This annoys him. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. This isn’t about you.”
“Then what is it about?” This from Angela, steady and crazy calm considering there’s a Black Wing in her living room. “What do you want?”
“We’ve come to see the baby,” he says.
Christian and I exchange troubled glances. Where is Webster?
“My baby?” Angela repeats, almost stupidly. “Why?”
“Penamue would like to see the wee thing, as would I. I’m the grandfather, after all.”
Holy crap, I think. Phen’s here. And … does that mean that the other angel is Angela’s father?
“You are nothing to him, Asael,” Anna spits out. “Nothing.”
At the name Asael my brain floods with every piece of information I’ve gathered about this guy over the past year: the collector, the big bad who would stop at nothing to recruit or destroy all of the Triplare from this world, the brother who usurped Samjeeza as the leader of the Watchers. Very dangerous, I can practically hear my father saying. Without pity. Without hesitation. He takes what he wants, and if he sees you, if he knows what you are, he will take you. I want to run, that’s my instinct—run, run down the stairs and out the door and not look back—but I clench my teeth and stay right where I am.
“He’s not here,” Angela says, like she’s only irritated at this intrusion and not terrified out of her mind. “You could have simply called, Phen, and I would have told you that. You didn’t have to make the trip all this way.”
Asael laughs. The sound makes my skin crawl. “We could have called,” he repeats, amused. “Where is the baby, then, if not here?”
“I gave him away.”
“You gave him away? To whom?”
“To a nice couple in a profile I picked at the adoption agency, who desperately wanted a kid. The dad’s a musician; the mom’s a pastry chef. I liked the idea that he’d always have music and good food.”
“Hmm,” Asael says thoughtfully. “I believe that Penamue was under the impression that you were going to keep the child. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” answers a voice I wouldn’t have recognized as Phen’s if I didn’t know it was him speaking. He sounds like he has a bad cold. “She told me she was keeping it.”
“Him,” Angela corrects. “And I changed my mind, after it was clear that you were going to bail on me.” She can’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Look, I’m not the maternal type. I’m nineteen years old. I go to Stanford. I have a life. Being strapped with a kid’s the last thing I want. So I gave him to some people who’d take care of him.”
I can’t see, but I can imagine Angela standing there, that carefully blank expression she gets when she’s hiding something, her hip pushed out a bit to one side, her head cocked like she can’t believe she’s still having this oh-so-boring conversation. “So it looks like you wasted your time,” she adds. “And mine.”
There’s a moment of silence. Then Asael starts to clap, slowly, so loudly I flinch every time his hands strike each other.
“What a performance,” he says. “You’re quite the actress, my dear.”
“Believe me or don’t,” she says. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Search the apartment,” Asael says, an untroubled calm to his voice, like still water on the lake, which doesn’t reveal the turmoil under the surface. “Look in all the nooks and crannies. I believe the baby is here, somewhere.”
I hear people moving away from us, down the hall, and then the noise of tossing furniture and breaking glass. Anna starts to whisper to herself, soft and desperate, something that I vaguely recognize as the Lord’s Prayer.
We should do something, I send to Christian.
He shakes his head again. We’re outnumbered. There are two full angels, Clara, and your dad said we wouldn’t be able to beat even one of them in a head-to-head fight. Then add in a few what I am betting are Triplare. We wouldn’t stand a chance in there.
I bite my lip. But we have to help Angela.
He shakes his head. We should figure out where Web is. That’s what Angela would want us to do, he says. I can feel his desire to run away, the way he’s been conditioned to in this situation, and I can feel his fear, almost panic at this point, rising in him. He’s not afraid for himself. He’s afraid for me. He wants to put me in his truck and drive far away from here. He knows if we stay it will all play out like his vision, which ends with me covered in blood, staring up at him with glassy eyes. He can’t let that happen.
Now it’s my turn to shake my head. We can’t just leave Angela.
“He’s not here. I told you,” Angela says.
“You are mine,” Asael says in a harder voice, starting to lose patience. The floor creaks under his weight as he takes a step toward her. “You are blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, and that baby belongs to me as well. The seventh is mine. I will have it.”
“Him,” she corrects again softly.
The others return.
“There’s no baby,” a woman’s voice reports. “But there’s a crib in one of the back rooms.” Then they start tearing apart the kitchen, dumping out drawers, throwing things on the floor for good measure.
Anna’s praying gets louder.
“Enough,” Asael says, his voice calm again. “Tell us where he is.”
“He’s gone,” Angela says, her voice wavering. “I sent him away from here.”
“Where?” Asael asks again, less patiently. “Where did you send him?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Angela,” rasps Phen. “Please. Tell him. Just tell him, and he will let you go.”
Asael makes an amused sound in the back of his throat. “Oh, Penamue, you really do care for her, don’t you? How droll. I would never have imagined, when I sent you to check up on my long-lost daughter in Italy, that you’d lose your little gray heart. But I suppose I understand. I do. She’s so young, isn’t she? So new, like a tender green sprout pushing up out of the earth.”
I get a flash of the floating woman again, him carrying her this time, his face pressed against her white, pulseless neck.
“So,” Asael continues, “do as your lover bids you. Tell us where you’ve taken the baby.”
“No.”
He sighs. “Very well. I don’t enjoy having to employ this particular tactic, but … Desmond, hold her mother for a moment?”
Footsteps. Anna stops praying as she’s yanked away from Angela. Then she starts up again: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven….”
“Amen. I do hope He’s listening to all this,” Asael says. “Now, then, tell me what I want to know, or your mother will die.”
I hear Angela’s sharp intake of breath. I cast a desperate glance at Christian, my mind whirling. What can we do?
“It’s quite the dilemma,” Asael says. “Your mother or your son. But consider this: If you tell us where to find the infant, I promise you that he’ll be safe from harm. He’ll want for nothing. I will raise him as my own child.”
“Yeah, well, I’m your child,” Angela says. “And that’s not working out so great.”
He gives a startled laugh at her back talk. “Then be my daughter, as these two lovely girls have been—your sisters, you know. I will give you a room in my house, a place at my table, by my side.”
“In hell, you mean,” she says.
“Hell’s not so bad. We’re free there. The angels are kings, and you could be a princess. And you could remain with your child.”
“Don’t do it,” Anna says.
“Come with me, and we’ll let your mother go unharmed, for the rest of her life,” Asael promises.
“No. Remember what I taught you,” Anna murmurs. “Don’t worry about me. They can murder my body, but they can never harm my soul.”
“Are you so sure about that?” Asael asks. “Olivia, come here, dear. Perhaps we should educate her. This”—he pauses briefly—“is a very special kind of knife. I call i
t Dubium Alta—the great doubt. The blade causes grievous injury, I’m afraid, to both body and soul. If I say the word, my girl Olivia here will cut your soul to ribbons. I think she’ll rather enjoy it.”
“Lead us not into temptation—”
“Olivia,” he prompts.
I don’t hear the one called Olivia move, but suddenly Anna gives a long, agonized cry.
“Mom,” whispers Angela, as Anna dissolves into ragged sobs.
I taste blood I’m biting my lip so hard. Christian’s hand comes down on my arm, tight enough to hurt.
No, he says.
I’ll call glory, I say, and we’ll run to them, before they can—
I feel him going through the possible scenarios, but none of them work, none of them will end the way we want them to, with all of us together and safe. It’s no use, he says. They’re too fast. Even with surprise on our side, there are too many of them. They’re too strong.
“And deliver us from evil,” Anna pants out finally.
“She’s a bit like a broken record, isn’t she? Olivia, sweetheart …”
Anna cries out again.
“Stop,” Angela says. “Stop hurting her!” She takes a deep breath. “I will take you to Web—to the baby.”
“Excellent,” Asael almost purrs.
“No, Angela,” Anna pleads weakly, like speaking is almost too much for her.
“You have to promise me that he’ll be taken care of, that he’ll be safe,” Angela says.
“I give you my word,” Asael agrees. “Not a hair on his head will be harmed.”
“All right. Let’s go, then,” she says.
Christian starts pulling me down the stairs.
But Asael sighs. “I wish I could believe you, my dear.”
“What?” Angela’s confused.
“You have no intention of taking us to your son. I hate to think of the wild goose chase you’d lead us on.”
“No, I swear—”
“You’ll give me what I want,” he says almost cheerfully. “Eventually. A few hours in hell and you’ll be drawing me a map to the child, I think.” His voice hardens. “All right, Olivia. I’m tired of playing games.”
“Wait!” Angela says desperately. “I said I would—”
Someone gags—a muffled cough, choking.
“Mom!” Angela’s crying, struggling against someone’s arms. “Mom! Mom!”
Anna whispers hoarsely, “God help me,” and falls heavily to the floor.
I can smell her blood.
God help me.
“Mom,” whimpers Angela. “No.”
The reality of what’s happened breaks over me like a tidal wave. We’ve waited too long, too afraid to take action. We’ve let this happen. We’ve let them kill her.
“Let’s go,” Asael says.
They move swiftly toward the door, giving Christian only seconds to drag me down the stairs before we’re seen. There’s not enough time to make it across the lobby and out into the street. He pulls me inside the auditorium, moving us blindly into the dark.
For a few minutes I stand in the blackness, quaking, my eyes going in and out of focus, my stomach cramping, yet at the same time I feel strangely disconnected from my body, like I’m seeing myself from a distance. From a vision, maybe. My vision.
Anna is dead. Angela is being taken to hell. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
The group comes down the stairs, Phen first, from the little I can see through the two-inch slit in the velvet curtains, then Angela being flanked by two identically dressed dark-haired girls. I don’t see their faces, but something about them strikes me as young, about my own age, maybe even younger. Angela’s face as she passes is shocked; tears gleam on her cheeks. She keeps her eyes down. Then a guy I’ve never seen before saunters by—the one called Desmond, I assume—and finally a man in a black suit who looks enough like Samjeeza that from a distance I doubt I could tell them apart. He raises a hand, and everybody stops in the middle of the lobby.
“You two,” he says. “I want you to stay and clean up.”
“Clean up?” repeats one of the girls in almost a whine. “But Father—”
“Burn the place,” he says.
“But how are we supposed to get back?” asks the other.
“Just take care of it,” he says irritably.
Desmond snickers, and one of the girls hits him hard in the chest. He lifts his fist to retaliate, but Asael stops him, laying a hand on his shoulder in a paternal manner, then turns to Angela and grabs her gently at the back of the neck. He smiles. Leans close to her ear. Whispers, “This, my child, is where you must abandon all hope.”
They vanish.
The first girl makes a disgusted sound, kicks a booted foot against one of the brass poles that holds up a line of velvet rope. It topples to the floor with a resounding crash. “Why do we always get the crap jobs?”
I expect Phen to disappear too, now that his dirty work is done, but he stays. He comes to the theater entrance and pulls back the curtain, forcing Christian and me to slink even farther into the belly of the auditorium, deeper in shadows, crouching among the seats.
“All the world’s a stage,” Phen says absently, like he’s talking to himself. “And all the men and women merely players.”
“What are you talking about?” one of the girls asks him. Their voices are exactly the same, like they’re twins or something, although one of them is wearing a bunch of glinting silver bracelets that occasionally jangle together when she moves. From the sound of it they’re breaking open the cash register at the refreshments counter and scooping out the change.
“I think Father’s done with you,” she says to Phen. “You can go back to your little hidey-hole in Rome. Unless you’d give us a ride home? Would you? That would be so sweet of you.”
“All the world’s a stage,” he murmurs, seeming not to hear her. “A stage.”
He turns, letting the curtain drop, and we’re plunged back into utter darkness.
“Oh, come on,” the girl purrs, “we’ll make it worth your while.”
No answer. He’s gone.
“Jerk,” Evil Twin One mutters. “Where’s the next train station? Like five hundred miles from here, I bet. Dumb hick town.”
“You have to admit, though, Phen’s sexy,” teases Evil Twin Two. “I wouldn’t have minded doing him a favor.”
“Just because he’s in a hot body doesn’t mean he’s not an old man inside,” Evil Twin One retorts.
“That’s right; I forgot,” says Evil Twin Two, obviously chewing on something, probably candy from under the counter. “You only go for younger guys.”
“Shut up. Come on, let’s get this over with,” Evil Twin One says.
It’s quiet for a minute. My heart drums in my ears, hard and fast. Then I catch the first whiff of smoke in the air.
This is it.
I know how this is going to happen. I’ve seen it too many times to count. But even so, in the real-life moment, knowing all that I do, I hold on to the hope that they’ll just leave now. I hear them jangling toward the door, and I think, They’ll leave this time, and then we can get out of this black hole that’s got us. I’ll run upstairs, and Anna will still be alive, and I’ll heal her. We’ll find Web. Everything will be okay, somehow.
But then, as always happens, there’s the high-pitched cry, muffled and frightened. And I remember.
Web’s in here with us. Somewhere in this darkness.
Behind me I feel Christian tense like a coiled spring.
“What’s that?” one of the twins says. “Shh. Be quiet.”
As if on cue, the crying abruptly stops. The silence in its wake is deafening. I hold my breath.
Then the curtains part, sending a beam of light down the middle of the auditorium.
“Something’s in there. Get the light.” They scuffle along the wall.
“I can’t find the stupid switch.”
The first one laughs. “Watch this.”
> The fireball arcs over my head and strikes the back edge of the left wall, which ignites instantly. I’m blinded by the light.
Christian doesn’t wait for them to see us. “Get down!” he yells, his glory sword like a flare in his hand. I dive for the aisle, which is awkward since it’s slanted. I bang my chin hard and then lie flat as Christian leaps over me, bringing his blade down hard on an evil twin’s black dagger. The sorrow blade crackles and splits, but the girl has another one in her hand before the first has fully disintegrated. She lunges down at him, swiping at his legs, but he moves aside. The other girl hisses and tries to move in on his flank.
“Who are you?” She darts in, and he easily deflects her blow, shatters her dagger.
“Concerned. Citizen,” he gets out between lunges.
They haven’t even seen me.
I scramble backward until my back hits a chair. I watch Christian dodge another strike from the second twin, moving faster than I’ve ever seen him move. Suddenly he veers sideways into the first twin and turns and hurls her into the second one. They stagger but recover quickly, advancing. One hops over a row of seats, then another, attempting to get behind him, but he retreats, keeping them in front of him. They remind me of snakes, I think dazedly, their movements fluid, purposeful, synchronized.
The fire’s spread to the heavy curtains at the edge of the stage now, filling the room with thick black smoke that boils in the rafters overhead. The baby starts to cry again, louder this time, angrier. The twins turn toward the sound.
Christian pivots to stand between them and the direction the cry is coming from. He’s amazing with the sword, whirling and cutting, keeping them at bay almost like a dance, so much more than I ever saw in our training together. There’s a fierceness in him that’s breathtaking to behold. But he’s tiring. I can see that, too.
I need to get up, I think. I need to draw my own sword, and help him.
I get my legs under me and shakily rise to my feet.
No, get back, Christian says in my mind. I’ll hold them off. Find the baby.
Web. My shell-shocked brain struggles to focus. I need to get Web.
I stumble up onto the stage and beyond it, backstage into one of the tiny dressing rooms on the side. There’s fabric everywhere, rolls of it lying around, costumes. I paw through them but don’t hit anything solid like a baby. I try to listen for the crying, but it’s stopped again.