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do this,” Eli said.
    The lean, redheaded angel swiveled his head toward us, monster-movie slow, his eyes hidden behind those damn mirrored sunglasses. “It is not human. I can do what I like.”
    “She’s half human. You’re tormenting her,” Eli said. “To what end?”
    “He’s behind the gloom and doom cloud in here?” I looked to Fred. “What, she didn’t suffer enough tonight? You figured you’d make her off herself, too?”
    “It knows who destroyed Maion and how,” Fred said to Eli. “It must reveal this information. It must know the consequences if it does not.”
    “Did ya try asking her?” I said.
    Eli glanced at me, but every other creature in the room totally ignored me. “They can’t—”
    “Yeah—yeah, icky illorum, I know,” I said.
    Fred pointed in my direction, his finger long and elegant. “Tell it to ask the other. Make it reveal what it knows.”
    “Bite me, Ginger. You wanna know so badly, ask her yourself. Nicely. ”
    I didn’t have a second to enjoy my retort before white-hot pain exploded through my right hand and steamrolled up my arm. My scream was guttural, raw, and unrestrained. I couldn’t breathe for the excruciating sensation, like every bone in my right hand had been crushed. My knees buckled and I dropped, clutching my swelling black and blue palm to my chest. Somewhere in the blind frenzy of my mind I knew Eli had rushed to my side.
    “Elizal!” Fred’s voice boomed with the single word and Eli stopped, hand mid-stretch for my shoulder. “You will not interfere.”
    “Then stop this, Fraciel. You go too far. This cruelty is unnecessary,” Eli said.
    Fred paused a moment, studying Eli. Finally, he sighed, shaking his head. “You value these nephilim too highly, Elizal. Did you learn nothing from the mistakes of our brothers? They are not to be loved or prized. They are suffered to live only in so far as they are impotent or put into duty to serve us.”
    “Not us, Fraciel. They serve the Father. They fight to do what we find too distasteful to do ourselves. They labor to cleanse their souls. Which of those undertakings do you find indecorous and unworthy of your deference?”
    “I neither condemn nor forgive. My thoughts are for my brothers and the fate that has befallen them, as should yours be,” Fred said.
    “Your concern is no greater than mine,” Eli said. “But not at the expense of my compassion. Stop this, Fraciel. Or I will.”
    The tall angel sighed. “It is only pain. The body’s reaction is psychosomatic.”
    “Fraciel, please.”
    The pain stopped and my body collapsed, relief like a tsunami crashing over me, liquefying my muscles. Suddenly I could breathe, I could think…and I wanted run.
    Eli helped me to my feet, his hands finding mine. Tenderly he felt the bones in my right hand. “Are you okay?”
    I nodded. “Yeah. Note to self, Fred’s got a bitch of a temper.”
    “A bit.” His smile flickered without the strength of his conviction to hold it on his lips. He raised a hand, brushed a blond strand of hair from my eyes. His finger traced around my ear, but the chin-length strand didn’t stay. A warm shiver shook across my shoulders with his feather-light touch.
    “Your buddies don’t like us much,” I said.
    “They’re shaken by the attack, that’s all,” he said. “We’re immortal. Invulnerable but for one impossible weakness. This shouldn’t have happened—it couldn’t have. Talk to the girl, Emma Jane. Try. If someone has discovered a way to end magisters, seraphim will only grow more desperate for answers until they discover how it was done and by whom.”
    “Yeah. I got that.”
    “What’re you doing in here?” Eli and I both looked back to the nurse standing in the now open doorway. “What have you done to that poor girl?”
    She stared across the room to the hospital bed, her round face etched with worry. I followed her gaze and saw for the first time the bed and the girl cowering under the covers. The