“Ghoulie?”
I look up at Dani, hovering in the parlor doorway where she’d been napping. There’s a bright, vivid anxiety in her eyes and a tightness to her voice, and I see it then. Her feelings for me. She said back in her lodgings that she cared about me, and I had tossed her words aside, not wanting to believe her. She’d betrayed me, used me, put my sisters at risk, and it wasn’t any more complicated than that.
Except right now—as I’m caught by the depth of expression in her familiar, heart-shaped face, as my gaze drags across the curve of her bottom lip, the same curve I’m always tempted to trace with the pad of my thumb—I know that isn’t true. It’s always been more complicated than that.
The two of us: messy, surviving, difficult to love, containing multitudes.
And in this moment, I’m glad I haven’t driven her away like I did once with Orion. I’m glad she’s still here with us.
“Get everyone to safety and watch your ass, okay?” I step away, expanding the distance between us. “I’ll keep its eyes on me.” And then I dash out through the front door.
The Archangel stands waiting for me in the middle of the street, and shit—it looks so much bigger out here, up close. Golden light glows from its eyes and mouth and chest cavity, butI keep my focus on its articulated metal hands, each of them the size of my upper body. And on the hilt of the five-foot-long sword strapped to its back.
“You’re looking for me, right?” I spread my arms wide. “Here I am. The terrible, delinquent saint.”
It clomps a step forward, and the boom of metal slamming onto the alloy ground rattles through my bones. One giant hand uncurls and reaches for me—
I phase away at the last minute, leaving it grasping empty air as I come back together on the street several steps away.
I clear my throat loudly. “Oops. Better luck next time, huh?”
It swivels around, its placid mask fixing on me as it storms forward, but I slip away again, this time even farther down the road, appearing crouched on top of a tall streetlamp.
“Aren’t you blessed by the Heralds or something? Didn’t they craft you with their very own divine hands? You should be a lot better at this.”
I don’t know if you can provoke a giant, holy instrument of heaven. I don’t even know if it hears or speaks in the same way I do. Either way, it’s working just as I’d hoped. I’m its ultimate target, so I can use that to lure it away, give Halle and Kelda and the others the space and time to get out.
I take a zigzagging path through Concord in the opposite direction of the lightningrail station, flickering into existence here and there to taunt the Archangel, making fun of the size of its wings, wondering out loud why anyone would send the smallest, weakest angel to come get me.
It doesn’t react. It just keeps coming for me, relentless. A shudder crawls down my spine, my throat already parched, and mystomach twists with a sickening kind of anticipation. Even with my ability to phase, I will eventually have a drop-dead point. Where I’m too dehydrated, too tired, too out of breath to keep going.
This horrific construct, on the other hand, won’t.
Move, Val. Just move. Whatever your drop-dead point is, it’ll be enough for everyone else to get out.
On the Archangel’s next swing at me, I duck, roll away, and then take a long phase, all the way to the outer edge of town. It leaves me gasping for air and I bend over, allowing myself a moment to rest my hands on my knees and catch my breath. To my left, maybe twenty yards away, is the edge of the Elysian Depths, but in front of me is all wide-open Copper Plains. No buildings or civilians to worry about. If I can just keep going, leading it out into all that endless space, maybe I can lose it in the darkness once night falls.
Pulling my goggles down over my eyes, I phase. I’m molecules and mist, spreading through the air—
—and then my world explodes.
An enormous metal hand smashes down on me. The Archangel shouldn’t know where I am, it shouldn’t be able to touch me, but in an instant, my phase breaks and I’m slapped to the ground. My back slams into the alloy, my head cracking backward, and I see stars and bright pinpoints of pain and I can’t breathe, my lungs won’t move, the air is too thick, I can’tbreathe—
My chest expands with a gasp. Oxygen floods my body, and my vision clears, fixating on the deepening turquoise sky far above me. I cough violently—around the pain, around the pressure of my ribs—and curl onto my side, trying to get my arms and legs underneath me.
The Archangel steps over me, and I hear someone. I crane my neck backward, my vision blurry, but I can still make out the familiar figures down the street.
Dani, with an arm wrapped around Halle, holding her back, and Kelda, screaming, wriggling in Orion’s grasp as he tries to pull her away from the fray. My sisters must have sprinted after me as soon as I left the house. But they can’t be here. It isn’t safe.
Halle jams her shoulder into Dani’s chest and wrenches herself free.
“Halle… don’t…” The words have barely any sound behind them, not much more than breath across my lips.
Every bone inside me is made of fire.
My muscles shake violently as I climb to my feet. I can taste blood in my mouth. My head still spins from the blow; I’m not steady enough to safely phase, but I have to. I have to. I step forward and let go—
Metal fingers wrap tightly around me, pulling me back together just as I start to drift apart. I’ve never hated the feeling of my own corporeal body more. I struggle against the Archangel’s grip as it lifts me off the ground. I’m breathless once again, half crushed as its hand tightens like a vise, my head pounding from the blows.
