I look at the piece of paper Ivy passed to me with my tea. I don’t know what Sonia has in store, but I shall have to return the favor of trust that she has shown me. Her writing is as neat and straight as a child’s.

Dearest Lia,

I have located someone who might help us in our journey. Please trust me, and come to 778 York Street at one o’clock in the afternoon.

S.S.

I have already given Edmund the address, and gather from his subsequent snort that we are not traveling to a part of town he deems appropriate. Nevertheless, he does not question me further, and I want to kiss him for his steadfast loyalty.

The carriage rumbles toward town in a series of harsh bounces and jolts across the hard-packed road. We have not had a good rain since the day following Father’s funeral nine days before. I think it befitting, as if God has used all his tears on the just cause of my father’s death. Even still, the lack of rain has been much discussed among the servants. They cluck their tongues and shake their heads, arguing about whether it means an especially cold winter or one especially warm.

We pass through the familiar part of town in a blink. Past Wycliffe, the bookstore, the fashionable inns and restaurants, the sweet shop, Sonia’s house. It is not long before Edmund turns the horses down a quiet lane hidden behind the clean and bustling streets.

The lane is dark, shaded on all sides by the tenement buildings that house the less fortunate. Through the window of the carriage, I see laundry swinging on clotheslines strung above the litter-strewn lane. The ride becomes bumpier, the ground further parched, as if even the water does not want to stay long here. I am beginning to feel green about the edges when Edmund finally pulls the horses to a stop with a soft, “Whoa, boys.”

Looking out the window, I cannot fathom a reason why Sonia should ask me to meet her at such a place, but Edmund is at the door, opening it wide before I can think further about the wisdom in coming.

“Are you certain you’d like to stop here, Miss?”

I step from the carriage, determined to see my journey through. Ours is not a quest for cowards. “Yes. Most certain, Edmund.”

Edmund holds his hat while we wait for Sonia. Two small boys kick a large rock down the lane. They make a racket, but their playful laugh is a welcome distraction from the silence of the deserted street.

“Which one is it?” I ask Edmund.

He nods toward a narrow doorway a few feet from the carriage. “That one there.”

I am beginning to wonder if I’ve made a mistake when Sonia rushes around the corner, breathless and pink at the cheeks. “Oh goodness! I’m sorry to be late! It’s ever so hard to escape Mrs. Millburn’s eye! She books me for so many sittings, I barely have time to breathe!”

“It’s quite all right, Sonia, but… whatever are we doing here?”

She stands for a moment, her hand on her chest as she attempts to catch her breath. “I asked around, carefully, mind you, and found someone who might have some answers to…” She eyes Edmund cautiously. “Well, to the things we’ve been discussing.”

Edmund does not look amused.

I nod. “All right.”

Sonia takes my hand, leading me to the dark doorway ahead. “I’ve thought and thought about the prophecy, but it makes no more sense to me now than it did when you first showed me the book. I thought we could do with some help. It was not easy to find such a person. But if anyone will assist us in finding answers, it will be Madame Berrier.”

The name itself is mysterious, but I follow Sonia to a nondescript door. She raises her hand and knocks, and the door is opened a moment later by a svelte, fashionable woman.

“Good afternoon. Please do come in.” The woman is obviously French but with the hint of a more exotic accent that I cannot quite place. She ushers us into a cramped foyer. Her eyes focus on something over my shoulder, and it is only when I follow her gaze that I realize Edmund has not stayed at the carriage. She looks at him appraisingly, her eyes flickering with interest over his strong face.

I turn to him. “Edmund, would you mind waiting here while we speak in private?”

He considers this thoughtfully, rubbing the coarse stubble along his jaw.

“We shall be right here in this very apartment.”

His nod is small, but he folds his large frame onto a small bench set against one wall.

“Follow me.” Madame Berrier leads us down a narrow hallway with doors on either side.

“Thank you, Madame, for seeing us on such short notice. I know how very busy you are.” Sonia’s voice echoes through the shadows of the dimly lit hallway. She turns to me as we walk. “Madame Berrier is one of the most sought-after spiritualists in New York. Some of her customers come from hundreds of miles to get a reading.”

I smile as if I have always had a friend who is a spiritualist, as if I am accustomed to meeting in the back lanes of town those with dark and questionable powers.

Madame Berrier’s voice is muted as she speaks ahead of us. “You are most welcome. You have powerful gifts of your own, my dear. It is only right that we should help one another, yes? Besides, it is not often I have the opportunity to speak of the Prophecy of the Sisters.”

“The Prophecy of the Sisters?” I mouth the words back to Sonia as Madame Berrier ushers us through an elegant apartment that belies its decrepit-looking exterior.

Sonia shrugs, following the older woman into a well-appointed parlor.

“Please sit down.” Madame Berrier waves us toward a red velvet settee as she sits in a carved chair opposite. Between us is a small wooden table that glows with the warmth of a well-polished apple. It is set with a silver pot, delicate porcelain cups and saucers, and a small plate of cookies. “Would you like some coffee? Or do you take tea in the tradition of the British?”

“Coffee, please.” My voice emerges firmer than I expect under the circumstances.

She nods, reaching for the pot on the table with a smile something like approval. “And for you?” she asks Sonia.

“Oh no. Nothing for me, thank you. It sometimes interferes with my sittings.”

Madame Berrier nods, placing the pot back on the silver tray. “Yes, the coffee and tea did the same for me when I was younger and more sensitive to external stimuli. I would wager these things will bother you less and less as you grow more sure in your powers, dear.”

Sonia nods, and I see her struggling against the words she wants to say.

Madame Berrier saves her the trouble. “Sonia tells me that you find yourself in an… unusual situation, Miss Milthorpe.”

I don’t answer right away, feeling unsure confessing to a stranger the things I have worked so mightily to keep secret. But in the end, I nod, for what purpose is there in trying to find answers if I’ll not speak to those who might give them?

“May I see your hand?” She holds her own across the table with such authority that hesitating does not seem an option.

I proffer my hand over the coffee and sugar.

Pulling up the sleeve of my gown, she eyes the mark coolly before releasing my hand. “Hmmm… Quite interesting. Quite interesting indeed. I have seen it before, of course. In the tales of the prophecy, and on the chosen few who play a part. But never one quite like this. It is most unusual.” She nods. “But of course, it is to be expected.”

Her last words take me by surprise. “Why… Why is it to be expected?”

She places her cup back into the saucer with a clink. “Because the prophecy dictates it, my dear! The prophecy promises it!”

I shake my head, feeling dimmer than ever. “I’m most sorry, Madame. I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

She tilts her head, as if trying to gauge my ignorance as crafty deception or the more simple variety of stupidity. At last she leans in, speaking in a low and urgent voice. “The Souls are helpless without Samael. They have been amassing an army for centuries, but the prophecy dictates that they can do nothing to bring about the Doom of Gods without the leadership of Samael, the Beast. And there is only one who can summon him. Only one who will carry the singular mark of that authority.” She pauses, meeting my eyes with both reverence and perhaps the smallest slice of fear. “Clearly that one is you. You, my dear, are the Angel. The Angel of Chaos.”

Through the haze of shock, the realization is a primordial chant, a drumbeat that begins as a flutter in my bones before spreading its wings through my body. I cannot speak around it, around the dawning apprehension. It has been difficult enough to accept my role as Gate. What can this new assignation mean for my place in the prophecy?

“But… I thought Lia was the Guardian? She is, is she not?” Sonia’s voice comes as if through a tunnel, and I remember that there has not been time to tell her of my discovery that I am the Gate.

Surprise shades Madame Berrier’s eyes. “Mais, non! There is no other with this mark, not one such as this! It names your friend as the Gate, and not just any Gate, but the Angel, the one Gate with the power to summon Samael. The one Gate with the choice to bring him forth or destroy him forever.”

“But… Lia?” Sonia turns to me, pleading for a truth that I wish I did not have to give her. “Is this true?”

I inspect my hands in my lap as if they somehow hold the answer to Sonia’s question. But only I hold the answer she must hear, and I raise my eyes to hers, nodding.

“Yes.” It is a whisper. “I haven’t had the time to tell you. I just found out last night, and I didn’t know I was the Angel until this very moment.”

Madame Berrier is aghast, and when she turns her eyes to me I see that they are so black as to be nearly without color. “You did not realize your place? Your mother does not teach you the ways of the prophecy, of your place in it? Did she not once hold a role of her own?”

Sonia murmurs next to me as if thinking aloud, her voice soft and without emotion. “Her mother passed, Madame, when she was but a child. And her father, too, more recently.”

The older woman’s eyes widen, her gaze not without pity. “Ah, that would explain it, then, for it is left to the older and wiser sisters of the prophecy to ensure their daughters’ education in its ways. And your father passed recently as well?” Her voice is a low purr, the question asked more to herself than to me. “Well. There you are, then. You have lost your protection. You have lost the veil.”

The words in the book come back to me, twisting softly through my memory like smoke. Guarded only by the gossamer veil of protection.

“The veil?” My voice cracks with the words.

She finally loses her patience, throwing her hands into the air as if in surrender. “Do you face the prophecy with no knowledge at all? How are you to do battle if you do not know your enemy? If you do not know the weapons at your disposal?” She sighs deeply. “It is foretold that the Angel will be given a protector. An earthly protector, but a protector nonetheless. Otherwise, the Angel would be helpless, and Samael would find his way through her before she was old enough to harness her power. Before she was old enough to make a choice. And everyone has a choice, my dear, as was dictated at the beginning of time. It is through the protection of the veil that the Gate may grow old enough to make her choice. As long as that protector is alive, the Beast cannot come for you. When did your father pass, dear girl?”

“A-About two weeks ago.”

“And were the circumstances of his death… unusual?”

“Yes.” It is a whisper.

She dabs at the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “I am most sorry. The prophecy is a burden for the most educated and prepared in the Sisterhood. For one so adrift as you… for one with your role… well, it must be quite overwhelming. I shall fill in as much as possible. Let us begin with your father. With his death.”

My throat closes at the mention of my father. “What does that have to do with the prophecy?”

“Everything,” she says simply. “The Souls have been waiting for centuries to return to our world. You are their Angel, the one with the power to make it so or banish them forever. Make no mistake, they will stop at nothing to get to you.”

I want to laugh at the absurdity of the implication. But then I think of Father’s face in death. The open eyes. The unfamiliar grimace on a face that was too horrified to be his. I think of these things and am filled with an all-consuming sadness that grows to something more like anger and a disbelief that is not altogether disbelieving.

When I look up at Madame Berrier, my words are no longer a question, but a truth. “He was killed by the Souls. He was killed because of me.”

She shakes her head sadly. “You needn’t feel responsible for your father’s death, Miss Milthorpe. No protector acts as the veil unwillingly. To accept such a role, he must have loved you very much, dear. He, too, made choices.” Madame Berrier’s voice is as soothing as a mother’s. “It is a wonder they did not take him sooner. To resist them for so long… well, he must have been a very strong man and quite determined to protect you.”

I shake my head, trying to get my mind around the truth of my father’s death. “But he didn’t travel the Plane. He never spoke of it to me, and he would have, if he had known.”

Madame Berrier considers this for a moment, nodding curtly. “Perhaps. But the Souls are crafty, child, and Samael immeasurably more so. It is possible that the Souls enticed him just that once with something of great significance. Something he dearly loved.”

With those words, the Dark Room flashes in my mind.

And now I know. I know how they enticed him to travel.

“My mother.”