I ask Barnabas about lock-picking tools first, like any self-respecting delinquent. He doesn't answer immediately, but his foot shifts, then pauses.

"What kind of lock is it?" he asks.

"Dunno. Can't tell."

"Is it accessible?"

"Only if you have something that can reach around the door."

"I'm not that good." Barnabas returns to his former position and says nothing more. I'm still standing awkwardly in the middle of the floor, but I've never been good at comforting people, and this is no exception.

"Mind if I join you?" I say at last, because I'm tired of standing, and I think people are generally more amenable to talking if you're not staring them down from the opposite side of a room like they might bite at any moment.

"Doesn't matter."

That's ambiguous, so I make the executive decision to take it as a yes, and come sit closer to Barnabas. He doesn't move.

"Can I ask a question?" I say.

There's a shuffle of fabric on stone. I'm pretty sure he just shrugged, but it's impossible to tell.

"For whatever accusations of witchcraft might be flying around," I say, "may it be known that while I would love to have a black-cat form, I can't see in the dark."

That gets me a quiet huff; I made him laugh.

"Oh good, you are sane," I say.

"I've been told otherwise."

That makes two of us. "Well, you're better than some of the other ones I've talked to. Let me tell you, I'd have thrown myself into the nearest frog pond if I had to spend more than half an hour in most of their presences. I've always liked frogs better."

"They're not so bad once you get to know them."

"Easy to say for the one who seems to make friends with everybody."

Another shrug. "They're an audience like the next. You just have to play them right."

"I've never been the acting type. Always preferred the tricks with fire in them."

Barnabas is chuckling again. He's probably not okay, but I seem to have at least broken the ice between us. "I'm surprised you haven't lit the school on fire yet."

"Figured pyro-boy had it covered."

"Ansel?"

"Sure."

Silence falls between us. After a long moment, Barnabas says, "Why haven't you lit the school on fire yet? If you knew... what was really going on."

I sigh. "We wanted to see if there was a way to get people back first." That's taking too much credit. "Well, Exie wanted to. We've been trying to investigate. We didn't realize how bad it was until... well, until after you got taken. I didn't burn anything because there was still so much we didn't know."

"Do you know now?"

"No. Well, not everything we wanted to. I was hoping to ask what you remember."

Silence again. I could fill this one, but I decide to wait it out instead.

"Not much," says Barnabas at last. He pulls up his knees and hugs them again. "It's been fading ever since..."

He fails to finish that sentence.

"Since what?" I ask.

"I don't know how long I've been awake."

"Strictly speaking, about three minutes."

"No, that's not..." He's struggling. "I can't tell if I was dreaming."

"If there was fire involved, that was real and also me."

That gets me another laugh, but it's weaker this time. "I don't think even you could light Hell's fires."

I sit up straighter. "You saw Hell?"

"I think? I don't know. There was... he was talking. The... cult leader, I guess."

"The demon, or Massingham?"

Barnabas makes a helpless noise. "Both?"

"Possessed?"

"Probably."

"Delightful."

"He read off... something. I don't remember what. Just that there was reading."

Now we're getting somewhere. "Was it a book?"

"That's the part I don't remember. He read something, and I was... too scared to pay attention, I guess. It was about me, then at some point it switched to being about him. It just got worse from there."

I hear him put his head down. The cell is so quiet, I can hear him breathing.

"Can I ask another question?" I say.

"Only if it's not about that."

"It's not. You were given something. Did you ever know what it was for?"

"Given..."

"A paper dove."

He sits bolt upright with a gasp that scares the living daylights out of me. There's a flurry of motion and fabric-sounds that I realize after a moment is him digging through his pockets.

"It's gone," he says, voice suddenly shot through with terror. "I have to find—I can't lose it. He said—"

"Barnabas."

"He'll find me." More and more frantic. "I can't lose—did you take it? Did—"

"Barnabas." I make a blind grab and manage to catch his wrist as he tries to rise. "You're safe. He's not in your head anymore."

I don't actually know that, but it's probably a fair assumption. Barnabas remains frozen for a good ten seconds, then asks shakily, "What do you mean?"

"That state that Colson was in? You were in it. But the dove was keeping you there. You woke up when we burned it."

"You burned it?"

I've told him this already, but he probably wasn't present enough to register it. I also don't think I mentioned the dove directly.

"Fire purifies," I say. "Consider it an exorcism."

Barnabas sinks back down beside me. I'm still gripping his wrist. I can feel him quaking.

"Like I said, we were looking for a way to get people back," I say. "We found out that each person the demon took had a dove, so I talked to Colson and figured out the connection. I've also watched the cult ritual that assigns them. They're the demon's ties to his victims. The cult's trying to get enough of them to bring him back." I have to wince at the vagueness of that particular facet. "Still fuzzy on how, to be honest."

"He judges people."

For a moment, my heart pitches for the floor, flung back to the memories of similar intonations by brainwashed students. Barnabas, though, continues.

"He was... he was kicked out of heaven. I think he judged people for God? Tempted them, and judged how they responded. But he got too powerful. He said... he said he was stronger than God. And she didn't like that. He says he was kicked out of heaven unjustly."

I roll my eyes. "Sounds like every fallen angel ever."

"I don't know. It sounded..." Barnabas breaks off, shuddering violently. "It sounded real."

"That's how the demons get you. Do you know what he planned to do with all the people he judged?"

"Show them to God to prove himself worthy."

The last piece snaps into place. Mastema was a judgment angel who got cocky and tried to overthrow God. From the underworld now, he's been using the cult to carry out his former job, though he seems to have done away with the temptation part and gone straight to judging. Maybe that's his twisted take on his own duty. Or maybe it's just a euphemism.

"Did he say how he'd do that?" I ask. There's a newer, darker possibility brewing at the back of my mind now, and a new question springs up with it. "Or tell you what to be ready for?"

"He said he would call us when he was ready. And that we would..." Once again, Barnabas trails off. I wait with bated breath until he finishes, "That we would find the strength we needed to prepare the way. For the one in authority is God's servant for your good."

I knew it.

"Romans 13," I say. I know that verse. I know how it ends. "'But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason.' Barnabas, he's not proving himself. He's raising an army."

Exie's brother David took to working for the church after the demon got him. Exie said he prayed all the time. That he sounded terrified, but would never answer what he was so terrified of. God is capable of smiting people, but she's normally benevolent. Love thy neighbor and all that. Maybe David was more of a hellraiser than Exie's letting on, but the more I talk to Barnabas, the more I trust Exie as a judge of character.

Prepare the way can be a metaphor for all manner of holy jargon, but if Mastema's trying to stage a coup in heaven, he could be tasking his followers with anything from taking up arms to brushing up the temples for his own return. He certainly seems to enjoy being worshiped. This entire place, built in his honor, is a church practically infested with fallen-angel decor.

"How do we stop him?" I murmur.

"I don't know." Barnabas's voice breaks, and he slumps down in his corner. "I don't know if we can."

There has to be a way. I'm about to jump up and make for the door again, but I catch myself. Rushing hasn't done me any favors here. This school expects delinquency—it's the reason Exie got herself into Mrs. Hardwick's office within half a day of classes just by kissing up. I don't have it in me to play within the system to that degree, but the system also doesn't have to burn immediately. It can be used.

"We need to get out," I say. I tour the cell, but it's well and truly empty. No food, no water, no bucket for other bodily functions. My throat is already dry from talking, and I'm trying not to monitor my stomach too closely. "If they're planning to leave us here until their next ceremony, someone's going to have to come between now and then. We're both good at talking. Depending on who it is, we can try to either talk our way out, or make a break for it... if they're not expecting you to be up already, all the better. But we probably can't count on that."

I pace the room, rubbing my arms in a failed attempt to warm them. "Whoever's left after tonight will have a little longer. Though we're not screwed even if they take us; we got you back, and Exie knows how to do that. Provided she's still free. We should try to get out together, though. If we make plans for the different teachers... is there anything we can steal from them, that might be useful?"

My hand drifts to my chest, where the heirloom cross necklace from Clarice still rests warm against my skin. Headmaster Massingham wears a cross large enough to stab someone with, and Clarice stole a little angel-winged one off another teacher. I've noticed crosses on all of the teachers, come to think of it, like the Godly iconography offers some kind of protection against being mind-wiped themselves. Maybe that's why I wasn't taken by the dove that escaped in the infirmary. I was certainly closer than Clarice.

What happens when you pull a cross off a teacher? Does the demon protect his followers? What happens if the cult leader dies? That doesn't seem to have stopped the line of prophetic succession so far, so that can't be the answer, but then what is?

"It has to be the books," I murmur. Saying it out loud makes it feel more real. "Seven bloody books."

I should have burned the one in Massingham's hands when I had the chance.

I never had that chance. I need to make that chance.

"I can see why Exie likes you," says Barnabas from his corner.

I turn so fast, I nearly crack my hand against the wall. "Why she what?"

"Really? You struck me as the more observant one."

"A proper explanation, sir."

"I don't know what there is to explain."

I'm about to pounce on him when a sound reaches me through the cell's heavy wooden door. The first sound in probably half a day that we ourselves are not making. I forget to breathe, which is just as well, because my silence reveals the extent of our predicament. We're not ready. We have no plan. But there are footsteps marching up the tunnel, and whoever's coming isn't alone.