There are at least seven people in that room, he says, closing his eyes. It’s hard to sift through.
“I told you that you’re not welcome here,” a voice says suddenly, low and frightened. “I want you to leave.”
“Come now, Anna,” responds another voice—an older man, from the sound of it, with the slight lilt to his speech that Dad has. “Is that any way to treat an old friend?”
“You were never my friend,” Anna says. “You were a mistake. A sin.”
“Oh, a sin,” he says. “I’m flattered.”
“I rebuke you,” Anna says. “In the name of Jesus Christ. Begone.”
This annoys him. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. This isn’t about you.”
“Then what is it about?” This from Angela, steady and crazy calm considering there’s a Black Wing in her living room. “What do you want?”
“We’ve come to see the baby,” he says.
Christian and I exchange troubled glances. Where is Webster?
“My baby?” Angela repeats, almost stupidly. “Why?”
“Penamue would like to see the wee thing, as would I. I’m the grandfather, after all.”
Holy crap, I think. Phen’s here. And … does that mean that the other angel is Angela’s father?
“You are nothing to him, Asael,” Anna spits out. “Nothing.”
At the name Asael my brain floods with every piece of information I’ve gathered about this guy over the past year: the collector, the big bad who would stop at nothing to recruit or destroy all of the Triplare from this world, the brother who usurped Samjeeza as the leader of the Watchers. Very dangerous, I can practically hear my father saying. Without pity. Without hesitation. He takes what he wants, and if he sees you, if he knows what you are, he will take you. I want to run, that’s my instinct—run, run down the stairs and out the door and not look back—but I clench my teeth and stay right where I am.
“He’s not here,” Angela says, like she’s only irritated at this intrusion and not terrified out of her mind. “You could have simply called, Phen, and I would have told you that. You didn’t have to make the trip all this way.”
Asael laughs. The sound makes my skin crawl. “We could have called,” he repeats, amused. “Where is the baby, then, if not here?”
“I gave him away.”
“You gave him away? To whom?”
“To a nice couple in a profile I picked at the adoption agency, who desperately wanted a kid. The dad’s a musician; the mom’s a pastry chef. I liked the idea that he’d always have music and good food.”
“Hmm,” Asael says thoughtfully. “I believe that Penamue was under the impression that you were going to keep the child. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” answers a voice I wouldn’t have recognized as Phen’s if I didn’t know it was him speaking. He sounds like he has a bad cold. “She told me she was keeping it.”
“Him,” Angela corrects. “And I changed my mind, after it was clear that you were going to bail on me.” She can’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Look, I’m not the maternal type. I’m nineteen years old. I go to Stanford. I have a life. Being strapped with a kid’s the last thing I want. So I gave him to some people who’d take care of him.”
I can’t see, but I can imagine Angela standing there, that carefully blank expression she gets when she’s hiding something, her hip pushed out a bit to one side, her head cocked like she can’t believe she’s still having this oh-so-boring conversation. “So it looks like you wasted your time,” she adds. “And mine.”
There’s a moment of silence. Then Asael starts to clap, slowly, so loudly I flinch every time his hands strike each other.
“What a performance,” he says. “You’re quite the actress, my dear.”
“Believe me or don’t,” she says. “It doesn’t matter to me.”