18

THIS ISN’T COVERED IN THE ENCHIRIDION

Noontime sunlight shone on the river. A gusty wind carved ripples into the water; the ripples chopped the sunlight into glints and flashes like an old-fashioned disco ball. The flickering light tumbled up the valley to the bluff-top picnic tables behind the library. One flash contained an angel. The angel carried a picnic basket.

Molly shed her halo to emerge from behind the boxelder tree. She’d scouted the spot from inside. To a person gazing through the library windows, it would appear as though Molly had just walked around the building. She’d tried to find a balance between outright lying and giving Anne the vague impression that she was staying in another town down the road. Already the evasions and vague answers wore thin. But the longer she lied, the more frightening it became to step out of the closet regarding her true nature. The danger of rejection seemed so much greater, so much more painful. Anne wasn’t a violent person, but she could hurt Molly just as much.

Like the past several, Molly had spent part of the previous night keeping an eye on Martin. Immediately after her first visit he had struck out from his apartment in search of another fix. She transmuted that, too. It was a waste of money Martin couldn’t afford. Even with Molly’s share, the money he inherited from their mother wouldn’t last long. But if she could just keep his mind and body clear a bit longer, just a few more days, he’d be well enough to take up his old job delivering pizza. That would be a start.

Ria—well, her body—lay in a hospital bed in a much better part of Minneapolis. Her family had money. Not wealth, but more than Molly’s folks had ever had. As on the past several nights, after whispering Martin into clean, dreamless, nontoxic sleep, and after making the rounds to do the same with the PI recipients, she paced Ria’s ward like a insubstantial revenant, listening. If not for the hum and beep and click of the machines quietly keeping her body alive, Ria might have been an honored stateswoman lying in repose. She shouldn’t have looked so peaceful: no turbulent subconscious churned within her mind, no dreams haunted her lifeless brain. It hurt worse than anything. Worse even than what METATRON had done. Molly hadn’t yet gathered the strength to approach any closer than the ward itself. Each time she tried to approach Ria’s bed, to sit by her side and take her hand, Molly bounced from an impenetrable bubble of shame and guilt. It was hardest when Ria’s parents came to visit. Molly fled the tears because they made the guilt so heavy it threatened to suffocate her, but told herself she withdrew to respect familial privacy. Molly wondered if her lies and evasions sounded as hollow to Anne as they did to herself. She had tamed the dreams of the Indulgence recipients; she had fought Martin’s addiction to a stalemate; she hadn’t done jack shit to help Ria. She was afraid to try. It was easier to hate herself than risk making it worse.

And, as she had for the past several days, she prepared lunch for two in her Magisterium, and then met Anne for lunch behind the library. The basket was an antique wicker thing with a hinged wooden flap on the top. Molly had plucked it from the memory of a photograph she’d once seen of her parents on a double date with another couple. Today she’d brought basil leaves, balsamic vinegar, sliced tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella for a caprese salad, plus blue cheese, salami, and crackers for additional snacking. For dessert, she’d rummaged childhood memories of old Christmases for a pair of perfectly ripe pears. She also packed a bottle of sparkling water. Upon reflection she decided to avoid the blue cheese because she didn’t want to have bad breath if they kissed again. She hoped they would.

“This is extremely sweet of you,” said Anne, taking a seat across from Molly. The bags beneath her eyes had receded since Molly banished the dreams and granted her untroubled sleep. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I know I don’t have to. But it’s the high point of my day. For really real.” A face appeared at one of the windows. Anne’s coworker. Molly tipped her head toward the library. “He’s watching again.”

“I think he fantasizes about watching us make out.” They hadn’t, not since their first date. But that was okay. It was nice, this slow unfolding of trust and connection.

Trust?

Anne continued, “My guess is that he’ll go jack off in the bathroom this afternoon. Pervert.”

Molly handed her a plate and the bottle of vinegar. “Drizzle this on top,” she said, indicating the layered medallions of mozzarella, tomato, and basil. A cluster of whirlybird seeds from the boxelder tree cast swaying shadows across their lunch. One seed broke free. A gust of wind pushed it beyond the split-rail fence along the edge of the bluff. It spiraled down to the river, like a slow-motion helicopter crash.

“Wow. Hand-delivered gourmet lunch every day. I’m a lucky woman.”

“I only know how to make three or four nice lunches. Tomorrow it’s peanut butter and jelly on stale bread.”

“In that case, we need to talk about our relationship.”

She said it in jest, but Anne quirked her neck and shoulders like somebody finding balance on thin ice. Silently, subconsciously, her body shouted doubts and concerns. Part of her had sensed a secret.

And, as had become her habit, Molly changed the subject before those seeds of doubt took root in Anne’s consciousness. It wasn’t purposeful deception, she told herself. It was investigation, and possibly vital to her own survival. Plus she honestly wanted to understand Anne’s experience. She said, “Can I ask you more about what it was like when you received the Indulgence?”

For each night that passed without Anne adding a new sketch to her dream journal, she opened up a little more. Which brought Molly that much closer to understanding the Plenary Indulgences. Which, she was convinced, were the key to everything. The Nephilim made her queasy: Anne might have become one of them, if Molly hadn’t intervened.

Anne said, “Haven’t you ever heard the phrase, ‘Let sleeping dogs lay?’ Lie. Whatever. My parents’ priest is dead. I don’t see what any of this matters.”

“I’m sorry I’m always bugging you about it,” said Molly. “But I’m really curious about the experience.”

A boxelder bug ambled toward her plate, its red stripes almost incandescent in the sunlight. Anne shooed it away. She sighed.

“The idea behind a Plenary Indulgence is that it erases all temporal punishment for sins committed up until then. Unlike a Partial Indulgence, which just reduces the punishment. So, you know, they don’t pass them out like coupons. Or they’re not supposed to, anyway. It requires doing some charitable work or penance assigned specifically for the Indulgence, followed by the sacraments of confession and eucharist—you have to be in what’s called a ‘state of grace’—followed by prayers for the pope.”

Molly splashed more vinegar on her plate. She took a sip of fizzy water, then had to suppress a burp before asking, “Was that difficult?”

“I’d been to Mass with my parents countless times. So I knew the drill. In this case we, all three of us, had been assigned to various works, including recitation of the Rosary and traveling the Stations of the Cross while spiritually penitent.”

Penitent. The word sent a jolt down Molly’s spine. It tingled in her teeth like a spark aimed at her fillings. Without intending to, Molly found herself drifting upstream against the current of Anne’s reminiscences. She knew that if she desired it so, she could embed herself directly inside the memory Anne described. Bayliss had done something similar in the moment Molly died. But she had built their nascent relationship on misdirection and lies by omission. She refused to compound that by violating Anne’s mind. She wouldn’t implant herself inside Anne’s reminiscences. But she could get the flow of them, ride the sensory impressions and experience the emotional currents they kicked off.

Molly closed her eyes, smelling incense. As Anne described that very long afternoon, Molly could feel a light weight descend upon each shoulder: a mother’s hand on the right, a father’s hand on the left. The whispering of wind through the boxelder leaves became the murmuring of prayer; the flicker of sunlight along the river became the soft glow of sunset through stained glass. Prayers scudded roughly past her lips, distorted by the mushy remnants of a communion wafer dissolving in the balsamic vinegar on her tongue. The tickle of bugs alighting on her hands became the sensation of hard glass beads wrapped through her fingers, a cold metal cross pressed into her palm.…

Anne’s emotions shaped her own, like a magnet aligning metal filings: Molly wanted this over, but in a conflicted way also wanted it done well. She wanted to earn approval, even as she knew she didn’t need it. Weary, so weary, of conflict with her parents’ relentless and uncompromising worldview …

“My parents had to participate,” said Anne, “because it was their failure that had allowed me to descend into a life of mortal sin.”

“This is really pissing me off. Mortal in what sense?”

“As opposed to venial. That’s forgivable. Venial sins don’t lead directly to hell. Mortal sins do.”

“Wow.”

“Uh-huh. And by being openly gay I was committing a mortal sin, of course. I had full knowledge of what I was doing. In Santorelli’s eyes, and my parents’, I was making a deliberate lifestyle choice with mortal consequences.”

The gentle emotional currents wafting from Anne disappeared, shredded by gale-force gusts of anger, humiliation, shame. They tossed Molly to a pew near the rear of Santorelli’s church, where she knelt between Anne’s parents. The bench’s thin leather padding didn’t ease the ache in her knees, but the discomfort helped distract her from what she was doing … Jesus.

“They made you pray for forgiveness? Anne, it sounds like emotional abuse to me. It’s sickening.”

“It wasn’t fun. But that wasn’t the worst part. The key thing in receiving a Plenary Indulgence, as opposed to a Partial Indulgence, is that one be absent from all attachment to sin, large and small. They say some people can strive for years, no matter how devout, and never obtain an Indulgence because of this.”

“But doing that would mean—” Molly shook her head. “Doing that would have required you to renounce…”

Anne nodded. She took a long, shuddery breath. Behind the cosmetic eyeglasses, her eyes shone wetly. “I knew I would never do that, not in my heart. I can’t be somebody else. And I know I’m not flawed or broken or evil. But I wanted so badly to make my parents happy just this one time, to show them I was doing it right. You don’t know what it’s like, constantly falling short of that approval.” She sniffled. “Eventually I wised up and realized it was never going to happen. So I split, and cut them out.”

Molly’s head pounded. Her eyes watered with the tears Anne suppressed. Anne’s shame clawed at her heart. Anne couldn’t renounce her identity, nor did she intend to, but she wanted so badly to gain her parents’ love and approval that her desperation broached some angelic breakwater, exceeded the spiritual activation energy for the tainted Indulgences. Thus was the goddamned Indulgence bestowed, setting into motion a mysterious alchemy that would have turned Anne into a revenant haunting the Pleroma if not for Molly’s intervention.

Don’t you see? she wanted to yell. This thing your mom and dad claimed to be parental love was nothing of the sort. It was dark and poisonous. Love is unconditional. But theirs was not. It was an instrument they wielded to control you, to mold you into the person they wanted you to be. To change you, to transform—

And then it hit Molly like an ice pick between the eyes.

She knew what had happened to the Jericho Trumpet.

Holy fucking shit.

It was obvious. She was a moron for not seeing it.

“Whoa.” Anne rocked back as though slapped. She stared at Molly, eyes wide, lips parted. Somewhere nearby, a car hummed to a stop on the quiet street.

“What is it?”

Anne held the stare for a fraction of a second. Then she shook her head, lifted her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. “The sunlight in my eyes … Just for a second there you looked, I don’t know, like you were glowing.”

“I guess you have that effect on me,” said Molly, scarcely aware of the thin words falling from her mouth. A maelstrom swept through her mind, a chaotic jumble of connections and conclusions.

METATRON had used the Trumpet to fundamentally alter the nature of the Choir. It was the tool that embedded an infinitesimal fragment of mundanity into the angels, to taint and shackle them.

Likewise, each Plenary Indulgence bestowed by Father Santorelli had changed the nature of its human recipient. Those people had become something that would, upon death, take residence within the Pleroma. But that ought to have been impossible: mortals could never perceive the divine realm, much less access it. Unless their nature had been fundamentally altered, too.

Molly had been thinking about this all wrong. The Trumpet wasn’t a physical object: it was a catalyst for metaphysical transmutation. It had changed the angels, and it had changed the PI recipients.

Because the Plenary Indulgences were the Trumpet.

Gabriel hadn’t been watching Father Santorelli. He’d hidden the Trumpet within the priest’s pastoral duties, and was keeping an eye on the hiding spot. Gabriel had created the Nephilim.

The slam of a car door broke Molly’s reverie. She opened her eyes. A car had parked just down the street from the library. The slam she’d heard was the sound of two penitentes emerging from the backseat. They were built like linebackers. To Molly’s human eyes, and doubtless Anne’s, they appeared unusual only in their size. But when viewed with eyes more angelic than human, their faces burned with veils of unquenchable flame.

Anne hadn’t noticed the car. She said, “It’s happening again. I swear it almost looks like you’re glowing.”

Molly stood. Without intending to, she imparted to her voice a hint of the same power it had demonstrated in the concert hall: “Anne. Get behind me. Now.”

Anne scrambled to her feet. Only then did she see the men crossing the street toward the library. She couldn’t have seen what Molly did, and yet she gasped. The lingering touch of the Trumpet had left her faintly attuned to the Pleroma. She could sense Molly’s halo, and she could sense danger in the newcomers.

Quietly, she asked, “Who are you, Molly?”

“Right now I’m the person standing between you and those assholes. And I’m pretty sure they don’t have your best interests at heart.”

“How come? Do you know those guys?”

Molly flipped her attention between the lumbering human hosts and the angels that rode within them. Overlaid faintly upon the penitentes, like images reflected in clean window glass on a bright day, she saw faces of fire and transparent wings vast enough to enfold the sky. A pair of Cherubim approached the library.

“Yeah,” said Molly. “We’ve met.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Gabriel hadn’t been working alone. The Cherubim had been working for him, but not fully aware of his plans. He never told them what he’d done with the Trumpet because they were just hired goons. Their jobs were simple and violent. So when Molly cured the Plenary Indulgence recipients of their deadly maddening dreams, thus indefinitely delaying the appearance of new Nephilim in the Pleroma, the Cherubim were called upon to fix the problem in a means both simple and violent.

By trying to help Anne she’d inadvertently put her in greater danger. That told Molly three things. First: Gabriel’s coconspirators were still out there. Second: whatever plan they had in mind for the Nephilim, it came with a timetable, because they weren’t content to wait for the remaining PI victims to die of old age. And third: it told her that she and Anne were screwed.

The penitente angels entered the library. Molly took a quick glance at the street. The penitentes’ car was still there. It wasn’t empty. Anne’s coworker appeared at the window again, but no longer alone. He pointed to their picnic table. Shit. The window glass glowed with an ethereal fire that only Molly could see. With concentration she could even discern METATRON’s gossamer tethers.

Molly turned to Anne, whose expression had become inscrutable. She spoke rapidly.

“Do you trust me?”

“I, uh, suppose, sure, except usually when people ask me that it means they’re—”

“Close enough.”

She laid a hand over Anne’s eyes. “Look, I know this is a little confusing. But it’s about to get a lot confusing. Don’t open your eyes until I say so, okay?”

Anne sucked in a breath to have something to hold while making her decision. When she nodded, her eyebrows tickled Molly’s hand. As did her sigh.

“Follow me,” said Molly. Hope this works …

Taking Anne by the wrist, she pulled her into the shadow of the boxelder maple—

—Anne gasped—

—Molly groaned; pulling Anne into the Pleroma was like lifting a ten-pound weight with her tongue—

—and they stood in the bedroom of Molly’s Magisterium apartment. The walls drooped and sagged like soft wax. Molly hadn’t anticipated the supreme effort required to move a mortal body into the Magisterium. Anne kept her eyes closed, but she was rubbing her wrist where Molly had touched her. A faint red weal encircled it.

“How you doing so far?”

Anne turned toward the sound of her voice. “What was that? It burned!”

That was me. That was me losing control as I tried to yank you to safety. That was me hurting you because I don’t know what I am. Didn’t I tell you my last relationship ended badly?

“You’re doing great. Just hold on.”

Molly dialed Bayliss. As usual, he wasn’t answering. “Comeoncomeoncomeonyouprick. Why aren’t you ever there when I need you?”

A crash rocked the apartment, followed by a bang so heavy the displaced air ruffled Anne’s hair. Anne jumped. Molly knew it was the sound of a door being ripped off the hinges and slammed to the floor. She’d hoped the Cherubim would be a little slower in figuring out where she’d taken Anne, or in making the transition from Earth to the Pleroma. She wondered, fleetingly, whether they had abandoned their human beards, or if they had dragged their hapless hosts along for the ride. Fucking angels.

Downstairs, the crashing started anew. Molly took Anne by the shoulders and gently guided her toward the closet. Not wanting to burn her again, she took an old scarf and wrapped one end around Anne’s hand. “Don’t let go, okay?”

She didn’t wait for Anne’s response. Pulling gently on the other end, Molly nudged her into the closet. She reimagined the configuration of closets in the imaginary apartment, switching the bedroom closet and the downstairs coat closet. The passage to Chicago still hung like a broken one-way mirror in the back of the coat closet. Molly hadn’t gotten around to removing it. She towed Anne through the passage. Then she reimagined the coat closet as it must have been on the night the apartment burned down and closed the egress behind them. A few wisps of smoke followed them into the latticework shadows of an El pillar.

The hubbub of dozens of conversations enveloped them, the noise of traffic and trains and bicycle messengers. It was much louder and busier here, standing amidst the lunchtime crowds on a Chicago sidewalk, than where they’d been moments ago. Anne noticed.

She frowned, cocked her head. Her eyebrows slid low over her eyes, though she still hadn’t opened them—a little show of faith in the midst of chaos, so endearing that Molly wanted to kiss her for it. Pedestrians flowed past them in a constant thrum, passing just inches from their spot on the leeward side of the pillar, leaving in their wake the clack of footsteps, the smells of cologne and perfume, the airborne taste of a spinach pirogi.

Anne said, her voice fluted by a rising edge of panic, “Molly?”

“Right here.”

Worry strangled Anne’s voice, rifled its pockets, and dumped the dead whisper in an alley. “Where are we?”

Molly scanned the crowd for penitentes with invisible riders. She said, “That’s kind of hard to explain.”

“It feels like I’m sliding back into one of my nightmares. The ones I showed you in my dream journal.”

Careful not to burn her, Molly pressed her hands to Anne’s face. “You’re not having a nightmare. You’re having a crazy nonsensical Nancy Drew adventure dream. And when you wake up, you’ll look back on it with amusement.”

“I’m not sure about that.”

“Yeah, me neither. But hold on.”

She pulled Anne into the throng, heading toward the lake. Unaware of what it was doing, the crowd parted for them. A woman stopped to take a call; two construction workers jostling for spots in line at a hotdog stand got into a fistfight, the spectacle attracting bystanders and pulling them from Molly’s path; a dog slipped its owner’s leash and sprinted up a side street. The world twisted itself to ease Molly’s passage.

Until the lady in the turquoise serape came charging down the stairs from an El platform. The wind caught her serape and flung it behind her like a cape. Her stigmata drizzled spots of glistening crimson on the iron handrails. Invisible flames sheened her face.

The possessed penitente vaulted the railing. A shadow passed over the sun as the thing inside her spread its transparent wings. The Cherub had switched into a different human host. But where was its partner? Or was this a third Cherub? She landed in a crouch, hitting the concrete with a thick dry sound like the cracking of a celery stalk. One foot splayed out when she straightened. The fragments of her shattered ankle rolled like marbles in a fleshy sock as she charged Molly and Anne.

Molly yanked the scarf, put her arm around Anne’s waist when she stumbled, and heaved her around the corner into the shadows beneath the stairs. Like sweeping dust under a rug, she pinched the corner of a shadow lying on the pavement and lifted the edge overhead. She ushered Anne into a nothing-space that was neither shaded nor light. The edge of the shadow twanged like a banjo string when Molly released it. They stood in the lobby of Martin’s building.

Molly said, “You’re doing great. How’s the wrist?”

“I don’t like this,” said Anne. The glow of flickering biomimetic graffiti played across her face as she sniffed the fetid air. It stank of urine. “How much longer do I have to keep my eyes closed?”

This was getting absurd. Molly had thought a couple quick detours through the Pleroma would throw the Cherubim off their trail. But those asshats were too stubborn. Strange that they relied upon human hosts for dirty work like this. They seemed reluctant to show their true forms in the mortal realm. Reluctant, or unable? Or was there something else at work here? Molly remembered what Bayliss had said about his attempt to talk to Father Santorelli, and the strange confused penitente he had encountered. She wondered if an angel had been riding inside that poor boy, working his puppet strings when he strangled the priest.

Anne hugged herself, as though warding off the odors of piss and decay. She shivered, still waiting a response.

“You can look now,” said Molly.

Gently, gingerly, Anne opened her eyes. She said nothing while her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The glowing graffiti illuminated debris, mildew, and a man slouched on a canvas camping chair. A hood covered the tattoos on his head. Though it was dark in the lobby, he wore wraparound sunglasses, as though he’d stared at an eclipse and damaged his eyes. Perhaps he had.

Anne said, “I don’t recognize this place.”

“I’d be worried if you did.” Molly took her hand to examine her wrist. The burn looked superficial, yet she could see her own fingerprints marking Anne’s skin. “My brother lives here.”

“The one you said—”

“Yep,” said Molly. “That’s the one. But I need a safe place for you to hide for a while.” I don’t know if this is it, she said to herself, but I’m running out of ideas. Her plan—if it even counted as such—revolved around something she vaguely remembered Bayliss mentioned in passing. She wished she had time to explore it, or at the very least practice.

Anne said, “Hide from what? Who are those people? And how did we get here? Did I pass out? I’m sure I didn’t.”

“If I promise to answer your questions, will you trust me just a little longer? Please?”

Anne hugged herself again. It was drafty in here. Canvas creaked as the guy in the corner shifted his weight, like somebody struggling to eavesdrop and stay invisible at the same time. His chin hung low, over his chest, but his breathing and his heartbeat gave him away.

“Hey.” Molly snapped her fingers under his nose. “Remember me?”

He slouched deeper into his camping chair, pulled the hood tight over his eyes. “I got nothing to say to you.”

“Good. That means you can listen.” She thought for a moment, remembered her mother, and produced a thin gold ring from her pocket. Crouching, she waved it under his nose. “That’s a real diamond. Do something for me and it’s yours. But if you try to screw me over”—Here she yanked the eyeglasses down past the tip of his nose and met his eyes. Dense circuitry in his contacts gave them a mirrored appearance.—“it’s pillar of salt for you.”

His gaze went to the ring. Luminous tattoos unfurled across his skull, lighting the inside of his hood like a jack-o’-lantern. He licked his lips. “What do I gotta do?”

“Anybody comes by looking for us, you haven’t seen a fucking thing. If anybody happens to be a penitente or two, they don’t get past this lobby. They’ll be tougher than they look, though, so call your friends. Call your enemies. I don’t care. But you hold them off.” She thought a little more. “Don’t kill them. But it’s okay if you’re rough.”

The Cherubim would eat this guy alive. Good. He fed Martin’s drug habit. But it might buy Anne some time.

“Deal.” He reached for the diamond ring. She snatched it out of his reach.

“Nuh-uh. I come back and find everything’s okay, you get this. I come back and find there’s a problem, you get the other thing.” Molly stuffed it back in her pocket. He pulled out an earbud as Molly rejoined Anne.

Anne asked, with forced nonchalance, “Old friend?”

Molly shook her head. “C’mon. We’re almost there.”

She lifted an arm to drape it over Anne’s shoulders. Anne flinched. Molly swallowed hard, dropped her arm, and led her to the stairs.

*   *   *

They stood outside Martin’s door. The elevator was out of service, so they’d had to climb twenty stories. Anne was breathing hard. The squatters in the stairwell had left them alone, concussed by the heavy awkward silence as they passed.

Molly said, “I can’t go with you. I have to take care of something.”

“Don’t you dare abandon me in this hellhole.”

“I’m not. I promise.”

“You’ll come back?”

“Promise.” Molly nodded toward the door. “Martin’s doing a little better these days.” She backed into the shadows. “He’ll do his best for you. Tell him you knew me, and he’ll treat you like a queen.”

Anne raised her hand to knock, but paused, as though reflecting upon the vagaries of the past tense.

*   *   *

Molly skipped the stairs. She stitched together shadows and returned to the lobby at the speed of thought. It was brighter and noisier than before. Light and shadow spun through the lobby as three men covered in lustrous tattoos tried to hold a line against a hulking penitente. The Cherub rode inside a human body that had to be at least six foot six. It towered over the men blocking its path. Pleroma-light from its inferno face diffracted through the invisible wings folded tightly around its human shell, casting a complementary dance of anti-light and un-shadow through the lobby.

The penitente stepped forward. Together, two men stepped forward and bulled him back. “You’re not coming in,” said the third.

Molly checked herself before charging in. She watched from the shadows, still wondering why the Cherubim had felt the need to carry out their errands while shrouded in a human guise. She also wondered how quickly this Cherub’s patience would rub thin. In her experience they were neither subtle nor patient.

The penitente stepped forward again. But this time when the two tried to force him to retreat, he pressed a hand to each man’s chest and shoved, hurling them across the lobby. One shattered the remains of the security door. The other slammed against the vandalized mailboxes. Both slumped to the floor, unmoving.

The tinkling echoes faded away. In the momentary silence, Molly could hear the wheezing of lungs laboring under shattered ribs. The atmosphere carried the tongue-curling salty-iron tang of aspirated blood.

The penitente headed for the stairs. The man to whom Molly had spoken fumbled under his shirt with trembling hands. He really wanted that ring. He couldn’t hurt the angel brushing past him, had no hope of slowing it down. But there was a danger he could hurt the Cherub’s human host, though.

Molly threw herself into the fray, wishing again she’d had time to practice. With thoughts focused on Bayliss’s tale of sneaking into Gabriel’s locked Magisterium, she revealed herself to the indomitable Cherub. The last lingering shadows abandoned the lobby. The tattooed man cowered.

“Hey, motherfucker,” she said. “Remember me?”

The penitente didn’t, but the thing inside him did. It advanced on her …

… while Molly imagined her consciousness unzipping, peeling apart like the skin of banana …

And then she was standing in the damaged lobby, slightly less than she had been an instant earlier, while a detached sliver of her consciousness hid in the rubble. She held the Cherub’s attention, and struggled not to look at the tiny part of herself scuttling in the corners. She wondered if the Cherub could sense the hole in her.		And then she was hiding in the rubble among shards of glass and the unconscious gang members, the merest fraction of what she had been an instant earlier. When she looked up, she saw a giant version of herself facing down an angry Cherub in an ill-fitting human suit. They filled the lobby. She wondered if the Cherub could sense her.
The thing in the corner was too small and weak to move quickly. It wouldn’t manage to circle around before the penitente attacked. Molly stepped over a fallen gang member and sidled deeper into the lobby. The possessed penitente kept pace, always facing her. Molly couldn’t get behind him.		She wormed through the grime, inching around the perimeter of the room, slowly making her way behind the penitente. But she was barely a wraith, a whisper of her full self. She was minuscule, the world huge. Skirting the rubble while monitoring the face-off took concentration and effort.
But the detached part of her consciousness could.		The penitente turned. It put her directly behind him.
The Cherub unfurled its wings. Moondust sifted from the heavens, blazing silver-bright in the glare from the Cherub’s fiery face. Behind it, something reared like a viper.		The Cherub unfurled its wings. Moondust sifted from the heavens, blazing silver-bright in the glare from the Cherub’s fiery face. She reared, impersonating a viper.
The detached fragment of her consciousness wiggled like a cat preparing to pounce. Molly grabbed the penitente’s wrists.		She gathered herself, pressing down like the coils of a spring. The giant Molly grabbed the penitente’s wrists.
“Surprise,” she said, nodding to the sliver of herself.		“Surprise,” said most of Molly, and gave herself a nod.
It lunged. Molly yanked with strength both human and other, pulling the penitente off balance, and spun him around. The other piece of her blurred into motion. The Cherub saw it, but too late. The sliver of consciousness speared into the eyes of its human disguise.		She lunged as the rest of Molly knocked the penitente off balance and spun him around. She crossed the gap moving at the speed of thought. The Cherub saw her. It tried to twist its human shell away, but it was too late. She hurled herself into the penitente’s eyes.
A dull sliver tinkled to the floor. The Cherub disappeared.		A dull sliver tinkled to the floor. The Cherub disappeared.
The penitente slumped against Molly, unconscious. She laid him gently to the floor. She stopped holding her breath. Then she nodded to the wispy fragment of herself. It slithered closer …		The rest of Molly caught the unconscious penitente and laid him gently on the floor. She released a long sigh, and then gave her a shaky nod. She slithered toward the rest of herself …

The wormy fragment of her consciousness slurped into place like a spaghetti noodle, and then she was whole again. She gasped: assimilating the disparate experiences was even more difficult than multitasking her consciousness in the first place. She staggered under the weight of paradox. She tripped over the unconscious penitente and crashed against the dented and vandalized mailboxes. Molly’s memory of the past few moments—her sense of identity—had acquired the eerie unreality of a photographic double exposure. Incompatible experiences churned together, an immiscible froth of oil and water.

It gave her a blinding, brain-shattering migraine. She coughed up something vinegary. She moved like an old woman when she knelt to pluck the leaden soul fragment from the floor. Her eyeballs felt ready to burst. Rather than move her eyes, she turned her entire body to face the drug dealer, who cowered in the corner.

“Hey,” she said. “You got anything for a headache?”

But he was staring at his unconscious companions sprawled on the floor where the Cherub had hurled them. Then he looked at the penitente. “Fuck,” he said.

“Now would be a good time for you to call an ambulance for your friends,” she suggested. She fished in her pocket and tossed the ring. It bounced across the filthy floor and rolled to a stop against the toe of his boot.

She shuffled closer to the unconscious penitente. Her headache throbbed in time to her footsteps. The fragment she had dislodged from the possessed man’s eye had followed her to Earth, much as the fragments Bayliss manipulated followed him to the Pleroma. She studied it, wondering how to make the man’s soul whole again.

The dealer repeated himself. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” she said. But then she followed his gaze. A second penitente strode into the lobby.

Molly felt herself deflating like a punctured tire. She retreated into the shadows, struggling to force the pain aside, trying to focus enough to split off another piece of herself. The second Cherub saw her. It continued to look straight at Molly while, slowly and deliberately, the hollow woman’s lips curled into a sneer; the glow of supernatural fire peeked through the corner of her mouth. It was wise to her trick. Rats.

Speaking through the corner of her mouth, Molly said, “Go for the eyes.”

But the dealer vaulted his injured companions and ran away. He did pause just long enough to take the ring.

As the first had done, the Cherub directed its penitente host toward the stairs. Molly blocked her passage. The wounded woman lunged forward with arms outstretched, twisted her fingers into Molly’s coat lapels, and heaved. Molly’s toes left the floor. She tried to break the woman’s grasp, but couldn’t.

“Crap,” she said, wishing she had taken Martin’s offer any of the countless times he’d spoken grandly about teaching her to throw a punch.

The penitente flexed her arms, preparing to hurl Molly across the lobby. Molly clamped a hand around the woman’s forearm. She pulled herself closer, until they were almost nose-to-nose. The searing heat of holy fire washed across her face. Instant sunburn. She squinted, peering through the blazing Pleromatic overlay to the human woman’s face. Something glistened in the corner of her right eye.

Molly flicked the first penitente’s soul fragment into the woman’s left eye.

There was a scream, the death rattle of bifurcated light, and then Molly tumbled to the floor, alone. The migraine metastasized into her arms, legs, spine. She narrowly avoided choking on the contents of her stomach.

Molly was still lying there when two pairs of shoes scuffled across the floor. She opened her eyes. Anne stood in the doorway.

“Moll?”

So did Martin.