“Where did she go?”
Or where did they go?
“I have no way of knowing that.”
Israfel had been alive all this time, living like a hermit in the farthest reaches of Heaven, and suddenly, out of every era he could have chosen, the Supernal decided to visit Earth now? He must have been searching and waiting for the Archon all along—hoping to reunite with his dead brother. But Angela wasn’t the Archon. Troy had said so. Or, at least, she wasn’t Raziel. So why would the angel bother with her in the first place? Either he was—despite his lofty nature—as ignorant as them, or someone, somewhere, knew something that everybody else didn’t.
Mikel blinked at him, glassy-eyed.
Kim grabbed her by the throat, nearly lifting her from the ground.
The angel’s teeth gritted and she clutched at his hands, furious at how helpless she was.
“What do you know?” Kim shouted at her. “And how do you know it? It seems odd to me that if Angela isn’t the Archon, she still managed to snag your attention.”
The trees groaned, turning in on one another, their limbs snapping ominously. Then the wind picked up, mirroring Mikel’s fury, and a gale besieged Tileaf’s grotto, branches splitting and tumbling from thick trunks, leaves blowing about in a whirlwind, every gust whistling, howling. Rain slanted into Kim’s eyes and his mouth, and still he held on, threatening the worst.
“Answer me, angel.”
“I don’t know what she is either,” Mikel said, screaming over the storm, “but she was powerful enough to call me, and so I came—”
“You told Israfel that the Archon was here. Just like you told the demons.” He tightened his grip. “You’re toying with everyone.”
Mikel twisted, kicking at his legs. “I told him nothing.” She glared at him, equally exasperated. “Israfel was my torturer, priest. He was the one who forced me—the one with no body—into a body made for nothing but pain. And the moment she called me, I left it. He is no more aware of that miracle than you were before this moment.”
Kim dropped her, shoving her away from him. “You’re saying that the official history—that Lucifel’s chicks died—was a lie he made up. There are more of you?”
The wind died down. The rain fell slower.
“One other. My brother.”
“And he is like you?”
“No. He is both body and soul, but he collaborates in my torture.” Mikel rubbed the skin of Nina’s throat, coughing. “You’re not listening to what I’m saying to you. I didn’t come to Angela Mathers. Angela Mathers called me. I left that prison summoned by her power, and if she is not the Archon, then we are all very mistaken about who the Archon is.” Her voice quivered, and she spoke to him sharply, insisting. “I am the offspring of Raziel and Lucifel. I am above the other angels, in case you are forgetting, and the power to break Israfel’s prison must be equal or greater than his.”
Equal. Or greater.
But there was none greater that they knew of.
Until now, everyone had believed Mikel and her brother to be dead, so what else had Heaven been hiding all these eons? What else lived and existed in its highest spaces? Israfel was more like Lucifel than even Kim had imagined, and perhaps it explained their terrible antipathy a little more logically. Their flavor of cruelty, anyway, was a close match. And if Israfel had the Archon, his sister’s possible future opponent, on his side . . .
A harsh screech echoed through the park.
Fury spiraled down amid the rain, her black wings settling clumsily as she landed on Kim’s shoulder. She croaked in his ear, persistent. Troy must have known where Angela and Israfel had disappeared to—and it certainly wouldn’t be Heaven. Grim and keenly unhappy, he watched silently while the bird glided to the ground and scratched letters in the soil. A flash of lightning highlighted the grotto, and for a brief moment, the Vapor’s true form appeared, overlapping her avian body—a little human girl with blond curls, her face as gray as when she’d died.
S-A-N-C-T-U-S
She used her beak, slicing into the earth.
M-A-R-I-A
E-C-C-L-E-S-I-A
Sanctus Maria Ecclesia.
“Saint Mary’s,” Kim muttered under his breath.
Not good. This morning was the Feast of All Saints, one of the Academy’s most important holy days. Priests, novices, visiting bishops, and every Westwood student from the grades of college freshman upward would be required to attend the ceremony. If Israfel showed his face in front of them all, it could mean absolute chaos. And that wasn’t counting whatever tricks Stephanie might have up her sleeve.
Kim slid a hand into his pocket, touching his knife. Perhaps it would be murdering another angel, another Jinn, or another demon. And no matter how much it hurt to admit it, Kim and Troy had one thing in common.