Later that night, Ash watched over the city from the balcony of his Belleville apartments, twirling his short knife behind his back pensively.

Something was going on. He could feel it—a change in the air. He wanted to believe it would be a change for the good, but so far, the signs were not auspicious.

Dr. Brès was most likely dead, but he hadn’t found her body. The Firehorse’s chain reaction abruptly ceased with the destruction of the hospital, leaving him little choice but to conclude someone had gotten to the doctor before he could.

Ash tried not to think about the way Madeleine must have suffered—or how her family had been murdered with her.

The entire Brès family, four in all, were missing, too. When he’d gone to their home, the whole lot was gone. They were probably rotting in an unmarked grave somewhere.

In unsanctified ground. Ash buried his knife into the concrete wall up to the hilt. He wanted to beat his fists on it, but the satisfaction that came with wanton destruction was fleeting. He knew that from experience.

The demon king was gone, but the evil in man was just as pernicious an enemy. His city harbored a band of murderers. But without the omniscience of God, he didn’t know how to find those responsible. Blasted Raphael still refused to show his face, so Ash couldn’t ask him who he had to punish.

He ground his teeth. It’s not like I can fly up there and ask.

Didn’t the Host know how tightly his hands were bound without their guidance?

How was he supposed to stop the humans from killing each other? As the resident angel, Ash was their moral guardian, the being responsible for their immortal souls. But he was flying blind.

Ash did know one thing he hadn’t before. The cursed were important, necessary people. They were the movers and makers, the ones blessed with creativity and invention. Society was measured by its progress in the arts and technology. At least those had always been his benchmarks.

He didn’t know what had marked each Firehorse as special, but he knew enough about some of them to know he was right. The designer of the hive house had been a Firehorse. Gaetan been studying how to earthquake-proof existing buildings when he’d been struck down. That had been a few years ago. Then there had been that woman, Livia, the one who’d found and repaired a guitar. She’d taught herself to play. Her music had been special, the sort that could influence people’s moods—calming or alternately energizing them.

Every Firehorse had been significant in some way. Ash didn’t always know how, but it made too much sense now that he’d seen the pattern.

He rubbed his head with rough hands. How could he have been so blind? Only an idiot would have missed something like this. And I’m still being a fool, he thought, doing some rapid math.

What if the curse struck people in inverse importance to their age? That way, they could never live up to their potential.

Which means…

Ash leaned on the wall for support. The child—the one he’d abandoned. What had been her destiny?

It was too late. She was long dead. Her bones were bleaching under the relentless sun in the wasteland.

“Katarina.” It was the first time he’d said her name in fifteen years. He needed to know more about her. There was a reason she’d never left his thoughts. She lived in his dreams as a reminder—a missed opportunity that might have helped them all.

I should have protected her. Instead, he’d been the instrument of her death.

Don’t think about. Don’t. He couldn’t allow himself to dwell on past mistakes. No, his path was clear—secure the future.

Maybe it wasn’t too late to find out what Kara had represented. If he could glean some information about her, he might figure out more about how the curse worked. He knew where her family had lived. Most had been wiped out when the demon king reigned, but not all. Kara and her grandmother had survived. What if the old woman was still alive? In their society, that was almost an impossibility, but he’d learn nothing standing here, pondering what might have been.

Ash took to the air, heading in the direction of Le Marais.

* * *

His wings brushed the dirt track that used to be the Rue Vieille du Temple. Ash turned and bit back a sigh. Years ago, he’d stood in this very spot. He could still see the crowd at the Carreau du Temple as he sat sipping espresso after a long day pretending to be human.

This part of the right bank had suffered more than most. Everything between the Republique metro and the Picasso museum had been laid to waste. His rebuilding efforts hadn’t touched the area yet. All that survived were a few derelict apartment buildings interspersed between a ramshackle assembly of worn-out huts and shacks.

The street where Katarina had lived with her family was still there, but no one seemed to remember her. He was about to give up and head back to Belleville when a man in the crowd pushed a woman toward him.

The matron was little more than forty at best, but she could have passed for twice that. Bent, with cracked hands and deeply etched lines on her face, she held a suckling, near-skeletal babe at her breast.

“Do you remember the Firehorse who used to live on this street?” Ash asked in his softest tone.

The woman’s eyes were unfocused. She probably needed glasses to see but her gaze sharpened nonetheless at the mention of their blight. “The cursed child?”

“Yes, her family name is Delavordo. She used to live here with her grandmother.”

“Simone is in Hell.”

Ash blinked. So the grandmother was dead.

The old woman didn’t mean Simone had been a bad person in life. People no longer said someone had gone to their reward or were with their maker. No, since the Collision, the dead were all said to be in Hell. Heaven seemed too far a stretch for them to wrap their minds around now, no matter how often he described its perfection.

He eyed the hungry child, observing the way its sunken cheeks fluttered, working too hard for what little milk there was. Maybe this is Hell.

“Do you remember the family? They were here through the Collision, weren’t they?”

The woman nodded, her rheumy eyes shifting to the apartments where Katarina had lived.

“I knew Simone well. Before the demons came, the Delavordos used to have money. The whole ground floor of this building was theirs.”

She shivered, wrapping a torn threadbare wrap closer around herself and the child. “They even had fancy heaters in all the rooms, but they broke and poisoned half the family. At least four little ones died to hear tell of it, so they ripped the rest out. But you can still see the fittings.”

Once upon a time, four deaths by carbon-monoxide poisoning would have been a tragedy, but he was too used to such tales.

“Is there anything else you can tell me about them? Did they have any other relations in the city?”

The woman shrugged. “No more people who I know of. Toward the end, they just had books. Lots of books. The demon king sent his servants for them.” A shudder racked her skinny frame.

Really? Amducious had pilfered many family coffers for art and jewels during his reign, but as far as Ash knew, the demon never bothered to confiscate books. He’d just ordered them burned.

“When was this?”

“Before I was born. My mother told me. You hadn’t come to us yet.”

Ash nodded, wondering if anyone else might know more, but now he needed to get into that apartment. “If you remember anything else, or come across more information from your neighbors, send for me. It’s important.”

Nonplussed at the idea of being able to summon an angel, the crone stuttered her agreement.

“Who is your councilman?” he asked, scanning the near-empty streets for a well-fed face.

“Titouan, but he never comes here anymore. Spends all his time up at the Petit Palais with all the other nobs.”

Ash hid his scowl, and dismissed the woman with a respectful bow.

That baby should not be starving. He’d made it very clear.

He waited until she was gone and stalked to the ground floor of the Delavordo family home. Ash went through the empty rooms, too angry to focus on his surroundings.

Innocent babes were a priority under his distribution plan. Yes, each arrondissement grew their own food, but the council re-allocated resources according to need. When a community was hit by a disaster, the others pitched in to help shoulder the burden. As far as he knew, Le Marais hadn’t been struck in over a year.

The people here were no less able-bodied or aged than any other arrondissement. They should have bounced back by now, but the reason why they hadn’t was obvious. This neighborhood wasn’t getting its share.

Ash would have to a word with Titouan. He would have Marcus look into it to be sure, but his hunch was the meals these people were missing were being served at the Petit Palais…

First things first. Ash turned his attention to the abandoned apartment.

A few impressionist paintings were still intact on the walls, although most of the furniture had been broken up for kindling. The leg of a Louis XIV lay next to a fragment of a pink porcelain vase, a Ming if his guess was right. Across the room, the face of a shattered Empire mantle clock stared at the ceiling.

He found the library shelves bare and broken. Every trace of the collection was gone. There were no bits of torn paper or convenient catalogs listing the contents of the library in sight.

The old woman must have been right about the demon horde coming for them. But why take the books and leave the art? Demons loved defacing the old masters.

In the drawer of the remains of a delicate mahogany writing desk, he found a few abandoned miniatures. Most were tiny landscapes, but two were portraits, a matching set of a man and woman in wedding finery. The tiny face of the bewigged woman caught his attention. For a moment, the resemblance to the topaz-eyed girl in Place Vendôme surprised him.

What if…

Ash shook his head. He was imagining things again. Despite the deprivation, beautiful faces were still common in this land. Parisian women had been renowned for their grace and elegance before the Collision. It was still true, more so now that the demon horde wasn’t going around disfiguring them for their own amusement.

That’s it. She was just another pretty face. On impulse, he pocketed the miniature portraits in his robe before departing.