“Yes.”

“And what if I kill him?” I said through gritted teeth, and the magic zipped through my blood, alight with lust at the thought of death. “Will I free my mother? Will I free Patrick and any other soul trapped inside him?”

“We don’t know,” Gabriel said quietly. “No one has ever killed a nephilim before.”

“Why the hell not?” I shouted. “Obviously they’re monsters, and you and Beezle and probably every angel and demon in the world knows about them. So why hasn’t anyone gone nuclear on them and rid the world of their presence once and for all?”

“The Grigori saw the nephilim and knew they were monsters,” Gabriel said. “But they were also the Grigori’s children. The children of nightmares, yes, but their children nonetheless. The Grigori had never had children before—no angel had. They could not bear the thought of killing their own offspring. So they bound the nephilim in the Valley of Sorrows for all eternity.”

“Well, obviously their binding didn’t take. What the hell is Ramuell doing rampaging around Chicago? How did he break free?”

“We are not entirely sure,” Gabriel said, frowning. “If he had simply broken free—an unlikely event, as all of the Grigori poured their power into the binding of the nephilim—then he would simply kill and destroy until he was captured again. I do not believe that Ramuell is ‘rampaging, ’ as you put it. These attacks appear to be controlled in some way. Lord Azazel has long suspected that someone, an enemy of Lucifer’s, is controlling Ramuell and using him for their own purpose.” “What purpose,” I said, and I could taste the magic on my tongue, hungry and eager, “would it serve to kill Katherine Black? How would she be a threat to Lucifer?”

“We don’t know,” Gabriel said again. “But Lord Azazel believes that your mother’s connection to him was one reason she was targeted.”

I felt a little hysterical. “So because my mother made the mistake of falling in love with my father, she was murdered and her soul is trapped forever inside this nephilim, which no one knows how to destroy?”

Beezle nodded, and I had never seen his face as heart-broken as it was now. “As Katherine died, she performed a binding to protect you from Ramuell, using her own life force as a sacrifice. She suspected that Ramuell would come for you sooner or later. There is a circle of protection approximately one-quarter mile around this building. It does not protect you from all threats, but it will keep you safe from Ramuell. He cannot enter the circle. That is why he had to lure you out the other night, using Patrick to draw you to him.”

I felt sick. My mother had sacrificed herself for me, kept me safe long after she was gone. But there wasn’t time to dwell on that now. There was something else bothering me; the first question that I had asked hadn’t been answered yet.

“So tell me,” I said, and I was proud of the control in my voice, “just what are you, Gabriel? Why did my father think that you were the only one who could protect me from Ramuell?”

Beezle looked at Gabriel, whose jaw was clenched. There were meteors exploding in Gabriel’s eyes.

“It is your secret to tell,” Beezle said, and he bowed his head.

“And it is not the time to tell it,” Gabriel said. He held up a hand to stop the protest on my lips. “It will not help you find Ramuell.”

“But it will help me know if you are to be trusted,” I said.

“You will have to trust that Lord Azazel knew what he was about when he sent me, and that the gargoyle would not allow me here if he thought you would come to harm.”

I looked at Beezle, who shrugged and said, “I don’t have to like him, but what the devil says is true.”

I didn’t trust my father, and I wasn’t sure that I entirely trusted Gabriel, but I knew that Beezle would never put me in harm’s way. If Gabriel was really a threat to me, Beezle would never have let him walk through the front door in the first place, geas or no.

“You will tell me,” I said to Gabriel.

He nodded. “When the time is right.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but I figured I had been given more than enough information to go on for now. At least I knew what I was up against. Lucifer’s child.

Lucifer . . . the dream that I’d had of Evangeline. She had been pregnant with Lucifer’s child. Was that Ramuell inside her? Was the nephilim somehow sending me these visions, confusing me, trying to lure me to it by making me sympathize with its human mother?

I wondered if I should tell Gabriel and Beezle about my dreams. But I held back. My magic was whispering in the back of my head, telling me to wait, that it was not yet time.

I still needed to get into the Hall of Records. I needed some way to track Ramuell, and the only way I could think to do that was by finding his victims. That, or perhaps the witch that I was supposed to meet for the concealment charm could make me a tracking spell. The problem was you usually needed something personal for a tracking spell, and if I could get close enough to the monster to draw a hair or prick its finger, then I wouldn’t need the stupid spell in the first place.

I realized suddenly that I was exhausted. The revelations of the last twenty-four hours and assorted beatings I’d taken were catching up with me. Gabriel seemed to sense that I’d had enough.

“I will return to you tomorrow,” Gabriel said, and sketched a little bow before sweeping out without another word.

“We’ll be waiting with bated breath,” Beezle muttered as the front door closed.

“I need popcorn,” I announced.

“Dinner of champions,” Beezle said, and hitched a ride on me into the kitchen.

I took a package of popcorn out of the pantry and stuck it in the microwave, noticing as I did that the microwave clock said it was five forty-seven.

“I can’t believe this day isn’t over yet,” I groaned, resting my elbows on the counter and dropping my head into my hands. Beezle scrambled down from my neck and onto the counter, his claws clicking. “When is it okay for me to go to bed and pretend the last two days never happened?”

“Huh,” Beezle said, hunched in front of the microwave and focused with a predator’s intensity on the popcorn bag turning on the glass plate. The only food that Beezle liked better than chocolate was popcorn.

“Beezle,” I said. “How come you never told me about my father?”

The gargoyle dragged his eyes reluctantly away from the popcorn bag, which had started to pop. His face was a mixture of shame and defensiveness. “I wanted to,” he said.

“But . . . ?” I asked, rotating my wrist in a circle to indicate that he should go on.

“Your mother asked me not to tell you anything unless it became necessary.”

The microwave beeped, indicating that the cycle was complete. Beezle scurried out of the way so that I could get the popcorn out of the microwave and put it in a bowl.

“Define ‘necessary,’”I said as I took two handfuls of popcorn and put them on a napkin.

He watched me take my serving of popcorn with greedy eyes. “You know . . . if Azazel showed up, I was to tell you everything. Other than that, Katherine left it to my judgment.”

“And your judgment was to keep me completely in the dark, even after I made nightfire? I’m sure that most gargoyles would consider that a ‘necessary’ moment.”

He looked abashed, but there was a defensive note in his voice as he said, “I was already under that devil’s geas when you manifested nightfire. I couldn’t tell you anything that would reveal him or your father.”

I looked at Beezle carefully, trying to decide how angry I wanted to be about his withholding information from me. Beezle loved me, I knew he did, but he had loved my mother far more. If she had asked him to keep a secret until he turned to stone, he would have. I could be as upset and angry as I liked, but the fact that his loyalty was to Katherine and the promises he made her wouldn’t change. I sighed as I handed Beezle the rest of the bowl and he stuck his face so far into the popcorn that all I could see were the tops of his ears.

There would be no talking while Beezle was eating, so I decided to eat a little, too. I was pretty sure that I hadn’t eaten all day. After two kernels of corn I realized that my head was still too sore from Antares’s beating to chew anything. When I tried to crunch down, a bolt of pain ran from my back teeth up to my eyeballs. I dumped the rest of the popcorn back into the bowl. I could see Beezle’s whole face now. His jaws worked with grim determination on the remaining few handfuls at the bottom. I decided I wasn’t that hungry after all.

I was definitely tired. Everything that I had learned in the last couple of days weighed on my heart. Patrick’s death and avenging my mother had been shunted aside by Antares, Gabriel, Lucifer, and my father, the fallen angel. And even with all of this happening, I still had my job to do. People don’t stop dying just because an Agent has personal issues, even if those personal issues are increasingly apocalyptic in nature.

I could infer without any help from Beezle that Gabriel had been sent to me because Azazel was clearly having troubles of his own, and his enemies would want to use me to get to him.

Case in point: my darling half brother. And Antares was probably going to take it very personally that he hadn’t been able to rip my heart from my chest on the first try. He just seemed like the type.

Thoughts of being a pawn in a looming demon war made me want to swallow a jar of antacids, so I pushed that aside for the time being and tried to concentrate on what I needed to do immediately.

“Beezle,” I said, tapping my finger on the counter. “Tomorrow I want you to go with me to Greenwitch’s.”

Beezle licked the greasy butter film off the bottom of the bowl before he spoke. “I don’t do things or go places. I stay here and guard the domicile. That’s the duty of a gargoyle.”

“It wasn’t the duty of a gargoyle the night Patrick was killed,” I reminded him. “Besides, I want you with me for a while.”