“Abraxas?” Now she looked doubly shocked. “You went to him?”

“Only to help you, to save you.”

Mariel whistled low. “And what did your demon lord say to all this?”

“This was his farewell gift.” She roughly wiped at the tears she could not keep from gathering. “So he’s not my demon lord anymore.”

“I’m sorry, Cece.” And it sounded like she meant it.

Celeste moved closer to the bars. “Listen, Mariel. You cannot tell anyone what you’ve told me. Right now, they think Lilitha is the killer, and you are innocent, and… and it will stay that way.”

“Are you sure?” She sounded so young. She might play the tough, but Celeste could see she had not been completely wrong about her sister. There was an innocence there, no matter her deeds to the contrary.

“We’re sisters. If I must choose, then I choose you. I choose family.”

“Sisters,” Mariel echoed, but she didn’t sound as sure, her eyes lingering on Celeste as if this time she was the one who had failed to see her real sister until this very minute.

Footsteps sounded in the hall, the door opened, and the Virtue was back.

“The Circle is ready for you.”

Mariel stood, stubbing out her cigarillo. The Virtue unlocked her cell, restrained her hands in irons, and marched her forward, Celeste trailing behind.

CHAPTER 16

The Circle’s court chamber was at the top of the building, down the hall from Ibrahim’s office in the opposite direction from the elevator. Celeste and Mariel stood waiting in a small atrium. From the window, Celeste could see all of Goetia and, above it, the mountain of Abaddon, its smaller peaks the Hands and the highest, always capped in snow, the peak called Abaddon’s Heart.

Once, after a late night at the faro table, Celeste had asked Abraxas to tell her what happened the day Abaddon fell, and he had looked at her so long she thought she had offended him. Finally, he’d said, “Domine miserere damnati.”

“Lord have mercy on the damned,” she’d translated, pleased to show off the Latin she had been learning.

“Have you ever seen an angel, Celeste?” he’d asked, voice wistful. “They are not like you and me. They are fire and wings and eyes and beauty so bright you cannot look upon it. Such was Abaddon, one of the best of Lucifer’s brethren. We called him Doom and Destroyer, and he came to the battlefield with an army of locusts at his back, plague in his every breath. It was Abaddon who led the charge that day against cruel Azrael, the Angel of Death himself, and for a while, our victory seemed sure. But something changed. A shift in the wind, a moment of distraction. Who can say? Abaddon fell, Azrael’s sword through his heart. And lo, we demons wept.