World After

53

THE RIVER of people mills around him as he stands like a rock in the channel. He stares at me, seemingly oblivious to the traffic of sparkling fabric, plumage of all colors, masked faces, and flutes of champagne flowing around him.

Time may have stopped for him but it hasn’t stopped for the rest of the world. Beliel continues to move farther into the crowd while Uriel walks closer to Raffe. If Raffe doesn’t move soon, he’ll be stuck having to greet Uriel.

The angels around Raffe fan their wings as Uriel approaches. If Raffe doesn’t fan his wings, too, Uriel is bound to notice him. Maybe he’ll stop to talk to him. Will he recognize Raffe’s voice? Walking into an angel party with demon wings is a little like walking onto a shooting range disguised as a target.

I try to warn Raffe with my eyes as we drift over to him, but he seems to be in a trance as he stares at me.

Only when it’s practically too late does he blink out of it and finally glance at Uriel. He ducks his head and turns away, but he gets caught trying to go in the wrong direction as the angels around him move forward to greet Uriel.

I can’t think of any way to help Raffe that doesn’t involve getting my head chopped off or something equally horrendous.

But if I do something to distract Uriel, he’ll likely wait until we’re in private to chop me up and feed me to his scorpion-tailed hounds.

At least, I hope so.

I take two small steps out of sync with my matching twin. I trip.

I careen into Uriel, bumping him harder than I intended.

Uriel stumbles into one of his sycophants and champagne sloshes onto his hand. He spins to look at me with a scowl. There is the promise of eternal torture in his eyes.

I almost expect scorpion monsters to jump out and grab me on the spot, dragging me into the depths of some dungeon where death minions will scuttle out to chop me to bits in the lonely darkness. I don’t need to fake my terror when Uriel looks at me.

But just as I suspected, he’ll wait to deal with me until he’s done stroking feathers or whatever it is that angel politicians do. I have until then to figure out how to get out of this mess.

By the time he composes the raw violence in his face into something more suitable for a politician and turns back to his admirers, Raffe is nowhere in sight.

It takes a few minutes before my heart slows down to normal. I keep my eyes forward and behave like a model accessory, ashamed to glance over at Andi and see the fear in her face. She’s not very useful to Uriel without me, is she?

I hope Raffe made it to a shadowy corner somewhere. I hope Paige is okay and that I’ll soon find her. I hope Mom and Clara are doing all right and are successfully escaping. And now, there’s Andi, who I clearly need to take with me when I leave because it’ll be a death sentence for her if her twin walks off or gets killed. And then there are all those people on Alcatraz.…

Too many.

Being responsible for Mom and Paige is nearly crushing me already. I take comfort in reminding myself that I am just a kid, not a hero. Heroes have a tendency to die in horrible ways. Somehow, I’ll get through this, and then I’ll lead the quietest life anyone could possibly have in the World After.

We follow Uriel as he works the crowd and makes his way to the makeshift stage at the ocean side of the lawn. The stage has a long table with a white tablecloth on it. The cloth shivers in the ocean wind, held down by plates and cutlery. Angels are seated on either side of an empty center chair like disciples at the Last Supper.

Uriel walks in front of the table and stands in the center, looking down at the party below him. I wonder if we should find seats, but Andi and I both hesitate long enough that we just assume our trophy poses on either side of him.

As if on cue, the roar of the party quiets down and all eyes are on us. On Uriel, of course, but I’m close to him so it feels like everyone’s staring at me, even though no one is.

I find myself scanning the masses for a certain sarcastic angel.

I take a deep breath. Am I really wishing that Raffe is still here? He almost got caught already. It’ll be suicide for him if he doesn’t get out of here fast.

But I can’t help but wonder if he sees me.

I should be staring at a spot above the crowd as my pose dictates, but my eyes keep drifting back to scan the faces below us.

“Welcome brothers and sisters,” Uriel says as everyone quiets down. “We are gathered tonight to unite in a single cause and to celebrate. I have news both appalling and amazing. First, the appalling.” The audience listens with hushed curiosity.

“Until the humans attacked our aerie, we assumed that they’d been behaving as well as could be expected. But now it has come to my attention that they’ve been up to sinister things that we cannot abide.”

Uriel motions for someone to come forward. An angel drags a cowering man onto the stage. He wears faded jeans, a Rolling Stones T-shirt, and glasses. He’s shaking and sweating, clearly terrified. The angel hands over a rolled cloth to Uriel.

He unrolls it, letting its contents fall onto the stage.

“Tell us, Man,” says Uriel. “Tell everyone what you had hidden in this cloth.”

The man starts hyperventilating in loud, raspy breaths, looking wildly at the crowd. When he doesn’t say anything, his guard grabs his hair and yanks his head back.

“Feathers,” the prisoner gasps out. “A… a handful of feathers.”

“And?” asks Uriel.

“Ha… hair. A lock of golden hair.”

“And what else, Man?” asks Uriel in a freezing voice.

The prisoner’s eyes dart around, looking trapped and desperate. His guard yanks back his head again so that his neck looks like it’s about to snap.

“Fingers.” The man sobs. Tears streak down his face, and I wonder what he did for a living before the civilized world came to an end. A doctor? A teacher? A grocery clerk?

“Two… severed… fingers,” he says between gasps. His guard lets him go. He huddles on the stage, shaking.

“What was the source of these feathers, hair, and fingers?”

The guard raises his hand and the man cringes, shielding his face.

“I got them from someone else,” says the man. “I didn’t hurt anybody. I swear. I never hurt anybody.”

“Where did they come from?” asks Uriel.

“I don’t know,” cries the man.

The guard grabs him by the arms, and I can almost hear his bones crunching.

The man cries out in pain. “Angel.” He falls to his knees, crying. His eyes dart around the hostile crowd in terror. “They’re angel parts.” He almost whispers, but the audience is silent and I’m sure they can hear him.