Raquel and Geo peeled back the thick black curtains, each peeking out a separate window as the taillights of Adena’s SUV disappeared into the darkness. They waited for a tense few minutes, not making a sound or moving away, in case the teenagers decided to be slick and circle around the block. When it was clear they were gone, the cousins burst out laughing.

  “Oh, man!” Geo shouted, curling into himself as he slapped his knee. “I can’t believe they fell for it.”

  “Yeah. And that was a surprisingly good idea you had to play up our disappointment. My brother had the smuggest look, like he totally caught us.”

  “Y’know, I was ninety-nine percent sure Adena was the smartest in our crew, but has it low-key been us the whole time?”

  Raquel shook her head, as she dug Leila’s key card out of her pocket. Since they shared a room, she had taken it from her purse while she and Adena fussed over their outfits. “Okay, let’s not get crazy. They’re all just too anxious or horny to think straight right now. I mean, did you see Rodrigo and Leila making googly eyes at each other. Boyfriend or not, I bet you $10 they’ll be sucking face by the end of the night.”

  “Sure, I’ll take your money. Don’t tell him I said so, cuz the dude’s starting to scare me, but your brother doesn’t have enough rizz to lock that down.” As the glee of getting one over on Rodrigo and the others faded, Geo grew serious. “So, real-talk, you sure this is gonna work? I know opening the doors from the inside doesn’t use fingerprints, but can we really use her card to get back in.”

  Raquel sucked her teeth, shoving Leila’s card into the slot by the front doors. “I told you already, I tested it the other day. The doors open so long as it’s a fingerprint that’s in the system. I guess it’s so no one gets locked out in a crisis, where one of us has to use the other’s card. Course, that doesn’t work for the individual rooms.”

  The large doors parted, exposing them to the night air and sounds. Raquel knew Rodrigo was trying to protect them, but then he should’ve agreed to take her and Geo to the party when they asked. Once they accepted that crashing the high-school party was unrealistic, they decided to have their own get together at Wilson’s house, with him, Jamie, and a few others. Raquel had wanted to host it at the warehouse, to reduce the risk of getting caught, but since seeing Rodrigo overpower two grown men like they were children yesterday, her boyfriend had gone from being wary of to deathly afraid of her brother. If he knew the whole truth, he’d probably cut all contact with her.

  As they walked toward the bus stop, Raquel kept her head on a swivel, like she had learned from watching Adena. Her long, baggie lilac hoodie masked the shape of the Beretta holstered on her hip. She had cut a hole in the hoodie’s right pocket so that she could free it before an enemy even knew she was armed. More than the demons, the night brought out the people looking to take advantage of all the gaps left by the cops killed during the invasion. Even with fast-tracking the time it took to complete the police academy, most of the best candidates had been drafted into the military, leaving them understaffed.

  Geo twirled his retracted staff in his hand, as he glanced over his shoulder back at the warehouse. “I just wanna make sure you’re not feening to see your boyfriend and goof up, getting us caught.”

  Raquel flashed him a patronizing smile. “Aw, poor baby. Is someone feeling a teensy bit lonely with no girl to call his own? If so, I have good news for you. I showed a picture of us to my friend Nikki, and I guess she either has low standards, or she’s in the market for a younger boy to fawn over her, because she said you’re cute. I can introduce you guys, if you want.”

  “Pfft. You think I care about middle-school girls when hot Ukrainian chicks are dying to meet me.”

  This nearly stopped Raquel in her tracks. “What? What are you talking about?”

  Geo didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. “Yeah, I was surprised, too. But I was just chilling, watching a trailer for the latest Call of Duty on my computer, when a message popped up from this hottie, Katya.”

  Raquel raised her brows. “Are you screwing with me, or are you really that gullible?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. Clickbait. But, no! I started chatting her up for laughs, figuring it was a bot, and she was asking me about how life is in America. She probably hacked my webcam to get a peek at me, and with how jacked I’m getting, figured I was 18, too.” Seeming undisturbed by that possibility, Geo rolled his sleeves up and flexed his small, but defined biceps.

  Raquel wasn’t sure what was sadder, some man impersonating an attractive woman to con poor saps out of money, or a real live woman trying to wring a green card out of a seventh grader. “I hate to rain on your idiot parade, but the only thing Katya’s dying to meet are your dad’s credit card numbers.”

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  Geo opened his mouth to speak, but a scream cut him off. Across the street, an older man was sprinting down the sidewalk, as a pack of young men dressed in purple and black chased after him. The more committed members even had streaks or their entire hair dyed blue. Dusks.

  Raquel reached for her holstered pistol. “Should we help him?”

  Geo shook his head and kept walking. “If Dusks are after him, it’s cuz he did something nasty.”

  That seemed to be an opinion shared by most non-police officers. Imitating Rodrigo’s failure of a fashion sense had started with a few dozen teenagers, mostly outcasts. Raquel figured it was done in an attempt to show solidarity. But once those same kids realized that Rodrigo was either too busy fighting demons, or purposely ignoring human criminals, they decided to take justice into their own hands, and things snowballed from there. Now, there were thousands of them around the country, and Raquel was just dreading that one moron who was going to ruin things for everyone by killing a shoplifter or something.

  Raquel stopped and watched as the Dusks gained on the man. They were going to catch him, and when they did, they were going to beat him senseless, and leave him for the already overworked hospitals. But was whatever he was guilty of worth the chance of being given brain damage? Maybe she should find out.

  Raquel had just started crossing the street, pulling her pistol out through her hoodie’s ripped pocket, when a series of cracks echoed through the night. The two Dusks closest to catching the man, fell down behind parked cars and shrieked, disappearing from view. The others skidded to a halt and stared down at the sidewalk in shock.

  Raquel doubled back, taking cover behind a parked truck. She flattened herself against the ground, looking to get a glimpse beneath the cars. The two guys that went down were still moving, so not dead, or even hurt badly enough to lose consciousness. But the ground beneath them was frozen over with a thin sheet of ice.

  Raquel pushed herself onto her feet, leaving the shelter of the ten-wheeler and glancing everywhere for the demon responsible. Like Rodrigo, she had begun studying demonology, though unlike him, she had a social life and could only dedicate so much time to it. But despite what several cultures believed, nowhere in the documented parts of Hell was it cold. So, she hadn’t read anything about demons that could manipulate ice, but apparently, they existed.

  Geo came to her side, his head tilted back and his mouth hanging open. Raquel followed his wide-eyed gaze and as she spotted them, must have had the same stupefied expression he did. Suspended in mid-air, not a hundred feet above the Dusks’ heads were a group of seven winged beings. Their wings all differed in size and appearance, matching their hair in color, not one of them having the white and fluffy wings they were so often depicted with. They were too high up for Raquel to make out their faces, but they were staring down at the Dusks intently.

  “A-are those...angels?” Geo asked.

  “D-don’t jump to conclusions. They could be demons disguising themselves.” Even as Raquel said it, she knew it wasn’t true. The longer she gawked at them like a bumpkin, the more the feelings of hope and tranquility grew within her. They were what humanity had been praying for, and gradually losing faith in ever seeing. The other side of the demonic coin.

  The angel at the head of the flock had wings and hair such a striking shade of red, Raquel doubted a word existed in English for it. He must have been in charge, because his wings were larger and more intricate than the others, having a glass-like quality to them. He seemed to be arguing with the black-winged one floating by his side, who had his splayed hand stretched toward the ground, and was either responsible for the ice or was planning to escalate the situation.

  Raquel, Geo, the Dusks, and the man they had been chasing were all in a trance as they watched the divine beings. One of the Dusks was the first to snap out of it enough to pull out his phone to try to take a picture. But no sooner had he pointed the camera at the angels than they flapped their wings and seven ear-popping sonic booms were heard. They were gone.

  Geo regained his senses faster than Raquel, and took out his own phone.

  “What are you doing?” Raquel asked.

  “Duh. Calling Jett,” Geo said, and Raquel snatched the phone from his hand. “The hell? I know you kinda planned it, but I think letting our brothers know the angels just dipped out the clouds is a bigger deal than our little pizza party.”

  “Stop and think,” Raquel said. “If we call them now, it doesn’t just ruin our good time, but theirs, too. And don’t forget, we’d have to explain how we sneaked out, meaning Adena would patch it, and we’d never get out that way again.”

  Geo’s body tensed, and Raquel thought she might have to stop him from trying to take his phone back with some of that Krav Maga Adena had been teaching her. But after a moment, he relaxed. “So, when do we tell them?”

  “I don’t think we’ll have to. If it’s like how it was with the demons, they’re probably showing up worldwide right now. But if somehow the others don’t hear about it by tomorrow, then we’ll face the music and come clean. Okay?”

  Geo gave a reluctant nod, and they continued on their way to the bus stop. The crowding of trains and the pitch-black of the tunnels they entered had made NYC’s subway system an all-you-can-kill buffet for the demons and still hadn’t been reopened to the public.

  Raquel’s motives weren’t all as selfish as she made them appear. While, yeah, she didn’t exactly want to get chewed out for this, she was more concerned about what her brother’s reaction would be. He was just starting to get back to his normal, lame self, instead of that bloodthirsty lunatic he had turned into after Carlito’s death. She knew he needed the angels’ help to finally be free of Resent, or at least as free as one could be of their brother, so he was on a collision course with them regardless. But at least she could let him have one night to blow off some steam before the cycle of violence swallowed him again.