I feel drained. There must be another answer, but I’m too emotionally beat up to think. I just want to crawl into the vault in my head and close the door on the world.

I lean toward Raffe and feel his muscles against my arm. I close my eyes and relax into him. He feels so solid. I’m not sure if I’m giving him comfort or the other way around.

When I open my eyes, my mom’s friend is watching us. I quickly step away from Raffe and stand tall. It’s a strange thing for her to do – watching us instead of the locusts or the cut-up little girl.

‘Somebody is looking for you,’ she says.

Oh, right. ‘Yeah, I heard.’ The angels, the hellions – who doesn’t want a piece of me right now?

She nods toward Raffe. ‘I meant him.’

Do they have a bounty on him too? He had a red mask over his face when we were fighting the angels, so they must have thought he was just some demon, right?

‘I have a message for you,’ says the woman to Raffe. ‘The message is, freedom and gratitude. Trust, my brother.’

Raffe spends a couple of seconds taking that in. ‘Where is he?’ he asks.

‘Waiting for you downtown at the church with the stained glass.’

‘He’s there now?’

‘Yes.’

He turns to me. ‘Do you know where that is?’

‘Sort of,’ I say, having a vague memory of a couple of different churches in Palo Alto. ‘What’s going on?’

He doesn’t say anything.

I wonder if the twins got their message wrong. Maybe the angels are looking for Raffe and not me.

‘Do you need anything more from me?’ the woman asks. She’s creeping me out a little with her calm and peaceful voice.

‘No, thank you.’ Raffe’s thoughts are far away.

The woman takes off her hood. Her head is shaved, looking particularly pale.

She takes off her coat, letting it fall to the ground. A sheet is wrapped around her body, tied at one shoulder. Her dark eyes look huge in her bald head, and they gaze at me with peace and serenity. Her hands are together with her fingers interlocking in front of her. The only thing that mars her old-world look is the pair of white tennis shoes she wears beneath her sheet.

She gives us a little bow before turning toward my sister. She doesn’t say any of the rehearsed recruiting statements that I would expect from someone so obviously part of an apocalypse cult. She just moves toward my sister quietly, then stops in front of her.

My mother bows to the lady. ‘Thank you for your sacrifice. Thank you for volunteering.’

‘Volunteering for what?’ I ask, feeling uneasy.

‘Don’t worry about it, Penryn.’ My mother waves me away. ‘I’ll take care of this.’