When We Wake by Karen Healey

too; my full name is actually Tegan Marie Mary Oglietti.
    Yeah, Marie Mary. I know, but I was thirteen and goingthrough a stage of really loving the Virgin, and I wanted her name as my confirmation name, even if it meant I had it twice. I still think she’s pretty awesome; she got this big job and she did it very well, even though you’ve got to think her parents and her fiancé were a bit side-eyed about the “virgin pregnancy” deal.

    The second I stepped into the church foyer, my right hand reached automatically for the holy water in the little niche beside the door, and I dabbed it on myself: forehead, heart, left shoulder, right shoulder.
    Bethari had opted to stay in the car, joined by a grumpy Gregor, but Zaneisha had insisted on accompanying me in.
    “Should I do this?” she asked, gesturing at the holy water.
    Well, goodness gracious me. Something I knew that this future woman didn’t.
    “It’s okay,” I said, trying to smother my smugness. It’s not like I would have been any more at ease in a mosque. “You don’t have to do any of the things I do.”
    She nodded infinitesimally, eyes tracking every exit and entrance. Being a bodyguard had to be exhausting.
    I avoided the center of the nave and the woman replacing the flowers beside the lectern there; I wasn’t interested in Jesus on his crucifix behind the main altar. They had a side altar for Mary, though, and I went down to say hi, past the Stations of the Cross depicted on the wall, my steps echoing through the silent space. She was wearing blue and white, and for once she wasn’tholding baby Jesus; she was just being herself, inscrutable and watchful.
    I went to my knees. “Hello,” I said to the perfect stone face. “How are you?”
    Mary didn’t reply.
    “I was thinking about what that Father guy said,” I told her. “I don’t think them bringing me back was a miracle. I mean, I’d rather be alive than not, you bet. And I think it was people who did it, not God. But I don’t think it’s God’s exclusive territory, either. If it was, they wouldn’t be
able
to do it. And I don’t feel evil or soulless. I feel like me.” I gulped. “Only sadder. And lonelier. It’s hard.”
    Zaneisha would probably have been a lot more comfortable if I’d talked to the Blessed Virgin in my head, which was one of the reasons I was doing it out loud.
    I mean, I mostly liked Zaneisha. I just resented that I couldn’t go anywhere without her.
    “Marie’s good. And I like Bethari a lot, and her friend Joph seems okay. But none of them get it, you know? They don’t really understand what it’s like to be from somewhere so different. I bet Abdi does, but I screwed up, and he doesn’t want to talk to me.”
    Mary didn’t seem to think she needed to comment. I felt the tears stinging at my eyelashes and tightened my jaw. “I just wanted to say hi,” I said, but that was a lie. What I wanted was to feel God, to be certain that I wasn’t some sort of fake person walking around with a borrowed face and voice, thinking I was a real girl.
    I was 99.9 percent sure I had a soul. But 0.1 percent can keep you up at night.
    After a while I decided that no matter how hard I prayed, there would be no choir of angels or tongues of flame to declare my soulfulness. Still, I stayed on my knees and watched that unmoving face.
    “Ms. Oglietti?” Zaneisha asked eventually, and then, though her voice didn’t change, “Tegan?”
    “I’m okay,” I said. The kneeler was padded in memory fabric, and it snapped back to fullness as I got up. There was no dimple in the cloth to show I’d ever been there. “Let’s go.”

    We were almost to the big carved doors when Zaneisha said, “Stop,” her voice so absolutely commanding that I did what she said without asking why.
    My instincts don’t usually work that way.
    “There’s an Inheritor of the Earth outside,” she said. “Gregor’s taking care of it.”
    Fear whooshed into my head like a train into a