The Milton ER was our first stop. We left Adora there. I paid for the first twenty-four hours of treatment and told Adora to stay there until I came and got her. The medmage spelled the cut on my face closed and told me to not expect miracles in regard to whether it would scar.

We walked into Beau’s office headfirst. It barely fit through the double door. The sheriff of Milton County looked at the head, looked at us, assessed the sorry state of his deputy, reached into his desk, and extracted a feather.

“This was found where the horses were. The two brothers identified it as belonging to the winged devil.”

I took the feather. It was long and glossy, a pure black that seemed to swallow the light, except for the very tip where a thin orange-red flared as if someone had dipped the feather into liquid fire. Only one being had feathers like that—Thanatos, the angel of death, with black wings and a flaming sword.

As soon as I got to a working phone, I’d need to call Teddy Jo.

“You need to tell Curran,” Derek told me as we walked back to our cars.

“Stay out of my relationship.”

“I don’t want you to turn into someone else,” he said quietly.

“I won’t.” Back in the woods when he was screaming in my face, I’d wanted to crush every bone in his body. I’d stomped on that urge before it went anywhere, but it was there. There were few things that terrified me. That did.

•   •   •

I HAD TO do a dozen things. I needed to call Teddy Jo. I needed to speak to Sienna. I needed to look through my notes on my father to see if I could find any reference to what Adora might be. Instead I dropped Ascanio off near his mother’s house, dropped Derek off at Cutting Edge, and turned around. I drove through the city as the sun slowly rolled toward the horizon. By the time I got to the Keep, the heat of the day had begun to ease. Evening was coming.

I walked into the Keep, identified myself to the sentries, and one of the guards walked me to the medward. New rules. Jim had decided I shouldn’t be walking around the Keep unescorted. It didn’t even bother me. I’d gone numb.

They’d put Andrea in a corner room, the one with large windows. I walked in. She was eating fried chicken and Raphael was holding Baby B.

Andrea saw my face and stopped eating.

“I’ve come to hold the baby,” I told her.

She nodded to Raphael. He got up and gave his daughter to me. I took Baby B. She stirred a little in her sleep and snuggled against me.

“The other room has the rocking chair in it,” Andrea said, pointing through the open double door. “There’s a nice window there.”