At this point, it was common knowledge that Zev Castellanos's bedroom, which had been a spare lounge before he'd been ordered to mentor me, was pretty much sacred. One did not cross its boundaries unless it was a dire emergency, and no emergency was dire to Zev. In fact, the room and he were a lot alike that way. Unapproachable. Distant. Foreign.

Regardless, there were some words to be had with him whether I liked it or not. Ever since he'd figured out what was going on between Alan and me, he'd been surly, a pot of water way past its boiling point. I'd tried letting him cool off, and judging by the threat he'd made last night, it hadn't worked.

I knocked briefly against the wood with a single knuckle, and my response was a jarring thwack, like he'd chucked something at the door.

"Go away," he called from the other side.

"It's Vinny."

"Oh, even worse. Go away."

I waited to see if, for whatever reason, he'd decide to be mature and open up the door anyway. When he didn't, I knocked again. "Zev, this is serious. I'm not going away."

A pause. "Let me guess. It's about that fool you've practically got attached to your hip."

My hand slipped from the wood, furled into a fist, unfurled again. It took all my energy to keep my voice steady. "Alan's not a fool."

For another moment, I stood alone in the hallway, the sunlight more gray than yellow, barren twigs scraping against windows.

Zev swung the door open, regarding me underneath eyebrows as thick and dark as coal, hair stuck like spindles of ink against his neck. "If you're asking me to take back what I said," he told me, folding his arms across his chest, "then you're wasting your time, Blondie."

I swallowed, trying to ignore the fact that his bedroom looked like a tornado had blown through it. Though Zev blocked a lot of my view into the space, I could still see the clothes tossed on the floor, or hanging from lamps, or being used as bookends. Unmade beds and gnarled curtains and slightly askew rugs. Chaotic as the man who lived in it.

I worried at a strand of my hair, watching it rather than Zev. Lucie had told me once that my hair felt like silk. It felt like hair to me. "I'm not asking you to take it back—just explain to me where it came from. What is it you have against him? And why are you—why are you making this so hard for me?"

"Hard for you?" he repeated with a sneer.

"You almost exposed me to Cian last night; don't act like you're unaware of that. If I was ready to tell him, I would have by now, and you know that, Zev."

He met my eyes, then sighed raggedly and stepped out into the hall, pulling his bedroom door shut behind us. Downstairs, the warble of a television show could just barely be heard; probably Nura watching one of her afternoon sitcoms. I was struck with the sudden want to be down there, with her, where the air was clear and where I could watch television and not have so much to worry about. It didn't matter what I wanted, though. It rarely ever did.

"You wanna know what I think?"

Quite frankly, I did not.

"I think you're being an idiot, Vinny," Zev said, leaning back against the opposite wall, a smirk at his mouth. The blood underneath my skin began to warm. Like he knew everything. Like he knew anything at all. "What do you think he's gonna do, huh? You pull out the 'I'm gay' speech and all of a sudden he disowns you? Burns you at the stake? I mean, goodness gracious, Blondie. Cian? Cian James Horne? Are we thinking of the same person?"

There were a lot of things I wanted to say to that, way too many to process at once. All that managed to escape, however, was, "I'm not planning to give him a speech. I don't think—I don't think that would work. Is that a thing? Is that a thing people do?"

Zev just blinked at me.

I looked out the window instead, stifling a cough.

"My point is," Zev went on after a moment, shaking his head, "your brother makes perfectly symmetrical slices out of his pancake stacks. He has about fifty of the same hoodies in his closet. He's a chess nerd. I really don't think this is the kind of thing that would drive him nuts."

"Except it is," I muttered. "It is driving him nuts. He won't even talk to me."

"Because you're not talking to him, Blondie."

I had known that. I'd known that and maybe that's why I was here, just so I could hear it from someone else's mouth, just so I could convince myself that there was only one way of fixing all of this. It was supposed to feel better, but it didn't; nothing did.

I wanted to crumple in on myself. Instead, I hugged my arms around my chest, kicking at a fuzz on the floor with the toe of my shoe. "I guess I'm a little confused. Do you want me to stay with Alan, or not? Last night, you threatened him. Today, you tell me to stop hiding it from everyone."

"I don't know, kid," Zev answered with a shrug, which wasn't satisfying at all. I'd come here hoping he'd be mad at me, have a clear opinion he could nail into my head, one I could easily derail. But he was a tangle of ambiguous thoughts, just as I was. "I do think he's messing with your head, that you would be able to deal with all your daddy issues and your people-wanting-your-brother-dead issues if he weren't in the picture. That we'd all be safer if he weren't in the picture."

"But?"

Something in his expression softened, like his eyes suddenly turned from fire to honey. "But I also know you're not going to listen to a word I say, so it doesn't exactly matter what I think. You'll let him drag you under. You'll realize you're drowning when you're already at the bottom, and you'll beg for my help, but I'll be too far away by then."

"Zev, quit it with all your creepy analogies."

Honey to fire again, quick as a struck match. A smile like danger. "Don't mistake the truth for what you think is just an analogy."

I frowned at him, then turned with a shake of my head, back towards the other end of the hallway. I needed to clear my head; it clamored with noise I could no longer comprehend.

Zev, amused, called from behind me: "Where are you going, Blondie?"

"Away," I replied. "From here. From you."

And I went into Cian's bedroom, slamming the door shut after me.

It was the same as ever, his half-open closet door, the desk he never used, collecting dust against the window. His slightly wrinkled comforter, like he'd sat there only moments ago. Empty picture frames on his bookshelf that hadn't held photos since the morning he'd found out I hadn't survived the boat collision.

My brother's bedroom has once been spotless and bright—textbooks in a neat row, looseleaf paper stacked underneath a three-hole punch, and of course, his favorite chess board, displayed on his shelf beside all his academic awards. He'd been everything Mom and Dad wanted him to be. He got all the firm handshakes and the ruffled hair. People would always tell my parents, What a fine young man you're raising.

Looking at him nowadays, it was like the boy he'd been then had never existed at all.

I clambered over Cian's desk, nearly knocking a snow globe aside as I did. My fingers found the window's latch, unlocked it, slid the window up. Cool air met my face, carrying with it the salt of the bay, the whisper of leaves falling from trees. The sky was gray with rain; a few drops tickled my nose.

For a while I stood there and let the rain speckle my shoulders, and then I drew myself up and I let my wings free and I remembered how to breathe.

Energy was lightning within me. Shouting at me to move. So I did.

I hopped up to the roof of the house, ran along the shingles and around the chimney. Jumped off the edge and felt myself soar up, dip down, soar up again. Flying was the type of activity that seemed like it should take more thought than it did. The truth was, I didn't think about it at all. I let the wind carry me, focused on the strike of feathers splicing air and the rain tapping upon all the roofs in the city and nothing else. I was free.

Even if it only lasted a moment.

The rain had reached such a bellowing crescendo that it took me a second to hear it: the click of talons upon slate, chittering teeth against teeth, a hoarse wheeze like someone's last breath.

This noise, this smell, like rotting food—I knew it. I'd felt it all before.

Every single hair on my arms stood up; I turned, slowly.

I'd never seen anything so dark, like it was birthed completely of ink, or maybe of shadow; it was hard to tell which. It had arms and legs, but way too many of them, too many to count. Teeth like razor blades, eyes like ice.

A demon.

Shivering, I grabbed for my bow and arrow, just as it screeched and lunged after me.

The rain seemed to have gotten significantly harder; the drops had turned to blades against my cheeks. I gritted my teeth, yanking an arrow from the quiver and setting it to the string. The demon unhinged its jaw; there were rows upon rows of teeth, all dripping with inky venom. It was inches from me. I jumped back as it clawed in my direction, the string twanging as I shot.

The arrow surged right for the demon, stopped abruptly as he caught it in his talons, crushed it to silver dust.

I had merely a second to think about just how screwed I was before he'd caught me, his claws wrapping around my throat, not deep enough to slice my skin, but more than enough to drag the breath from my lungs.

I hit the roof, hard, shingles cracking underneath me. I gasped, clawing for him to let me go, but his grip was relentless. Stars began to blur my vision; everything was black and white, his shadowy form, the fangs like glistening shards of glass.

It surely could have killed me by now.

Why wasn't I dead?

A voice, painfully familiar, was my answer: "Alright, that's quite enough. We don't want to kill the boy, not yet."

No. No, no, no, no.

I struggled to get up, but the demon only tightened his grip. My muscles slackened; I gasped once more for my breath.

Rain turned his muddy brown hair almost black. It licked at his temples, at scars on his face that hadn't been there when I'd seen him last. Emerald eyes as black as tar. The grin of an angel tinted way too dark.

"Hello, little Horne," Nick said. "Did you miss me?"