Ed's study had never felt this formal.
Three chairs arranged in a semicircle. A folder on the desk, thick with documents. Lorraine at Ed's side, her expression carefully neutral. I sat across from them, feeling like I was about to be promoted or fired, unable to tell which.
"We have news," Ed began. "Official news. From the Church."
My stomach tightened. The last time the Church had sent official news, it had been during the Morrison case, when everything had nearly fallen apart. Whatever came next would be significant.
Ed pushed the folder across the desk.
"Open it."
I did.
The documents inside bore seals I recognized: the Diocese of Hartford, the Vatican's office of demonological affairs, names I'd seen on exorcism authorizations and case files. My name appeared throughout, typed in official fonts on letterhead that smelled faintly of incense.
"Paul Francis Franco," Ed read from memory, "is hereby designated as an Authorized Investigator for the Catholic Church's Office of Paranormal Research, with full independent authority to conduct investigations, evaluate evidence, and recommend formal Church intervention in cases of supernatural disturbance."
I stared at the papers. The words swam slightly, refusing to resolve into meaning.
"Not just assistant," Ed continued. "Not just helper or trainee. Full investigator status. Equal to mine, in the eyes of the Church."
"I don't..." I stopped. Started again. "How?"
"Father Gorman's report from the Perron case. Father Callahan's testimony. The accumulated evidence from three years of work, documented and submitted for official review." Ed's voice held something that might have been pride. "You've earned it, Paul. Every bit of it."
Lorraine reached across the desk and squeezed my hand.
"We're so proud of you," she said. "Both of us. From that first day when you walked into our lives, we knew there was something special about you. And now the Church has recognized it too."
I looked at the papers again. Official stamps. Signatures. My name, typed in the space where Ed's name had always been.
This was real. This was mine now.
[STATUS UPDATE: FAITH NETWORK]
[CHURCH STANDING: AUTHORIZED INVESTIGATOR]
[INDEPENDENT AUTHORITY: GRANTED]
But there was something else in Ed's eyes. Something beneath the pride and the formality.
I'd learned to read him over three years: the subtleties of his expression, the things he said without saying them. And right now, behind the celebration, I saw calculation. Planning. The careful arrangement of pieces on a board.
"When we're gone," Ed said quietly, and Lorraine's hand tightened on mine, "someone has to carry on. The work doesn't end with us. The evil we fight, it's been here since before we were born, and it'll be here long after we're dust."
"Ed..."
"Let me finish." His voice was gentle but firm. "I'm sixty-one years old, Paul. I've been doing this work since I was seventeen. Forty-four years of facing things that would break most people. My heart's not what it used to be. My body's wearing down." He met my eyes. "I'm not giving up. But I'm also not naive. The day is coming when I won't be able to do this anymore. When Lorraine and I will need someone to continue what we've built."
"I want it to be you."
The words hung in the air between us. Everything they meant, everything they implied: the passing of a torch, the inheritance of a legacy, responsibility transferred from one generation to the next.
"I'll honor everything you've taught me," I said. My voice was steady despite the emotion churning in my chest. "Every lesson. Every prayer. Every sacrifice. Whatever you've built, I'll protect it. I'll grow it. I'll make sure it survives."
Ed nodded gruffly, hiding feelings he wasn't comfortable showing.
Lorraine didn't hide anything. She stood, circled the desk, and pulled both of us into a hug that smelled like her perfume and felt like coming home.
"My boys," she whispered. "My beautiful boys."
That night, Ed brought out the photo albums.
We sat in the living room, just the two of us. Lorraine had retired early with a headache she insisted wasn't serious. We turned pages that documented forty years of work. Young Ed and Lorraine, barely out of their teens, standing in front of their first haunted house. Cases from the fifties, sixties, seventies, names and faces I recognized from Ed's stories, now given visual form.
"This was the Sutcliffe case," Ed said, pointing to a faded photograph of a farmhouse in New Hampshire. "1963. Our first real demon. I almost lost Lorraine to that one."
"You never told me that."
"Some things are easier to show than say." He turned the page. "This was Father Malachi. Best exorcist I ever worked with. He died in '67, heart attack, right in the middle of a rite. The demon we were fighting laughed when he fell."
The images continued. Triumphs and tragedies. Friends gained and lost. A life spent fighting the darkness, documented in fading photographs and handwritten notes.
"This is our legacy," Ed said finally, closing the album. "Yours now too. These cases, these lessons, everything we've learned about how to fight what's out there, it passes to you when we're gone. You're the one who carries it forward."
I touched the worn cover of the album, all that history under my fingers.
"I won't let you down."
"I know you won't." Ed's hand found my shoulder, squeezed once, released. "That's why we chose you."
Every story I'm writing is its own world. This is just one of them.
The others exist too, all under one roof.
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― DECREE ―
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