caged creatures looming overhead—these were visions she had long suspected were the inventions of
her own imagination. The thought that these beasts were real—and that they were the reason her father
had brought her to St. Rose—was more than she could bear to think about.
Standing, Evangeline went to the back of the room, where a row of nineteenth-century books lined
the shelves of a locked glass case. Although the books were the oldest in their library, brought to St.
Rose Convent the year it was founded, they were modern compared to the texts analyzed and
discussed in their pages. Taking the key from a hook on the wall, she opened the case and removed
one, cradling it in her arms carefully as she walked to the wide oak table near the fireplace. She
examined the book— Anatomy of the Dark Angels—and ran her fingers over the soft leather binding
with great tenderness, afraid she might, in her haste to open it, damage the spine.
After slipping on a pair of thin cotton gloves, she delicately opened the cover and looked inside,
finding hundreds of pages of facts about the shadow side of angels at her disposal. Each page, each
diagram, each etching related in some way to the transgressions of angelic creatures who had defied
the natural order. The book brought together everything from biblical exegesis to the Franciscan
position on exorcism. Evangeline flipped through the pages, pausing at an examination of demons in
church history. Although never discussed among the sisters, and an enigma to Evangeline, the demonic
had once been a source of much theological discussion in the church. St. Thomas Aquinas, for
example, had asserted that it was a dogma of faith that demons had the power to produce wind,
storms, and a rain of fire from heaven. The demonic population—7,405,926 divided into seventy-two
companies, according to Talmudic accounts—was not directly accounted for in Christian works, and
she doubted that this number could be anything more than numeric speculation, but the figure struck
Evangeline as astonishing. The first chapters of the book contained historical information about
angelic rebellion. Christians, Jews, and Muslims had been arguing over the existence of the dark
angels for thousands of years. The most concrete reference to the disobedient angels could be found in
Genesis, but there were apocryphal and pseudepigraphical texts circulated throughout the centuries
after Christ that had shaped the Judeo-Christian conception of angels. Stories of angelic visitation
abounded, and misinformation about the nature of angels was as prevalent in the ancient world as it
was in the present era. It was a common mistake, for example, to confuse the Watchers—who were
thought to have been sent to earth by God for the specific purpose of spying on humanity—with the
rebel angels, those angelic beings rendered popular by Paradise Lost who followed Lucifer and
were banished from heaven. The Watchers were of the tenth order of bene Elohim, whereas Lucifer
and the rebel angels—the devil and his demons—were from the Malakim, which included the more
perfect orders of angels. Whereas the devil had been condemned to eternal fire, the Watchers were
merely imprisoned for an indeterminate period of time. Contained in what was variously translated as
a pit, a hole, a cave, and hell, they awaited freedom.
After reading for some time, Evangeline found that she had unwittingly pushed the pages of the
book flat against the oak table. Her gaze drifted from the book to the doorway of the library, where,
only a few hours before, she had looked upon Verlaine for the first time. It had been such a
profoundly odd day, the progression from her morning ablutions to her present state of anxiety more
dream than reality. Verlaine had burst into her life with such force that he seemed to be—like the
memories of her family—a creation of her mind, both real and unreal at the same time.
Taking his letter from her pocket and straightening it upon the table, she read it once again. There
had been something in his manner—his directness, his familiarity, his intelligence—that had cracked
through the shell in which she’d lived these past years. His appearance had reminded her that another
world existed outside, beyond the convent grounds. He had given her his telephone number on a scrap
of paper. Evangeline knew that despite her duty to her sisters and the danger of being discovered, she
must speak with him again.
A sense of urgency overtook her as she walked through the busy hallways of the first floor. She
hurried past a Prayer Partner informational meeting under way in the Perpetual Peace Lounge and a
crafts class in the St. Rose of Viterbo Art Center. She did not pause in the communal cloakroom to
find her jacket, and she did not stop by the Mission and Recruitment Office to see about the day’s