***ALEX***

The first thing I realize when Mom and I get back home is that I'm hungry as hell. Shit, when was the last time I ate? If I've been such a zombie these last few days, probably on Saturday. I probably haven't had any coffee in that amount of time either, though if it's been a few days, shouldn't I be out of withdrawal by now and feeling a lot less zombie-like?

Of course, going without coffee this long doesn't explain why I'm feeling so fuzzy-headed. No, I'm thinking it's more of my brain trying to keep myself from being too overwhelmed. The only stimulus I need or want right now is me feeding my face, which I'm doing with barbeque chips straight from the bag. And, for a moment, poking my stomach to see if my lovingly crafted bod has survived my recent stupor. Somehow, it's not all gone, but these chips are threatening to destroy the remains of my abs.

Whatever. I'll work out when I'm done having to save the world again. And besides, said having to save the world might give me the exercise I need to make up for the last few days.

Maybe the Hungarians are on to something with their love of paprika. The primary flavoring agent in those chips (along with avocado oil), it's proving a better stimulant than any coffee right now. Nearly two full minutes of eating leaves me a hell of a lot more alert than I was the whole time after Mom woke me up. It's not as good a stimulant as sharing a dream with Fionna again, not even close, but I'll take it for now.

Alertness lets me notice a discrepancy I hadn't before. "Mom, when did I get a new phone?"

She starts, then takes the bag of chips from me and eats a handful herself. "It was supposed to be your Christmas gift, but since your old one got broken, I gave it to you early." She chews another handful, then adds, with her mouth full, "Thanks for not noticing."

I check the screen. The new phone looks almost identical to my old one, other than having no headphone jack. Shit. That's part of why I was hoping not to upgrade. But oh well. A headphone jack isn't something I need so much now.

"Does it at least come with antivirus software built in?" I ask.

"I wish, but the company would probably charge fifty percent more for that." Mom tilts her head and eyeballs me. "Don't want people catching the shit you do with Kelly, am I right?"

If I could see my face next to the chip bag, I'd probably see two objects the exact same shade of red. "How'd you know...?"

"Josh let it slip." Normally, Mom would revel a bit in my embarrassment, but not now. Instead, she takes my hand, which makes me giggle involuntarily because both our hands are lightly dusted in BBQ chip flavoring. "Are you sure he's really supposed to be Jesus and not just some distant cousin? He looked just like you when you blurt out something you don't wanna say."

"He's not related to us. He's not an angel." I take my hand back. "And besides, aren't you supposed to take me to get exorcised for having demon sex?"

"After Christmas, I promise." Mom winks, but her smile looks forced. Still, I'm sure she's just kidding. Religious she may be, but she's the last parent to interfere with her kid's healthy sex life. She's cool like that, and always has been.

I look at my phone again. New to me it may be, but Mom's already moved all my settings and apps from my old phone to this one. Everything's in its right place, with one exception. "Where's my Snapchat?"

Mom rests her chin in her hands. "I thought you could do with less temptation to be inappropriate on my Wi-Fi."

Okay, so maybe she's a little less cool than I thought. But yeah, I could do with this distraction out of the way as well. So I resolve not to restore Snapchat to my phone until my work with Josh and Firdaus and Ahmad and everyone is done.

Whatever that work is.

My phone goes off with another call. Before answering it, I take a moment to reflect on my ringtone still being the same as on my old phone. "Got anything else, Josh?" I ask.

"Not Josh," Firdaus says, "but look who's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed today! Channeling your inner Superman, are you?"

"And yet I still feel like Batman having a crap day."

"With that voice, I wouldn't be surprised if you were," Firdaus says with a small laugh. "Listen, really quick, how fast can you fly to Joey's Pizza?"

"Joey's Pizza?" I repeat. "In-"

"No, don't say it!" she interrupts me. "Not on an open line. Just come to where I last saw you, er, before we officially met."

"Oh..." I nod, earning a little more head-tilted attention from Mom. "Yeah, I...I should be there in about fifteen, twenty minutes if I leave now."

"You'll still probably get there ahead of us, with the traffic as bad as it is." Firdaus scoffs. "Even though...yeah, they finally canceled the alert. Still, now half these people are gonna need to turn back, and..." She pauses, but I hear her say something to one of the guys in the background. All I can pick up on are the words "candy cane," very muffled. And maybe "flat tire." I don't need to know, but now I want to. Finally, Firdaus speaks up again, oddly businesslike. "Just meet us there. We'll talk soon." Then she hangs up.

I feel Mom's eyeballs on my back as I get up to leave the room. "Do you want me to come with you?" she asks.

"Why?"

"Because I don't want you doing shit alone this time." She adjusts the sleeves of her jacket. "Where are you going?"

"Joey's Pizza. In San Castiel."

She looks down at the jacket and considers it for a second. "What is it about that town that everything's been happening to you there lately?"

"I've just got a lot of friends there. It's only a coincidence."

"Yeah." She fishes the keys from her pocket and twirls them around on the tip of her finger. "Sure it is."

"We're not driving," I point out.

"No, but you don't expect me to leave the house unlocked and empty, do you?"

"Really," I say with more feeling, "don't come with me-"

"This isn't my first rodeo, Alex." Mom pushes past me and opens the front door. "And I may not be as speedy as I used to be, but give me half a chance and I can keep up with you on the wing without breaking a sweat."

I follow her outside, resigning myself to my lack of choice in the matter. "This isn't the time to brag-"

"I'm not. I'm just telling you the truth." She spreads her wings and follows me up to the top of the house. "San Castiel, you said?"

"Just follow me. I know the way."

"Where exactly? The theater, or the pizza place?"

"The latter." I crouch and spring off the roof, though I almost slip and fall off because of the condensation under my feet. The rain may have stopped for a moment, but in this cold, of course there won't be enough sun to dry it immediately. Mom, behind me, has less slippage. Probably because she wears chunky athletic shoes as opposed to my more fragile skater-type sneakers. Ty's right about Chuck Taylor II's being stronger and more waterproof than the original style, but I still haven't switched because I just love the original too much. That, plus Mom won't buy me more than one new pair of shoes each year, unless it's an absolute emergency. As long as my shoes are still largely intact and hole-free, which they are, I'm keeping them. I mean, I could buy some myself with my allowance at Balthazar, potentially. But still, shoes are expensive, especially the ones that are practical, appealing, or any combination thereof. Better to spend my money in little bits each day on coffee or pizza.

Speaking of pizza, Joey's is nearly deserted, other than Josh and his people sitting at a table with Gideon. "Not interrupting your work, I hope?" I ask him as he gets up and hugs me hello. He even kisses my neck, which I think is because my mom's here. He hasn't met her yet, which means he probably wants to ferret out any phobic levels on her part. Of course, hers are minimal, so I don't even have to look at her to know she's barely batting an eye. But I do hear a faint thought of Silly millennials in her voice.

"You're kidding, right?" Gideon asks. "Hermano, your observation skills need a refresher."

I pound my chest a couple of times with my fist, marking the place on his where his hoodie's Punisher skull logo has its crown. "I dunno, I bet they'd let you wear that on the job around here."

"They would, actually," he concedes, "but Frank Castle would shoot my ass from across the border if he knew I was covering his symbol in doughy dust."

"Mmm." Firdaus sips from a glass full of soda. Ginger ale, I think, judging from the color. Or maybe cream soda, but isn't ginger ale supposed to be good for stomachaches? Maybe she has a stomachache from anxiety. I wouldn't be surprised. I've had a similar persistent pain in my gut ever since Mom woke me up. "Doughy dust. Tomato sauce. Cheese. Those must be a pain to get out in even one laundry cycle."

I introduce Mom to Gideon, then let the two of them talk for a bit while I turn to Firdaus and ask, "Where's AK?"

"He says he's on his way." She consults her phone, as do Josh and Michael. Ahmad doesn't, only because he's too busy working on his laptop. I don't remember there being stickers on it before, but the better to look like any other college-age coder, I guess. I wonder who curated his sticker collection. It's a very eclectic one - Zayn's face in grayscale, "I AM S_H_E_R LOCKED," Ms. Pac-Man, the Eeveelutions (I have the same sticker myself), and even a large red shark with "San Francisco" written down its side in white.

"Who's AK?" Mom asks.

"My cousin," I tell her.

"Oh, Allen?"

"Yeah, but he doesn't go by Allen."

"Well...as he wishes."

Dude, your mom's fucking cringe, Gideon thinks to me. Honestly, why the hell does she have to talk about all the trans students she's taught?

She talks about her autistic students to me all the time, I tell him. Gabe also got his ear talked off about her gay students. Trust me, she means well.

Thanks for sticking up for me, Mom says.

But just 'cause you mean well, I think a little more harshly, doesn't mean you gotta be so tryhard to relate to us marginalized men.

"What are you guys talking about?" asks Ahmad. "Some of us ain't telepathic, you know."

Michael barely even looks up from his phone as he says, "They're plotting to take the stickers off your laptop and use them to wax you."

"Haha, nice try. I don't got a lot of body hair anyway."

Michael looks up a little more, and his eyes glitter mischievously. "Bikini. Wax."

Ahmad stares back at Michael. "You say that like I'm afraid of getting one. I've actually had it done twice."

Josh whistles as Michael slumps in his seat. "Wow, Ahmad, when'd you turn into such a wit?"

"I learned from you," Ahmad says. "You're the one who likes to complain about people jerking off to statues of you on the cross."

Mom, by far the most Christian person in this room, gags so loudly I'm sure she'd be spit-taking if she had a drink in her hand. "People do that? I mean, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but still-"

Josh shrugs and raises his hands in the air. "I exaggerate, but not as much as I'd like. My dad's shown me some of the security cam footage to prove it. Just one of his many failed 'cures' for asexuality."

I palm my face. "I dunno who's more sadistic here - your dad, or the people jerking off to your bloody statue."

"It was a woman in that footage," Josh corrects me. "Cis," he adds when Gideon draws breath, ostensibly to correct him.

"I think I speak for everyone," Mom says, "when I say none of us want to know."

"Use your imaginations, if you dare," Josh says. "I'm not telling."

I steer the conversation out of these filthy waters. "So, Ahmad, how's it looking with getting Kristoff out of the system?"

He starts, unsure in the moment to what I'm referring. "Oh, you mean the alert...no, no, he's gone from there. I got him out, but there's still a chance he might jump back in any second." He looks out the window, where the street view shows traffic moving like normal. "But to look at the world now, you might almost think nothing was going down anymore."

"Why, is there anything else?" I ask.

"Not in this universe, but..." Ahmad checks something on his screen. "Yeah, Second 'Verse is having a shit-ton of shit going down. Internet, power - you name it, they're trying to hack it away from you. Peppermint and Scoville both."

"Aren't they one and the same?" I point out.

"Technically, they are," says Josh, "but try telling that to the government in the Second 'Verse."

"You'd think having a second chance at life would teach the mortals to simplify their shit," Michael points out.

"A lot of scrivs are only on their first chance," I remind him.

Michael doesn't say "Touché" out loud, but he pretends that I've stabbed him dead. Silently, but with the gestures doing all the talking. Gestures he pulls off with only one hand because his other is busy lifting his phone up in the air, the better for me to witness his pantomime. If he were brown-haired instead of blond, I'd be a lot more accurate in calling him a silly goose.

"So..." I drum my fingers on the tabletop, trying to parse all the information Ahmad's given us. "What the hell is Scoville's endgame here?"

"Does he even have one?" Firdaus mutters.

Josh crosses his arms. "The guy's working with my dad, and I'm pretty sure both are planning to double-cross each other. There's an endgame here, obviously. We're just taking a very long time to find it."

"Your dad...who's God?" Mom asks like she still doesn't quite believe it.

"Please don't make me say it again," Josh says. "I'm very much not proud of it."

"My guess," Gideon says, "is that he wants to kill Alex and Gabe. Again."

"Which he?" asks Josh.

"And can we please not talk about my boys dying?" Mom asks, looking like she's ready to slap Gideon upside the head, Gibbs-style. "Because I'm gonna punch up anyone who tries to make that happen."

"You're the one who held me back when I almost killed..." I stop myself, not wanting to remind Gideon of his worst nightmare.

"You can say it," Gideon tells me. "Leah."

Mom looks from Gideon to me, then back again a couple of times. "Letting her live? My mistake."

"Well..." Josh's eyeballs flicker from side to side. "I mean, as much as my dad likes to play it cool around you, Alex, he really doesn't like you."

"Tell me something I don't know," I say.

"No, really." Josh spreads his arms so wide that he almost Gibbs-slaps Ahmad for real. "His beef is that someone went and made you and Gabe as Breakers on purpose. Breakers in general he doesn't like, but he's not so bothered when it's just a purely natural reproduction between angels and demons. Or angels and humans, or demons and humans." When everyone else, especially the three Heavenly ones - myself included - stares at him in surprise, he simply says, "It's rare, but sometimes an angel or a demon meets a human, and they love each other very much...and I'm off topic, aren't I?"

See, Mom says, nudging me lightly. This is what I mean when I say he looks like you when you get awkward.

"But my point is," Josh says, "the whole Breaker thing was just an accident he couldn't foresee. So he doesn't encourage intermixing, the better to not remind him of these twists of fate." He scoffs. "Ugh, listen to what I just said. My dad sounds sooooooo racist."

Even Michael, the whitest one here (literally), winces along with him.

As for Gideon, he leans back in his seat and says, "I thought we were supposed to be disproving the fundies on every level."

"For that purpose," Michael suggests, "why don't we just pretend I'm God instead?"

"And then everyone starts to wonder why Your Only Son is brown," Josh points out. "Never mind that I'm technically not the Only Son, but...ehh, whatever. People can believe what they want."

The door opens, making the little sleigh bells mounted above it ring. In walk a couple of guys, one white and one black, chatting about some recent Sharks game. I think. If I followed sports, I'd have a better idea, but their mentioning "ice" and "goal" in the same sentence educates my guess.

"Aren't we closed?" I ask Gideon out of the corner of my mouth.

"We're supposed to be..."

I watch as one of the guys, the black one, pockets a bug-shaped doohickey in his nice suit jacket. My eyes cut over to the door. Even at this bad angle, I can't fail to see a crack in the glass, extending and forking out from the lock in the center.

"Can I help you?" An older Italian- or Spanish-looking guy, one I haven't seen before, steps out of the kitchen and up to the counter.

"You the owner of this establishment?" asks the white guy in a mishmash of accents from the northeastern quarter of this country. I'm pretty good at accents myself, but I've been known to sound more Chicago when I'm trying to imitate New York. Let me play-act as some flavor of English, though, and I'd dance circles around the locals whose ancestors were just the latest in the long line of those who colonized my ancestors.

My point is, the white guy sounds like he's faking an American accent.

"No, I just work here," says the older guy. Gideon leans in closer to me and thinks his name: Dio Montezemolo.

For real? I ask. Doesn't his name mean "God?"

Not that God, Gideon adds. Short for "Dionigi."

Oh, now I get it.

"May we speak to the owner, please?" the black guy asks. His American accent sounds real, but his Penner-esque chipper tone of voice doesn't. Mom grabs my hand, no doubt to absorb the ice already creeping across the tabletop from my knuckles. She's not much for ice, but it's part of her very same elemental, so she can handle it.

"He ain't here," Dio says with his hands as much as his mouth. "He's, uh, how you say, emeritus."

"I'm sorry, what?" The white guy leans down, cupping his hand around his ear.

"The place is still in Joey's name, but he's retired." Dio shakes his head, then drops it into his hands. "You mean to tell me you never took a semester of Latin-"

BANG BANG.

The white guy, whose hand has been in his jacket almost the whole time, draws a gun and double-taps Dio right in the skull, splattering the ovens behind him with blood, bone, and gray matter.

Everyone at this table screams and dives for cover. I'm one of the last to hit the deck, and one of the few to see another shot coming our way, smashing through Ahmad's laptop. Almost dead center. Does that mean his counter-hack is over? Can Kristoff get back into the system and trick the alarms into going off again? Or, worse, send real nukes?

Gideon and I lock eyes. We've done this before, he thinks. Haven't we?

Prom night, I say. You think we can do the same kind of attack?

Me quakey, you freezy? What if I wanna be punchy this time? I give him a long stare back, then he shrugs and says, I'm just playin'. Here, hold on... He taps his fist against the floor a couple of times, then spreads his fingers out, directing a bone-rattling burst of land-elemental energy at the shooter and his accomplice. They lose their balance, and the white guy shoots another bullet, inadvertently, into the ceiling, shattering the recessed light. He screams when hot glass shards rain down all over his head, cutting and burning him.

Last time I jumped out to ice a particularly shooty guy (unaware back then that he was Russell Aspen in deliberate disguise), I wasn't alone. And this time, neither am I. Mom actually pulls water from the glasses still sitting on the table and uses it to whip another gun out of the black guy's hands like she's Indiana Jones. Though I'm pretty sure Indy's an air elemental - they deliberately never make it clear in the movies, but his ability to carve so efficiently through the air like he's an angel instead of a demon makes me wonder. But Mom, she's kicking ass with almost German efficiency.

As for me, I'm concentrating on the white guy. His elemental is light, which confirms for me that he's not from around here, and not just in a "not American" way. If he's working for Kristoff Scoville, could he be an Australian scriv too? Based on what I've seen of Australian actors, many have a lot of trouble hiding their native accents. Which might explain why, instead of the New York accent he was trying to adopt - probably to better lure Dio into a false sense of security - he wound up sounding more Boston. His accent job is shakier than the ground we're standing on - which is saying something, because Gideon's still doing his own elemental thing. And maybe because Mom and I are both California born and raised, we're not only a little more sensitive to earthquake dangers, but also a little better able to compensate for even a brief loss of underfoot stability. So while his light blades keep coming close to me but not really having much effect, I land more than glancing blows with my own ice shots. Every time he gets back on his feet, Gideon and I conspire to take him right back down.

Finally, he lies on the ground, eyes wide open with fear, as well he should be. I loom over him, noting as I do that even if he were standing, I'd still have a height advantage. Maybe not so much weight, though - he's a lot stockier to make up for his being a little shorter than average.

"Who sent you?" I ask in the lowest, growliest voice I can manage. Kaz "Dirtyhands" Brekker," at your service. Even though dapper af and gloved af I'm not. "Was it Kristoff? It was Kristoff, wasn't it?"

The guy just laughs in my face.

"Fuck you, then." I leave him behind, icing up his hands and wrists for the moment. Then I go back to the table so I can check on my friends. Gideon's closest to the outside, so I focus on him first. "Gid? You okay?"

He claws his way up to his feet, using me as a support. Pretending to be delirious and trembling with adrenaline, he says in a drunk-sounding voice, "Marry me, baby."

"Yeah..." I kiss the top of his head. God, his is even shaggier than mine these days, and I'm not just saying that about his increasingly heavy beard. "You're all right, ħu."

"Huh?" He's actually repeating what I just said and not even realizing.

"Maltese for hermano." To my side, Mom nods approvingly.

"Oh, right, right..."

I'd help the others up, but they're already clambering out from under the table themselves, starting with Firdaus and Josh. Then Ahmad, who makes a small sound of lament when he sees the state of his techie toy. And even if Michael needed help, Gideon's too busy clinging to me. I think about how close he is to getting his top surgery. If he dies, or even if he gets hurt and they have to delay it-

"Shit!" I turn around, carrying Gideon with me as my peripheral vision alerts me to an incoming attack. The white guy, he's broken his ice bonds and is throwing his brightest, sharpest light blade yet. I push Gideon down so he's out of the way, then start hitting the deck myself.

I'm not fast enough.

This time, the light blade doesn't just nick me - it embeds itself in the left-hand side of my face. It vanishes from existence very quickly, but not quickly enough that it doesn't leave me on the floor, clutching my face and feeling a long, deep cut from my jaw to my cheekbone.

Tears sprang from my eyes instinctively at the moment of impact, and now they're mixing with my blood, setting my face on fire.

It takes me almost ten seconds to realize how much I'm screaming, and even then only because Mom descends on me, icing my face and holding me tightly until I quiet down.

And also because that's when AK finally shows up, surveys my damage, and says, "Dude, you know chicks don't really dig scars, right?"

I eyeball Gideon - with one eye, because Mom's improvised ice pack partly covers my left eye, forcing me to keep it shut. Now I have some idea how Paul Smythe felt after Elijah made him cut out his.

"You want to tell him your boss is dead," I ask Gideon, "or should I?"