Exie's door slams behind Clarice as we pile into her room. Clarice locks the door. Exie spins me around and sits me on her spare bed.

"Show me your hands," she says.

I just look at her. Her words bounce around the walls like meaningless echoes behind the flashing memories of empty eyes and angel wings plastering my vision.

"Your hands, Des," she says again. When I still don't respond, she grabs them from my lap and checks them both. They're smeared with red. Did I kill someone? No, I don't even know how—other than burning them, and I'd need to have set a fire to do that. I can't smell smoke anywhere. Exie instructs Clarice to pour out fresh water into the little washbasin on her desk, then drops a cloth in it and wipes both my palms. They sting fearsomely.

"Oh thank God, it's not as bad as it looks," she says. Then, "Lie down, Des, you look about to faint."

I must not respond quickly enough, because she half pushes, half guides me down onto the mattress and rests my hands palms-up beside me, cadaver style. I watch the ceiling ballroom dance with itself until a sharp pain makes me hiss between my teeth. Exie smears a stinging antiseptic on each of my skinned palms, then an ointment of some kind, then wraps them with bandages she's pulled out of a hat somewhere. I joked once about her packing to hike the silk road, but she'd be better at that than me.

The stinging and the disappearance of my raw-red palms slows the world's roundabout. Or maybe I'm the one spinning, and the ride I'm on slows enough for me to finally get off. That dismounting is more of a messy tumble than anything I'd want to execute in front of a girl as cute as Exie, but I probably spent my dignity allowance on nearly fainting at the sight of blood.

"You're squeamish," says Exie when I manage to push myself up onto my elbows.

I grimace. I didn't used to be, but apparently stepping on a dead body's face will do this to a person. It's been six days, and I'm still uncovering new side effects.

"We lost Barnabas," I say. I'm exceptional at stating the obvious.

Exie nods. For the first time, I notice the pinched look in her expression, like she's trying not to cry. I try to sit up properly, and spit out another snake impression as my wounded palms make contact with the mattress beneath me. It's scarcely been ten seconds, and my panic-addled memory has already wiped the pain. Exie's eyes are bright with unreleased emotion. She spins away and fusses with the first-aid kit, a little purse-like satchel packed pigeon-nest-tight with bandages.

"We'll get him back," I say. Or rather, my stupid mouth says for me.

"No we won't," snaps Exie. My startle clears the world a little further. Exie buttons the satchel and jams it back into her bag with far more force than necessary. "He's gone like David, and I didn't even get to ask him for a contact outside."

Her crouch goes out from under her, and she jars her tailbone on the floor. She curls up and hugs her knees, rocking.

"Hey," I say. I'm not sure where I'm going with that, but actions speak louder than words, so I swing myself off the bed and test my shaky legs for standing. They score lower than my tenth-grade math marks. I look around helplessly for something—anything—that I can offer Exie to comfort her. When nothing presents itself, I reach out a hand and rest it awkwardly on her shoulder. She stops rocking, but otherwise doesn't move.

"Okay, maybe we won't," I say. "But if we're here to try and solve this, we can at least try. And if we find a way to get Barnabas back, we'll find it for David, too."

"The whole school is in on it. The cult."

"I know. We knew that from the start."

"I can't plan for all of them."

"Then we go without a plan. Or we plan for what we can predict might happen, and wing the rest. We have to trust ourselves." I swallow hard. "We have to. We're all we've got."

That's cheesy. But it's also true, and it only rings truer the more turns it takes around my head. We can't trust the teachers, nor access anyone on the outside. Half the student body is breaking down or taking bets on who'll be next to snap like matchsticks, and at least the popular kids have already written me off as insane. I have no clue how they see Exie, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is staying alive.

Exie doesn't respond, and I can't sit hunched over with my hand on her shoulder forever. I cast about again, and come up with the pillow Exie laid me down on. It has a nice texture, at least. I nudge it against her arm. After a moment, she peeks up, then takes my offering and buries her face in that instead. I straighten for the first time to find Clarice perched on Exie's bed across from me, watching me with her head tipped to one side. There's a look on her face like she's spotted an exceptionally lavish necklace and is scheming how to get it off its owner without being convicted of attempted strangulation.

"When you called out that girl and boy," she says without waiting for me to ask. "You said to ask Colson why he has a paper bird in his pocket. You said it was there when he died, too, and that he carries it around. And that it was made from a book page."

My whole body locks up like someone's dumped road slush down my collar. For the first time in what feels like our entire investigation, two seemingly unrelated pieces connect. A book page. We were looking at books in the stained glass only hours ago.

"Did you get to see what it was?" asks Clarice. "The book, I mean. Or at least what language it was written in?"

"I didn't see the language." I couldn't read it well enough to tell. "It was handwritten. Colson said it was a reminder that that angel was watching him."

"A book page needs to come from a book, though. You said it was old? How old?"

I shrug helplessly. "It had marginalia. How old does that make something?"

Exie's muffled voice answers that one, still buried in the pillow. "It was common until the printing press was invented. Less common after that. But still around."

I make a mental note that academics serve as Exie activation no matter her mental state. Something about the timeline niggles at me, though, so I line it up in my mind.

"Three hundred years," I say.

Exie's head whips up. Clarice goes stiller than a statue of an indecent devil in a Catholic cathedral. We have a mark on Exie's timeline for three hundred years ago. A very significant mark, if my intuition is to judge.

"That's when the original edition of the Miranda Bible was written," I say. 

"It could still be newer," says Exie. "The dove page."

"But handwritten and decorated? You have to admit it'd make sense."

She shrugs weakly.

"We need to get our hands on one of those doves," I say.

"One of?" says Clarice.

"Well, we need to find out if Barnabas and the others each have one. If they do, there's a book linking this all together. The Miranda Bible's original edition, or something else. One of those big red books from the stained glass, that all the angels seem to care about." Another memory springs to mind unbidden. "In the big rose window, the falling angel at the top was coming straight towards the book. They have to be connected."

"Everything's connected," says Exie, muffled again.

"You know what I mean."

"I don't think Colson is going to give up his dove so easily."

"Then we don't give him the option."

"Oh!" says Clarice. "Do you want me to steal it from him?"

A slow grin creeps across my face. I knew it would eventually come in handy to ally with a kleptomaniac. "He keeps it in his right-hand blazer pocket. How hard would that be for you?"

Clarice looks offended that I'm even asking.

"Okay," I say. "That's your task, then. But we need to do it at a time when he can't retaliate. Preferably when he's asleep."

"It'll be dark then. It'll be hard to read the book page or fold the dove back again."

"Then we don't return it."

Clarice's shifting expression betrays her unease.

"Unless you think we should," I say. "I'm all for burning it after we've gotten what we need, personally."

Clarice fidgets with Exie's bedspread. "Won't that make the angel angry?"

"I'll take the risk."

"Even when we don't know about the maps yet?"

"This is one of the best leads we have right now. If Mastema's taking a student every night, we don't have a lot of time."

"Why not both at once, then?"

I pause. That's a fair point, actually. Exie and I still have plans to sneak back into Mrs. Hardwick's office to scope out the maps on her walls for any older than the ones we've found. Having three people on that task would be more liability than asset, and I don't think either Exie and I have the skill to keep up with Clarice. If we split up, we could accomplish both at once. There's more risk of waking teachers, then, and endangering each other's tasks as a result. But we're on a timeline, and for every night wasted, someone else dies.

"Tonight?" I say.

Clarice shrugs, an affable gesture that says she doesn't really care either way. I nudge Exie, who lifts her head again and wipes her eyes. She doesn't answer immediately, though. I'm about to repeat the question when she says, "I think David might have had a dove, too."

I take a moment to formulate a decent answer to that. "You don't know for sure?"

She shakes her head. "He had... a wallet. It used to just be that, but after he came home from Melliford Academy, he got really obsessive about it. I always thought it was weird, because he stopped caring about anything else except praying and the church. He didn't care about money anymore, either. But he took the wallet everywhere."

"Hiding the dove inside of it."

"If he had one. But if he did, that's where he would put it."

I think it's a fair assumption that everyone Mastema's taken will have one, then. "We should still try for Colson first, because we at least know where he keeps his. But if that doesn't work, whose room is closest?"

"Probably Barnabas. And he doesn't lock his door. Or didn't used to, anyway."

I frown at her. "How do you know that?"

"He said he always tried to keep a clear escape route."

My candle-fire of jealousy dissipates like teapot steam. Exie's eyes are damp again. She and Barnabas must have gotten along better than I judged in the short time I got to see them collaborating. I'm the one who said we only have each other, but I suddenly want to save Barnabas, too. Even if only to see Exie smile like that again.

"Then Barnabas is our backup," I say. "Are we doing this tonight?"

Exie nods. "Meet here?"

"Midnight?"

"One."

She's being cautious. That's probably fair, but it doesn't stop discomfort from worming through my body. We don't want to get caught by students or teachers yet to fall asleep after curfew, but we don't want to run out of time, either. I don't know how early Melliford Academy's teachers rise.

Exie hasn't protested our double-decker rule-breaking yet, though, and nor has she tried to make more detailed plans than I've already verbalized. That'll probably change when it's just the two of us setting up contingencies. But for now, I'll take the compromise.

"Fine," I say. "When the church bell strikes one, meet here. Bring matches."