In the week that follows, Mammon has to leave town on business while the others bring Colt up to speed on the issues they have discovered on Switchtrack Alley.
One morning around 5 AM, Colt gets a call from Provost Sixty Six. The old biker explains that the Heirarch needs the Ebon Cross's help. He is reluctant to explain on the phone but he needs their help discretely tracking a spirit and time is of the essence. Colt calls and wakes up Valkyrie, explaining what he knows and telling her to prepare to be picked up. She hastily writes a note for Evan and gets ready. Meanwhile Adele arrives, walking through the morning rains to take care of the dogs. Colt and Adele drive across town picking up Valkyrie as they go. The streets are dark with heavy rain making travel difficult. Overhead lightning flashes across the sky.
A half hour later they arrive at the North Loop of Chicago near the high rise apartment building that serves as the Sanctum for Freedom Manifest. Sixty Six meets them at door and leads them to Ezekiel. Along way, he explains that Ezekiel summoned an Angel from the Supernal but that it escaped. Inside the sanctum the decor is modern, accented with odd magical trinkets and souvenirs. They enter a room damp from rain with a large broken window. The Heirarch is there, dressed in ceremonial robes with high speech symbols for Aether stitched in gold thread. He stands in front of a summoning circle as the storm rages above him. As sweat drips down the old man's face, he explains that he was attempting a Supernal summoning, calling down an angel from above. After a night's work, the summoning went awry, as the angel fled the building. That was just after 4 AM. He asks for their help in catching or convincing the angel to return. If not returned soon it could die and part of the Supernal destroyed with it. He can't go himself as he must maintain the summoning circle. Otherwise an Abyssal gate will open.
Adele grabs a ceremonial item from the summoning, hoping to use it to entice the angel back. Colt meanwhile scans outside, detecting the strong Supernal resonance of the creature. The cabal piles back into Colt's truck and begins following the trail. They cross a rain filled parking lot, avoiding the pot holes and rusty lumps of vehicles. The trail leads to a corner convenience store. The window to this store is smashed in and inside the contents are upturned and thrown about. A surly clerk mops up the damage. Colt and Valkyrie jump out and examine the store. Colt pushes through to get to the back exit through which the angel fled. As Adele drives the truck on the street, the others try to follow its trail out the back. But they soon lose it.
Driving around in the truck, they spot the resonance again at Angel's Day Care Center. No one is there but the door is open. The trail leads on but first Colt goes inside, finding strange symbols covering the chalk board. He takes a picture with his phone and they move on, following a ley line tinged with supernal energies that runs from here to the Angel Food Bakery. The smell of baked goods fills the air as they approach. A small patch of sunlight breaks through the clouds and the resonance is stronger. Adele spots a group of ghosts drawn to the heavenly feeling.
They continue to follow trail to an accident site near a store called Angel Sales. No one is seriously hurt and already the cops have things in hand. A spirit of wrecks is gloating in Shadow. Colt meanwhile determines the angel landed in the street briefly before heading down an alley.
As Colt and Valkyrie head down the alley on foot, Adele makes her way around the accident in the truck. In the alley they encounter a viscous dog. Colt convinces it to let them pass and they continue to the other street. Down the street they find another ley line passing through the Golden Angel Restaurant. The Mexican restaurant is closed for the moment but the ley line is channeling pure energies of the Aether making it hard to pick out the angel's path. After a moment however they push on.
They end up stuck in grid lock. As they slowly make their way down the street, they spot the angel flying overhead. Again Colt and Valkyrie jump out and swirm past the cars, leaving Adele to make it past the traffic in Colt's truck. On the other side of the road, they make their way through an alley. Several homeless people are there asking what just happened. As they try to get a hand out they grab Colt while Valkyrie slips past. After a moment he extricates himself from the situation and joins Valkyrie at St. Andrews. The church is empty but the sounds of wing beats come from inside. They search for the creature until finally Adele having caught up finds it by the alter. It flies off again suddenly, but seems to be leading them on.
They follow it to the Angel Psychic Center. There they find the angel in the lobby, quietly watching a Sleeper woman, Abbey Johnson, crouched and scared in a corner. The creature itself is a faceless shadow of an angel, clearly filled with wondrous power. Its four wings are feathered as is its crown and flanks. Its face is devoid of features. Sexless, its skin is perfect and gray, almost insubstantial.
The woman is bewildered and afraid, but Colt is able to calm her and explains he will be back later. Convincing the angel to return to the circle turns out to be easy after it is done looking at the woman. They cloak it with invisibility and drive back in the truck with the girls flanking the angel and Colt in the back. They get back to the sanctum without incident. When asked what it was doing, the Angel replies that it was delivering illumination. It speaks to each of them before returning to the circle. To Adele it says that the path to Supernal will be opened soon, to Valkyrie that the pieces have been set into motion, and to Colt that the revelation is coming. It also delivers a silent message to the Heirarch who thanks it and then sends it back to the heavens, releasing the magic of the summons into a flash of Prime magic.
The tired leader thanks the cabal and promises to help them in anyway he can. Adele hurries off to class, Valkyrie heads back home to get some sleep, and Colt returns to the Psychic Center to check on Abbey. He finds that the Sleeper has forgotten the entire incident, washed away in the fog of sleep.
In the next few days, Adele talks to Father Joseph about Father Neely's troubles. He remembers the old priest from seminary and happily agrees to ask the congregation to help out at the soup kitchen alongside her. She and the others also begin their plan to get Neely's congregation to clean up the blood of Isaiah's death.
Meanwhile word spreads of a newly Awakened mage. Decima gives Colt the task of evaluating the mage and promoting the Silver Ladder. Valkyrie gets a similar message from Red Knight. The Obrimos gets to the Guardian safe house first and is shown in by Roach. Inside is an unknown Guardian with a missing arm and the Sleeper they met a few days before. Valkyrie explains the Arrow to Abbey, describing what they do and how important they are to defending mage society. Colt arrives later, and after reintroducing himself explains the Silver Ladder to the mage. It comes out that Abbey is an avid believer in psychic powers and sees her Awakening in terms of this. But the Awakening she describes fits none of the lore they know. She seems skilled in the Arcana of Forces and Time but is neither an Obrimos nor an Acanthus. They also explain the importance of Shadow names and other realities of Mage life.
Afterwards they go to dinner, further discussing Awakening and the peculiarities of Abbey's. Eventually she decides to join the Silver Ladder and begins training under Goes and Fakir.