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isn’t helping me at the moment.”
    Raguel opened the humidor on his desk and withdrew a cigar, placing it between his lips uncut and unlit. He didn’t smoke, but he enjoyed the act of holding a cigar in his mouth for reasons Reed had never grasped.
    “Are you having a crisis of faith?” the archangel asked, his words spoken around the cigar.
    “If this Infernal continues to murder Marks at a rate of one a week, we’ll need to step up recruitment, training, mentoring—just to maintain our numbers. And if it keeps taking out our best and brightest, we’ll soon be left with only novices.”
    “You paint the direst of pictures, Abel, as if this demon will charge through our ranks unchecked.”
    “It’s my job to anticipate and prevent.”
    “Which is why I think you should accompany Mariel.”
    “I’m going.” Reed stood. “I’ll call her and we’ll head out.”
    There was more behind Raguel’s request than preventative measures. The archangel wanted his firm to be the one responsible for the identification and vanquishing of this new demon. He didn’t want Uriel to take that honor, or any of the other archangels.
    “I will be assembling the class and taking them to Fort McCroskey this evening. Report your findings to me there.”
    “Fine. Keep an eye on Eve.”
    Raguel withdrew the cigar from his smiling mouth. “Of course. She is my star pupil.”
    “Is that because she’s already good? Or because you want her to be?”
    “She is passably proficient.” Raguel shrugged. “She could be brilliant, if her heart was in it. As it is, only determination drives her, and that is not enough to achieve the heights she might be capable of.”
    “How many new Marks have their heart in it? They’re all drafted into service.” Reed ran a hand through his short hair, reminded again that Eve was not at all the sort of mortal who usually became a Mark. She was/had been agnostic and she hadn’t committed a crime of sufficient severity. Her only offense was being a temptation to Cain; the shining, delicious apple in his garden of demons and death.
    “Ms. Hollis is different,” Raguel said, his resonant voice rolling gently through the air. “Marks always come to us with varying degrees of faith within them. She has none at all, and she is hindered without it. Other Marks find strength in their desperation to save their souls; she lacks that edge and that deficiency might be the death of her.”
    If Raguel didn’t see to that first. “Are the other Marks still hostile toward her? She might be ‘dumbing down’ to avoid further antagonism.”
    “I have never witnessed any hostilities.”
    Reed’s mouth curved wryly. “That doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
    Because Eve was paired with Cain, a legend in thefield for both his 100 percent kill rate and his autonomy, she was tormented by those who were jealous of her “good fortune.” They assumed Cain did the lion’s share of the work and she stood around looking pretty. They didn’t bother to learn how wrong they were.
    Cain had also pulled strings to keep Eve close to her family. Marks, as a rule, were transplanted to foreign firms. They were mostly loners, those who had either distanced themselves from family and friends or didn’t have any for a variety of reasons. Their lack of strong emotional ties facilitated their acclimation to the life of a Mark. It also created a divide between them and Eve that was undeniable.
    But Raguel blindly—or conveniently—ignored how the other Marks treated her.
    “Just keep her alive while I’m gone,” Reed said. “That’s not asking too much.”
    “Keep
yourself
alive, Abel,” Raguel returned. “We have a great deal of work ahead of us.”
    As if Reed could forget that.
    Armageddon. It was coming. Sooner, rather than later.
     
    Alec pulled Eve’s Chrysler 300 into her assigned spot in the subterranean garage of Gadara Tower. Turning off the engine, he glanced at her, noting her set jaw and taut