As she and Abby were at the hospital, waiting to see if Crystal survived her operation on her stomach and chest, the blonde just grabbed her hand and squeezed it tightly. There were tears in her eyes, and although Tierna got her to come back, she couldn't ignore the guilt that was now taking over Abby's whole body: she thinks it's her fault her evil twin sister tried to kill everyone and succeeded at doing so to 14 people and more ; she was beating herself up because the others - and especially Sam - weren't there anymore, just vanished. As the whole town was looking for the three missing teenagers - well, especially Shelina and Sam since they're Eastside royalty in some ways - the remaining ones were just lost.
When the door of the waiting room opens and the two girls watch as Tobin and Mapi enter the room, out of breath. They all seemed quite beaten up by everything going on.
"What are you doing here?" Tierna immediately asks, her eyes set on Mapi.
The Spanish girl just rolls her eyes, knowing that she would always be the target of stereotypes because of who her family is.
Deciding to cut right to the chase, Tobin orders:
"Listen to what she has to say."
Mapi takes a deep breath, before saying without any chill:
"I'm gonna go straight to the point, all right? (As the others nod, she continues:) I know everything about the witch and Satan's heir, and I am not your enemy - rather, I believe I am your best chance at saving your friends from where they are."
"W-what do you mean 'where they are'?" Abby immediately asks, frowning.
"They're in a dimension called the In-Between: in short, it's an alternate temporality where the victims of the curse go instead of dying right away. Don't get me wrong, they're very well dead: but they can come back as ghosts. When Kelley was about to kill y'all and Crystal, Shelina's love for her just woke her powers up, and it seems as if she has very powerful ones."
Tierna shakes her head, highly confused.
"Well, it kind of makes sense that she also has powers if she's the witch's heir." the brunette thinks out loud, confused.
But Mapi just says:
"Except that she's not the witch's heir."
"I'm sorry, what?" Abby asks, her eyes going wide.
Mapi nods, knowingly waiting for a few seconds to say something else. As Tobin and Tierna are on the verge of strangling her while Abby's eyes turn dark, the Spanish starts laughing quietly, before getting out a book neither of them had seen before.
She opens it and shows them a picture that got them even more confused than before:
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*Picture found on Google
A smirk on her face, Mapi then drops the bomb:
"Shelina was never the witch's heir: she is her reincarnation, she is the witch, and she never was the bad guy - Kelley is."
***
Christen wakes up in her house in the Westside, but something didn't add up - nobody was there, filling a house that was usually occupied by about seven to ten people on calm days. No cries, no screams, no laughs - just utter silence. Even after she walks in every room, there was nobody to be ween - except in the last room she visits.
Turning her back on her, probably knitting like when Christen was a child and her parents worked all the time, Annemarie Press is listening to classical piano music, that usually calms her nerve. When Christen walks in, she immediately turns around, and her face is soon lightened with a happy smile.
Christen, touched at the heart, starts crying: she knows her grandmother is dead, but even if this is a dream, seeing her was making her feel nostalgic - she was, after all, the woman that raised her brothers and sisters as well as herself up, that she saw die right in front of her eyes.
"We finally get to finish our conversation, mi preciosa nieta" (English: my precious grand-daughter) the old woman softly whispers, her heart breaking a little bit seeing how loss affected her favourite grandchild. As Christen advances slowly, she opens her arms and says: "Although I will never come back to the land of the livings, I can still hug you one last time. Come here."
Without asking any question, Christen throws herself inside her grandmothers' arms, crying all the tears that had been growing inside her body for so many months now - all the people she lost, the fear, the struggle... everything was coming to the surface now.
After a few minutes of holding the younger woman tightly, Annemarie Press just releases her, before Christen asks:
"H-How..."
"Your friends will explain it to you, preciosa" she starts, before sighing. Now was the only chance to tell Christen the truth: "Turns out I was wrong about the curse: the witch never chose to be offered victims in order to kill her heir - because she never had one."
"Does this mean..." Christen starts, but her grandmother knew the time was counted.
"Listen, Christen, because it is very important: I may be dead, but you are not - you are going to find a way to go back to the land of the living, and when you do, you must be warned. You already know your friend Kelley is the second Satan's heiress, but what you do not know is that she isn't the only celestial being on Earth at the moment - because as long as there is a devil existing in the universe, there is also a God."
"What? God is in Sunnyvale?"
"No, He is not" Annemarie whispers, before showing Christen a painting of God and all of His children - including Samael, the birth name of Satan. Frowning, the young woman just hears the unbelievable truth : "One of Samael's siblings, Azrael, the Angel of Death, has had a child of her own - which is usually forbidden for celestial beings. She fell in love with a man on Earth - a delinquent, a bad man - and they enbfanted a child that now lives in Sunnyvale."
Christen's blood runs cold.
"Oh my God..."
"And Azrael's daughter has in turn fallen in love with one of The Four, swearing to protect her at all costs..."
This time, Christen's heart seemed to just stop, as she whispers:
"Marìa..."
Annemarie Press nods.
"Your friends are waiting for you right outside the house: they told me you have a meeting point at The Circle. I love you, Christen."
"My friends? But-"
As she turned around only one second, Christen turns around again and realises that her grandmother has vanished. Confused, she runs toward the entrance door, opening it with tears in her eyes, still under the shock of such a reveal.
Her eyes once again go wide, as she sees her childhood friends Megan Rapinoe and Allie Long waving at her from their car.
