Anna’s praying gets louder.

“Enough,” Asael says, his voice calm again. “Tell us where he is.”

“He’s gone,” Angela says, her voice wavering. “I sent him away from here.”

“Where?” Asael asks again, less patiently. “Where did you send him?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Angela,” rasps Phen. “Please. Tell him. Just tell him, and he will let you go.”

Asael makes an amused sound in the back of his throat. “Oh, Penamue, you really do care for her, don’t you? How droll. I would never have imagined, when I sent you to check up on my long-lost daughter in Italy, that you’d lose your little gray heart. But I suppose I understand. I do. She’s so young, isn’t she? So new, like a tender green sprout pushing up out of the earth.”

I get a flash of the floating woman again, him carrying her this time, his face pressed against her white, pulseless neck.

“So,” Asael continues, “do as your lover bids you. Tell us where you’ve taken the baby.”

“No.”

He sighs. “Very well. I don’t enjoy having to employ this particular tactic, but … Desmond, hold her mother for a moment?”

Footsteps. Anna stops praying as she’s yanked away from Angela. Then she starts up again: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven….”

“Amen. I do hope He’s listening to all this,” Asael says. “Now, then, tell me what I want to know, or your mother will die.”

I hear Angela’s sharp intake of breath. I cast a desperate glance at Christian, my mind whirling. What can we do?

“It’s quite the dilemma,” Asael says. “Your mother or your son. But consider this: If you tell us where to find the infant, I promise you that he’ll be safe from harm. He’ll want for nothing. I will raise him as my own child.”

“Yeah, well, I’m your child,” Angela says. “And that’s not working out so great.”

He gives a startled laugh at her back talk. “Then be my daughter, as these two lovely girls have been—your sisters, you know. I will give you a room in my house, a place at my table, by my side.”

“In hell, you mean,” she says.

“Hell’s not so bad. We’re free there. The angels are kings, and you could be a princess. And you could remain with your child.”

“Don’t do it,” Anna says.

“Come with me, and we’ll let your mother go unharmed, for the rest of her life,” Asael promises.

“No. Remember what I taught you,” Anna murmurs. “Don’t worry about me. They can murder my body, but they can never harm my soul.”

“Are you so sure about that?” Asael asks. “Olivia, come here, dear. Perhaps we should educate her. This”—he pauses briefly—“is a very special kind of knife. I call it Dubium Alta—the great doubt. The blade causes grievous injury, I’m afraid, to both body and soul. If I say the word, my girl Olivia here will cut your soul to ribbons. I think she’ll rather enjoy it.”

“Lead us not into temptation—”

“Olivia,” he prompts.

I don’t hear the one called Olivia move, but suddenly Anna gives a long, agonized cry.

“Mom,” whispers Angela, as Anna dissolves into ragged sobs.

I taste blood I’m biting my lip so hard. Christian’s hand comes down on my arm, tight enough to hurt.

No, he says.

I’ll call glory, I say, and we’ll run to them, before they can—

I feel him going through the possible scenarios, but none of them work, none of them will end the way we want them to, with all of us together and safe. It’s no use, he says. They’re too fast. Even with surprise on our side, there are too many of them. They’re too strong.

“And deliver us from evil,” Anna pants out finally.

“She’s a bit like a broken record, isn’t she? Olivia, sweetheart …”

Anna cries out again.

“Stop,” Angela says. “Stop hurting her!” She takes a deep breath. “I will take you to Web—to the baby.”

“Excellent,” Asael almost purrs.

“No, Angela,” Anna pleads weakly, like speaking is almost too much for her.

“You have to promise me that he’ll be taken care of, that he’ll be safe,” Angela says.

“I give you my word,” Asael agrees. “Not a hair on his head will be harmed.”

“All right. Let’s go, then,” she says.

Christian starts pulling me down the stairs.

But Asael sighs. “I wish I could believe you, my dear.”

“What?” Angela’s confused.

“You have no intention of taking us to your son. I hate to think of the wild goose chase you’d lead us on.”

“No, I swear—”

“You’ll give me what I want,” he says almost cheerfully. “Eventually. A few hours in hell and you’ll be drawing me a map to the child, I think.” His voice hardens. “All right, Olivia. I’m tired of playing games.”

“Wait!” Angela says desperately. “I said I would—”

Someone gags—a muffled cough, choking.

“Mom!” Angela’s crying, struggling against someone’s arms. “Mom! Mom!”

Anna whispers hoarsely, “God help me,” and falls heavily to the floor.

I can smell her blood.

God help me.

“Mom,” whimpers Angela. “No.”

The reality of what’s happened breaks over me like a tidal wave. We’ve waited too long, too afraid to take action. We’ve let this happen. We’ve let them kill her.

“Let’s go,” Asael says.

They move swiftly toward the door, giving Christian only seconds to drag me down the stairs before we’re seen. There’s not enough time to make it across the lobby and out into the street. He pulls me inside the auditorium, moving us blindly into the dark.

For a few minutes I stand in the blackness, quaking, my eyes going in and out of focus, my stomach cramping, yet at the same time I feel strangely disconnected from my body, like I’m seeing myself from a distance. From a vision, maybe. My vision.

Anna is dead. Angela is being taken to hell. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

The group comes down the stairs, Phen first, from the little I can see through the two-inch slit in the velvet curtains, then Angela being flanked by two identically dressed dark-haired girls. I don’t see their faces, but something about them strikes me as young, about my own age, maybe even younger. Angela’s face as she passes is shocked; tears gleam on her cheeks. She keeps her eyes down. Then a guy I’ve never seen before saunters by—the one called Desmond, I assume—and finally a man in a black suit who looks enough like Samjeeza that from a distance I doubt I could tell them apart. He raises a hand, and everybody stops in the middle of the lobby.

“You two,” he says. “I want you to stay and clean up.”

“Clean up?” repeats one of the girls in almost a whine. “But Father—”

“Burn the place,” he says.

“But how are we supposed to get back?” asks the other.

“Just take care of it,” he says irritably.

Desmond snickers, and one of the girls hits him hard in the chest. He lifts his fist to retaliate, but Asael stops him, laying a hand on his shoulder in a paternal manner, then turns to Angela and grabs her gently at the back of the neck. He smiles. Leans close to her ear. Whispers, “This, my child, is where you must abandon all hope.”

They vanish.

The first girl makes a disgusted sound, kicks a booted foot against one of the brass poles that holds up a line of velvet rope. It topples to the floor with a resounding crash. “Why do we always get the crap jobs?”

I expect Phen to disappear too, now that his dirty work is done, but he stays. He comes to the theater entrance and pulls back the curtain, forcing Christian and me to slink even farther into the belly of the auditorium, deeper in shadows, crouching among the seats.

“All the world’s a stage,” Phen says absently, like he’s talking to himself. “And all the men and women merely players.”

“What are you talking about?” one of the girls asks him. Their voices are exactly the same, like they’re twins or something, although one of them is wearing a bunch of glinting silver bracelets that occasionally jangle together when she moves. From the sound of it they’re breaking open the cash register at the refreshments counter and scooping out the change.