The bottom right-hand corner showed the bodies of monks, all of them wearing white, hanging from the wall of a monastery. Human bones were stacked like kindling beneath their feet, and one of the monks had an arrow in the center of his forehead. A grapnel had been painted upon the front of each monk’s robes in what appeared to be blood. A group of mounted soldiers was riding away from them, led by a tall armored figure with a white mote in his right eye. Human heads dangled from their saddles, and their horses wore spikes upon their foreheads.

If the bearded figure was their leader, it was to one of his men that one’s eye was immediately drawn. He was not riding a horse, but instead walked alongside his captain, bearing a bloodied sword in his right hand. He was a fat imp, gross and deformed, with a great goiter or tumor at his neck. He wore a tunic of leather plates that failed to conceal the enormity of his belly, and his legs seemed almost to be collapsing under the weight of his body. There was blood around his mouth, where he had fed upon the dead. In his left hand he held aloft a banner bearing the symbol of the grapnel.

“Why was this hidden?” I asked.

“This is the aftermath of the sacking of the monastery at Sedlec,” said Miss Stern. “The killing of the monks during a period of truce was first blamed upon Jan Ziska and his Hussites, but this painting may be closer to the truth. It seems to suggest that the killings were the work of mercenaries, operating in the confusion of the aftermath and led by these two men. Later documentary evidence, including the testimony of eyewitnesses, supports the artist’s version of events.”

She spread the index and middle fingers of her right hand to indicate the bearded rider and the grotesque figure cavorting beside him. “This one”-she indicated the fat man-“has no name. Their leader was known simply as ‘the Captain,’ but if one is to believe the myths surrounding Sedlec, he was really Ashmael, the original Black Angel. According to the old stories, after the banishment from heaven, Ashmael was shunned by the company of the fallen because his eyes were marked by his last glimpse of God. In his loneliness, Ashmael tore himself in two so that he would have company in his wanderings, and he gave the name Immael to his twin. Eventually, they grew weary and descended into the depths of the earth near Sedlec, where they slept until the mines were dug. Then they awoke, and found the world above at war, so they began fomenting conflict, playing one side off against the other, until at last Immael was confronted and cast down into molten silver. Ashmael immediately commenced searching for him, but when he reached the monastery the statue had already been spirited away, so he avenged himself on the monks and continued his quest, a quest which, according to the tenets of the Believers, goes on to this day. So now you know, Mr. Parker. The Believers exist to reunite two halves of a fallen angel. It is a wonderful story, and now I plan to sell it in return for twenty percent of the final price. In the end, I am the only person who will profit from the story of the Black Angels.”

I was home before midnight. The house was silent. I went upstairs and found Rachel asleep. I didn’t wake her. Instead, I was about to check up on Sam when Rachel’s mother appeared at the door and, putting a finger to her lips to hush me, indicated that I should follow her downstairs.

“Would you like coffee?” she asked.

“Coffee would be good.”

She heated some water and retrieved the ground beans from the freezer. I didn’t speak as she went about preparing the coffee. I sensed that it wasn’t my place to begin whatever conversation we were about to have.

Joan placed a cup of coffee in front of me and cradled her own in her hands.

“We had a problem,” she said. She didn’t look at me as she spoke.

“What kind of problem?”

“Someone tried to get into the house through Sam’s window.”

“A burglar?”

“We don’t know. The police seem to think so, but Rachel and I, we’re not so sure.”

“Why?”

“They didn’t set the motion sensors off. The sensors weren’t disabled either, so we can’t figure out how they got to the house. And this is going to sound crazy, I know, but it seemed as if they were crawling up the exterior. We heard one of them moving on the outside wall behind Rachel’s bed. There was another on the roof, and when Rachel went into Sam’s room, she says she saw a woman’s face at the window, but it was upside down. She shot at it and-”

“She what?”

“I’d taken Sam out of the room, and Rachel had set off the panic button. She had a gun, and she shot the window out. We had it replaced today.”

I hid my face in my hands for a few moments, saying nothing.

I felt something touch my fingers, and Joan took my hand in hers.

“Listen to me,” she said. “I know that sometimes it might seem like Frank and I are hard on you, and I know you and Frank don’t get along too well, but you have to understand that we love Rachel, and we love Sam. We know that you love them too, and that Rachel cares about you, and loves you more deeply than she’s ever loved any other man in her life. But the feelings she has for you are costing her a great deal. They’ve put her life at risk in the past, and they’re bringing her pain now.”

Something caught in my throat when I tried to speak. I took a sip of coffee to try to dislodge it, but it would not be moved.

“Rachel has told you about her brother, Curtis,” said Joan.

“Yes,” I said. “He sounded like he was a good man.”

Joan smiled at the description.

“Curtis was pretty wild when he was a teenager,” said Joan, “and wilder still when he was in his twenties. He had a girlfriend, Justine, and, boy, he drove her crazy. She was much gentler than he was, and though he always looked out for her, I think he kind of frightened her some, and she left him for a time. He couldn’t understand why, and I had to sit him down and explain to him that it was okay to cut loose a little, that young men did those kinds of things, but at some point you had to start behaving like an adult, and rein in the young part. It didn’t mean that you had to spend the rest of your life in a suit and tie, never raising your voice or stepping out of line, but you had to recognize that the rewards a relationship brought came at a price. The cost was a whole lot less than what you got in return, but it was a sacrifice nonetheless. If he wasn’t prepared to make that sacrifice by growing up, then he had to just let her go and accept that she wasn’t for him. He decided that he wanted to be with her. It took some time, but he changed. He was still the same boy at heart, of course, and that wild streak never left him, but he kept it in check, the way you might train a horse so you can harness its power and channel its energy. Eventually, he became a policeman, and he was good at what he did. Those people who killed him made the world a poorer place by taking him from it, and they broke so many hearts, just so many.

“I never thought I’d be having that conversation again with a man, and I understand that the circumstances are not the same. I know all that you’ve gone through, and I can imagine some of your pain. But you have to choose between the life you’re being offered here, with a woman and a child, maybe a second marriage and more children to come, and this other life that you lead. If something happens to you because of it, then Rachel will have lost two men that she loved to violence; but if something happens to her or to Sam as a consequence of what you do, then everyone who loves Rachel and Sam will be torn apart, and you worst of all, because I don’t believe that you could survive that loss a second time. Nobody could.

“You’re a good man, and I understand that you’re driven to try to make things right for people who can’t help themselves, for those who’ve been hurt, or even killed. There’s something noble in that, but I don’t think you’re concerned with nobility. It’s sacrifice, but not the right kind. You’re trying to make up for things that can never be undone, and you blame yourself for allowing them to occur even though it wasn’t in your power to stop them. But at some point you’re going to have to stop blaming yourself. You’re going to have to stop trying to change the past. All of that is gone, hard as it may be to accept. What you have now is new hope. Don’t let it slip away, and don’t let it be taken from you.”