punished the evil. Together, they kept the world in balance.
“But the messengers of justice enjoyed the violence a little too much. They decided small missteps by humans were worthy of severe punishment. It wasn’t about justice anymore. It was about ego, about their conceptions of right and wrong. They lost their moral compass.”
“The Dark Ones?” I guessed.
“The Dark Ones,” he confirmed. “Angels with brutal swords of righteousness. Humans fought back against them; the Dark Ones went nuclear. They took out entire cities they thought didn’t measure up to their standards. Carthage was just one example. The conflict goes back much, much further.”
“How far?” Paige asked.
“Sodom and Gomorrah far.”
“Why call them ‘Dark Ones’?” Paige asked.
“According to Kantor, the darker their souls became, the darker their wings became.” He flipped a page again. This drawing showed only a caricature of a creature with dark wings, their size dwarfing the rest of the image. “Because of that, some sups, including your gnomes, referred to them as ‘Dark Ones.’ ”
“And other sups?” I wondered.
He glanced at me. “Humans think of them as demons, although to be a ‘demon’ doesn’t really mean anything. ‘Demon’ is a quality, not a species. To be demonic—those who abandon good and give themselves wholly to the darkness.”
“So Todd thinks Seth Tate was a Dark One,” Paige said. “Theory or fact?”
“Tate fought Ethan with a sword, and Paulie was killed with a blade,” I said. “Paulie’s definitely guilty of some transgressions. Manufacturing V, for one. If Seth is a Dark One, he could have had a justice motive. Harsh justice, but still.”
“Ironic he doesn’t consider himself worthy of that kind of justice,” Paige muttered. “But even if that explains Seth,” Paige said, “what about the other Seth?”
“I have no idea. So, to summarize, Seth was an angry angel, Mallory tried to conjure evil, and Seth touched the book at the same time she triggered the spell. That somehow doubled him up, so now we have two identical angry angels flying around Chicago.”
The very idea made me want to run away screaming…or hide under my bed for a few weeks.
“That would appear to be the case,” Paige said.
I glanced back at the librarian. “Were there a lot of messengers? If he’s one of them, can we narrow down which one?”
“There aren’t many. Some you’ve heard of: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael.”
“The archangels,” I said.
“An angel by any other name,” the librarian said. He flipped back to the first page he’d showed us, the one with the Latin text. “There are three Dark Ones listed: Uriel, Dominic, and Azrael.”
“Are there any drawings that show their faces in any detail?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
Every question we managed to answer about Tate seemed only to spawn four or five more.
But the real question was how much time we’d have to figure it all out.
The sun was nearly up before I returned to Ethan’s apartments. I’d have much rather returned to my room, but we’d made too much progress not to give him a report. Trouble didn’t care if he was being an ass; in fact, the Tates probably would have been thrilled to hear it.
I found him in a leather armchair in his sitting room, one leg crossed over the other, his head on the back of the chair, his eyes closed.
He looked exhausted, and I could sympathize. It had been a long night—too full by half of magic books, pretentious Brits, and murder, and not nearly full enough of satisfying answers. But we had at least one more than we’d had a few hours ago, so I stood in front of him at attention and gave him a precise report.
“So Tate is a Dark One. An angel of retribution who couldn’t control his more violent urges.”
“That seems to be the case. Do you know anything else about the ‘Dark Ones’ myth? Does it sound familiar to you?”
“You mean because of my age?”
Angry or not, I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to tease him. “Well, you were alive during the big bang, weren’t you?”
He rolled his eyes. “I know the myths of the fallen angels. Those who didn’t support the right camp and ended up cast aside at a decidedly downward angle. I wasn’t aware they were alleged to have caused the destruction at Carthage. It hardly seems possible the Romans would have been able to destroy all the evidence they weren’t the true victors.”
“You came back from the dead,” I pointed out. “You really aren’t in a position to argue what is and