Pastor Minstrel sauntered to Miranda and bent down to her face. “And then she took from us one of our own. She took from this child a loving father. She has no place among godly people.”

Miranda squeezed her eyes shut against the sun. Her knees trembled.

“As her sin bloomed, our fields grew fallow. As her spirit withered, so did our crops. And we did nothing. But our God is a forgiving God. Repent and pray with me.” He dropped to his knees.

The crowd raised their open palms to the sky. Their mouths gaped, and from their throats rose a guttural cry. Their tongues wagged over their teeth.

“Kaholy nabida kala haveel lalakohlay!” The pastor screamed into the microphone. The metal speakers shook dust from the church eaves. The baby began to wail, its tiny face screwed up in outrage.

The crowd’s fervor swelled. Miranda’s mother dropped to the grass, convulsing, orange drool running down her neck and staining the collar of her shirt.

“Let the Holy Spirit take you all! Sing in the Spirit with me!” One of the mounted speakers shook free of a bolt and hung at an angle, rattling against the dry wood siding.

The crowd swayed, shaking their hands at the sky and singing in the language of angels.

“It is our duty, as agents of the Lord, to show the unsaved the value of the life taken from us! Show her what we think of her shunning the gifts of God! Show her what we think of her pact with Satan!” The speaker shook itself free from its remaining bolt and tumbled into the grass.

As one, the crowd dropped their hands and reached for the plastic bags at their feet. Out came handfuls of dirty ceramic angels. Dusty again, and faceless.

Miranda pressed herself against the wall. Her chin trembled. She looked to Pastor Minstrel and shook her head. No, not like this.

He smiled and licked his teeth. His eyes slid to Mrs. Datlan. She nodded, weeping, eyes still rolling in spiritual reverie. “All the angels in the world can’t save you, not now, and I brought ‘em all.”

Pastor Minstrel’s microphone shook. “Show her what the Lord thinks of those who would snuff out the spark of God’s light!”

The angels flew at her. Their wings shattered against the cinderblocks around her. They broke against her forehead and her teeth. They cut into her stomach, still swollen from birth, still red. They tore at her arms, her legs, and caught in her hair. She tasted the dirt of them, felt their grit in the blood that filled her mouth. And as she sank to the grass, she smelled smoke, and saw, through a red haze, the speaker—smoldering in the dry grass, small flames licking up the side of the church wall as Pastor Minstrel held her baby aloft and hollered nonsense to the sky from a vortex of faceless angels.