teagan Chilcott

can you be so close to them?” I hoped my voice didn’t come across as irritable as I thought it did.
    â€œShe’s immune to her own powers, Emilie,” Cael said in a slightly cold voice.
    â€œI didn’t mean anything by that, Cael.” I said quickly in an attempt to defend myself.
    Cael shook his head in irritation before returning to the stairs. I looked down at my shoes, disappointed with myself. In all my years of existence I never would have believed that I would feel ashamed of myself or that I would make so many mistakes. Oh, how I had changed. I really must say that I regretted how I’d behaved over the last few centuries. I supposed my life had really gone downhill sinceDorian tried to kill me. Seems like a fairly good reason to act the way I did though.
    â€œIt’s okay, Emilie. Cael’s just a jerk …” Holly said quietly with a sheepish smile.
    As I looked around I saw that the yard had gone back to how it was before. The hundreds of flowers that all but covered the lawn in deadly beauty were now gone. The yard was once again dull and lifeless, bringing back the horrors that Holly must have faced.
    â€œAre you two coming? I need to see what the … bodies look like and then we need to get rid of them.” Cael’s voice called down to us from the verandah in a low, serious voice.
    Holly walked slowly through the grass, her long, golden-brown hair swaying behind her as she walked up the stairs. It was obvious just from looking at her that she was an old soul. Holly handed Cael the house key and he unlocked the door. We stepped in and I looked around the room. It was a dark house and I had barely walked two steps when a shiver ran down my spine. Holly walked past us and sat in a large lounge chair, pulling out a paperback novel.
    Cael leaned towards me and whispered. “I have to tell you, when she told me that a possession had happened I didn’t believe her. I have only ever heard of a demonic possession once before, never seen one though. I thought demons always used possession as a last resort, it gets messy, or whatever.”
    I nodded in agreement and Cael smiled grimly. “All the signs I read about were there though, with the possession I mean.”
    â€œWhat signs? What do you mean?”
    Cael coughed nervously. “The room where I found the bodies … There were reversed pentacles drawn around them, trapping them in. And they definitely weren’t drawn by her parents, there had to be other demons there.” Cael’s voice had dropped to a new level of low, so low that I could barely hear him.
    â€œWhy would they possess her parents if they only wanted to trap them and kill them?” I whispered back.
    It seemed a little pointless. When a demon possesses a weak human, they like to play with them. Trapping them and forcing them to kill themselves hardly seemed fun by demonic standards.
    â€œI really don’t know. My best guess is that they were planning on taking Holly but failed.” Cael’s voice was still very low, as though he didn’t want her to be affected by this.
    I guessed he’d forgotten that Holly had probably seen everything that had happened to her parents. What really confused me though, was why Cael wanted her to remember how she died in her past life. Past lives did interest me, but I didn’t dabble in that sort of thing. Everything happens for a reason, and if you died you were fulfilling your life’s purpose. It hardly made sense.
    â€œYou, uh …” Cael began but stopped abruptly, looking away from me.
    â€œI what, Cael?” I asked laughing a little.
    He smiled and muttered that it was a little too far off topic. I punched him lightly on the shoulder.
    â€œTell me!” I laughed.
    Holly cut in, barely looking up from her book. “Oh please , he likes you, obviously. He’s been checking you out since you got here. Probably before that