Earl Cain Hargreaves calls a meeting at his mansion, inviting all those who know about the Delilah Organization to work with him, together, to bring it down. Included among them is Dominic Crehador, a medium, but he refuses to work with Cain, instead leaving and walking out.
But Dominic is in love with a woman who is also a prostitute. When he accuses her of only loving money, she is enraged and leaves for an assignation with another man, the mayor of London. Dominic follows them, and sees the mayor. Later, Sheila sees a strangee ritual the mayor performs, killing a young woman underneath an angel statue after giving her a special necklace. But when she confesses to Crehador what she had seen over the phone, she is overheard by one of the mayor's minions and slain, drowned in a bathtub in an apparent suicide.
Crehador had called on Cain for help, and now Cain helps in a different way, serving as a body for Crehador to call Sheila's spirit into so they can get information about her killer. It's unexpected that Cain had this ability, but he is able to see her death through her own eyes. She tells them that her killer is there in the room, but the only other people in the room besides Cain and Crehador are Riff and Cain's cousin, Oscar!
Cain immediately accuses Oscar, and asks if he has a Rose-shaped birthmark on his chest, while Riff goes chasing after a man who threw something through the window into the room. While giving chase, his heart pounds and he starts to feel sick. Blood oozes from his mouth, and a passerby tells him that the doctor has a message for him, that he needs medicine, but that he will only get it when he does something that makes it clear he deserves it.
As Riff coughs up blood and wonders what this means, he manages to make it back to the room, where he tells Cain he lost the man he was chasing. Cain is irritated about Oscar and tells Riff not to mention his name ever again. The Angel statue is part of a group of twelve ringed around the center of London, and a ceremony will soon be held to consecrate them. Cain plans to attend the ceremony and find out the secret of the angels. He sends Riff to find the entrance to the statue. Riff finds it and goes down to find the entrance under the statue, where he is confronted by Jizabel Disraeli, who upbraids him and then tells him he will give Riff the medicine. When Riff asks how he will know it is the real medicine, Jizabel says he could just withhold it if he wanted to kill Riff. He starts to give Riff the injection, but Cain's father appears and destroys the needle with the medicine in it, saying he wants Riff to suffer for as long as he has left of life. Riff blacks out, wondering why Cain's father hates Cain so much.
When he wakes up, he is at Cain's home, in bed. Mary Weather observes that Riff has been sick and passing out a lot lately. Is he okay? Cain has brought a Doctor, but Riff doesn't want Cain to find out about his illness, so he refuses to see the Doctor. Cain, not being good with words, has brought flowers to Riff's bedside in a vase, and Riff's heart is warmed at the evidence of Cain's feelings for him, much more than those of a master to a servant. Cain promises Mary Weather that when all of this is over, they will have an endless tea party out on the Heath, with all the clotted cream, scones, cucumber sandwiches and cherry cake they can eat, and all the tea they can drink.
Later, at the party to consecrate the angel statues, Cain is all set to expose the Mayor's twisted schemes... when he is betrayed from a most unexpected direction, and the true killer of Sheila is revealed!
The ending to this book was very unexpected, as it came from the direction least expected. I can't say much without giving it away (I have probably already given it away), but it's very clear when Cain promises Mary Weather the party that he or she probably won't live to have the party, given the dark background of the characters and world. It's sad and depressing, but gives a smile to your face at the same time, and makes the coming shock that much greater. How many characters will survive the events to come?
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