I climbed the next staircase, found three more doors and another, still narrower staircase. Again, a wraith showed me the way. Again, the way was up. Two more landings. Two more sets of doors and a staircase. Two more helpful wraiths. I knew I’d reached the angel’s aerie when I had only a single choice: a white door.

Beyond that door was an angel. A real angel. I’d never met one before. In the ghost world, angels were rarely discussed, and then only in tones half-derisive, half-reverent, as if we supernaturals wanted to mock them, but weren’t sure we dared.

Angels are the earthly messengers of the Fates and their ilk. Every now and then we’d hear of an angel being dispatched to fix some problem on earth. Never knew what the problem was—probably some tear-jerking misfortune straight out of a Touched by an Angel episode. The angels went down and flitted about, spreading peace, joy, and goodwill like fairy dust, realigned the cosmos before commercial break, and winged back up to their clouds to await the next quasi-catastrophe.

Why the Fates would dispatch an angel to catch that murdering bitch of a demi-demon was beyond me. Like sending a butterfly after a hawk. The Nix had done exactly what I’d have expected, chewed the angel up and spit her out in pieces. But, as the Fates admitted, they’d had no idea how to handle the Nix. When she’d escaped, their first reaction, understandably, had been to send their divine messengers after her.

As I reached out to knock on the door, a jolt of energy zapped through me. When I caught my balance, I looked down at my hand and flexed it. No pain…just surprise. A mental shock.

I cautiously extended my fingers toward the door again, braced for the jolt. Instead, a wave of some indefinable emotion filled me, amorphous but distinctly negative. A magical boundary. Instead of physically repelling me, it triggered a subconscious voice that said, “You don’t want to go in there.”

But I did want to. I had to.

So, pushing past the sensation, I knocked. For a split second, all went dark. Before I could even think “Oh shit,” the darkness evaporated. The door was gone. The foyer was gone. Instead I stood in yet another white room. This one, though, appeared to have been built of brick, then plastered and whitewashed, the pattern of the brick just barely showing through. The floor also looked brick, but darker and patterned. In the middle was a large reed mat surrounded by several high-backed wooden chairs, a few tables, and a carved sofa piled with embroidered pillows.