I let go of Will’s arm and touched his face. “Thank you,” I said, and kissed his cheek. “Thank you for this.”

“Thank you, Preliator,” Ethan Stone said.

I turned to him and made sure the tone of my voice ensured that Stone would heed my warning. “Don’t make me regret my mercy, or I’ll come back here and kill you myself.”

“You won’t,” he replied. “I am in your debt.”

“For now,” I began, “I’ll take this.” I clutched the grimoire close to my chest.

He regarded me shrewdly. “What do you plan on doing with it?”

“I have an angel to evoke.”

“Ah,” Stone said. “Dangerous creatures, angels. I would have thought you were interested in getting in touch with your inner angel.”

“That’s not something I’m willing to talk about with you,” I said coldly. “We’re leaving now. Thanks for the book.”

Will let his sword disappear and he followed me down the stairs and toward the exit.

“You’ll want to take a closer look at the Ars Goetia, Gabriel,” Ethan called from behind us.

I faced him, looking up at him leaning over the loft balcony. I longed to stay and ask him about everything he could possibly know and about all of the secrets in his cavernous libraries, but there was no time. I now had what I came for and I wouldn’t stop here.

A smile split Ethan Stone’s sharp face. “Happy reading, archangel.”

14

I SPENT THE NEXT SEVERAL HOURS SCOURING THAT book, turning crisp, delicate pages, my eyes straining to read Nathaniel’s elegant medieval script. If there was a way to evoke the angel of death, it was not in the grimoire. It may have been in the original scroll written by Antares, but Nathaniel didn’t include it here. It wasn’t until we had landed in Detroit and were driving through Southfield that a lightbulb switched on.

“Oh my God,” I murmured as the cryptic last words of Ethan Stone unraveled in my head. “The Ars Goetia. Stone, you smartass.”

“What is it?” Will asked and glanced over his shoulder at the open pages in my lap. “The Lesser Key of Solomon. Why does that sound so familiar?”

I was practically bouncing in my seat. “The Ars Goetia is the first book in the Lemegeton, also known as The Lesser Key of Solomon. The version Nathaniel wrote here is the original Middle Latin text naming and describing seventy-two demons that can be evoked, but he also included the English version published in 1904 by Aleister Crowley for reference.”

“Crowley? The occultist Crowley?”

“That’s the one,” I said. “And I know what Stone was getting at when he recommended I pay close attention to this section. Crowley believed that the Ring of Solomon, also called the Pentalpha, was real. This ring is said to be able to summon and control the Fallen bound in Hell.”

“I’ve heard of the Pentalpha,” Will said. “But no one’s ever found it. Just because some lunatic strung out on opiates believed something mythical exists doesn’t mean it really does.”

I couldn’t help but smile. I felt like I was the only one in the world who knew that this war was about to turn in our favor, thanks to Ethan Stone.

“The Pentalpha does exist,” I said, “because I’m the one who made it and gave it to King Solomon. He was a psychic who engineered one of the earliest reaper-hunting groups.”

Will grew quiet and seemed to digest what I’d told him. “Okay, say this Ring of Solomon is real. How will it help us? We don’t exactly have any Fallen we want to evoke.”

“Because I created it, I have complete control over it,” I explained. “Instead of summoning a demon, I can make it summon an angel. I will evoke Azrael.”

“Do you think you can really do that?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Okay then,” he said. “Let’s find it. A relic that powerful is bound to have a guardian—a very strong guardian. We should look into the known guardians and narrow down possible leads. Ava can help with that, but with a relic that can summon demons, it’s likely to be very well hidden and—”

He stopped midsentence and stared ahead onto the busy road. The car slowed, but the countless headlights and neon flashes of traffic signals were too disorienting and I couldn’t quite see what he saw.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

“There’s something in the road.”

A moment later, I could make out what his reaper eyes saw: the silhouette of a figure shaped like a man stood in the middle of the busy road. “Oh no,” I breathed as a pair of wings stretched from the figure’s shoulders, wings that were in plain view of human beings.

Will smashed the gas pedal to the floor. The engine roared as the turbochargers kicked in and we raced past cars in the other lanes.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice trembling. My hands tightened on both the dashboard and console. “Will, please slow down. Slow down!”

His foot jammed harder on the pedal and the figure zoomed into closer view. I caught an electrifying blaze of moonlight eyes before the reaper launched himself off the ground and out of the path of the Audi’s grill. Will swore and slammed on the brakes. The tires squealed as the car fishtailed. He avoided the other cars in the lanes by swinging into the parking lot of a strip center and the tires screeched to a halt. The reaper landed in the middle of the street with a bend of his knees and his back to us. Headlights from passing vehicles fell on gleaming black membranous wings that spread high and wide, and his inky black power rolled across the ground toward us, the pressure like extremely low frequency in my ears.