Raffe is scanning the area. Seeing him do this reminds me that this could be a trap and that I shouldn’t get distracted by my anger toward this scum.

I glance around and see nothing but quiet shadows in what was once a sweet little neighborhood.

‘I’m listening,’ says Raffe. ‘Talk fast.’

‘I talked Laylah into agreeing to change back your wings,’ says Josiah. ‘For real this time. She swore to me.’

‘Why should I believe her?’

‘Or you,’ I say. It was Josiah and Laylah who tricked Raffe into having demon wings in the first place. There’s no reason to believe they’ll do anything but trick him again.

Josiah turns his bloody eyes to me. ‘Uriel blames Laylah for the locusts turning on us last night. He says no one else but the doctor who created them could have that kind of control over them. He has her locked in her laboratory. He would have killed her, except she’s in the middle of creating some plagues for him. That, and she’s the only one who can maintain his growing army of monsters.’

‘Plagues?’ I ask. ‘Why is everybody trying to make plagues?’

‘What’s an apocalypse without pestilence?’ asks Josiah.

‘Great,’ I say. ‘So we’re supposed to trust a known liar who’s cooking up apocalyptic plagues? And why would we even care what happens to Laylah? Serves her right for transplanting demon wings onto Raffe and playing Dr. Frankenstein with human beings. We’re not just biomass to be shaped into whatever dolls she wants to play with.’

Josiah looks at me, then back at Raffe. ‘Does she need to be here?’

‘Apparently, she does,’ says Raffe. ‘It turns out that she’s the only one I can trust to watch my back.’

I stand a little taller when he says that.

‘Laylah didn’t know.’ Josiah shifts his body to make it clear he’s talking to Raffe. ‘I warned her not to get involved, but you know how ambitious she is. Look, you can trust her this time because you’re her only hope out of this mess. Uriel will kill her when he has everything he needs from her.’

‘Kill her? You mean set her up for a fall?’

‘No, I mean kill her. He was furious with her, wouldn’t believe a word she said when she told him she had nothing to do with the locusts turning on us. He flew into a rage and told her he killed the Messenger and he could kill her too. The Messenger, Raffe. Uriel killed him.’

An image of the winged man who called himself Archangel Gabriel, the Messenger of God being shot down over the rubble of Jerusalem flashes through my mind. They looped it for days on TV.