there's a small kitchen. i just about broke down in tears when i saw the pantry stacked full of snacks. energy bars, nuts, fun-sized chocolates, and even a case of instant noodles, the kind that come in their own cups. why hadn't i thought to look in offices before? probably because i'd never worked in one.

i ignore the refrigerator, knowing there's nothing in there worth eating. we still have electricity but it's unreliable and often goes off for days at a time. there must still be frozen meals in the freezer because the smell is not unlike my mother's rotten eggs. the office building even has its own shower, probably for those overweight executives trying to lose weight at lunch time. whatever the reason, it came in handy for rinsing off the blood.

all the comforts of home without, of course, my family who would make it home.

with all the responsibilities and pressures, hardly a day has gone by when i haven't thought i'd be happier without my family. but it turns out that's not true. maybe it would be if i wasn't so worried about them. i can't help but think how happy paige and my mother would have been if we'd found this place together. we could have parked here for a week and pretended that everything was all right.

i feel adrift and clanless, lost and insignificant. i begin to understand what drives the new orphans to join the street gangs.

we have been here two days. two days in which the angel has neither died nor recovered. he just lies there, sweating. i'm pretty sure he's dying. if he wasn't, he would have awakened by now, wouldn't he?

i find a first aid kit under the sink, but the band aids and most of the other supplies are really meant for nothing worse than paper cuts. i rummage through the first aid box, reading the labels on the little packages. there is a bottle of aspirin. doesn't aspirin reduce fevers as well as get rid of a headache? i read the label, and it confirms my suspicions.

i have no idea if aspirin will work on an angel, or if his fever has anything to do with his wounds. for all i know, this could be his regular temperature. just because he looks human doesn't mean he is.

i walk back to the corner office with aspirin and a glass of water. the angel lies on his stomach on the black couch. i had tried to put a blanket over him that first night, but he just kept kicking it off. so now, he lies on the couch with only his pants, boots and bandages wrapped around him. i thought about taking off his pants and boots when i sprayed the blood off him in the shower, but decided that i wasn't here to make him comfortable.

his black hair is plastered to his forehead. i try to get him to swallow some pills and drink some water but i can't wake him enough to do anything. he just lies there like a burning piece of rock, totally unresponsive.

"if you don't drink this water, i'm just going to leave you here to die alone."

his bandaged back moves up and down serenely, just as it's been doing for the last two days.

i've been out four times looking for mom. but i haven't gone far, always afraid the angel would wake while i was gone and i would miss my chance to find paige before he died on me. crazy women can sometimes fend for themselves on the streets, while wheelchair-bound little girls never can. so each time, i rushed back from my search for mom, relieved and frustrated to find the angel still unconscious.

for two days, i've been mostly sitting around eating instant noodles while my sister....

i can't bear to think about what's happening to her, if for no other reason than my sheer lack of imagination as to what angels would want with a human child. it couldn't be enslavement. she can't walk. i shut down those thoughts. i will not think about what may be happening or what may already have happened. i just need to focus on finding her.

the anger and frustration swamp me. all i want to do is throw a tantrum like a two-year-old. i'm overwhelmed by a strong urge to hurl my glass of water at the wall, tear down the bookshelves, and scream my head off. the urge is so strong my hand starts to tremble, and the water in the glass shakes, threatening to spill.

instead of hurling the glass against the wall, i throw the water on the angel. i want to smash the glass after it, but i hold back.

"wake up, damn you. wake up! what are they doing to my sister? what do they want with her? where the hell is she?" i scream at the top of my lungs, knowing i could be bringing on street gangs and not caring.

i kick the couch for good measure.

to my utter amazement, his eyes open blearily. deep blue eyes glare at me. "can you keep it down? i'm trying to sleep." his voice is raw and full of pain, but somehow, he still manages to inject a certain level of condescension.

i drop down on my knees to look directly into his face. "where did the other angels go? where did they take my sister?"

he deliberately closes his eyes.

i slap his back with everything i've got, right where the bandages are bloodied.

his eyes fly open, his teeth gritting. he hisses through his teeth but he doesn't cry out in pain. wow, does he look pissed off. i resist the urge to take a step back.

"you don't scare me." i say in my coldest voice, trying to tamp down the fear. "you're too weak to even stand, you're practically bled out, and without me, you'd already be dead. tell me where they took her."

"she's dead," he says with absolute finality. then he closes his eyes as though going back to sleep.

i could swear my heart stops beating for a minute. my fingers feel like they're freezing. then my breath comes back to me in a painful heave.

"you're lying. you're lying."

he doesn't respond. i grab the old blanket that i left on the desk.

"look at me!" i unroll the blanket onto the floor. the torn wings come tumbling out of it. rolled up, they compressed to a tiny fraction of their wing span. the feathers almost seem to have disappeared. as they tumble out of the blanket, the wings partially open, and the fine down lifts as if stretching after a long nap.

i imagine that the horror in his eyes would be exactly like that of a human's if he saw his own amputated legs rolling out of that moth-eaten blanket. i know i'm being unforgivably cruel, but i don't have the luxury of being nice, not if i ever want to see paige alive again.

"recognize these?" i hardly recognize my own voice. it's cold and hard. the voice of a mercenary. the voice of a torturer.

the wings have lost their sheen. there is still a hint of golden highlights in the snowy feathers, but some of the feathers are broken and sticking out at odd angles. also, blood is splattered and congealed all over the wings, making the feathers clump and shrivel.

"if you help me find my sister, you can have these back. i saved them for you."

"thanks," he croaks, surveying the wings. "they'll look great on my wall." bitterness tinges his voice, but something else is also there. a tiny bit of hope, maybe.

"before you and your buddies destroyed our world, there used to be doctors who could attach a finger or a hand back onto you if it happened to be cut off." i don't mention anything about refrigeration or the usual need to reattach a body part within hours of being severed. he'll probably die anyway and none of this will matter.

the tense muscle in his jaw still stands out on his cold face, but his eyes warm just a fraction, as if he can't help but think of the possibilities.

"i didn't cut these off you," i say. "but i can help you get them back. if you'll help me find my sister."

as an answer, he closes his eyes and appears to fall asleep.

he breathes deeply and heavily, just like a person in deep sleep. but he doesn't heal like a person. when i dragged him in here, his face was black, blue, and swelling. now, after almost two full days of sleeping, his face is back to normal. the dent from his broken ribs has disappeared. the bruises around his cheeks and eyes are gone, and the numerous cuts and marks on his hands, shoulders, and chest are completely healed.

the only things that haven't healed are the wounds where his wings used to be. i can't tell if they're better through the bandages, but since they're still bleeding, they're probably not much better than they were two days ago.

i pause for a moment, thinking through my options. if i can't bribe him, i'll have to torture it out of him. i'm determined to do what it takes to keep my family alive, but i don't know if i can go that far.

but he doesn't have to know that.

now that he's awake, i had better make sure i can keep him under control. i head out to see if i can find something to hold him.

chapter 7

when i walk out of the corner office, i find that the dead man in the foyer has been messed with. he seems to have lost all dignity since the last time i saw him.

someone has arranged for one hand to be propped on his hip while the other hand reaches up to his hair. his long, shaggy hair has been spiked as though electrocuted, and his mouth is smeared drunkenly with lipstick. his eyes are wide open with black felt lines radiating like sun rays from his eyes. in the middle of his chest, a kitchen knife that wasn't there an hour ago sticks out like a flagpole. someone stabbed a dead body for reasons only the insane can fathom.

my mother has found me.

my mother's condition is not as consistent as some might think. the intensity of her insanity waxes and wanes with no predictable schedule or trigger. of course, it doesn't help that she's off her meds. when it's good, people might not guess there's anything wrong with her. those are the days when the guilt of my anger and frustration toward her eat away at me. when it's bad, i might walk out of my room to find a dead-man-turned-toy on the floor.

to be fair, she has never played with corpses before, at least, not that i've seen. before the world fell apart, she'd always been on the edge and often several steps beyond it. but my dad's desertion, then later the attacks, intensified everything. whatever rational part of her that had been holding her back from diving into the darkness simply dissolved.

i think about burying the body, but a cold part of my mind tells me that this is still the best deterrent i could have. any sane person who looks through the glass doors would run far, far away. we now play a permanent game of i-am-crazier-and-scarier-than-you. and in that game, my mother is our secret weapon.

i walk cautiously toward the bathrooms where the shower is running. my mother hums a haunting melody, one that i think she made up. she used to sing it to us when she was in her half-lucid state. a wordless tune that is both sad and nostalgic. it may have had words to it at one point because every time i hear it, it evokes a sunset over the ocean, an ancient castle, and a beautiful princess who throws herself off the castle walls into the pounding surf below.