"Does it strike you?" Gabriel asked, and his eyes were piercing in a way they had rarely been before. Piercing and not exactly glowing, but lit with a serene kind of certainty, a knowledge. He already knew what Skul was thinking. He already knew it because the Archangel was thinking it too. Perhaps it was merely a sequence, a chain which had begun with Merlin speaking on the rosary, with the resonances reaching out to Gabe and touching Finbar instead. Maybe it was as simple as an accidental trigger.

But Gabe very rarely believed in coincidences, because, quite frequently, what humanity saw as 'coincidences' were a series of deliberate prods from both the angelic and the demonic. There was a purpose in that 'accidental' vision.

The Archangel blinked and looked down at Finbar, but cradling the psychic's consciousness as he was, Gabriel still seemed a step apart. Less Gabe, the American cowboy, more Gabriel, the Archangel. He already knew he was going to regret this show of activity, once the breach closed. Even now the residue of the music ran across his inside feathers, and whenever it puttered out against his flight-feathers he felt the twitch of it against the gouges on their backs. The thunder in his head was presence, but distant. Set aside.

He could bear it, for the moment.

"Finbar," he said gently, his thumb stroking the psychic's temple, and this time there wasn't so much an order as a request. "It's enough, little brother. Come back."