He groans again, and I know he won’t be able to tell me anything if I don’t stop his bleeding and take him to a place where the gangs aren’t likely to swoop down and chop him into little trophies. He is shivering, probably going into deep shock. I flip him over onto his face, this time noticing how light he is.

I run over to my mother’s upended cart. I dig through the pile looking for rags to wrap him with. A first aid kit is hidden at the bottom of the cart. I hesitate only a moment before grabbing it. I hate to waste precious first aid supplies on an angel who will die anyway, but he looks so human without his wings that I allow myself to use a few sterile bandages as a layer on his cut.

His back is covered with so much blood and dirt that I can’t actually see how bad the wounds are. I decide it doesn’t matter, so long as I can keep him alive long enough to tell me where they took Paige. I wrap strips of rags around his torso as tightly as I can, trying to put as much pressure on the wounds as possible. I don’t know if you can kill a person by making the bindings too tight, but I do know that bleeding to death is faster than death by almost any other way.

I can all but feel the pressure of unseen eyes on my back as I work. The gangs would assume that I’m cutting out trophies. They’re probably assessing whether the other angels are likely to come back while they’re wrestling the pieces out of my hands. I have to bundle him up and get him out of here before they grow too bold. In my haste, I knot him up like a rag doll.

I run over and grab Paige’s wheelchair. He is surprisingly light for his size, and it’s far less of a struggle than I’d anticipated to get him into the chair. I suppose it makes sense when you think about it. It’s easier to fly when you weigh 50 pounds than 500. Knowing he is stronger and lighter than humans doesn’t make me feel any warmer toward him.

I make a show of lifting him and putting him into the chair, grunting and staggering as though he’s terribly heavy. I want the watchers to think the angel is as heavy as he looks, because maybe then they’ll conclude that I’m stronger and tougher than I look in my underfed five-foot-two frame.

Is that the beginning of an amused grin forming on the angel’s face?

Whatever it is, it turns into a grimace of pain as I dump him into the chair. He is too big to fit comfortably, but it’ll do.

I quickly grab the silken wings to wrap them in a moth-eaten blanket from my mother’s cart. The snowy feathers are wondrously soft, especially compared to the coarse blanket. Even in this panicked moment, I’m tempted to stroke the smooth down. If I pluck the feathers and use them as currency one at a time, a single wing could probably house and feed all three of us for a year. That is, assuming I can get all three of us back together again.