Azazel was waiting for me back at the Ninth Branch. She was standing beside the golem, studying it curiously. She heard us walk in, but she didn’t turn around.
“Can you tell me now?” he asked as we entered the schoolhouse. My eyes were locked on Azazel, though. There was something about how she stood, her seeming unreadable demeanor. Even as I unconsciously tried to tune into her emotions, there was nothing but an opaque emptiness.
“Vance, can you give me a second with her? I promise I’ll tell you something, but I need to talk to her,” I said absently as I approached her. He made a sound of indignant impatience, but I paid him no mind. She was silently demanding me by giving me nothing. I was compelled to her in the absence of feeling.
“Alana, can you show our guest a room?” she said without moving. Alana seemed to magically materialize, and she approached Vance. I looked back at him, and he was looking at me with a mild expression. I gave a slight shrug and said, “It’s fine, just go with her.” Almost reluctantly, he followed her down a set of stairs. I moved toward Azazel, and she stated, “You met with Pythius.”
“I did, by accident,” I added hastily. Had I let her down?
Wait.
Why do I care?
“I understand. It proposed to you a deal, did it not?” she asked. There wasn’t a single hint of a question in her tone, and she continued to give me nothing. I shuffled uneasily, feeling her lack of emotion like the bareness of my skin to the world.
“He did,” I responded, maintaining a level tone.
“And the deal was?”
“He wants me to give him Agatha.”
“Do you understand why you cannot do that?” she asked.
“Well, I had no intention of doing that anyway.”
“Then why did you make the deal? It made you shake on it, did it not?”
“He did.”
“Deals with the Fallen are not things you can easily work around,” she said, turning to me with a deep frown. My heart seemed to falter in my chest. I did let her down.
Shaking my head, I squinted my eyes at her, trying to understand what was happening. Suspiciously, I asked, “What are you doing to me? Are you working some sort of angel magic?”
Her expression was again blank, and she answered, “Nothing. If you are to truly be part of me, I am the whole. You are but a piece. Your very existence is compelled to me.”
At first, I didn’t quite understand what she was trying to say, and then as realization dawned on me, a quiet terror entered my being.
“You should not have trepidation. You should be rejoicing that you may finally be whole, soon,” she said, nodding at me and finally showing some expression: a knowing smile.
“Unfortunately, though you are part of my being, you did not receive my inherent knowledge of the Fallen and have made a grave mistake,” she said, her face falling flat again.
“What are you doing?” I yelled at her, feeling my heart clench painfully at her apparent negligence.
“You maintain your existence more easily when you have something to give you life. As that is me, you directly feed and thrive on my own energy and emotions. I may not be able to cut you from my energy, but I can shut you out of my head and emotions,” she answered simply.
Rage boiling over—rage at her unnecessary punishment, rage at myself for relying on it an giving her that power over me—I yelled, “Well, I’m working around it!”
“Settle,” she commanded, and in an instant, I was calm, as if the rage never existed in the first place.
“I followed you,” she said simply. “For obvious reasons.”
“You followed me?” I asked, thrown off by the sudden mood shift.
“You and Azrael went to the town nearby.”
“If you followed us, then why didn’t you do anything?” I asked, my own fury fighting against the calm that was forced on my like a straight jacket.
“I did not want to interfere. If Pythius had wanted to kill you, he would have done it as soon as you got to the town, but he didn’t. He wanted to make a deal, and the deal was a trade of Agatha for the guaranteed safety of your loved ones, yes?”
“Yes,” I said slowly.
“You know you cannot trust him.”
“Yes, I do.”
“What do you plan to do then?” she asked, turning to look straight at me. There was contempt in hidden behind her eyes.
“I’ll figure it out,” I said indignantly, feeling my own buckling against her will.
“How?”
“I don’t know, I just will,” I snapped. “Why are you questioning me?”
“Because you do not understand what you have done,” she sighed, fire behind her words. “This is out of your realm of understanding, and you do not understand all of the consequences this deal will have.”
“What was I supposed to do then? He was holding Vance hostage!” I exclaimed, her hold on my emotions relinquishing. I took a step back, feeling the full force of my own emotions slamming into me like an ocean wave. I forced myself to take a deep breath as I tried to get a handle of the backlash of my own anger slapping against my heart. Looking back up at her with scornful eyes, I asked in a low, almost threatening tone, “Was I supposed to let him hurt him or what?”
“You were supposed to negotiate,” she said simply.
“Negotiate how? With what? All I have to barter with is my life, and if I die, you die, too.”
She shook her head at me and said, “Like your world, things are not so black and white, Amor.”
“God, I can’t stand you!” I screamed in her face, indulging the fire just slightly. “You go from one place to the next with me in a matter of seconds. How am I supposed to deal with you?”
She looked at me with blank eyes, and she said, “How am I supposed to deal with you, Amor? You are a creature that should have never existed that possesses the one thing that will allow me to go home and be with my people. Of course I will react in hostility upon meeting you. I have been searching for years looking for my wing, and I now find that not only is it attached to what appears to be a human, but a human that is physically identical to me and now is somehow inexplicably linked to me. It would be convenient to be on somewhat amiable terms with you, Amor, but you are hard to understand as well. You have many outbursts and feel much more deeply than most humans I have come across. There are things about you I may never understand, but right now I do not want to understand you. I want to keep you alive and stop the event that will take millions of lives.
“What do you want to do, Amor?” she finished with a frown. I looked away from her then, and I said, without hesitation, in a hushed and bitter voice, “I want to be alone.”
“Then go and be alone.” she said simply. It wasn’t mean or mocking, but somehow it hurt more than when my mother had slapped me. I turned on my heel and walked down the stairs to the room I last remembered. In a room to myself, it was dark. I could vaguely hear people moving about in the other rooms around me, and at first, it was loud and overbearing. I could feel the waters in my head rising and growing impatient and restless. I was angry, and I was frustrated, and I was stressed, and I was worried, and I was sad, and I was really sad, and I was anxious, and I was scared, and I was worried, and I was stressed, and I was frustrated, and I was bitter, and I was angry, and I was all of this, and somehow I was more, and I was everything but happy, all at once. I thrust my head between my knees, trying to cover my ears with my legs in hopes that I might be able to silence the noiseless storm gaining frightening power in my mind, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. The waters were dark, and they were suffocating, and they were trying to drag me deeper, and I was desperate for air, but I was already breathing. That was a weird sensation, drowning with air in your lungs.
All at once, the darkness in my mind suddenly burst into a bright red light, and I could see myself floating in this colorless sea, sinking in this colorless sea, and the sky above me was a brilliant, bloody red. My scars tingled lightly, my wrists crawling. My skin called to me, enticing me. I was out of tears, but I needed to cry. I stared blankly at my arms, at the dark scars that decorated them. I was unexpectedly disgusted by them, horrified at the stories they told, but at the same time, desperate to create more. Just a simple, easy slice wouldn’t be so bad. I thought I was in a position to allow myself this small satisfaction. That would be the last of anyone’s worries, right? Me cutting myself? As long as I didn’t die, that’s all that mattered, right? And I had the briefest, so certain instant to do something about this ungodly craving, when I remembered that anything that happened to me, reflected on Azazel.
Darkness befell my mind, and in the sea I drowned once again, the weight of the realization pulling me down fast. Without warning, I was shut out from the manifestation in my headspace.
I rocked silently back and forth, back and forth, as for the briefest of moments, I remembered that storms did not last forever, and that tidal waves eventually crashed. I was caught in the flood of my brain, stuck in the descent of the waters that had spent so much time building. This was the hardest part about these episodes. Logic was never a feasible thought in these moments, but from time to rarer and rarer time, some piece of truth would magically make it through and remind me of a simple fundamental fact about the world. Thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, were not lasting events that carried on indefinitely. They left devastation, but they were just masses of energy that needed to be expelled, and eventually that energy would leave. Tidal waves did not last for hours and hours. They spent a lot of time building, no matter how big or small, for a brief instance of crash.
The simplicity of it was almost laughable, but just getting through it was easier said than done. My heart ached, crushed and thrown in the torrent of this uncontrollable emotion. My throat was painfully closed, as if someone were choking me from within, and though I was breathing, I couldn’t feel it. The air passed through my body without sensation. My mind was entirely too wrapped up in trying to keep my head above water to register whether or not I was breathing. But it was temporary. It wouldn’t last forever, no matter how deep the waters dragged me or what boulders and rocks it threw me against. It was temporary. It wouldn’t last forever.
All that mattered to me, then, was getting through it. That’s all I ever tried to ask of myself in these situations. That’s all I could ask. Just get through it.
I was rocking back and forth for a long time. I could never track the time in these episodes, but eventually, the waves in my ears died down, and the sound of my world came back to me. What was at once so loud and overbearing had quieted enough for me to shut it all out.
Pulling myself back together, salvaging the remains of my muddled mind, was another endeavor on its own, and one I rarely asked of myself. Often times I fell apart, and I oftentimes fell back together over time. It was a lot to ask of myself to survive the madness in my own brain, so it only seemed fair I find my pieces sometime after I managed to come back to reality. The comedown after an episode like that wasn’t something I’d call reality.
It was a fugue-like state. Most of me shattered completely in those episodes, what I referred to as a ritualistic suicide of self. I could become someone different, someone better, someone stronger; I just needed time to put the pieces together.
Now, at this moment, I was asking myself to take a step further and salvage the pieces of me floating in the gravity of my person. I was asking myself to grab as much of me as I could before it all floated away and put it back together—put me back together– and that was a difficult thing to do. But it needed to be done. No one else could survive a tragedy that happened in my own brain. No one could put me back together. This was the one thing I could do for myself, if not anything else.
The sensation of my feet rubbing against socks that no doubt needed to be changed felt mildly disgusting. My feet were freezing, but they were still somehow sweating in my shoes. The jeans on my legs had already been a tad too tight to begin with, but in this place of concentration, it felt almost too oppressive on my body. The shirt I wore was unfamiliar. It didn’t smell like mine at all; probably because it wasn’t. At some point in my sleep earlier that day, someone had deemed my other shirt just too ripped and tattered to be called some form of fashion statement.
My hands on my head, my head in my hands; one or the other felt either too suffocating or too heavy. Maybe it was both. Maybe it there was so much in my head that my hands felt like an inescapable trap, or maybe there was so much in my head that it weighed heavy on my neck and needed to be supported by my hands. My legs felt stiff and rigid, my arms like steel. My gut hadn’t unclenched since I left the diner, and it somehow managed to clench more now that I was trying to take the time to ground myself. Why did it always seem that in the times I tried to purposefully calm myself down, it was coincidentally the time the mess in my head seemed most overbearing? I didn’t even want to stretch out my wing. That would just add to all the sensation I was forcing myself to be aware of, but even keeping it tucked away felt like neglecting my back, going around moving about knowing it needed a good cracking.
Sighing, I leaned my head back against the door and tried to count forwards and backwards. I wasn’t finished with grounding myself, but the next part was harder to manage without counting. Starting from one, I went up to ten, and back down to one, and up to ten, and down to one, and up to ten, and down to one, and up to ten. There wasn’t a particular number of repetitions I was trying to achieve. It was rather trying to instill the tempo in my mind, setting a mental metronome, and once it had been established, I counted my breaths. Inhale one and two, exhale three and four. Inhale one and two, exhale three and four.
I paid careful attention to the delicate way the air passed through my nose and inflated my lungs, how it felt to breathe it out. Inhale clarity, exhale chaos. My silent mantra. Inhale clarity, exhale chaos, and gradually, I paid more attention to the quiet beat of my heart in my ears, in the silence of the room. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
That’s right.
My heart was still beating. My brain was a mess, and I felt like I was drowning in my mind, like I was suffocating in the confines of my head, but despite that, my heart was steadily beating on. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. That’s right. No matter how bad I felt, no matter how messed up my brain got, my heart knew what to do, and it did the one thing right that the rest of me did wrong. My heart continued to beat; my heart continued to live. I opened my eyes into the darkness, and I wasn’t surprised to see the room was suddenly filled with about thirty people. We all possibly couldn’t have fit in there, but I was the only real person there, so it didn’t matter if we fit or not. Madison and Donovan stood at the front before me, and there was a peculiar, proud look on their face.
“You did good, kid.” Madison said with a small, proud smile.
“If you can get past this, you can get past anything.” Donovan beamed.
Madison gave him a faux mocking look, and she said, “Could you get any cheesier?”
“Don’t try me,” Donovan chuckled.
They both looked back down at me, and Madison said, “Remember this moment, Ama. You know it’s only going to get crazier from here. You just need to remember that your heart isn’t the same as your brain. We’re all rooting for you.” The crowd behind her made a sound of agreement, and various people nodded. I recognized each and every single one of them, and for a moment, I felt as if I’d walked into a family reunion, gathered for me after coming home from a long war.
“The war is only beginning.” Yaya said, looking at me with keen eyes. Without saying another word, they quietly began to fade away, and I asked, “What, does this mean I can’t talk to any of you from now on?”
“Settle down, drama queen,” Madison said. “I told you. We all don’t travel in a pack, but we all felt you. We came together to see you through this if you couldn’t do it. They’re just going back to wherever it is they hang out.”
I laughed quietly to myself and said, “Of course. The war isn’t over yet. I’m probably gonna need all of you at some point, aren’t I?”
Madison shrugged and said, “Looks to be that way, but rest easy. We’re all here for you.”
“How reassuring,” I murmured with a gentle eye roll, but the smile on my face was genuine as I watched Madison and Donovan fade into the darkness. As soon as they vanished from sight, the smile fell from my face. Inside, the pieces of myself that I slapped together were solidifying in place. I hoped it was enough to get me through. Standing, I brushed my pants off and left the room. I wandered along the hall until I came across the meeting room. Alana, Eleanor and Ben were playing cards.
“Amor,” Alana said, standing, “How are you doing? Is everything okay?”
“Do you guys have a shower here?”
“Yeah, of course. Here, I’ll show it to you,” she said, standing and guiding me to yet another part of the building. “Do you need clothes?”
Glancing down at myself, I said, “Yeah, it’s probably about time I change.” She gave me an endearing smile and showed me how the shower operated, then left. The water pressure was a little hard for my usual liking, but I was calm then. The warmth of the water put me at ease. Tilting my head up to the water, I let my thoughts be calm and wander silently through the stillness of my mind. It was relaxing being able to think without thinking.
Out of the shower, Alana had laid out a pair of better fitting jeans and a sleeveless shirt with a low cut back. She had also laid out for me a gray hoodie, and I remembered that I had left my father’s out in the car. I slid into the clothes and walked back out and straight to my car. I sat there for a second, just soaking up the silence of the car, and then I reached back to grab my father’s hoodie. It was obnoxiously large on me, but it smelled like home. The door opened beside me, then, and Vance slid into the seat next to me.
I looked over at him, but he was staring straight ahead. He didn’t say anything, but he had his hands on the steering wheel, and I could see that his knuckles were pale. Studying him, I was silent. I didn’t want to say anything. I just wanted to enjoy this moment of soundless conversation with him, even if he was upset with me. Even with a simmering expression on his face, he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, and a soft smile spread across my face. Reaching over, I took his arm from the steering wheel and snuggled into it, looking off vaguely into the distance before us.
“It started with the triangle,” I began in a mellow tone. We were in the car for a while as I started to recount the last few days. It was strange telling him everything that happened. It all seemed to be stuck and jumbled in my head. I never stopped to think that maybe saying it out loud would make it more real, or least make more sense of it all. There was a lot of it all to detail, and even as I said it out loud, it sounded wild to me, but I knew that it happened, because I had felt it all. I had survived all of that. Vance gradually softened toward me, and eventually he was holding me quietly, squeezing me gently when I told him about the times I’d been hurt or almost died. By the end of it, he was holding me very close and he was quiet. Speechless, probably. I wouldn’t know what to say about any of that, either, so I didn’t blame him. I just let him hold me as I held the hoodie close to me, and after a few more minutes of silence, he finally asked, “You did all of that? By yourself?”
“I mean, I had Jo and Bond with me. I wouldn’t say I did it all by myself,” I said back.
“But you kind of did it by yourself, if you think about it,” he offered. He let out a long exhale and sat back in his seat, and he glanced down at me and said, “Man, you’re crazier than I thought.”
“Hey now,” I protested lightly, “I’m insane.”
He chuckled and said, “Yeah, yeah I guess you are. So, that’s the whole story, huh?”
“That’s the story so far,” I shrugged. “It’s still going now, I guess.”
He let out a long breath and he asked, “Am I part of this story now?”
“I guess you are,” I sighed. “Are you okay with that?”
“Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” He smiled, and I looked up at him with big, wide eyes. “What?” he asked.
“You just surprise me,” I said after a moment, a giggle escaping me. A smile curled across his face and he said, “That’s good then. You’re always full of surprises. Gotta be on my toes around you.”
“I guess that’s my specialty,” I shrugged. “C’mon, let’s go back inside. I’m hungry.”
He snickered and said, “Yeah, I am, too. So much for our little date, huh?”
“Yeah,” I murmured with an eye roll. Back inside we followed the noise down the stairs and into the more elaborate underground of the building. We were in the big meeting space where people were gathered, but I didn’t see Jo or Bond around. My eyes scanned over the doors that led off to different parts of the building, wondering which one they had disappeared behind. I wondered quite how big the underground of the Ninth Branch really was, but I didn’t feel like exploring. Moving past the crowd with Vance in tow, I followed my instincts toward Azazel, and found ourselves in a kitchen.
Alana and Eleanor were busy preparing dinner already. They were talking back and forth as they clamored around the kitchen, working around each other in sync. An appetizing aroma wafted from a few, quietly boiling pots on the stove. They hadn’t noticed us walk in, and Azazel didn’t acknowledge me. She was sitting at a small table in the kitchen, watching the twins aimlessly. She looked up at me a second late, expressionless. I furrowed my eyebrows at her, and a second later, a wave of calm washed over me. She was deep in thought about something—likely the deal—and she didn’t want me to concern myself over it. Kind as the thought was, I wasn’t too fond of this control she had on my emotions.
“Oh, hello, Amor,” Alana said, glancing over her shoulder at me, “I hope you and your friends are hungry.”
“Sure am. Where are my friends, anyway?” I asked, feeling that forced calm ebbing away.
“They should be in their rooms, probably relaxing or freshening up,” Eleanor offered.
“What are you guys cooking?” Vance asked, hovering closely beside me. It felt nice, comfortable having him there with me. I couldn’t say I was ecstatic that he knew about this world now, but I guess it could put my mind at ease that he was here with me and not being used as potential leverage against me.
“We’re making a stew our mom used to make for us when we were kids,” Eleanor answered, “It’s almost ready.”
“Smells delicious,” Vance said.
“If it’s not too much to ask, could you help with setting up the tables outside?” Eleanor asked, gesturing to the door behind him.
“Sure,” he said back, detaching from me and leaving to the door behind us. I glance back at him, wanting him to stay near, but the lack of expression on Azazel was bothering me again. I took a seat in front of her, and she looked at me with the same blank face. Though we were physically identical in most physical aspects—she didn’t have any scars I could see– I couldn’t see myself as her. I didn’t recognize this face as even being similar to mine. I may as well have been looking in a mirror, but she was somehow entirely different from me.
“We are different people, Amor. Did you expect differently?” she asked, reading my thoughts flawlessly.
“Is this something you can just do? Or are you a mind reader?” I asked, feeling some irritation at the invasion.
“I receive impressions of those who open themselves up to me, but I see your mind clearly.”
Then I should be able to read yours, but I can’t because you’re masking your thoughts, I thought.
“Precisely,” she said back.
“Asshole,” I muttered, looking at the wall directly before me.
“What?” Vance asked, coming up behind me. I glanced back at him and said, “She can read my thoughts but she won’t let me read hers.”
“Ah, okay. Weird,” he said with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, right?” I asked, looking back at her, a frown on my face. Why aren’t you letting me in?
There are many things within my mind that you should not see, she thought back to me. I was almost shocked at how clear her voice was in my mind. As she spoke in my head, there was the briefest glimpse of other parts of her memories and thoughts and life. I didn’t quite know what I was looking at, but it was heavy and sharp in my head. I put a hand to my head and rubbed my temple gently.
“Do you see now?” she asked.
“Yeah, I guess,” I murmured, still rubbing my temple.
She didn’t say anything for a moment, then offered, “You can shut me out, too, if you try hard enough.”
Turning, I studied her full on with scrutinizing eyes. Why would she tell me that? I’m sure I would have eventually gotten around to understanding that myself, but why mention it? I’d imagine it would be in her benefit that I didn’t know that, lest she still have suspicions about my allegiance. She didn’t respond to the evident questions on my mind, but instead studied me, mirroring my exact expression. I wasn’t sure if it was out of mockery or she was genuinely studying me.
She said after another few seconds of silence, “It has come to full understanding that you are, for the most part, a human who has my wing. Knowing that is true, I can only begin to imagine what your life has become and how it must feel to be put in this new, unprecedented world. You do not have the efficacy to utilize my abilities, so I am trying to limit my own to
properly see you.”
My eyebrows drew together, confused and slightly suspicious of the sudden turn.
“You’re . . . trying to empathize with me?”
Azazel’s face relaxed and her eyes shot skyward. “Yes.”
“Food’s ready,” Eleanor and Alana same time. She and I both looked over, and I turned in my seat. We would talk about this later. Azazel and I both stood. She moved to the cabinet to grab out bowls of all kinds, and I copied her. Alana and Eleanor both grabbed a giant steaming pot in mittened hands and followed Azazel and I through the door that Vance held open. Azazel was in front of me and gave Vance a onceover that ignited—jealousy?—within me. Thankfully, Vance didn’t notice, but just smiled warmly down at me.
“How many people live here?” Vance asked as he moved beside me.
I shrugged, said back, “No clue,” placed the bowls on long, foldable tables. There were about fifteen people in total. I looked around, still not seeing Jo or Bond. Tentatively, I reached out with my consciousness to find the familiar flow of their thoughts. The steady rhythm of Bond reverberated back to me, and not far from him was the fluid, mellow movement of Jo’s. They were here, just resting, thankfully.
“Only three people actually live here. We function as a halfway house for a lot of people who come and go,” Alana answered, snapping me from my short trance.
“Ah, right, Ben told me about that. Does he live here?” I answered, forcing myself back to presence. I noticed then that he wasn’t there.
“No, he visits every couple of days for service and to help out.” Alana said.
“You guys eat down here?” I asked, listening to more people coming up from the stairs.
“Most of the time we do. We pray upstairs before the idol of Azazel and we share communion and feast down here, close to the earth that bore us,” Eleanor said. Eleanor and Alana set the giant pots on a table closest to the kitchen, and Azazel and I set the bowls down beside it. Azazel dipped back into the kitchen with Eleanor and came back out with sets of flatware and napkins. Eleanor had a tray of bread rolls in her hand before she ran back for condiments. A second later, a line formed at the end of the table, and everyone grabbed a bowl, Alana spooning a hefty amount into each.
“Peace and prosperity,” Alana murmured with a warm smile, to which the greeting was returned. I stood by, somewhat awkwardly, not quite sure if I should jump in line or wait, as Azazel did beside Alana. A second later, Eleanor gestured to Azazel, Vance and I and said, “We’re going to eat somewhere else.”
“Why’s that?” Vance asked.
“We will be dining with Agatha since she is not well enough to move freely on her own yet,” Azazel spoke.
“Ah, okay,” he whispered, then he leaned down to my ear and asked, “Who’s Agatha again?”
“She’s like the priest of this Branch,” I murmured back. Eleanor took the tray and gestured for us to follow. The room was now full of people, as others had trickled in more as the aroma of the stew wafted around the underground. There were a few faces I recognized from earlier, but there were many new ones, including a young girl. Though she looked clean and put together, which her mousy hair done up in a cute messy bun, she couldn’t have been older than middle school age, and I couldn’t help but feel she’d run away from something.
“How is she doing?” I asked, turning my attention to Eleanor.
“Aggy? She’s doing better. She’s still regaining her strength,” she responded. She opened the door to the room Agatha was staying in. Inside, the bookcase had been pushed off to one of the walls, and someone had put a circular table neatly in the center of the room with several chairs around. Agatha sat reclined in one of the chairs, an arm slung over the back of the chair and a hand covering her face. There was a glass of red wine in front of her, and the bottle was mostly empty.
“Hey, Aggy, dinner’s ready,” Eleanor said, placing the bowls around the table.
“Cool, thanks,” she said, taking a deep breath and forcing herself into a sitting position, with great struggle. I sat down directly across from her and Eleanor sat to her right. Azazel sat to my left, and Vance sat to my right. She gave him another onceover, and a sultry smile cracked across her face before disappearing. I said nothing, but I simmered inside. There were still two seats left on the other side of Vance, and a moment later, Jo and Bond came into the room.
“Oh, hey, there you are,” Jo said, once she saw me. “Hey, Vance, what’s up? We were wondering where you’d disappeared to.”
“Hey, dude, not much. I’m here now, I guess,” Vance said with a smile and shrug.
“Well, this should be more interesting then, huh,” Bond said sitting down next to Jo. In a half joking voice, he said, “More people to die for you.”
“I gave you guys the out. You chose to stay,” I shrugged at him. I filed away the other half of his tone as something to keep an eye on. Of the three of us, Bond was definitely the most grounded. It really did surprise me he when he chose to stay. Of the three of us, he also had the best chance at a real future. Bond was much smarter than I was and could make sense of the maths and sciences in ways I wouldn’t even dream of. Consequently, he was gearing himself towards a degree somewhere in the STEM region and already had a full-ride scholarship waiting for him after school.
With that in mind, I wondered why he chose to potentially throw that away. If I knew there was no going back from here, he knew it five steps before.
“You guys are looking better,” I noted, keeping the inquiry to myself. “What did you guys do while I was gone?”
“Waited around for your ass to get better,” Bond said with a snicker. And there it was. There was that lanky, awkward, new-to-school asshole that I had befriended when we were sophomores. He stayed despite the danger because I was the one who was in danger. “Are you better now?”
“Well, I’m here,” I shrugged, stifling the warmth of knowing true loyalty. I glanced at Jo, who was studying the room with inquisitive eyes. She was my given. Not just a given. She was my given. She would follow me to hell and back if it ever demanded, and I would do the same for her in a heartbeat. If it had been her who had this damnable wing attached to her back, I wouldn’t have hesitated in going with her. Without saying a word, I stood and moved to them, wrapped my arms around both of them and held them close. Whispering, for only them to hear, “I love you dearly.”
Jo said nothing, just returned the hug as she continued her studying, and Bond chuckled and said, “So you are better,” and he patted my arm affectionately. I gave them another squeeze and returned to my seat beside Vance. Riding on affection, I slid my hand under the table and placed my hand on his knee, hoping the rush of heat wasn’t visible on my neck. Without saying anything, he slid his hand in mine and held it firmly. I could feel Azazel’s irritation beside me, and I stomped a triumphant smile.
As soon as everyone was seated, we all just talked like it was a normal day, a normal dinner. Agatha sipped her wine more than she sipped her soup. She didn’t speak too much, but rather listened and nodded her head in conversation with Eleanor and Azazel. Jo, Bond, Vance and I all spoke about our life back home as if it was a casual day and we were having a nice get-together and catching up. It was nice, a temporary reprieve from this situation at hand, and there were plenty of jibes at each other but many more laughs in between. Vance didn’t know Bond or Jo very well, but they were all close enough to me to still enjoy the company and the conversation. I knew they would all be good friends; we all just needed a time to get together and sit down. I hated how it had to be this way.
Keeping my spirits aloof and elevated, we continued to chat and laugh and reminisce and eat. The stew was absurdly delicious and very filling. By the end of our bowls, Eleanor had brought out another bottle of wine and was serving glasses around the table. I was never a big fan of alcohol, but the wine was sweet and warm. I felt light and calm by the end of the glass, and by the end of the bottle, our conversations had slowed down, and we looked around contentedly at one another.
Glancing at Azazel, I thought, Should they know about Pythius’ deal?
Azazel was looking down at her glass, which was almost full still. She swirled her finger thoughtfully along the rim, and she shook her head lightly.
You will call upon Pythius tomorrow night, she thought to me briefly.
So soon?
Did you have a plan of action? The message didn’t come across as mean or challenging; rather it was a simple question hoping for a meaningful answer. Part of my shrunk away in mild regret of the decision, but there was no going back. It wasn’t like I could just text Evelyn and ask her to reschedule. A slight bang of betrayal shot through me, despite the anger I had wanted to focus on in regards to her—him.
I guess not, I thought back, more to myself than her. I looked down at my empty glass, and Agatha and Eleanor thought it was time for all of us to go to sleep. Eleanor collected the bowls and let us say good-bye to Agatha, who was looking paler than normal, but she was smiling. Jo and I were sharing a room, and Bond and Vance were sharing their own room.
“Ama,” Jo asked in the dimness of the room after we’d settled.
“What’s up?”
“How do you feel about everything?” Such a simple question with so many answers.
I blew out a long sigh and asked, “How am I supposed to feel about it all?”
I could almost feel her shrugging as she said, “I don’t know. Scared? Excited? You’re the MC, love. Tell me.”
“I don’t really know what there is to be excited about,” I responded after a second of thought. “If this were some RPG game where no one actually dies or gets hurt, sure I might be excited.”
“This is kind of like a game,” she offered lightly.
“This would be some cheesy B-rate flick if this were a movie,” trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
“B-rate? I was thinking C.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I laughed at her. “It’s Bond, right? He gives it that C-rate.”
“Naw, I was thinking about how you having a cheesy twin angel thing was the C-rate, especially you of all people.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know, Ama, it’s kind of weirdly convenient that it’s you in the center of this nonsense instead of anyone else.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, sitting up onto my arm. The light the spilled beneath the crack of the door was enough to make out shapes and details. In the dimness of the room, she was making a face at the ceiling. I could feel myself getting defensive already, and she answered carefully, “You’ve always kind of been that way, you know, at the center of everything. You’re always the main wherever you are, like people always focus on you.”
“That’s not true,” I protested.
She looked over at me with dull expression, and she said, “Really, Amor? I’ve known you since we were in first grade. You’ve always been this way.”
“No, I mean . . . well,” I struggled, “that’s not my fault.”
“I didn’t say it was,” she said lightly. “I never blamed you for being in the spotlight. It’s just always been that with you, and it’s kind of funny that you’re still in the center. I don’t know, maybe it was always supposed to be this way with you.”
I fell back on the bed and looking up at the ceiling, then I closed my eyes and said, “Please don’t say that.”
She was quiet for a while then. I listened to her breathing as I listened to mine, and I tried to keep my thoughts airy. I hated to admit it, but she was right. I’d always been that way, even if I didn’t want to be. The only place I was really normal was school, and most of my time there was spent in loathing. High school sucked, and while I was there, I looked forward to at least enjoying some bit of my life after the schooling but with no idea of where I was going. Maybe she was right. Maybe I was always at the center of everything so it could prepare me for when I got here. Why was I even here? I didn’t even think Azazel had an idea of why it was me that had to have her wing.
I didn’t like to think about how this might have never been in my control in the first place. From time to time, I caught myself vaguely wondering if things would have been different if I simply hadn’t gone to that cult in the first place. I didn’t know what was worse, though: knowing this could have been prevented, or knowing it was never in my control in the first place.
I drifted off into sleep not long afterward.