“I’ll speak for you. I’ll do anything I can to stop them. Right now they’re more worried about the Nephilim and whether Uriel will use your presence as an excuse to move against us. I just don’t want you to count on Raziel. He’s sworn off caring about anyone, and I’m afraid he’s not going to make an exception for you.” She tilted her head sideways, assessing me. “At least, I don’t think so. But I’ll fight for you. And sometimes they listen.”

And if that didn’t sound like a rock-solid guarantee, I figured it was the best I could expect. If I was going to get out of this mess, I’d have to figure it out on my own.

Sammael appeared at the door just as Sarah was leaving, and he didn’t look any happier to see me than he had before.

“Are you ready?” he asked politely.

I suddenly remembered all those flights of stairs, and groaned. Once a day was enough. “I don’t suppose you have an elevator hidden anywhere around here?”

“No.” Sammael moved past me to push open a section of the windows that I had blithely assumed was solid wall. The wind was rising, swirling into the apartment, but in Raziel’s sterile environment there was nothing loose that could be blown away. “Come with me—we’ll take the shortcut.”

I looked from Sammael’s calm face to the wind and ocean just beyond those doors to nowhere. He was an angel, wasn’t he? Albeit Sarah had said he was one of the angels of death. He wasn’t going to toss me out the window, was he?

You can only die once, I thought, not knowing whether it was true or not. Taking Sammael’s hand, I stepped out into a nothingness that was blindingly bright.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

IT SEEMED AS IF A MOMENT HAD passed, or an hour. I found myself standing on a cliff, much higher up than the house had been, and I’d never been crazy about heights. I could see out over the vast ocean, and the sun beginning to sink lower on the horizon. Pacific Ocean, then. The ground was wet beneath my feet, and there was no sign of my missing mentor. I glanced at Sammael. I couldn’t remember holding on to him, soaring through those misty skies. But clearly I hadn’t walked.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“In the cave. Just go straight—you’ll find him.”

We were three-quarters of the way up a mountain that I hadn’t even realized was nearby. Its top was enshrouded in mist, as was the rocky shoreline below, and I could see the great yawning mouth of a cave closer than I would have liked. I waited for the familiar panic to set in. “I’m claustrophobic when it comes to caves,” I finally admitted, glancing nervously at the rough-hewn entrance, worn smooth by centuries of scouring winds. In fact, I didn’t like heights, closed-in places, places that were too open—give me a phobia and I embraced it enthusiastically.

“Not anymore,” Sammael said in a colorless voice. “You should watch what you say. You’ll be lucky if the Council simply decides to grant you the Grace.”

“The Grace?” That sounded almost pleasant.

“Your memory would be wiped clean. I promise you, it wouldn’t hurt, and you’d be perfectly happy. You’d be able to do simple tasks, perhaps even learn to read and write a few simple words.”

I stared at him in absolute horror. “No,” I said flatly.

“It won’t be your choice.” He seemed unmoved by my reaction. “Do you want me to take you to Raziel?”

“I can manage,” I said, not sure that I could, but I really didn’t want to hear any more of Sammael’s awful possibilities. The inhabitants of Sheol seemed to have mixed feelings about me. Azazel, Sammael, and Raziel clearly thought I didn’t belong, and I was happy to agree with them. Tamlel, Sarah, and the Stepford wives were welcoming, but that would probably mean nothing once they held their council meeting. “But I thank you for the offer. I think I need to figure out how to get what I need on my own, don’t I?”

He barely registered my question. “I’ll come back if there’s a problem.”

“How will you know?” I asked suspiciously. Raziel had been able to read my mind—if it turned out the whole place knew what I was thinking, then maybe I wouldn’t mind getting a lobotomy.

“Sarah will know. Sarah will tell me,” he said simply, as if he expected me to know something so basic.

Clearly Sarah was a force to be reckoned with. It was a good thing that she seemed to be on my side. “I’ll be fine,” I said firmly, and before I could add to it, Sammael had disappeared into the wind.

“Well, damn,” I said out loud. I’d been hoping to see wings. If Sammael came equipped with them, I hadn’t had time to notice. Which made travel convenient, but still a little bit puzzling.

I turned to look at the cave, waiting for the icy fear to set in, but I felt nothing but an entirely reasonable nervousness at the thought of bearding Raziel in his den. Sammael had told the truth—the claustrophobia had vanished. Whoopee, I thought with a suitable lack of enthusiasm, walking forward.

I still wasn’t crazy about enclosed spaces. The wide corridor into the mountain looked as if it had been a mine shaft, if they had mine shafts in the afterlife. It narrowed a little too swiftly as I made my way down it. Normally I’d be curled up on the ground, covered with a cold sweat. The fact that I could keep moving, deeper and deeper into the mountain, was more proof of how different things were. A proof I could easily have done without.

I wasn’t quite sure what I expected. The corridor took a couple of sharp turns, shutting out the daylight at the entrance, but I managed to keep going without stopping to hyperventilate. Where the hell was Raziel? I had the sudden fear that Sammael had pulled a Hansel and Gretel on me, luring me to this mountain to abandon me, thereby getting rid of a messy problem. Sarah wouldn’t let him get away with that, would she?

I’d almost given up trying to find him when I turned one last corner and saw him sitting on a wooden chair in the middle of a huge stone cavern, his eyes closed.

I had planned to be a smart-ass and say something like “Yoo-hoo, imaginary creature, I’m here,” but I thought better of it. He was sitting at the edge of a great yawning hole in the center of the cave, and it looked like some of the walls had collapsed inward. He was at the very edge, too close for comfort, and as I looked he seemed to sway toward the opening.

I tried to stifle my instinctive scream, but he heard me anyway and jerked, startled. He fell backward, away from the pit, and the chair went over. I could hear it splintering against the stone walls as it fell, and I shivered. He rose, focusing on me, and I tried for a cheerful smile.

As I expected, he wasn’t the least bit pleased to see me. “How did you get here?” he demanded, not moving any closer.

“Sammael,” I said.