“Search the apartment,” Asael says, an untroubled calm to his voice, like still water on the lake, which doesn’t reveal the turmoil under the surface. “Look in all the nooks and crannies. I believe the baby is here, somewhere.”
I hear people moving away from us, down the hall, and then the noise of tossing furniture and breaking glass. Anna starts to whisper to herself, soft and desperate, something that I vaguely recognize as the Lord’s Prayer.
We should do something, I send to Christian.
He shakes his head again. We’re outnumbered. There are two full angels, Clara, and your dad said we wouldn’t be able to beat even one of them in a head-to-head fight. Then add in a few what I am betting are Triplare. We wouldn’t stand a chance in there.
I bite my lip. But we have to help Angela.
He shakes his head. We should figure out where Web is. That’s what Angela would want us to do, he says. I can feel his desire to run away, the way he’s been conditioned to in this situation, and I can feel his fear, almost panic at this point, rising in him. He’s not afraid for himself. He’s afraid for me. He wants to put me in his truck and drive far away from here. He knows if we stay it will all play out like his vision, which ends with me covered in blood, staring up at him with glassy eyes. He can’t let that happen.
Now it’s my turn to shake my head. We can’t just leave Angela.
“He’s not here. I told you,” Angela says.
“You are mine,” Asael says in a harder voice, starting to lose patience. The floor creaks under his weight as he takes a step toward her. “You are blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, and that baby belongs to me as well. The seventh is mine. I will have it.”
“Him,” she corrects again softly.
The others return.
“There’s no baby,” a woman’s voice reports. “But there’s a crib in one of the back rooms.” Then they start tearing apart the kitchen, dumping out drawers, throwing things on the floor for good measure.
Anna’s praying gets louder.
“Enough,” Asael says, his voice calm again. “Tell us where he is.”
“He’s gone,” Angela says, her voice wavering. “I sent him away from here.”
“Where?” Asael asks again, less patiently. “Where did you send him?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Angela,” rasps Phen. “Please. Tell him. Just tell him, and he will let you go.”
Asael makes an amused sound in the back of his throat. “Oh, Penamue, you really do care for her, don’t you? How droll. I would never have imagined, when I sent you to check up on my long-lost daughter in Italy, that you’d lose your little gray heart. But I suppose I understand. I do. She’s so young, isn’t she? So new, like a tender green sprout pushing up out of the earth.”
I get a flash of the floating woman again, him carrying her this time, his face pressed against her white, pulseless neck.
“So,” Asael continues, “do as your lover bids you. Tell us where you’ve taken the baby.”
“No.”
He sighs. “Very well. I don’t enjoy having to employ this particular tactic, but … Desmond, hold her mother for a moment?”
Footsteps. Anna stops praying as she’s yanked away from Angela. Then she starts up again: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven….”
“Amen. I do hope He’s listening to all this,” Asael says. “Now, then, tell me what I want to know, or your mother will die.”
I hear Angela’s sharp intake of breath. I cast a desperate glance at Christian, my mind whirling. What can we do?
“It’s quite the dilemma,” Asael says. “Your mother or your son. But consider this: If you tell us where to find the infant, I promise you that he’ll be safe from harm. He’ll want for nothing. I will raise him as my own child.”
“Yeah, well, I’m your child,” Angela says. “And that’s not working out so great.”
He gives a startled laugh at her back talk. “Then be my daughter, as these two lovely girls have been—your sisters, you know. I will give you a room in my house, a place at my table, by my side.”