Then Alice moved off the window.
"There's something you should know before you agree to anything," she said.
She told them what Guild Zero had not put in the announcement. The American had not fought Wrath. He had fought an Echo of Wrath, a rebuilt copy of a fallen angel called Turiel. The whole plan depended on the Echo's retaliation, and on controlling when it went off, not on hitting it harder than it hit back.
Fianna listened without interrupting. Mara's eyes had gone narrow. Declan sat very still.
Ciara did not ask for everything at once. She asked one thing.
"Are you treating ten of us as one attacking group?"
"No," said James. "Ten people unloading on it together is the one thing we can't do. Everything we put into it, it keeps, and it gives back."
Ciara looked at him for a moment and something in her face settled.
James was already putting them over what Alice had said, piece by piece.
