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been a painful year since then, but even now the memories were more like half-remembered nightmares, their details blurring and fading with the passage of time.
    Camdon took Lizbeth’s place by Angela’s side. Gently, he placed his large hand on top of Angela’s. “Angela, you were a good friend to my sister. She was a troubled girl, unpopular and bullied. But you chose to be her friend—even until the end. If you won’t do it for yourself, join the Order for people like her. For people like Janna. Give them something to belong to, and a renewed sense of pride.”
    Angela nodded, suddenly speechless.
    Camdon Willis left her side. “At least think about it. You have some time,” he said.
    Yet Angela could feel him staring intensely at her.
    As if that was the cue for everyone to leave, nineteen chairs slid away from the table and their occupants milled out of the room. Sophia followed them, hastily grabbed at coats and scarves set on the couches, and delivered them to their proper owners. Father Schrader was the last to leave.
    He took his hat from Sophia and slapped it onto his thick white hair, already grumbling about the cold. He buttoned his long black coat from the waist up.
    â€œThe first snowfall in Luz in two centuries. The end is certainly nigh,” he muttered to himself.
    Angela stepped in front of him, blocking the front door. “Father Schrader . . . how is Stephanie doing? I . . . I’ve been curious . . .”
    They stood next to a statue so lifelike it could have been a real angel listening to their secrets, his marble hand cupped around his marble ear.
    Father Schrader glanced around furtively. “Not good, Miss Mathers. Not good. We can get nothing of sense out of her. No crucial information, not even a sentence worthy of note.” His face darkened. “If it hadn’t been for that demon, I would have said she was simply insane. Perhaps we should consider her fate to be a lesson: that pride indeed comes before the inevitable fall. Human beings were not meant to commune with angels, and vice versa. There are firm reasons why God has so definitively separated the two.”
    But what about the creatures who were in between?
    Angela’s mind flashed to Stephanie’s missing ex-boyfriend Kim. He’d called himself a half-breed. The forbidden offspring of a race of devils called Jinn and a human witch, he was an immortal vagabond who belonged nowhere. But Angela was sure Kim’s hatred of the Jinn had more to do with being an outsider like Angela than he’d ever admit. Perhaps that explained why he’d been searching for the Archon in the first place, even his crazy need to see Angela seated on the Throne of Hell in Lucifel’s place. Maybe what he’d really wanted all along was just to make a place for himself.
    For both of them.
    Angela shivered, almost feeling his touch in the drafts against her neck. It was impossible not to remember his golden eyes, his firm hands, or even the way he’d whispered in her ear. Everything about him had been suspicious, even his odd human name. Yet some kind of strange attraction had compelled Angela to listen and believe him, even to trust, as if their futures depended mysteriously on each other. She’d wanted to know so much more about him, but after the battle with Lucifel that had almost killed Angela, Kim had simply disappeared, leaving her with a thousand questions and no one able or willing to answer them.
    Or maybe—and Angela shivered with an entirely different kind of feeling this time—maybe his past had just finally caught up with him.
    She forced herself to finally ask one of those many questions. “Have you heard anything about Stephanie’s old boyfriend, Father Schrader? His name was Kim . . .”
    Father Schrader raised an eyebrow again. This time, he stared at Angela as if he could see right through her. “That one—I knew he