On the rooftop of our rookery, safe from the trip wires and traps, I turned the makeshift spit over our fireplace, a piece of metal speared through the rabbit. The flames warmed the winter air around us. Smoke from the roasting meat curled into the air, and my mouth watered. Tonight, no clouds darkened the sky, and a canopy of stars twinkled above us.

Years ago, you could hardly see the stars in big cities like this, but now they burned bright, gleaming sequins on a midnight fabric. In the old days, the fae had claimed they were windows into the worlds of the gods.

Across from me, Lucy twirled her blond hair around a fingertip, the firelight wavering over her skin. Before dragons had scorched the Earth, she’d been a bartender. During the long days in the rookery, she regaled us with stories of drunken brawls in the Duke of York—the men who fought with broken bottles, the women pulling hair. Sometimes she told us about her exes—a charming collection of men who’d cheated on her and complained about the size of her thighs.

Lucy licked her lips, staring at the rabbit. “I miss pies. How hard do you think it would be to make a rabbit pie? How do you make pie, anyway? You need flour for pies. Can you make a pie without flour?”

Katie, a thin woman with a smattering of freckles over her nose and dirt caked in her hair, sat by her side. “Are you going to keep saying the word ‘pie’? We can’t make them. Forget it.”

I knew very little about Katie’s prior life. She was a bit… off. When she told stories, they were not about her life. They were weird fantasy tales about talking arctic foxes and royal polar bears ruling Nordic kingdoms. Pure nonsense, really, but it was a nice escape from her usual ill-tempered grumbling.

Alex’s stories were my favorite, of course. I didn’t think I’d ever get sick of hearing about one-hundred-fifty-dollar wagyu steaks or hot tubs on hotel roofs.

And me—I could tell stories of life as a fae burlesque dancer in New York City. Angela Death, my alter ego. I tried to leave the tragedies out of it. In fact, I mostly kept it on the glitter and feathers, the backstage drama. Or that time I had to fill in for my friend’s oddly kinky “cake smooshing” routine.

That wasn’t me anymore—I didn’t want the glitter or the attention, didn’t want men’s eyes on me. But people liked those stories. Even if I could hardly bring myself to detail such a flagrantly wasteful use of cake anymore.

Lucy tapped my shoulder. “Tell us about the angel again. Not the one from yesterday. The blond one in New York.”

I swallowed hard. Like I said, no one wanted to hear about the tragedies, and that meant this story had to be edited. Heavily.

I stared into the jumping flames. “I was dancing in Madame Francine’s. I had all kinds of routines—stripping Salem witch judges, a lonely satyr with troublesome hooves, a slightly terrifying clown routine. The seductive angel was one of my few purely sexy shows. I mean, it was back before we knew angels were terrifying, when I thought they just floated in the heavens like pretty spirits.”

Alex hugged his knees to his chest. “Are you telling me the fae were just as clueless about angels as we humans were?”

I shrugged. “We knew about dragons, definitely. But not angels, even though we evolved from them. After the rebellious angels were cast from the heavens, some became demons of darkness. Some became demons of fire. And the fae—we’re unaligned. We lost our wings over time, transformed. Got obsessed with the food, the clothes, the dancing—all the fun stuff you get on Earth. We’ve all been fighting each other for millennia, dragging in the humans sometimes. But you have to understand that the fall happened a hundred thousand years ago. None of us had seen a real angel since. It’s like expecting you to know what a Neanderthal might be like, except without scientists to explain it all.”

Lucy nudged my arm. “Less of the history. Get back to the sexy angel costume.”

I smiled. “Fine. I had a silver dress, feathered wings, lacy stockings, the whole nine yards. Pretty and delicate. Just like an angel.”

Alex snorted.

“But that wasn’t the whole costume. I glamoured myself like a succubus,” I continued. “If any demons came in, the succubus touches always intrigued them—the dark swirls of magic, the faintly gold skin. They couldn’t get enough of the whole demonic-angel thing.” I swallowed hard. “Little did I know, that night an actual angel came in. He didn’t have his wings on display or anything like that. They can hide them, I guess. I just thought he was an ordinary demon, a powerful one, with a golden glow of magic.”

Lucy gripped my arm. “Handsome, right?”

I nodded. “Very. While I danced, his eyes were locked on me. I could tell he really liked the whole routine. I could just see his rapt expression, like he was drinking me up with his eyes. After my performance, he came up to talk to me. I thought he was flirty, totally full of himself, used to getting what he wanted. I brushed him off. I had no idea what he really was.”

A harbinger of death.

Firelight sparked in Alex’s eyes. “But you saw him again. The golden angel.”

A few days after my angel show, when I was picnicking in the park, I learned what the handsome, glowing stranger really was. He flew down from the heavens with his wings blazing copper, his head gleaming like a golden crown, with dragons surrounding him.

A lump rose in my throat. “Yeah. You all remember that day, I’m sure.” The day the world ended for everyone. I straightened. “But none of us want to talk about that, do we?”

My chest ached, but I tried to keep my expression neutral. Don’t tell them what happened, Ruby. Leave out all the death. Put on a good show. “The angels had come back to Earth. The blond angel told me his name was Kratos, and he invited me to join him in London. I declined his offer.”

Lucy shook her head scornfully. “You could be in a palace right now.”

I left out the rest—the part about dragons abducting my little sister in the midst of an orgy of destruction and flying off with her into the skies. I didn’t tell them what it had felt like to watch the reptilian shifters slaughter my boyfriend, Marcus, the gorgeous vampire who’d been the love of my life. I didn’t tell them that my decision to turn down Kratos had been one of the worst of my life—that without his help, I had no hope of finding my sister again. They had their own traumas. On that same day, everyone here had watched people die.

Stories were a performance, and I aimed to make people happy.

Alex rubbed his chin. “My theory is that the angels lured the dragons to kill us all, just like another weapon. They spread diseases and death throughout the world just for the hell of it, and dragons did the job pretty quick.”

I glanced at Alex, eager to distract myself. “You’re ruining story time with this misery. Tell us about the good stuff, will you?”

“Right. Sorry.” Now it was Alex’s turn to regale us. He leaned into the fire, the flames dancing over his dark skin.

He took a deep breath. “One night a few years ago—I’m not even kidding you—I woke up under a table in the Forge Bar, covered in a pile of fifty-pound notes, empty bottles of Cristal, and two pairs of rubber gloves. I’m still not sure what happened. Had to show up to work an hour late, reeking like the bottom of a pub trash bin, and close a deal with Goldman Sachs.”

Katie blinked thoughtfully. “Sometimes I put on gloves and touch my own face and pretend it’s someone else’s hand.”

Her comments tended to hang in the air awkwardly while people tried to figure out how to respond, and that one was no different. Katie was often the first to break the silence, making it worse.

“Sometimes I feel so cooped up in here,” she continued. “Like I’m being buried alive in the hospital walls. Never wanted to die in hospital, now I live in a hospital, and I’ll probably die here too.” Wide-eyed, she stroked her cheeks. “Freckles, I say. Everything will be okay.” She snapped out of her reverie, scowling again. “People call me Freckles. No idea why.”

“Maybe because of…” I cleared my throat. “Never mind.”

Lucy touched Alex’s arm. “Did you close the deal with Goldman Sachs, Alex?”

Alex smirked. “Of course I did.”

Katie scooted forward, taking her turn at the spit.

I leaned back on my hands, smiling at Alex. “In those days, Alex, you had buckets of champagne and probably some expensive prostitutes—”

“I had no such thing,” Alex interrupted.

“—Cheap prostitutes, whatever. I’m not judging. But how often did you get to sit under the stars with a roaring fire pit, three beautiful women, and a roasting rabbit? This is the good life, Alex. Even if we’re on top of a ruined hospital building in a city full of scorched trash.”

He nodded. “Of course. The post-apocalyptic hell is a significant improvement on my former life of luxury, as long as I never need to see a doctor or any of my loved ones ever again.”

“Well that’s just being greedy, Alex. We can’t have everything.”

Lucy bit her lip. “What do you think the chances are any of this will get fixed? I’ve heard there are people working against the angels, you know. A resistance, like, in the Tower of London.”

Lucy was talking about the Order of the Watchers—the secretive group my parents had once served, dedicated to preventing the apocalypse. Hadn’t really worked out the way they’d planned, apparently.

“I went to see them once,” I said. I surprised myself by the admission.

“What happened?” asked Alex.

“I wanted to exchange information.” Not the whole truth. I wanted to spy for them, but they wouldn’t give me the time of day. “One of their wardens turned me away. Apparently, they weren’t willing to even talk to me unless I could tell them something they didn’t already know. And they already knew about Kratos.”

“Bastards,” muttered Alex.

Would my encounter yesterday be enough to get me past their gates? I didn’t think so. I needed something more, and I planned to get it—if I could survive long enough.

I shimmied over to the edge of the roof, peering down at the night-cloaked streets. In the moonlight, a few sentinels drifted along the main street like phantoms. One of them turned, gaze locked on me, and my heart skipped a beat.

The sentinels saw everything.

I scooted back toward the fire, relishing its warmth. The Hunt hadn’t yet begun tonight. At the first sign of the howling hounds, we’d be inside, lightning-fast. Rabbit or no rabbit.

I leaned back on the roof, gazing up at the stars.

As Katie launched into a story about a sparrow king, I reached into my pocket, pulling out a copper feather—Kratos’s feather. Moonlight streamed through the downy filaments, tingeing them with silver.

This was the true reason I’d come all the way to London, stowing away on the private jet of an apocalypse profiteer. I’d wanted to find Kratos. Dragons hoarded beautiful women like treasures. Kratos had been there on the worst day of my life, perhaps controlling the dragons that had taken my sister. Maybe he knew where to find Hazel.

Crazy as it sounded, my ambitions didn’t stop there. Maybe, with a little help, I could worm my way into Kratos’s life until I learned the angels’ secrets, their vulnerabilities. Surely even angels had weaknesses. If I was careful enough and clever enough, maybe I could exploit them.

As I stroked my fingertip up the soft side of the feather, a hound’s bark bellowed through London’s streets, and horror slid through my bones.

The Hunt was nearby.