Disclaimer: I don't own the Teen Titans.

Author's Note: This is written for Qoheleth's Great Malachy O'More FF Challenge, which is repeated below:

There exists a list of Latin phrases that were ostensibly written by St. Malachy O'More as prophetic descriptions of every pope and major antipope from Celestine II to Benedict XVI. The challenge is as follows: contact Qoheleth to express your interest, after which you will be randomly assigned a motto. Your task is to then write a fic that uses that motto as its title. It can be a story, a poem, or something else entirely. The only requirement is that it has to fit its title.

My phrase (obviously) is "peregrinus apostolicus," and was inspired a great deal by Jim Butcher's excellent series of books known as "The Dresden Files."

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
-1 Corinthians. 15. 26.

Wandering Apostle

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

My name is Garfield Logan. As I write this, I am celebrating my thirty-third birthday by sitting in my tiny home by the sea on Prince Edward Island, over in East Canada. If you've heard of the place, it's probably because you've read Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and its subsequent sequels. It's not known for much else.

I didn't always live here, making a living off of doing odd jobs for the people around town. I spent my childhood in Africa with my parents, who died in a boating accident.

If it's all the same to you, I'd just as soon not dwell on that. That's what nightmares are for.

Following the loss of my parents, I returned to the land of my birth: the good ol' U S of A. To be specific, I lived in Jump City, over in Southern California. Unlike my current place of residence, you've probably heard of Jump without ever needing to crack open a book. It's got just about everything you could imagine, from pizzerias and tofu shacks to a S.T.A.R. Labs facility. There's even this crazy T-shaped building some weird rich dude built on an island just off the coast. I think it's a hotel, or something.

But I digress.

As I mentioned earlier, today is the anniversary of my birth. I've spent a fairly substantial portion of those all alone… though some more than others. Up until I was eight years old, I had my parents, of course. After that, there was a plethora of foster parents and legal guardians ranging the scale from completely disinterested to vaguely aware of the fact that a kid under their roof was "celebrating" his birthday.

Of course, after my thirteenth birthday, I never really was alone again.

You see, that's the day I found out that I was possessed.

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shalt stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.

There are only two reactions to telling someone that you're possessed: either they don't believe you and think you're a loony, or they DO believe you.

It is my personal opinion that the first reaction is infinitely preferable.

I don't know how she wound up taking up residence in my head. There were no messages written in blood on my bedroom ceiling, or in meatloaf gravy on the school cafeteria wall, or anywhere else by any other medium that let me know when, why, and how a creation of Satan—his daughter, technically—came to try and lure me over to the Dark Side.

What I do know, however, is how she made her first attempt on my soul. I got a number of pretty good laughs at her expense over it over the next couple of years.

I had eaten dinner with the most recent pair of overworked substitute parents, had a piece of cake (this pair remembered, at least), done my homework, and was getting ready to turn out the light and go to bed when it happened.

"It," of course, being Pamela Anderson walking out of my closet in a bright red one-piece swimsuit. If you've ever had the pleasure of being a thirteen year-old boy, you can guess what sort of reaction this inspired.

You would probably be wrong.

First of all, Pam seemed a bit… off her game. I would hesitate to say she was stumbling around as though she was drunk. Instead, I'd say she was stumbling around as though some monster had ripped off her skin and was wearing it in my bedroom like a suit… a Pamela suit. Secondly, there was her voice. It might not be the absolute first thing you think of when you think of Pamela Anderson—or the second thing, at that—you would at least recognize that she doesn't speak in a monotone.

"Hey there birthday boy," she said, without a hint of emotion. "Would you perhaps care to exchange your immortal soul to the Demon Lord Trigon for sexual intercourse with me?"

Like seduction, subtlety was not her strong suit. Or salesmanship.

I may have been thirteen, but I wasn't stupid… enough. I blinked twice, screamed in unholy terror, and ran like the hounds of Hell were nipping at my heels… which for all I knew, they were. Approximately three milliseconds later I was in the bathroom, door locked, huddled in the shower with a brown towel in one hand and a yellow plastic squirt gun in the other trying to make myself invisible.

"I take it that you are choosing to decline my offer," the monotonous voice commented, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. It sounded vaguely disappointed, and I flattered myself for a moment concerning the reason for that.

Yes, I was just under five feet tall, maybe ninety pounds soaking wet, and regularly mistaken for a little girl by telemarketers. Nonetheless, I was convinced that I was a green-eyed, blond-haired hunk of burnin' man love. I didn't deny being stupid, just asserted that there was a limit to that stupidity.

In any case, the disembodied voice of Zombie-Devil Pamela Anderson made me jump about ten feet in the air with a very manly shriek.

"Stay back!" I squeaked as bravely as I could muster. "I-I've got a gun!"

"You've got a half-empty water gun and a dirty bath towel," she retorted. "I've got powers beyond mortal comprehension."

This would probably be a good time to point out that she's had a few laughs at my expense over this series of events as well.

"Look," she exhaled, "if I make myself visible, can you keep yourself from having a stroke?"

I thought for a moment. "Are you still going to look like Pamela Anderson?"

"No."

"I think I can restrain myself, then. Probably. No promises though." I truly thought I was being witty, because at thirteen there is nothing funnier than a masturbation joke. We were both lucky I didn't think of calling her "Pamela Handerson."

Regardless, her irritation expressed itself by way of her appearing right behind me with a loud and completely unnecessary bang. For the third time that night, I hit pitches most sopranos can only dream of. Heart hammering, I spun around to face my tormenter.

I have repeatedly mentioned that I was thirteen. Allow me to use that excuse once again when I say that the first thought that went through my brain was "Wow, she's hot!" Perhaps "beautiful" would have been more appropriate, given that I couldn't even see anything below her neck, it being obscured by the blue cloak she was wearing… but again, thirteen. She looked to be about eighteen or nineteen years old, and while most girls can't really pull off the "grey pallor look" very effectively, it completely suited her, as did the purple hair and eyes. The cut of her hair was a little weird, but I'd seen weirder every day at school. She didn't look to be very tall for a girl, but since I was kind of a pre-growth-spurt shrimp, she still had about six inches on me. Ten, if you counted the four inches currently between her feet and the shower floor.

My second thought was a silent prayer that she didn't know what I was thinking. I later found out that not only was not the case, but she knew every thought I had ever had, ever, because she lived in my brain. But I'll get to that in a bit.

Speaking of brains, mine decided at that moment that it was probably wise to be polite to the scary floating devil lady, especially in light of the whole "powers beyond mortal comprehension" thing she had mentioned.

"Um, hi. I'm Garfield?" I didn't sound entirely confident in my identity, but given that I was either having a demonic visitation or an entirely too vivid hallucination, I didn't much care. Either way, I was holding ten pounds of trouble in a two pound bag.

I extended my hand. Raising an eyebrow a fraction of an inch, she clasped mine in hers. Immediately I noticed that there was something decidedly insubstantial about her hand: while my hand stopped as though it had encountered another person's hand, there wasn't the feeling of weight that is associated with shaking an object with mass.

"My name is Raven. Please stop ogling me."

I blinked in surprise, then suddenly realized that I had been looking at the gap created in her cloak when she extended a hand through it. Perhaps "looking" is too mild a word for what I had been doing, but this isn't a story about my teenage raging hormones. I blushed, chuckled nervously, and redirected my gaze back up to her face. So much for polite, I guess.

"Okay, Raven. Um, if you don't mind telling me, what are you?"

She considered the question for a moment, determining how best to answer that question. "Well, in the sense that you would talk to a phone when calling someone, what you are talking to at the moment is a very convincing illusion that only you can see. Your brain can 'hear' me, 'see' me, and 'touch' me, but the person whose hand you are holding is nothing more than a figment of your imagination. It is what I would look like if I had a physical body, instead of a purely spiritual one."

You may safely assume that I had absolutely no idea what she was saying. Realizing that, she made a second attempt.

"I'm a demon living in your brain," she stated in a very matter-of-fact manner, "talking to you by way of a particularly convincing hallucination. It is my mission to find some way to convince you to part with your soul so that my father—the Demon Lord Trigon—may be freed from his infernal imprisonment and manifest in this world, raining down death and destruction upon mankind for all of eternity."

"Oh." Like I said, she didn't have a bright future in sales.

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Name of the Lord.

"How long do plan on persisting in your refusal to accept the realities of the situation you are in?"

It had been two days since Raven's appearance, and I had learned a very important fact about her: she did not appreciate being treated as a symptom of a mental illness. Her current attempt to convince me she was real was taking place as I walked through my house towards my bedroom.

"You are not real," I replied, repeating what had become something of a mantra of mine over the past forty-eight hours. "I am John Nash, this is 'A Beautiful Mind,' and if I refuse to admit you exist, I can eventually stop being crazy."

Raven appeared in front of me as I tried to enter my room, her arm extended in a classic "halt" gesture. I ran into it headfirst and came to a stop.

"If I didn't have some basis in reality, could I do that?" she asked, referring to the fact that she could make my brain believe that there was a solid object where her illusory hand was—and where the brain led, the body followed.

In response, I closed my eyes and focused on the fact that I knew that there was nothing in front of me. I took three steps forward and found myself inside of my room. "You are not real, I am John Nash, this-"

"I am living in your mind, Garfield. It's not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination."

"Hey, do I cut you off midsentence to insult you?" I indignantly asked.

"Yes," she huffed. "Several times an hour, in fa-"

"That's because you're not real. Now, what will it take to keep you quiet?" That's me, the very soul of courtesy.

"Your soul."

"How about something a little less long-term? Like long enough for me to finish my Spanish homework in peace?"

"Are you making a deal with a hallucination, or are you willing to admit to the fact of my existence?"

I sat down at my desk and pulled my Spanish book out of my backpack. "I'm crazy, Raven. I make deals with the Pillsbury Doughboy if I want."

There was an unenthusiastic "woo hoo" from my bedroom door, but when I turned to check, she had gone. I let out a sigh of relief and opened my textbook to the assigned reading.

"What the hell?"

I stared down at my textbook in shock: the passage I was supposed to translate into English for tomorrow was already written in English in the book! Then, as I gaped at the page, the text blurred briefly into Spanish before snapping back to English. A sudden motion in my peripheral vision drew my attention, and I found myself looking over at my bed.

My current foster parents had provided my with a bunk bed to sleep on, operating on the theory that all boys love bunk beds. I can't speak for the other boys, but I'm definitely not a fan: you only have to roll out of bed while sleeping on the top bunk once before being that high up loses its appeal.

The motion that had drawn my attention was, as you might have guessed, Raven's doing. She was sitting on my top bunk swinging her legs idly and silently whistling. If she had been a cat, there would be a yellow feather dangling on her whiskers.

I leveled my most intense glare at her. She met it with a slight smirk and an arched eyebrow. Seconds passed. Minutes. Hours. Eons.

I broke first. "Fine, you're real! Happy?"

The smirk vanished, as did the rest of Raven. "Ecstatic."

I said, I will take heed to my ways: that I offend not in my tongue.
I will keep my mouth as it were with a bridle: while the ungodly is in my sight.

"How is it," I asked several weeks later, "that you can know every thought I have in my head and still be so incredibly bad at convincing me to sell my soul?" We were walking—that is, I was walking while she was projecting the illusion of… you know what? Let's go with "we."

We were walking back to my house from school, and occurred to me that I hadn't even been remotely tempted by any of the offers Raven had made, even though in theory she should know me inside and out… or at the very least well enough to make me an offer I could take seriously.

For instance, last Wednesday she had offered me an A on Friday's algebra test in exchange for my soul. I turned her down, took the test, and made an A anyways… and that was largely because she had tutored me, too.

Then there was her offer to turn me into an unstoppable killing machine in order to deal with a couple of bullies at school. Now don't get me wrong: I really don't like those guys, but I'm also really against killing. I mean, I'm a vegetarian (I mentioned that, right?) for a reason. Also, I don't think the police would take me going on a killing spree too kindly. In any case, I strangely became a temporary expert in about sixteen kinds of kung fu the next time those goons tried to beat me up. I suspect it was probably the last time they'll try.

I admit that her offer to give me the power to turn into any animal I could imagine (which came completely out of the blue) was a close call, but apparently I'd also be permanently green in every form, both human and animal. That's what we call a deal-breaker, people.

In any case, the point is that Raven, who ought to be the world expert in Knowing How to Convince Garfield Logan to Give Up His Soul, was about as good at it as I was at convincing her that Saturday morning cartoons are cultural masterpieces.

"There is a significant difference between merely knowing and truly understanding, Garfield," she said patiently, as though she were telling me the most obvious thing in the world. "I know all of your thoughts, feelings, desires, fantasies, and emotions past and present. They are, however… confusing."

"I dunno, Rae. I seem pretty simple to me."

I could feel her angrily glaring a hole in the side of my head; the nickname I had given her over the weekend after I had acknowledged her existence (and my own sanity) annoyed her to no end, which in turn motivated me to keep using it. She knew that, of course, but she seemed incapable of hiding her irritation.

She recovered quickly, though. "I concede, Garfield, that you are simple… at least in one sense of the word." I scowled, realizing that I couldn't have given her a better opening for a retaliatory quip if I had tried. She accepted the point in her favor with good grace and continued. "Allow me to give you a demonstration of the problem I face with you."

"Shoot."

"For example, you know that according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, precise inequalities constrain certain pairs of physical properties, such as measuring the present position while determining future momentum of a particle."

I stared blankly at her.

"Garfield, I know that you…" she sighed and changed tack. "You know that the only visible difference between Superman and Clark Kent is the fact that Kent wears glasses and Superman wears blue tights, red underwear, and a cape. So how is it that Lois Lane doesn't recognize one as the other?"

"Well, actually-" I started to reply before she cut me off.

"No, no, I don't want to hear it. I know what your theory is already, and I'm trying as hard as I can not to think about it. We're changing the subject."

"But-"

"Garfield," she growled, "if I get a headache, you get a headache."

I paused for a moment. "Really? Does it work that way?"

"If it doesn't," she replied, "I'll find a way to make it happen."

The next few minutes passed by in silence. Silence grated on my nerves when I was young, so I never let it last too long if I could help it.

"Hey Raven?"

"Hmm?"

"What happens to you if I do actually... accept your offer?"

Raven's image briefly flicked out of existence, before reappearing on my other side a few seconds later.

"I haven't given the matter any thought," she said, looking straight ahead as she said it.

"Liar," I accused. Of course she had thought about it. If I had, then she had, after all. She vanished again for a moment, then materialized directly in front of me, levitating a foot off the ground. I jumped back a step to keep from running headfirst into her.

Raven's face was red with emotion as she furiously glared down at me. Her shoulders were trembling slightly, and I got the sudden feeling that if she could directly interact with the physical world, everything for about a block around us would be flattened, exploded, or on fire.

"Why, dear host, do you ask?" she asked slowly, very clearly emphasizing her second and third words. She had never referred to me as her host before, instead calling me by name.

I think she was trying to unnerve me.

I think it did.

"Because I think that, in spite of the fact that you're trying to convince me to sell my soul to your father and doom the world to an eternity of suffering, you've also been a good friend to me." I got louder as I went on, until I was shouting at her. "If you want me to make a decision like that, I would like to know how it would affect a person I care about."

As soon as I'd finished speaking, I noticed that she was no longer looming before me, but seemed to have shrunk into herself. A hood that hadn't been part of her cloak before appeared on her head, hiding most of her face in shadows that seemed unnaturally dark in the bright sunlight we were in.

"Raven," I said, all heat gone from my voice. Despite the fact that I had been saying that I was her friend, I still felt bad for yelling at her like that. "I'm sor-"

Her head shot up and the hood vanished. Meeting my eyes defiantly, she angrily snapped, "When I present my father with your immortal soul, Garfield Mark Logan, I will then be reabsorbed into his consciousness as I am meant to be. I will cease this independent existence and once more be part of the glorious whole that is Trigon the Terrible.

"I am not a person, Garfield." With that, she vanished, and I walked the rest of the way home alone.

My Spanish homework was really hard that night.

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with thine ears consider my calling: hold not thy peace at my tears.

As Calvin's philosophical conversations with Hobbes (the six year-old boy and the stuffed tiger, not the French theologian and the English philosopher) frequently took place while plunging towards certain doom on a toboggan, mine with Raven usually happened on the way to and from school. This one was no exception.

"She likes you. Just ask her out already."

I was sixteen and change when I got my first real crush. Yeah, it was a little late, but over three years of living with a hot demon lady in your head has a weird effect on how a guy looks at the opposite sex. I mean, I didn't have a crush on Raven or anything, because having a crush on an incorporeal demon that lives in your head is silly.

But Tara Markov was definitely something special, and I definitely noticed her when her family moved here from Ukraine and she started school my junior year. She was beautiful, playful, unafraid of getting dirty, exciting, and—according to Raven—interested in me.

"How exactly do you come to that conclusion?" I asked. "I'm the weird kid who laughs at nothing and is often seen having conversations with himself. And what's worse—and by the way, totally your fault—I'm a nerd!"

"By my accounting," Raven said with a slightly confused look on her face, "those first two qualities are my fault, while the last one is entirely your doing."

"No," I disagreed, "the first two are because you're invisible, which isn't something you can control and therefore no fault of yours." Raven's confused look deepened. "The last one is your fault because you tutored me in all my school subjects, which led to me getting good grades, which led to me getting put into AP classes. Your continued tutoring resulted me in continuing to get good grades, which when done in AP classes results in being classified as a nerd. QED, Rae."

"You did not just 'QED' me, Garfield," she huffed in false indignation.

"You have most certainly been QEDed…ed. By me. Take that, vastly superior intellect!" Raven let out a disgusted snort that sounded suspiciously like laughter. I didn't press, though, mostly because I was out of ammo.

Our relationship had changed since I'd told her I thought of her as a friend. We'd never talked about it since then, but the years had seen a definite decline in the number of offers she made for my soul. She had mentioned during one of our talks that she was pretty much obligated by the very fact of her existence to try and weasel my soul out of me, but her heart never really seemed to be in it. She never actually came out and said it either, but I was pretty sure she thought of me as her friend too.

Which apparently meant she could give me dating advice.

"Garfield, I don't know if you are aware-"

"Yes you do," I interrupted.

"Okay, I know that you are unaware of the fact that, while I cannot even begin to comprehend how your so-called brain functions, women are fairly straightforward and easy to understand."

"You're right, I was completely unaware of that fact," I replied. "The entire male population of the world is unaware of that fact. We are also unaware of the fact that pigs can fly, that politicians don't lie, and that coyotes can get hit by missiles, trains, and dynamite and never die." I smiled smugly, fairly proud of my little rhyming retort.

"Hmm," Raven responded. "I suppose you're right…"

I was slightly astounded.

"… about my vastly superior intellect."

I was no longer astounded.

"Garfield, regardless of how you may think your peers perceive you-"

"They let me know how they perceive me on a regular basis."

"-you are a kind, intelligent, fairly attractive—if not a little short—young man. Tara is not interested in a Bad Boy, nor is she interested in a muscle-headed jock or some so-called Golden Hottie. When you're not looking at her, believe me, she's sneaking a glance at you. If you ask, she'll say yes. Trust me."

I did.

O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength: before I go hence, and be no more seen.

"I cannot adequately express how incredibly sorry I am, Garfield." Like me, Raven looked a little shell-shocked.

"Nothing ventured, I suppose," I said, trying to put a nonchalant spin on my glorious flameout.

"No cracks about my allegedly 'vastly superior intellect?'"

"You're smart, not psychic. Don't worry, my self-esteem will recover before I start drawing Social Security checks."

"My understanding is that your country's Social Security program will be bankrupt by the time you are old enough to receive payment from it."

"Well, I guess I'm screwed then."

There were a few minutes of silence between us, with me trying not to think of my spectacular rejection, and Raven… thinking whatever Raven was thinking. She lived in my head, not the other way around.

"You know," she finally said, "she's probably a traitorous, back-stabbing bitch anyways."

I laughed. "Then we'll just file this under 'D' for 'Dodged Bullets' and be Done with it."

Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.

"Garfield, it's not healthy." I was at college for this one. Raven and I were having one of our relatively uncommon Serious Disagreements. She thought I needed to hang out with other people more.

"Raven, I've got a better friend than most people I've met have the potential to ever aspire to become already living in my head. Why get greedy?"

"Because humans are social animals, and only spending time with one person all the time is bad enough when they're visible. Your psychological well-being would be significantly improved by having a human friend or two."

I snorted. She evidently had a higher opinion of people than me, which struck me as funny. Weren't demons supposed to be the cynical ones?

"Any suggestions, then? Who have you seen around here that seems likely to want to hang out with the weird loner who everyone is convinced is schizophrenic?"

She was evidently prepared for this one, since she replied immediately. "Victor Stone seems like a nice person you could be friends with," she proposed.

"Victor Stone?"

"Yes."

"The football star?"

"Yes. Was I unclear?"

"The football star and most popular guy on campus with hordes of people of both genders and all sexual persuasions beating down his door to merely be seen around school spending time with him?"

"Well, when you put it that way-"

I brought out my biggest gun. "Vastly superior intellect?" Raven flinched noticeably.

"Being wrong once doesn't mean I don't have a point."

"Catastrophically wrong."

"But I was right about her being a back-stabbing, traitorous-"

"Even so, Raven-" Raven held up a hand to cut me off, and visibly braced herself to say what she was planning on saying.

"Garfield, if you don't talk to him—if you don't try—by Friday, then I will not speak to you or appear to you until you do."

I was floored. I'd become so used to Raven's constant company over the past seven years that I had difficulty imagining being without her. Of course, she could be bluffing.

"I'm not bluffing, Garfield."

I got angry. I shouted. I yelled. I pleaded. She refused to give in. Friday morning arrived, and I didn't hear from her.

I talked to Victor on Wednesday, when I 'happened' to run into him between classes. He was a pretty cool guy, and we actually became pretty good friends. I haven't spoken to him in a few years, ever since… yeah. But apparently, Raven was right. Vastly superior intellect and all.

And yes, it's that Victor Stone. I actually introduced him to his wife, Jen. She's the only person who didn't think I was crazy other than Vic. I think she somehow knew about Raven, but we never really talked about it.

But this story isn't about Vic or Jen, it's about Raven, who appeared again when I got back to my dorm Wednesday night and hugged the everloving shit out of me when I opened the door. If anybody had been in the hallway, they'd have seen me hugging the air and valiantly trying not to cry. I didn't care if they saw me, and I didn't care that I was failing with the crying thing either.

"Raven, if I could sell my soul to make you a distinct person, I'd do it in a heartbeat."

She tensed up for a moment, then relaxed.

"Trigon won't do that. If he gives me a physical body, I'd be free of him. He'll never allow even the smallest portion of his power to be diminished like that."

"Then he'll never have my soul."

"Thank God for that."

Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

I should have died. The firefighters, the FAA, and every expert and official agreed on that. The pilot, co-pilot, and every other living soul on the plane were unrecognizable charred husks on the runway. Instead, I was completely untouched by the fire that had ravaged the 757. Even my seat and my carry-on beneath it survived unscathed. I made national headlines, and some famous evangelist on some news network claimed that my survival was an act of Divine Providence.

She wasn't that far off the mark.

Both of the engines had caught fire simultaneously when the pilot began making his descent, and the investigation after the fact showed a concurrent catastrophic failure of the hydraulic systems that adjusted the flaps and things that actually made planes fly as well as an electrical short that started a fire in the cockpit. The pilot had a medical failure of his own, since they figured out somehow that he had been dead before impact, and the co-pilot was incapacitated for reasons that nobody will ever know.

Raven had known immediately, of course. She could feel the influence of her father reaching out to claim her in the only way he knew how. He knew that she had failed to make me relinquish my soul, and so he was retrieving his daughter by killing me.

He could have just killed me like he had the pilot, but that's not Trigon's way, according to Raven. He delights in tormenting his victims before killing them.

He wanted me to know death was coming.

He hadn't counted on Raven.

Demons don't sacrifice themselves for others. That's the rule. But Raven wasn't a demon at heart. She had appeared to me one last time and explained a few facts of her existence, kissed the top of my head, and said goodbye. I didn't understand exactly what she intended to do until a translucent black screen appeared around me as the plane hit the ground.

The air itself burned all around me, and when the fire cleared there was nothing even remotely human-looking left in sight. I beat on the black shield surrounding me, trying to bring it down before…

Raven had told me that she couldn't manifest in the world outside me, that she couldn't directly affect the physical world. She hadn't been entirely honest with me.

Her spirit—her soul—could leave my mind any time she chose, and once outside she could do some pretty amazing things. Like keep one passenger alive through a catastrophic plane crash. But Raven didn't have a body of her own, and could only survive like a parasite, protecting herself inside the body her father had put her in. And like any parasite, she couldn't last long without a host.

And once she left a host, she was powerless to get back in on her own.

An hour later, the firefighters managed to put out most of the fires. Only when the air around me was cool enough for me to survive breathing it in did Raven's shield fall. Coughing through the smoke, I rushed out to the astonished firefighters and EMTs who hadn't had any expectations of survivors to worry about.

Raven's gambit had worked. I lived, and in destroying herself she had denied Trigon her power—miniscule as it may have been in comparison to what he already possessed.

And I lost my best friend in the process.

OUR Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Victor and Jen had tried to help as best they could, but they couldn't even begin to replace the emptiness Raven had left behind. I finished school a year later and left the city the same day. I had taken up reading for pleasure back in high school as an exchange with Raven: I could play video games and watch TV without any "brain-rotting" comments from the peanut gallery if I spent an equal amount of time reading books she recommended, my reading being the only way she could get any reading done herself. One of my favorites had been the Anne of Green Gables book I'd mentioned earlier, and eventually I found myself seeing if I could make a home on Prince Edward Island.

Alone.

It worked. I found I had a surprising aptitude for physical labor and fixing things. From cars to microwaves, all anyone in one of the nearby towns had to do was drop it off at my place, and I'd call them when it was fixed. If they needed a job done, like painting a house or something, they'd give me a call and I'd go on down and do what I could.

But I didn't make friends, I didn't flirt with the women my age, and I didn't let anyone get close to me. People respected my unspoken wish to be left alone, and didn't bother me with social calls.

And life goes implacably on.

Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; But deliver us from evil.

My name is Garfield Logan. As I write this, I am celebrating my thirty-third birthday by sitting in my tiny home by the sea. But I am not alone.

This morning, when I stepped out my front door, I found a small basket on the porch. A plain brown wicker affair, it contained within it a pale baby girl with—strangely enough—purple eyes and hair. Pinned to the white blanket protecting the infant was a note that read:

"Many souls earn a second chance at happiness. Some souls get it. –U"

I don't know who "U" is, but I do know that I plan on making sure that this child—who am I kidding—that Raven gets the happiness she deserves. I owe that much and more to her.

And if I manage to find some happiness the way, I won't complain. I should probably give Vic a call.

Amen.

Heh. She giggles when I call her "Rae."