Josh had to say, he never really saw it coming, his father joining them on the BART train. Since when would he even deign to potentially surround himself with so many teeming masses?

Of course, now that Josh thought about it more deeply, that was probably why the train was never all that crowded to begin with. Even for a rainy Saturday morning. Angels in general really had become hydrophobic, he'd gathered from his recent months in Heaven. Except for water elementals like Alex and AK. To be fair, though, angels shied away from all the sources of elemental power now. They cleaned themselves up more, avoiding the tiniest fragments of land that used to adorn their bodies. They used less fire, unless they were chemists combusting stuff in crucibles hanging precariously over Bunsen burners. Hell, they even used less air, because while airplanes took a little longer to invent in this dimension, they did eventually come about. No angel could fly across the Atlantic, say. Not all at once.

The point was, Josh didn't expect his father to appear on this train. Now that he was here, that meant he'd have to alter his game plan. A lot. And on the fly, too, such as it were. An expression that would mean something different to the two angels he was traveling with, he knew, but he couldn't help the accidental pun.

He only hoped that Alex wouldn't do anything too rash. Because Alex looked pretty riled up and hotheaded, looking at Josh's father with venom in his eyes. Perhaps he'd done his job too well, convincing Alex of the truth that Elliot Graziadei was out to kill him.

A truth that, maybe, had been just a little stretched.

But only just a little.

He reached out and laid his hand on Alex's shoulder, hoping to send some kind of calming energy through touch. That wasn't a power he actually had, nor did anyone that he knew of. All he could hope for was that Alex took it as intended, even if it was some kind of placebo.

The last thing Josh wanted was for Alex to run into a fight he'd lose before it even began.