They walked to the bridge, like any other tourists interested in architecture. Annabelle walked much more stiffly than normal, and Luce saw Arriane reach out and touch her hand. The sun was bright and the air smelled like lavender and river water. The bridge was made of big white stones, held up by long arches underneath.

  There was a small stone chapel with a single tower attached to one side near the entrance of the bridge. It held a sign that read CHAPEL DE SAINT NICOLAS. Luce wondered where the real tourists were.

  The chapel was coated with a fine, silvery dust.

  They walked the bridge silently, but Luce noticed that Annabelle wasn’t the only one upset. Daniel and Roland were trembling, keeping well clear of the entrance to the chapel, and Luce remembered they were forbid-den to enter a sanctuary of God.

  Dee ran her fingers over the narrow brass railing with a heavy sigh. “We are too late.”

  “This isn’t—” Luce touched the dust. It was insubstantial and light, with a hint of silver shimmer, like the dust that had covered her parents’ backyard. “You mean—”

  “Angels have died here.” Roland’s voice was monotone as he stared into the river.

  “B-but,” Luce stammered, “we don’t know whether Gabbe and Cam and Molly even made it here.”

  “This used to be a beautiful place,” Annabelle said.

  “Now they’ve marred it forever. Je m’excuse, Bénézet. ”

  That was when Arriane held up a quivering silver feather. “Gabbe’s pennon. Intact, so it must have been taken by her own hand. Perhaps to give to an Outcast who didn’t get it before . . .” She looked away, holding the feather to her chest.

  “But I thought the Scale didn’t kill angels,” Luce said.

  “They don’t.” Daniel bent down and wiped away some of the dust that was mounded like snow at his feet.

  Something was buried underneath it.

  His fingers found a dusty silver starshot. He wiped it on his shirt and Luce shivered each time his fingers drew near the deadly dull tip. At last, he held it out for the others to examine. It was branded with an ornate letter Z.

  “The Elders,” Arriane whispered.

  “They are happy to kill angels,” Daniel said softly.

  “In fact, there’s nothing they’d rather do.” There was a sharp crack.

  Luce whipped around, expecting . . . she didn’t know what. Scale? Elders?

  Dee shook out her fist, rubbing red knuckles with her other hand. Then Luce saw: The wooden door to the chapel was smashed in the center. Dee must have punched it. No one else thought it was remarkable that such a tiny woman could cause so much damage.

  “You all right there, Dee?” Arriane called out.

  “Sophia has no business here.” Her voice quaked with rage. “What Lucifer is doing is beyond the compass of the Elders’ concern. And yet she could ruin everything for you angels. I could kill her.”

  “Promise?” Roland asked.

  Daniel slipped the starshot into the satchel and clasped it shut. “However this battle ended, it must have begun over the third relic. Someone found it.”

  “A war of resources,” Dee said.

  Luce flinched. “And someone died for it.”

  “We don’t know what happened, Luce,” Daniel said.

  “And we won’t know until we stand before the Elders.

  We need to track them down.”

  “How?” Roland asked.

  “Maybe they went to Sinai to stake us out,” Annabelle suggested.

  Daniel shook his head and paced. “They don’t know to go to Sinai—unless they tortured the location out of one of our angels.” He stopped and looked away.

  “No,” Dee said, looking around their circle on the bridge. “The Elders have their own agenda. They’re greedy. They want a larger stake in all of this. They want to be remembered, like their forefathers. If they die, they want to go as martyrs.” She paused. “And what is the most self-indulgent location to stage your own martyr-dom?”

  The angels shifted their weight. Daniel’s wings bristled as he scanned the pale pink eastern sky. Annabelle ran her long nails through her hair. Arriane hugged her arms around her chest and stared hard at the ground, at a loss for sarcastic words. Luce seemed to be the only one who didn’t know what Dee was talking about. Finally, Roland’s voice echoed ominously across the crumbling bridge:

  “Golgotha. Place of skulls.”

  ELEVEN

  VIA DOLOROSA

  As the angels banked right over what looked like the southern coast of France, Luce watched the dark waves roll below them, washing up along the distant shore. She did some math in her head:

  At midnight, it would be Tuesday, December 1. Five days had passed since she’d returned from the Announcers, which meant they were past the midpoint of the nine-day period that the angels fell to Earth. Lucifer and all their earlier selves were more than halfway through the Fall.

  They had two of the three relics, but they didn’t know what the third was, didn’t know how to read them once they got them all together. Worse, in the process of locating the relics, they’d gained more enemies. And it looked like they had lost their friends.

  Dust from the Pont Saint Bénézet was under Luce’s fingernails. What if it was Cam? In a handful of days, Luce had gone from being wary about Cam’s involve-ment in their mission to feeling despondent at the thought of losing him. Cam was fierce and dark and unpredictable and intimidating and not the guy that Luce was meant to be with—but that didn’t mean she didn’t care about him, didn’t care for him in a certain way.

  And Gabbe. The Southern beauty who always knew the right thing to say and do. From the moment Luce met Gabbe at Sword & Cross, the angel had done nothing but look out for her. Now Luce wanted to look out for Gabbe.

  Molly Zane had also gone to Avignon with Cam and Gabbe. Luce had feared, then hated Molly—until the other morning, when Luce had come in through the bedroom window at her parents’ house to find Molly covering for her in bed. It was a solid favor. Even Callie liked spending time with Molly. Had the demon changed?

  Had Luce?

  The rhythmic beats of Daniel’s wings across the starry sky lulled Luce into a deep state of relaxation, but she did not want to sleep. She wanted to focus on what might greet them when they arrived at Golgotha, to brace herself for what was coming.

  “What’s on your mind?” Daniel asked. His voice was low and intimate in the frantic wind they were flying through. Annabelle and Arriane flew in front of them and a little bit below. Their wings, dark silver and iridescent, spread wide over the green boot of Italy.

  Luce touched the silver locket around her neck. “I’m afraid.”

  Daniel squeezed her tight. “You’re so brave, Luce.”

  “I feel stronger than I ever have before, and I’m proud of all the memories I can access on my own, especially if they can help us stop Lucifer”—she paused, glancing down at her dusty fingernails—“but I’m still afraid of what we’re flying towards now.”

  “I won’t let Sophia get anywhere near you.”

  “It’s not what she might do to me, Daniel. It’s what she may have already done to people I care about. That bridge, all that dust—”

  “I hope as much as you do that Cam and Gabbe and Molly are unharmed.” His wings gave one great beat and Luce felt her body rise above a swollen rain cloud. “But angels can die, Lucinda.”

  “I know that, Daniel.”

  “Of course you do. And you know how dangerous this is. Every angel who joins our struggle to stop Lucifer knows it, too. By joining us, they acknowledge that our mission is more important than any single angel’s soul.”

  Luce closed her eyes. A single angel’s soul.

  There it was again. The idea she’d first heard Arriane speak about in the Vegas IHOP. One powerful angel to tip the scales. One choice to determine the outcome of a fight that had lasted for millennia.

  When she opened her eyes, the moon was bathed in soft white light, rising over the dark landscape below.

  “The forces of Heaven and Hell,” she began, “are they really in balance against each other right now?” Daniel was quiet. She felt his chest rise against her and then fall. His wings beat a bit more swiftly, but he didn’t answer.

  “You know?” Luce pressed on. “The same number of demons on one side and the same number of angels on the other?”

  Wind whipped against her.

  Finally, Daniel said, “Yes, though it’s not that simple.

  It’s not a matter of a thousand here versus a thousand there. Different players matter more than others. The Outcasts carry no weight. You heard Phil lamenting that.

  The Scale are almost negligible—though you’d never know that from the way they carry on about their importance.” He paused. “One of the Archangels? They are worth a thousand lesser angels.”

  “Is it still true that there’s one important angel who still has to choose a side?”

  A pause. “Yes, that is still true.”

  She’d already begged him to choose once, on the rooftop at Shoreline. They were in the middle of an argument and the time hadn’t been right. But their bond was stronger now. Surely if he knew how much she supported him, that she’d stand by him and love him no matter what, it would help him finally make up his mind.

  “What if you just went ahead and . . . chose?”

  “No—”

  “But, Daniel, you could stop this! You could tip the scales, and no one else would have to die, and—”

  “I mean no, it’s not that easy.” She heard him sigh and knew, even without looking, the precise shade his eyes would be glowing now: a deep, wild lupine violet.

  “It’s not that easy anymore,” he repeated.

  “Why not?”

  “Because this present no longer matters. We’re in a pocket of time that may cease to exist. So choosing now wouldn’t mean a thing, not until this nine-day glitch is fixed. We still have to stop him. Either Lucifer gets his way and erases the past five or six millennia and we all begin again—”

  “Or we succeed,” Luce said automatically.

  “If that happens,” Daniel said, “we’ll reassess how the ranks are aligned.”

  Twenty feet below them, Arriane was flying in slow trancelike loop-the-loops, as if to pass the time. Annabelle flew into one of the rain showers that the angels usually avoided. She came out on the other side with her wings damp and her pink hair plastered to the side of her face without even seeming to notice. Roland was somewhere behind them, probably deep in his own thoughts as he carried Dee in his arms. Everyone seemed weary, distracted.

  “But when we succeed, couldn’t you . . .”

  “Choose Heaven?” Daniel said. “No. I made my choice a very long time ago, almost at the Beginning.”

  “But I thought—”

  “I chose you, Lucinda.”

  Luce swept her hand over Daniel’s as the tar-dark sea beneath them washed up onto a swath of desert.

  The landscape was far below, but it reminded her of the terrain around Sinai: rocky cliffs interrupted by the green scrub of an occasional tree. She didn’t understand why Daniel had to choose between Heaven and love.

  All she’d ever wanted was his love—but at what price? Was their love worth the erasure of the world and all its stories? Could Daniel have prevented this threat if he’d chosen Heaven long before?

  And would he have returned there, where he belonged, had his love for Luce not led him astray?

  As if he were reading her mind, Daniel said, “We put our faith in love.”

  Roland caught up to them. His wings angled and his body pivoted to face Daniel and Luce. In his arms, Dee’s red hair was flying and her cheeks were aglow. She gestured for the two of them to come close. Daniel’s wings gave one full, graceful beat, and they shot through a cloud to hover at Roland and Dee’s side. Roland whistled and Arriane and Annabelle also doubled back, closing an iridescent circle in the dark sky.

  “It’s nearly four o’clock in the morning in Jerusalem,” Dee said. “That means we can expect the majority of mortals to be asleep or otherwise out of the way for perhaps another hour. If Sophia has your friends, she’s probably planning . . . well, we should hurry, dears.”

  “You know where they’ll be?” Daniel asked.

  Dee thought for a moment. “Before I defected from the Elders, the plan was always to reconvene at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was built on the slope of Golgotha, in the Christian Quarter of the Old City.”

  The group glided toward the hallowed ground. They were a column of glowing wings. The clear sky was navy, sprinkled with stars, and the white stones of distant buildings below shone an eerie acid blue.

  Though the land seemed naturally dry, dusty, the earth was studded with thick palm trees and groves of olives.

  They swooped over the most expansive cemetery Luce had ever seen, built on a gradual slope facing the Old City of Jerusalem.

  The city itself was dark and sleepy, tucked in moonlight and surrounded by a tall stone partition. The formidable Dome of the Rock mosque sat high on a hill, its golden dome gleaming even in darkness. It was at a distance from the rest of the crammed city, set off by long flights of stone stairs and tall gates at every entrance.

  Beyond the old walls, a few modern high-rise buildings cut out a distant skyline, but within the Old City, the structures were much older, smaller, crafting a maze of narrow cobbled alleys best navigated by foot.

  They alighted on the ramparts of a tall gate marking the entrance to the city.

  “This is the New Gate,” Dee explained. “It’s the closest entrance to the Christian Quarter, where the church is.”

  By the time they filed down the worn stairs from the top of the gate, the angels had retracted their wings into their shoulders. The cobbled street narrowed as Dee brandished a small red plastic flashlight and led them onward toward the church. Most of the stone storefronts had been fitted with metal doors that slid up and down like the door on Luce’s parents’ garage. The doors were all closed now, padlocked to the street through which Luce walked next to Daniel, holding his hand and hoping for the best.

  The deeper into the city they went, the more the buildings seemed to press in on either side of them. They passed under the striped tented awnings of empty Arab markets, under long stone arches and dim corridors. The air smelled like roasted lamb, then incense, then laundry soap. Azalea vines climbed the walls, searching for water.

  The neighborhood was silent but for the angels’ steps and a coyote yowling in the hills. They passed a shut-tered Laundromat, its sign posted in Arabic, then a flower shop with Hebrew stickers plastered across its windows.

  Everywhere Luce looked, narrow walkways forked off from the street: through an open wooden gate here, up a short flight of stairs there. Dee seemed to be counting the doorways they passed, wagging her finger as they walked. At one point she snapped, ducked under a weathered wooden arch, turned a corner, and disappeared. Luce and the angels glanced at each other quickly, then followed her: down several steps, around a damp and darkened corner, up a few more steps, and suddenly, they were on the roof of another building, looking down at another cramped street.

  “There it is.” Dee nodded grimly.

  The church towered over everything nearby. It was built of pale, smooth stones and stood easily five stories, taller at its pair of slender steeples. At its center, an enormous blue dome looked like a blanket of midnight sky wrapped around a stone. Giant bricks formed large arches along the façade, marking places for massive wooden doors on the first story and arched stained-glass windows higher up. A ladder leaned on a brick ledge outside a third-story window, reaching up for nothing.

  Portions of the church’s façade were crumbling and black with age, while others looked recently restored.

  On either side, two long stone arms branched forward from the church, forming a border around a flat cobbled plaza. Just behind the church, a tall white minaret stabbed the sky.

  “Wow,” Luce heard herself say as she and the angels descended another surprising flight of stairs to enter the plaza.

  The angels approached the heavy double doors that towered over them, forty feet high at least. They were painted green and flanked by three plain stone pillars on either side. Luce’s eye was drawn to the ornate frieze between the doors and the arches above them—and above that, the gleaming golden cross puncturing the sky. The building was quiet, somber, alive with spiritual electricity.

  “In we go, then,” Dee said.

  “We can’t go in there,” Roland said, moving away from the church.

  “Oh, yes,” Dee said, “the incendiary business. You think you can’t go in because it’s a sanctuary of God—”

  “It’s the sanctuary of God,” Roland said. “I don’t want to be the guy who takes this place down.”

  “Only it isn’t a sanctuary of God,” Dee said simply.

  “Quite the opposite. This is the place where Jesus suffered and died. Therefore it has never been a sanctuary as far as the Throne is concerned, and that’s the only opinion that really matters. A sanctuary is a safe haven, a refuge from harm. Mortals step within these walls to pray, in their infinitely morbid way, but as far as your curse is concerned, you will not be affected.” Dee paused.

  “Which is good, because Sophia and your friends are inside.”

  “How do you know?” Luce asked.

  She heard footsteps on stone on the east side of the courtyard. Dee squinted down the narrow street.

  Daniel grabbed Luce’s waist so swiftly she fell into him. Turning a corner beneath a street sign that read VIA DOLOROSA, two elderly nuns strained under the weight of a large wooden cross. They wore simple navy habits, thick sensible sandals, and beaded rosaries around their necks.

  Luce relaxed at the sight of the old believers, whose average age seemed to be eighty-five. She started to move toward the women, obeying an instinct to assist the elderly with a heavy load, but Daniel’s grasp on Luce’s waist did not loosen as the nuns approached the great doors of the church with excruciating slow-ness. It seemed impossible that the nuns would not have seen the group of angels twenty feet away—they were the only other souls in the plaza—but the struggling sisters never so much as glanced in the angels’ direction.