She stood up, feeling like a kid as Arriane engulfed her in the towel and dried her off. The towel was thin and coarse, but the robe that followed was thick and warm.
“We need to skedaddle before the tourist cavalry arrives,” said Arriane, gathering Luce’s boots.
By the time they left the baptismal room and walked back into the chapel, the sun had risen, and it cast colorful rays of light through the stained-glass depiction of the Ascension in the window.
Beneath the window lay the bodies of Miss Sophia and the two other Elders, bound together.
When the girls crossed to the front of the larger chapel, Cam, Roland, and Daniel were sitting on the center altar, talking softly. Cam was drinking the last of the starshot colas from Phil’s black leather satchel. Luce could actually see his bloody ankle scab over and then the scab begin to flake away. He swallowed the last drop and rotated his shoulder back into its socket with a snap.
The boys looked up to see Luce standing between Annabelle and Arriane. All three of them hopped off the altar, but Cam stepped toward Luce first.
She stood very still as he approached. Her heart was beating fast.
His skin was pale, making the green of his eyes look like emeralds. There were sweat along his hairline and a small scratch near his left eye. His wing tips had stopped bleeding and had been bandaged with some kind of fancy gauze.
He smiled at her. Took her hands. His were warm and alive and there had been a moment when Luce thought she might never see him again, never see his eyes shine, never watch his golden wings unfurl, never hear the way his voice rose when he made a dark joke . . . and though she loved Daniel more than anything else, more than she ever thought possible, Luce could not bear to lose Cam. That was what had sent her bounding into the room. “Thank you,” he said.
Luce felt her lips quiver and her eyes burn. Before she knew what she was doing, she fell into Cam’s arms, felt his hands wrap around her back. When his chin rested on the top of her head, she began to weep.
He let her cry. Held her close. He whispered, “You’re so brave.”
Then Cam’s arms shifted and his chest pulled lightly away. For a second, she felt cold and exposed, but then another chest, another pair of arms replaced Cam’s. And she knew without opening her eyes that it was Daniel.
No other body in the universe fit hers so well.
“Mind if I cut in?” he asked softly.
“Daniel—” She clenched her fists and squeezed her arms around him, wanting to squeeze away the pain.
“Shhh.” He held her like that for what might have been hours, rocking her slightly, cradling her in his wings until her tears had tapered off and the weight in her heart had eased enough that she could breathe without sniffling.
“When an angel dies,” she said against his shoulder,
“does she go to Heaven?”
“No,” he said. “There is nothing for an angel after death.”
“How can that be?”
“The Throne never anticipated that any angel would rebel, much less that the fallen angel Azazel would spend centuries in a deep Greek cave over a fire, developing a weapon to kill angels.”
Her chest shuddered again. “But—”
“Shhh,” he whispered. “Grief can choke you. It’s dangerous, something else you have to beat.” She took a deep breath and pulled back, enough to see his face. Her eyes felt swollen and exhausted, and Daniel’s shirt was soaked with her tears, like she’d baptized him with her sorrow.
Beyond Daniel’s shoulder, resting on the altar where Gabbe had been bound, something silver gleamed. It was an enormous goblet, as big around as a punch bowl, but oblong in shape and made of hammered silver.
“Is that it?” Was this the relic that had cost her friends their lives?
Cam walked over to it, picked it up. “We uncovered it at the base of the Pont Saint Bénézet right before the Elders overtook us.” He shook his head. “I do hope this spittoon is worth it.”
“Where’s Dee?” Luce looked around for the person most likely to know the significance of the relic.
“She’s downstairs.” Daniel explained, “The church opened to the public a little while ago, so Dee went down to build a small Patina to cloak the corpses of the Elders.
Now she’s at the base of the stairs with a sign that says this ‘wing’ is closed for reconstruction.”
“And it worked?” Annabelle asked, impressed.
“No one’s gotten past her yet. Religious tourists aren’t football hooligans,” Cam smirked. “Storm the prayer pillows!”
“How can you joke right now?” Luce asked.
“How can I not?” Cam countered darkly. “Would you prefer I cried?”
A rap sounded at the window on the other side of the chapel. The angels stiffened as Cam went to open the pane next to the stained glass. His jaw clenched. “Ready the starshots!”
“Cam, wait!” Daniel cried. “Don’t shoot.” Cam paused. A moment later, a boy in a tan trench coat slipped through the open window. As soon as he was on his feet, Phil raised his shaved blond head and fixed his dead white eyes on Cam.
Cam snarled. “You’re lost, Outcast.”
“They’re with us now, Cam.” Daniel pointed to the pennon from his own wing, tucked into Phil’s lapel.
Cam swallowed, crossed his arms over his chest.
“Apologies. I did not know that.” He cleared his throat, adding, “That explains why the Outcasts we saw on the bridge in Avignon were fighting the Elders when we arrived. They never had a chance to explain before all of them were—”
“Killed,” Phil said. “Yes. The Outcasts sacrificed themselves for your cause.”
“The universe is everyone’s cause,” Daniel said, and Phil gave a curt nod.
Luce hung her head. All that dust on the bridge. It hadn’t occurred to her that it could have been Outcasts.
She’d been too worried about Gabbe and Molly and Cam.
“These last few days have dealt a heavy blow to the Outcasts,” Phil said. His voice betrayed a shade of sorrow. “Many were captured in Vienna at the hands of Scale. Many more fell to Elders in Avignon. Four of us remain. May I show them in?”
“Of course,” Daniel said.
Phil held out a hand toward the window and three more tan trench coats slipped through the open pane: a girl Luce didn’t recognize, who Phil introduced as Phresia; Vincent, one of the Outcasts who’d stood guard for Luce and Daniel at Mount Sinai; and Olianna, the pale girl from the palace rooftop in Vienna. Luce flashed her a smile she knew the Outcast girl could not see. But Luce hoped Olianna could sense it, because Luce was glad to see her recovered. All the Outcasts looked like siblings, modest and attractive, alarmingly pale.
Phil pointed at the dead Elders under the window. “It looks as if you need some assistance with the disposal of these corpses. May the Outcasts take them off your hands?”
Daniel let out a surprised laugh. “Please.”
“Just make sure you don’t pay this geriatric roadkill any respect,” Cam added.
“Phresia.” Phil nodded at the girl, who dropped to her knees before the bodies, slung them over her shoulders, unfurled her mud-brown wings, and shot through the window. Luce watched her cross the sky, carrying away the last of Miss Sophia Luce would ever see.
“What’s in the duffel bag?” Cam pointed to the navy blue canvas bag strapped over Vincent’s shoulders.
Phil motioned for Vincent to drop the duffel bag on the center altar. It landed with a heavy thwump. “In Venice, Daniel Grigori asked me whether I had any food for Lucinda Price. I have been regretting that all I had to offer was cheap unhealthful snacks, the kind of foods my Italian model friends prefer. This time, I asked a mortal Israeli girl what sort of things she liked to eat. She led me to a something called a falafel stand.” Phil shrugged and his voice lilted in a question at the end.
“Are you saying I’m looking at a solid brick of falafel?” Roland raised a doubtful eyebrow at Vincent’s bulging bag.
“Oh no,” Vincent said. “The Outcasts also purchased hummus, pita, pickles, a container of something called tabbouleh, cucumber salad, and fresh pomegranate juice.
Are you hungry, Lucinda Price?”
It was an absurd amount of delicious food. Somehow it felt wrong to eat on the altars, so they spread out a smorgasbord on the floor and everyone—Outcast, angel, mortal—tucked in. The mood was somber, but the food was filling and hot and exactly what all of them seemed to need. Luce showed Olianna and Vincent how to make a falafel sandwich; Cam even asked Phil to pass him the hummus. At some point, Arriane flew out the window to find Luce some new clothes. She returned with a faded pair of jeans, a white V-neck T-shirt, and a cool Israeli army flak jacket with a patch depicting an orange-and-yellow flame.
“Had to kiss a soldier for this,” she said, but her voice didn’t have the same showy lightness it would have if she’d been performing for Gabbe and Molly, too.
When none of them could eat any more, Dee appeared in the doorway. She greeted the Outcasts politely and rested a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “Do you have the relic, dear?”
Before Daniel could answer, Dee’s eyes found the goblet. She lifted it and twirled it in her hands, examining it carefully from all sides. “The Silver Pennon,” she whispered. “Hello, old friend.”
“I take it she knows what to do with that thing,” Cam said.
“She knows,” Luce answered.
Dee pointed to a brass plate that had been welded into one of the broad sides of the goblet, and muttered something under her breath, as if she were reading. She ran her fingers across a hammered image depicted there.
Luce inched forward for a better look. The illustration looked like angel wings in free fall.
At last, Dee looked up to face them with a strange expression on her face. “Well, now it all makes sense.”
“What makes sense?” Luce asked.
“My life. My purpose. Where we need to go. What we need to do. It’s time.”
“Time for what?” Luce asked. They’d gathered all the artifacts now, but she didn’t understand any better what they had left to do.
“Time for my final act, dear,” Dee said warmly.
“Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it, step by step.”
“To Mount Sinai?” Daniel rose from the floor and helped Luce to her feet.
“Close.” Dee shut her eyes and took a deep breath, as if to draw the memory from within her lungs. “There’s a pair of trees in the mountains about a mile above Saint Catherine’s Monastery. I’d like for us to convene there.
It is called the Qayom Malak. ”
“Qayom Malak . . . Qayom Malak,” Daniel repeated.
The word sounded like kayome malaka. “That’s in my book.” He unzipped the satchel and flipped through some pages, muttering under his breath. At last, he held it out for Dee to see. Luce stepped forward to take a look. At the bottom of the page, about a hundred pages in, Daniel’s finger pointed at a faded note scribbled in a language Luce didn’t recognize. Next to the note he had written the same group of letters three times: QYWM’ ML’K’. QYWM’ ML’K’. QYWM’ ML’K’.
