“The others must have crossed them in some way. As long as I follow their protocol, appeal to their vanity, the Scale will not imprison me,” he said. “I’ll go alone.” He glanced at the Outcasts and added, “Unarmed.”

  “But the Outcasts are charged with guarding you,” Vincent said in his even monotone. “We will follow at a distance and—”

  “No.” Daniel lifted a hand to stop Vincent. “You will take the warehouse roof. Did you sense Scale there?”

  Vincent nodded. “A few. The majority are near the main entrance.”

  “Good.” Daniel nodded. “I’ll use their own procedure against them. Once I reach the front doors, the Scale will waste time identifying me, checking me for contraband, anything they can make appear illegal. While I distract them near the entrance, the Outcasts will force your way through the warehouse roof and free Roland, Arriane, and Annabelle. And if you face a member of the Scale up there—”

  In unison, the Outcasts held open their trench coats to reveal sheaths of dull silver starshots and compact matching bows.

  “You cannot kill them,” Daniel warned.

  “Please, Daniel Grigori,” Vincent begged. “We are all better off without them.”

  “They are called Scale not only because of their small-minded obsession with rules. They also provide an essential counterbalance to Lucifer’s forces. You are quick enough to elude their cloaks. We only need to delay them, and for that a threat will suffice.”

  “But they only seek to delay you,” Vincent countered. “All of this delaying will lead to oblivion.”

  Luce was about to ask where this plan left her when Daniel drew her into his arms. “I need you to stay here and guard the relic.” They looked at the halo, resting against the base of the warrior statue. It was beaded with rain. “Please don’t argue. We can’t let the Scale near the relic. You and it will be safest here. Olianna will stay to protect you.”

  Luce glanced at the Outcast girl, who stared back emptily, her eyes a depthless gray. “Okay, I’ll stay here.”

  “Let us hope the second relic is still at large,” he said, arching back his wings. “Once the others have been freed, we can make a plan to find it together.”

  Luce clenched her fists, closed her eyes, and kissed Daniel, holding him tight for one last moment.

  He was gone a second later, his regal wings growing smaller as he soared into the night, the three Outcasts flying alongside him. Soon they all seemed little more than flecks of dust in the clouds.

  Olianna hadn’t moved. She stood like a trench-coated version of any of the other statues on the roof. She faced Luce with her hands clasped over her chest, the blond hair along her forehead pulled back so tight into its ponytail it looked like it would snap. When she reached inside her trench coat, a harsh scent of sawdust wafted out. When she pulled out and nocked a silver starshot, Luce scrambled a few steps back.

  “Do not be afraid, Lucinda Price,” Olianna said. “I only want to be prepared to defend you in case an enemy approaches.”

  Luce tried not to imagine what enemies the blond girl envisioned. She lowered herself to the roof again and sheltered herself from the wind behind the statue of the warrior with the golden spear, more out of habit than need. She adjusted her body so that she could still see the tall brown brick clock tower with the golden face. Five-thirty. She was marking the minutes until Daniel and the other Outcasts came back.

  “Do you want to sit down?” she asked Olianna, who lurked directly behind Luce with her arrow at the ready.

  “I prefer to stand guard—”

  “Yeah, I don’t guess you can really sit guard,” Luce mumbled. “Ha-ha.”

  A siren wailed from below, a police car speeding through a roundabout. When it passed and the air grew quiet again, Luce didn’t know how to fill the silence.

  She stared at the clock, squinting as if it would help her see through the fog. Had Daniel reached the warehouse by now? What would Arriane, Roland, and Annabelle do when they saw the Outcasts? Luce realized Daniel hadn’t given anyone but Phil a pennon of his wing. How would the angels know to trust the Outcasts? Her shoulders were hunched up around her ears, and her whole body stiffened with the sense of futile frustration. Why was she sitting here, waiting, cracking stupid jokes? She should have an active role in this. After all, it wasn’t Luce the Scale wanted. She should be helping rescue her friends or finding the relic instead of sitting here like a distressed damsel, waiting for her knight to return.

  “Do you remember me, Lucinda Price?” the Outcast asked so quietly Luce almost didn’t hear.

  “Why do the Outcasts call us by our full names all of a sudden?” She turned around to find the girl’s head tilted down at her, her bow and arrow listing against her shoulder.

  “It is a sign of respect, Lucinda Price. We are your allies now. You and Daniel Grigori. Do you remember me?”

  Luce thought for a second. “Were you one of the Outcasts fighting the angels in my parents’ backyard?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry.” Luce shrugged. “I don’t remember everything about my past. Have we already met?”

  The Outcast lifted her head just a bit. “We knew one another before.”

  “When?”

  The girl shrugged, her shoulders rising delicately, and Luce suddenly realized she was pretty. “Just before. It is hard to explain.”

  “What isn’t?” Luce swiveled back around, not in the mood to decode another cryptic conversation. She stuffed her freezing hands inside the sleeves of her white sweater and watched the traffic moving up and down the slick roads, the tiny cars wedged into slanted spaces on crooked alleys, people in long dark coats marching over illuminated bridges, carrying groceries home to their families.

  Luce felt painfully lonely. Was her family thinking of her? Did they picture her in the cramped dorm room she’d slept in at Sword & Cross? Was Callie back at Dover by now? Would she be huddled on the cold window seat of her room, letting her dark-red fingernails dry, chatting on the phone about her weird Thanksgiving trip to see some friend who wasn’t Luce?

  A dark cloud drifted past the clock, rendering it invisible as it struck six. Daniel had been gone an hour that felt like a year. Luce watched the church bells ringing, watched the hands of the great old clock, and she let her memory drift back to her lives spent before the invention of linear time, when time meant seasons, the planting and the harvest.

  After the sixth gong of the clock came another—closer, and Luce spun around just in time to see Olianna slump forward to her knees. She fell and landed heavily in Luce’s arms. Luce turned the ragged angel over and touched the Outcast’s face.

  Olianna was unconscious. The sound Luce had heard was the Outcast being hit in the head.

  Before Luce stood an enormous black-cloaked figure. His face was craggy with wrinkles and looked impossibly old, layers of skin drooping under his dull blue eyes and below his protruding chin, beneath a mouthful of crooked black-and-yellow teeth. In his huge right hand was the flagpole he must have used as a weapon. The Austrian flag hung from the end of the pole, fluttering softly against the surface of the roof.

  Luce shot to her feet, feeling her fists rise even as she wondered what good they’d be against this enormous fiend.

  His wings were a very pale blue, just a shade away from white. Even though his body towered over her, his wings were small and dense, spanning only a little farther than his arms could reach.

  Something small and golden was pinned to the front of the man’s cloak: a feather—a marbled gold-black feather. Luce knew whose wing it had come from. But why would Roland have given this creature a pennon from his wings?

  He wouldn’t have. This feather was bent and severed and missing some of its matter near the quill. Its point was maroon with blood, and instead of standing upright like the brilliant plume Daniel had given to Phil, this feather seemed to have withered and faded when it was attached to the gruesome angel’s black cloak.

  A trick.

  “Who are you?” Luce asked, falling to her knees. “What do you want?”

  “Show some respect.” The angel’s throat convulsed as if he meant to bark, but his voice came out warbled and faint and old.

  “Earn my respect,” Luce said. “And I’ll give it to you.”

  He gave her half an evil smirk and dropped his head low. Then he pulled down the cloak to expose the back of his neck. Luce blinked in the dim light. His neck bore a painted brand, which shimmered gold in the glow of streetlights mingled with the moon. She counted seven points on the star.

  He was one of the Scale.

  “Recognize me now?”

  “Is this how the Throne’s enforcers work? Bludgeoning innocent angels?”

  “No Outcast is innocent. Nor is anyone else, for that matter, until they are proven to be so.”

  “You’ve proven yourself innocent of any honor, striking a girl from behind.”

  “Insolence.” He wrinkled his nose at her. “Won’t get you far with me.”

  “That’s exactly where I want to be.” Luce’s eyes darted to Olianna, to her pale hand and the starshot clenched in its grip.

  “But it’s not where you will stay,” the Scale said haltingly, as if having to force himself to commit to their illogical banter.

  Luce snatched at the starshot as the Scale lurched for her. But the angel was much faster and stronger than he looked. He wrested the starshot from her hands, knocked her onto her back against the stone roof with one strong slap across the face. He held the arrow tip of the starshot up close to Luce’s heart.

  They can’t kill mortals. They can’t kill mortals, she kept repeating in her head. But Luce remembered Bill’s bargain with her: She had one immortal part of her that could be killed. Her soul. And she would not part with that, not after everything she’d been through, not when the end was so near.

  She raised her leg, preparing to kick him like she’d seen in kung fu movies, when suddenly he pitched the arrow and its bow straight over the edge of the roof. Luce jerked her head to the side, her cheek pressing against the cold stone, and watched the weapon twirl through the air on its way into the twinkling Christmas lights of the Vienna streets.

  The Scale angel rubbed his hands on his cloak. “Filthy things.” Then he grabbed Luce roughly by the shoulders and yanked her to her feet.

  He kicked the Outcast aside—Olianna moaned but did not stir—and there, under her thin, trench-coated body, was the golden halo.

  “Thought I might find this here,” the Scale angel said, snatching it up and thrusting it under the folds of his cloak.

  “No!” She plunged her hands into the dark place where she’d seen the halo disappear, but the angel slapped her a second time across the face, sending her backward, her hair swinging over the edge of the roof.

  She clutched her face. Her nose was bleeding.

  “You are more dangerous than they think,” he croaked. “We were told you were a whiner, not courageous. I’d better bind you up before we fly.”

  The angel quickly slipped off his cloak and dropped it over her head like a curtain, blinding Luce for a long, horrible moment. Then the Vienna night—and the angel—were visible again. Luce noticed that beneath the cloak he’d been wearing, the Scale wore another, precisely like the one he’d removed and fastened around Luce. He bent down, and with the pull of a string, Luce’s cloak constricted around her like a straitjacket. When she kicked, convulsed, she felt the cloak become tighter.

  She let out a scream. “Daniel!”

  “He won’t hear you,” the angel chuckled mirthlessly as he stuffed her under one arm and moved toward the edge of the roof. “He wouldn’t hear you if you screamed forever.”

  SEVEN

  KNOT ANGELS

  The cloak was paralyzing.

  The more Luce moved, the more it constricted around her. Its rough fabric was secured with a strange rope that pinched her skin and held her body rigidly. When Luce writhed against it, the rope responded, cinching tighter around her shoulders, squeezing her ribs until she could barely breathe.

  The Scale angel held Luce under his bony arm as he scraped through the night sky. With her face buried in the fetid waist of the regenerated cloak the angel wore, she could see nothing, could only feel wind whipping across the surface of her miserable mildewed cocoon. All she could hear was wind-howl, punctuated by the beating of stiff wings.

  Where was he taking her? How would she get word to Daniel? They did not have time for this!

  After a while the wind stopped, but the Scale angel didn’t land.

  He and Luce hovered in the air.

  Then the angel let out a roar. “Trespasser!” he bellowed.

  Luce felt the two of them dropping, but she could see only the darkness of the folds of her captor’s cloak, which muffled her cries of terror—until the sound of breaking glass halted even those.

  Thin, razor-like shards sliced through her constricting cloak, through the fabric of her jeans. Her legs stung like they’d been cut in a thousand places.

  When the Scale angel’s feet slammed in a landing, Luce shuddered with the impact. He dropped her roughly, and she landed on her hip bone and shoulder. She rolled a couple of feet, then stopped. She saw that she was near a long wooden workman’s table piled high with fragments of faded cloth and porcelain. She squirmed under its temporary shelter, almost succeeding at preventing her cloak from constricting more tightly around her. It had begun to close around her trachea.

  But at least now she could see.

  She was in a cold, cavernous room. The floor beneath her was a lacquered mosaic made of triangular gray and red tiles. The walls were a gleaming mustard-colored marble, as were the thick square pillars in the center of the room. She briefly studied a long row of frosted skylights that spanned the vast ceiling forty feet above. The roof was pocked by open craters of broken glass, revealing dark-gray vistas of cloudy night on the other side. That must have been where she and the angel crashed through.

  And this must be the museum wing the Scale had overtaken, the one Vincent had told Daniel about on the copper roof. That meant Daniel must be just outside—and Arriane and Annabelle and Roland should be somewhere inside! Her heart soared, then sank.

  Their wings were bound, the Outcasts had said. Were they in the same shape she was in? She hated that she had made it here and couldn’t even help them, hated that she had to move to save them but that moving put her life in peril. There was perhaps nothing worse than not being able to move.

  The Scale angel’s muddy black boots appeared before her. Luce peered up at his towering figure. He bent down, smelling like rotting mothballs, his dull eyes leering. His black-gloved hand reached for her—

  Then the Scale angel’s hand fell limply—as if he had been knocked out. He lunged forward, crashing heavily into the workman’s table, pushing it back, exposing Luce. The severed sculpture head that had apparently struck the Scale rolled eerily to rest on the floor near Luce’s face, seeming to stare into Luce’s eyes.

  As Luce rolled back under the table, more blue wings blurred in her peripheral vision. More Scale. Four of them flew in loose formation toward a recessed alcove about halfway up the wall … where Luce now saw Emmet standing, brandishing a long silver saw.

  Emmet must have thrown the head that had saved her from the Scale! He was the trespasser whose entrance through the ceiling had enraged her kidnapper. Luce had never thought she’d be so happy to see an Outcast.

  Emmet was surrounded by sculptures on platforms and pedestals, some shrouded, some scaffolded, one newly beheaded—and by four impossibly old Scale angels, hovering closer to him in the air, cloaks extended, like shabby vampires. These stiff black cloaks seemed to be their only weapon, their only tool, and Luce knew well it was a brutal one. Her pained breathing was evidence of that.

  She suppressed a gasp as Emmet pulled a starshot from a quiver beneath his trench coat and held it out in front of him. Daniel had made the Outcasts promise not to kill the Scale!

  The Scale in the air backed slowly away from Emmet, hissing, “Vile! Vile!” so loudly that it caused Luce’s captor to stir on the table above her. Then the Outcast did something that amazed everybody in the room. He aimed the starshot at himself. Luce had seen Daniel suicidal in Tibet, so she knew something about that emotion’s desperate atmosphere, the defeated body language that accompanied a gesture so extreme. But Emmet seemed as confident and defiant as ever as he looked from one leathery Scale face to another.

  The Scale became emboldened by Emmet’s strange behavior. They hovered ever closer, blocking the thin Outcast from Luce’s view with the slow intensity of vultures approaching a carcass on a desert highway. Where were the other Outcasts? Where was Phil? Had the Scale already done away with them?

  What sounded like thick and heavy fabric being torn echoed loudly through the room. The Scale hovered motionlessly, their broad, overlapping cloaks like the gaping mouth of an Announcer that led somewhere terrible and sad. Then a slicing sound cut through the air, followed by another tearing sound—and then the four Scale angels spun like rag dolls toward Luce, their jaws slack, their eyes open, their cloaks mutilated and ripped open to expose black hearts and black lungs twitching spastically, streaming pale blue blood.

  Daniel had told the Outcasts they could not use their starshots to kill the Scale, but he had not said the Outcasts could not hurt them.

  The four Scale angels fell to the floor in a clump like puppets whose strings had been snipped. Luce looked up from where they lay, struggling to breathe, to the alcove, where Emmet was wiping black Scale blood from the fletchings of his starshot. Luce had never heard of anyone using the butt end of a starshot as a weapon—and apparently neither had the Scale.

  “Is Lucinda here?” Luce heard Phil call out. She looked up to see his face glowing through a crater in the roof.