Chapter Eleven

Justice shuffled into the cavern, blinking grit from her eyes. “Sera, some of us pretend to have day jobs.” She rubbed sleep sand from her lashes with the back of her hand.

“I return to my threshold,” Sera said. “I wanted you to hear it from me before the sky carried me away.”

Patience stepped closer, slow and steady. “I thought you were staying with us.” Justice crossed her arms. “And helping us.”

Sera’s mouth softened. “Guardians were made to endure without me. Compassion is the law written into your bones. I was only ever a witness to it.”

Compassion’s voice was soft, but it filled the cavern. “We don’t only need you, Sera. We care about you.”

“As do I.” Sera pressed her fingers to her sternum, as if steadying the dimmed light there. “But Jack still wounds the world, and my purppose has not gone silent. If healing cannot reach him, then I must become the hand that bars the door.”

Compassion’s eyebrows rose.

“There is a sacred thing hidden near my home—old, wounded, and still bright enough to answer me. If grace will not intervene, perhaps memory will.”

Patience laid a careful hand on Sera’s shoulder, grounding rather than stopping her. “Then let us walk beside you.”

“No.” Sera covered Patience’s hand with her own, then gently lowered it. “This road is not peril only; it is contamination. I have already fallen far enough to walk it, and I will not let your mercy learn the shape of a wound meant for me.” She looked from face to face. “But if you ever come to my door, it will open. My home is yours. Always.”

They followed her outside and watched her rise into the air, her off-white wings spreading against the sky.

Time was nonlinear for angels. Sera flew into the clouds, let them carry her, and fixed her thoughts on home. She wondered why she had bothered with an airline flight earlier, but then, she had never faced evil before. Truth be told, she had also been curious about jets. In no time, she descended into her back garden. Heat steamed from her body after the effort. She spread her wings and let the cool air wash over her, but it wasn’t enough. She found the hose and drank deeply. The moonflower was closed against the daylight. Kneeling beside it, Sera thrust her hands into the earth, and the soil drank in her heat. She pushed the warmth through the garden until her plants answered, drawing the fever from her. When she could breathe again, she stood, attached the sprinkler to the hose, set the timer to soak the beds, and began to form a plan.

Where should she start? Where was the sacred thing she sought? She could pray over it, but God would not interfere. That was not their way. Free will remained, and now, tainted as she was, Sera had it too. She needed a bath to cleanse her body and settle her mind. In her study, she chose a blend of moonflower essence, calendula, natural antibiotic minerals, and a touch of darkness to tamp down her light, then added it to the bathwater. After soaking for an hour, she surfaced into late afternoon, west coast time. Wrapped in her terrycloth robe, she went to her bedroom, crawled beneath her organic sage-colored sheets, and set her alarm for eight in the evening. This would be a dark path to walk, and she needed a clear head.

Sera woke before the alarm. Night had blossomed outside. She dressed in the only black clothes she owned—workout leggings and a long-sleeved T-shirt—and hurried to the garden, where the moonflower opened to the night sky. She knelt before it and asked forgiveness. Then she plucked one flower, shredded its petals, rubbed them across her face and hands, tucked some into her pockets, and ate the rest. Armed with a small, precise collection of her blended pharmaceuticals, Sera slipped off her property toward the abandoned building half a mile away.

At the derelict building, Sera stopped beneath the broken roofline and opened her senses. The night answered wrong. Air scraped cold across her skin, and somewhere beyond the walls, something turned its attention toward her. Her heart lurched—too human, too loud. A watcher. She folded her light inward until it was no more than an ember and moved to the shattered window. Glass teeth clung to the frame. She eased through without touching them, silent as a sigh. Inside, the dark was not absence but pressure. It leaned against her eyes until they adjusted, revealing the entrance ahead: a seam of blackness denser than the room around it. On sneakered feet, Sera crossed the floor, feeling every loose board threaten betrayal, and slipped into the madness of another dimension.