I fingered through the dog-eared pages searching for where I'd left the intrepid heroine hanging. Ah yes, I smiled, still arguing with the enigmatic, but darkly handsome hero. Deeply into the novel and just starting my second knish, I heard someone shout my name.

"Deidre!" A hand touched me familiarly on the shoulder. A dark-eyed woman with a crew cut stood next to me. A white patch of scar tissue interrupted an otherwise perfectly shaped eyebrow. It had been almost twenty years, but, despite the new haircut, I recognized Rebeckah immediately.

"I'd ask you to join me, Rebeckah, but ..." I gestured helplessly at the crowd.

A meaningful glance at the man in the seat next to me was all it took for her to commandeer a place at the crowded counter. While her attention was elsewhere, I unobtrusively slipped the paperback into my pocket. Once she'd settled herself, she asked, "It's been a while. How are you?"

"Holding up," I managed to say around a mouthful of knish. "You?"

"Fine." She said absently, watching the door.

I thought about asking her if she was planning on coming to our college's next reunion, but even if there were going to be one, neither of us would go. Rebeckah was underground these days with the Malachim, and I was off the force, excommunicated.

She watched me eat in silence. After inhaling the rest of the potato pastry, I cleared my throat. "You've always been shitty at small talk, Rebeckah. This meeting isn't a coincidence, is it?"

"My mistake. I thought you came here to talk to me."

I raised an eyebrow and looked around the restaurant. Could Rebeckah be implying that this little deli was the headquarters of the Malachim? I decided not to ask. She might not appreciate us being overheard.

"Actually," I said, "I was just out wandering. Maybe it was psychic. I have been thinking about you."

"Oh, really? Decided to join us finally?"

"No," I said, "but I hear we have a mutual friend."

"Is that so?" Leaning back on the stool, Rebeckah observed me carefully. "Who could that be?"

"Michael Angelucci," I said. "Apparently he contacted your people before talking to me. Hear anything about him?"

"No," her mouth said, but her eyes were dark and guarded. "We've been keeping our dealings with the Italians to a minimum, you know that."

I laughed. "He'd prefer to be called 'Roman.' "

"A Vatican agent?" Rebeckah scoffed, jumping to a conclusion I hadn't even considered. "Thanks to that hotheaded ex-partner of yours we haven't had contact with Vatican City in over a year."

I started to chide her for being so public about her business, when the full impact of what she'd implied struck me. In a conspiratorial tone, I whispered, "Your people had a Papal connection?"

She laughed. "Don't look so horrified, Deidre. Historically, your popes have made questionable alliances with nastier folks."

"No, no, that's not what surprised me," I said. Picking at the crumbs on my plate, I tried to piece things together. "The Pope ... he was, er, sympathetic to your cause?"

"To our methods, no," Rebeckah admitted quietly. "But our aims ..." She shrugged.

"Your aims?"

"We've always been Free Staters. Even though America is a theocratic republic, at least there's still a pretense of the representational government model. Christendom is a badly disguised oligarchy."

"But isn't the Pope the leader of Christendom?" Rebeckah's political jargon made my head ache again.

"He is now. Innocent had a plan to decentralize his power and give it back to the people."

"I'll be hanged," I said. Putting my hands on the countertop, I leaned back on the stool. This information was a big hole in the case against Daniel. At the time, everyone claimed Danny had been motivated partly out of fear a presidential alliance with the Pope would bring Christendom to America.

Rebeckah nudged me on the arm. "I hate to cut this short because it's been a long time, but I have to go." Jerking her chin in the direction of the window, she frowned. "Seems like you were followed here, Dee. I can't risk another arrest right now. I've been compromised enough lately."

"Wait," I begged. "If you do hear something about Angelucci, will you contact me?"

Her eyes flicked about nervously, but she paused long enough for me to press my card into her palm. Glancing down at it absently, she sighed.

"Sure." She squeezed my shoulder tenderly. Reaching up absently, I placed my hand over hers for a second. Too preoccupied to make a more formal or proper goodbye, she headed for the door. My eyes were riveted to where she'd gestured out the window. I scanned the crowd for a suspicious or familiar face. When I found none, I found myself looking up at the evening sky searching for dark wings – raven's wings, or angel's.

I laughed under my breath. Rebeckah's paranoia was rubbing off on me. No doubt it was just some sleazy reporter or a remote cam; they were forever darting in and out of my peripheral vision. All the same, I decided to err on the side of caution. I relinquished my precious window seat to an anxious patron and headed for the bathroom.

The toilets, the sign indicated, were located down a narrow, dingy hallway. Instead of choosing the door clearly labeled, women, I took a detour. I boldly entered the one marked employees only and found myself in a tiny kitchen. A half wall separated the cashier from the kitchen, but the noise from the deli could only barely be heard over the humming of several industrial-looking refrigerator units that flanked the wall closest to me. Vat-grown lettuce and other vegetable matter were strewn across a low metal table. Soy-salami and other meats hung in disarray on the far wall. Then, I saw what I was looking for. Over the head of a surprised chef glowed an exit sign.

Rapping the edge of the counter as I passed him, I said, "By the way, excellent knishes. Best I've ever had." My offhand compliment must have taken the poor man by surprise, because I was already at the door when I heard him shout in protest.

As the door closed behind me, I found myself in an old abandoned trade-way. Most restaurants and stores were connected by a set of delivery tunnels. As respectable businesses moved closer and closer to the top floors of the skyscrapers and began using roof access for delivery, the money for upkeep of the tunnels disappeared. Some places still used the trade-ways, but the farther from city center you got, the more likely that gangs of Gorgons had taken them over as private thoroughfares.

This one was clearly not in use. The smell of urine was close in the stale air. Graffiti dotted the walls. Some of the scrawl appeared to be a phonetic approximation of English, but mostly the colors bled together into a kind of urban artistic expression.

Someone was illegally siphoning electricity to power Christmas lights duct-taped haphazardly across the ceiling. The track of lights closely followed the strip where the train used to run. Apparently following someone's internal sense of aesthetics, the Christmas lights occasionally abandoned the linear and burst into starlike patterns. As I looked down the tunnel, I noticed the designs seemed to happen at regular intervals.

Curious, I moved to a spot directly underneath one of the starbursts and looked up. The lights danced around a shifting rectangular shadow. The object didn't look like any kind of conduit box I'd ever seen before. Also, maintenance crews tended to paint things like that with fluorescent yellow stripes, so that they were easily located in case of emergency. This box was a flat gray metal that seemed to absorb the light intentionally. If I could only get closer, I thought, I might be able to take the cover off to see what was inside.

Just as I was about to search for something to use as a stepladder, I heard a shuffling noise. I decided not to take any chances and headed for the exit. As I walked, I stepped over discarded fast-food containers. Finding a door marked exit, I quickly pushed through. As I expected, the doorway opened to the pedestrian skyway system, which roughly followed the same path as the traffic tunnels.