"You are the Preliator," Wil declared with an edge of authority to his voice.

"I know who I am," I said. "I can remember that, but I don't know what I am. And I don't know who you are."

Hurt crushed his stony resolve, surprising me. "I am your Guardian, your servant. I'm here to protect and guide you. That is my duty, and that is al that I am."

"How old are you?" I asked, studying his face.

"Six hundred."

My head grew foggy. "How old am I?"

"I don't know exactly. A few thousand years, maybe. We have records of you predating ancient Rome."

I crumpled to the ground next to my car. I looked up at the enormous gashes and the dent in the Audi's fender. My parents were going to kil me.

"This is al real, isn't it?"

"Yes." Wil crouched down in front of me. He wiped at my cheek. The touch was soft, kind, familiar. His gaze was firm but gentle. "You had blood on your face."

I nodded toward my weapons. "Those swords are so strange looking. Why am I able to just make them appear out of thin air? Why do they light on fire? How? "

"They are Khopesh, an ancient weapon," he explained. I recognized the name from my nightmares. "They are exceptional blades--meant for slashing, not stabbing, but they get the job done. We are both able to cal our swords through our power with angelic magic, but once they appear, they are here. We can't conjure new ones, so you had better not lose either of them. We can wil them away also, when we are holding them in our hands, or when we die. They disappear until we cal them again."

He held his sword out straight, and it vanished right before my eyes with that same shimmering light. He opened his palm and conjured the sword once more to show me how simple it was, and then he wil ed it away once more.

"The fire around your swords is angelfire, the only thing effective, catastrophic enough to destroy reapers besides decapitation. Or destruction of the heart--that's what those hooks on the back of your blades are for."

I examined my swords. Sure enough, the tip of the blunt edge of each blade curved back into a hook that I imagined could do an extreme amount of damage if lodged in soft flesh. I swal owed hard, picturing what had happened to the first reaper's heart when the hook had grabbed it.

"If a reaper dies by means other than angelfire," Wil continued, "its body turns to stone instead of burning up. Silver also burns, which is why our blades are made of it, but it doesn't have the permanent effects of angelfire."

I nodded. "That's what happened to the second reaper. Can you make the angelfire appear?"

"No. Only you can, because you are the Preliator."

I held both swords up and wondered how I'd made them light up before. They had done it just because I'd wanted them to. Could I do it again, outside of battle? I watched the blades. Was it like an on-off switch? I let one word cross my mind and concentrated. On. Flames erupted around the blades, leaving the handles and my hands unscorched. They didn't feel warm and they didn't burn anything. I touched the fiery swords to my pant legs and felt no heat. I touched the flat side of a blade to Wil 's arm. He looked at me oddly but otherwise did not react. Off. The flames vanished. "Cool."

I examined one of the blades closely. Etched in the silver, just above the helve, was a series of strange, whirling, beautiful markings. "What does this mean?"

I looked up at him, and his gaze met mine.

"It's Enochian," he explained, his attention flickering to the sword. "The language of the divine, angelic magic. You once told me that it's a prayer of power, but I can't read it myself. We've tried re-creating the writings on other weapons in order to make them as powerful as your Khopesh swords, but so far they are the only weapons able to light with angelfire."

"That's pretty cool," I said. "Who engraved the prayer onto my swords?"

He sat down on the ground next to me, his back up against my car. "You did."

I blinked in surprise. My fingers brushed the strange words, the edges of the markings scraping my skin softly. I felt a sense of nostalgia, but it was distant, like the memory of a wonderful dream. The more I admired them, the more I remembered. "Just like the tattoos on your arm. I put them there a long time ago."

"Yes."

I traced the spiraling symbols of the tattoo with my finger. His arm tensed under my touch and his breaths became slower and steadier. "It's so strange," I said. "I can't believe that what I'm saying out loud isn't something I made up. I remember tattooing this into your arm. I meant for it to protect you."

"It's an Enochian spel , like the one on your swords."

I noticed he was watching my fingers on his skin, and I pul ed back shyly. "Wel , you're stil here, so it must work. Why don't I have one?"

"The spel is ineffective on human skin."

How inconvenient. "How did you find me? Do you always know where I am?"

"Yes. I can sense you above al others. I always know where you are, and I try never to be far away. I found you again a few years ago, and the reapers found you more recently."

"Are they hunting me now?"

"Most don't. They're too afraid. But yes, some wil hunt you. Be glad it's only a few. Most of them try to stay under the radar, and the weakest ones wouldn't even know you until they saw those swords light up."