“There you are.” The dish rack’s silverware basket was full. She emptied it to make room for the spatula. “I know it’s no business of ours, but they’re under our roof now, for however long.”

“I should have asked you before I brought them home.”

“We’re fine for a few days, though it’s tight quarters. Had to sit Jake on an end table at dinner. But the girls keep to themselves.” Silverware rattled as she hipped the drawer shut. “I think it was harder for them to come here than for us to take them.” A cry issued from the next room. He turned from the sink with sudsy hands.

In the living room, Jake was chasing Hannah around the couch with a toy thunder lizard; she was running, and laughing, and turned to hit him in the face with her pillow.

*   *   *

By the time Cat finished her interview, Raz was gone.

The explanation took longer than she expected; Jones asked the right questions. Justice supplied memories and words Cat lacked. The other Suits cleaned up: drove Tara, protesting, to a hospital, and the gargoyles to nearby buildings where they could safely drain the stone to heal themselves. The tower roof was crumbling, and most of the gargoyles too hurt to fly. The Suits carried them.

But Raz—when Jones broke off their interview, Raz had disappeared.

You’re hurt, the Suit whispered to her. Get to a hospital. You’ve done enough for the evening.

Where did he go?

Justice integrated and sifted the Suits’ perceptions. Memories not hers melted as she clutched for them.

She remembered climbing crumbling walls, the vertigo of seeing herself in conference with Jones, tending the wounded and the dead. And there, Raz rose and shambled down the dark stairs. As far as the Suits guarding the tower’s base could tell, he never came out.

I have to find him.

No, Justice said. You need a medic. Now.

Hells with this. Cat was off duty. She let the Suit go.

Pain hit her from nine directions at once. The sky dimmed, and the air chilled-warmed-chilled again, her skin unsure what to feel after so long inside the Suit.

Cat walked to the dark stairs because she could not run and lurched down winding steps shafted with moon- and streetlight through fresh cracks in the walls.

Raz lay in a nest of rubble at the tower’s base. His clothes were torn, and his skin intact. He was very still.

She’d seen him gutted at least twice on the tower, and hamstrung once, healing almost as fast as demons could hurt him.

She limped over concrete and broken rock to sit by his side. “Raz?”

No answer.