Luca and I say nothing before going back to bed. Neither of us can sleep, though. Even Luca, an infamously heavy sleeper who managed to not wake up during a late-night fireworks display on the last night of school last year, keeps tossing and turning for hours, the same way I do.

I can't help but think that somehow, I should have recognized that that was really Steve's head Marco found this morning. Maybe I'd suspected it all along in the back of my mind somewhere, and I'd consciously rejected it because, while it was possible (especially since it was so freakishly realistic), the chances of that being the case were pretty remote.

I guessed earlier that I wasn't going to be able to sleep tonight, and I turn out to be right. Just not for the reason I thought.

The only real consolation is that after I do finally go to sleep - maybe around two in the morning - I don't leave the room, and I wake up with the alarm clock at seven, still in my bed.

Luca and I then get dressed - in our street clothes; as soon as we turn our phones on, we see that we've both received the same text message from the school. All classes are cancelled for the rest of the week, and the school is on lockdown during that time as well, for security reasons.

Heading down the hall, we see a couple of cops - CSI types in black vests marked "Nicks County Sheriff's Department" - emerging from Marco and Steve's room. We stop and watch for a moment as they carry out a metal box with steam issuing from it.

"You think they've got Steve's head in there?" I whisper to Luca.

"Maybe," he says. "Frozen so they can transport it safely? It's a bit of a long drive down to Bearville."

I shake my head. "Poor guy. God..."

The cops are both gone now, so Luca and I go down the hall and into the lounge. Some seniors are still gathered around the TV - not as many of them as there were last night when the news first broke, but those that are there all look as if they've been up all night. They're pale, their clothes are wrinkled, and some of them - for instance, Marco - have their wings unfurled and emerging from their shirts, draped limply over the furniture.

Luca comes around the side of the couch and lifts Marco's left wing so he can take a seat. Marco jerks in surprise, then quickly pulls in his wings. "Hey, guys," he says with a loud yawn.

"'Morning," Luca mumbles.

"'Morning," I say. I turn my attention to the TV for a moment. The reporter - a different woman from last night's reporter - is droning on about an imminent press conference with our headmaster, Dr. Saltz.

"They searched your room or something?" Luca asks.

"They wanted to eliminate it as a crime scene," Marco says with a heavy sigh. He wipes his eyes - not to get rid of tears, but probably to wake himself up some.

"Jesus, you look like shit," Luca says. "How much sleep did you get last night?"

Marco gives Luca a serious stink-eye for a split second, then he slumps in his seat. "Dunno. An hour? All in here, too," he adds, gesturing to the couch. "They wouldn't let me back into my room. Until now, that is."

"What, you told them about the head?" I ask.

"I kinda had to," Marco says. "Don't worry, I didn't tell 'em about showing it to you guys."

"Were we supposed to be worried about that?" Luca asks.

"They didn't ask, and I didn't..." Marco stops and yawns again. "I didn't tell. This is my problem more than it is you guys' problem."

"Hey, we were his friends too-" I begin.

"Not as much as I was!" Marco hisses, his fists clenching. Then he remembers himself, swallows, and relaxes again. "Shit. I'm sorry."

"It's all good," I say, clapping his shoulder. "Just a bit of stage two. Normal, right?"

Marco nods, but doesn't speak. He's got his lips tightened to try and stop them from shaking, but it's not really working.

"You need some sleep," Luca says. "You said they're done in your room now?"

"Mm-hmm. I kinda don't wanna go back there, but...but I've got nowhere else to go. Unless they assign me another room later."

"All right, come on. I'll take you to my room instead." Luca grabs Marco's arm and helps him stand up. He then drapes his arm over Marco's shoulders and leads him back to the dorm.

On the other side of the room, the main door to the lounge opens up. I turn to see a tall, handsome senior guy walk in with a brown paper cup in each hand. He looks around and asks the room at large where Marco is. A few people mumble something about him going back to his room.

"Crap," the guy mutters. "He might've gone to sleep, too...Can't exactly let good hot chocolate go to waste. Anyone want it?" Around me, there's a chorus of "No thanks." "What about you, guy?"

I look around when nobody answers his question.

"Yeah, you with the red, white, and blue plaid," the guy says. "You want this hot chocolate or what?"

I look up and see him holding one of the cups out to me. "Oh. Okay. Thanks." I take the cup and hold it, letting the warmth seep into my hands.

The guy sits next to me, right where Luca had been before. "Don't think I've seen you before," he says. "You're not a senior, I'm guessing."

"Um...nope." I take a sip of the hot chocolate. It's really good - sweet and creamy and thick. Definitely not the hot chocolate from the cafeteria here at Balthazar. That stuff comes from a cheap Nescafé machine and is always more milk than chocolate. And the brown cup is another clue - especially with the coffee-bean pattern printed on it. I've only seen that kind of cup at one place. "You get this from Smythe and Darknell?" I ask.

"Duh," the guy says. "The cops around here don't even trust their own coffee machine. They always get my mom's stuff, so all I had to do was get her to make a couple extra cups." He holds out his hand. "I'm Paul. Paul Smythe."

Oh yeah. Now I remember him. Paul's the senior class president, football team captain, and Homecoming King. Mr. Popularity, basically. And now that he mentions it, I can see how he's got his mother's blue eyes.

"Alex Snow," I say, shaking his hand.

"Nice to meet you, Alex," Paul says. He takes a long sip of whatever's in his cup - coffee, judging from the smell - and then sighs through his nose. "Awful, isn't it?" Paul asks, gesturing to the TV. "Poor guy."

"I know," I say. "Why him?"

"Beats me," Paul says sadly. "I mean, Steve...he was all about the fun and games. What enemies could he have had?"

"Someone who hated humor enough that they'd kill anyone who had any?"

"There's a word for that," Paul says, finally cracking a smile. "You might find Mussolini's face next to it in the dictionary."

I hear the dorm door open again, and I turn around to see Luca coming back into the lounge. Luca says hi to Paul - the two have apparently met before - and then he sits on my other side. Together, we sit and watch as Dr. Saltz speaks from a makeshift podium out in the courtyard.

"Yes, Mr. Walker's entire body has been found and recovered," he says. "The Sheriff's Department will be conducting a thorough investigation into this tragedy, and we hope they will have some news for us about the identity of his killer. And once again, the students and faculty of Balthazar Academy offer their deepest condolences to the Walker family."

My phone rings at this point. Cursing under my breath as the creepy piano riff shatters everyone's concentration, I hurriedly mutter an apology and run over to the window on the edge of the room so I can answer it. "What's up, Gabe?"

On the other end, Gabe is panting with excitement. "Dude, Alex, you gotta put on the news right now."

"Believe me, we're already watching," I say. "God...it's really sad."

"You're probably not watching the feed from the Hell side of town," Gabe says. "I mean, shit. There's murder everywhere today. It's on every channel, Heaven and Hell both."

"You're kidding me, right?" I lean against the wall, peering through the glass at the cloudy morning sky, which threatens to unleash a torrent of rain on the valley. "Since when does a murder in Heaven make the news in Hell?"

"Not in Heaven," says Gabe. "There was a murder last night on our side too. And...oh wow, I just remembered - you probably saw him last night, too. It was one of the Three Guys, you know? Freddie Krause."

"'Krause...'" I repeat, trying to remember my date with Fionna last night. "The guy with the fire elemental, right? I thought his name was Cross."

"No, but that's pretty close to Krause," says Gabe. "Although why would a demon have a name like Cross anyway?" He laughs weakly before returning to more serious business. "So you did see him last night, right?"

I close the curtain and sit on the nearest chair. "Yeah, I did. In fact, I remember when I saw him, he was sending out this one bum, really drunk-looking, and he had to light a fire under the guy's ass, literally."

"Put on the Hell news and you'll see it," Gabe says.

"I can't," I say, looking back at the crowd. Luca looks back at me questioningly, and I shrug my shoulders. "Everyone's watching all the stuff about Steve, and...oh, wait, they just cut to commercial. Hang on..." I cover the mike on my phone and make my way to the center of the room. "Um, can someone change to the Hell-side news for a minute?" I ask.

"Why, what's going on?" Paul asks, reaching for the remote.

"My brother says there's been a killing there too."

People start whispering to each other, then fall silent as Paul switches to Channel 4 from Hell. A demon newscaster, dramatically backlit by the yellow sunrise over the hill on which Castledown is perched, is talking about the death of Freddie Krause.

"...Coldfire Creek Police say there is no evidence of a break-in, and that the victim's wounds appear to be self-inflicted. However, a close friend of Krause, who refused to appear on camera, told reporters that Krause would not have been capable of suicide..."

"All right, I believe you now," I say to Gabe. I walk back to the window, and in the background, I hear Paul change back to Heaven's Channel 4, where they're about to continue the press conference with the sheriff himself. "Who could've done it, I wonder? Who would've wanted to hurt that guy?" I pause. "Huh. You don't think it might've been that bum from last night, do you?"

"Anything's possible, I guess. But I dunno...not unless he had a fire elemental like Freddie. Hang on a sec..." Gabe pauses, and I can hear muffled talking sounds coming through my speaker. "Sorry about that...anyway, Freddie got his eyes burned out of their sockets. Tanner was just showing me the pics. They're, um, not pretty."

Tanner Ferris is Gabe's roommate at Castledown. I know that his older brother is a cop; maybe that's where he got his crime-scene photos from. That's about all I know about him, though, other than the fact that he's gay. Gabe once had him be one of my blind dates, thinking, wrongly, that the reason why I never had second dates with the girls he'd set me up with was because I was in the closet.

"Too disgusting for TV, huh?"

"You have no idea." Gabe pauses for a moment, probably to shudder. "But it's weird, you know? It almost looks like something I saw on TV somewhere."

"Yeah, maybe. It seems like a serial-killer thing to do."

"So..." Gabe casts around for something else to say before deciding to change the subject. "So you say you like Fionna?"

I nod. "Yeah, Fionna's amazing. I keep expecting to suddenly wake up and learn she doesn't exist. Um, she does actually exist, right? Please don't crash my hard-won hopes now!" Surprisingly, I have no problem getting into my usual chatting rhythm with Gabe. Guess I need an excuse to distract myself from the tragedy at hand for a moment.

"I wish," Gabe says. "But no. She's as real as you and me."

"Don't you mean, 'you and I?'"

"Don't go all grammar-Nazi on me!" Gabe yells as if in pain. "But that's not the point. Now you know your faith in me wasn't misplaced after all, was it?"

"Who says?"

"Come on, bro. Name one time I really steered you wrong."

Oh, hell, here we go. "There was that one-"

Gabe cuts me off. "I thought we agreed we'd never speak of that...fiasco again." He's talking, of course, about the time he'd set me up with Tanner. I'd been pretty pissed at the time - I didn't even stick around at Three Guys long enough to do anything but tell him, "Here, the pizza's all yours. Tell Gabe I'm not interested." That was about a year ago. We've all apologized to each other since then for the various rude and misleading behaviors involved, and Tanner's on good terms with both me and Gabe these days.

"It was your own damn fault anyway," I point out. "You made a completely misguided decision. But I'm sure you've suffered enough punishment for that mistake." I can sense Gabe pouting right now, so I decide to lift his spirits. "Hey, Fionna said we might hit the movies this weekend. Howsabout you come with, make it a double date?"

"How do you know I got anyone to bring along with me?"

"You always got someone, I'm sure."

"Dude, I think you overestimate my totality of game." Gabe spoils the effect by laughing his head off as soon as he finishes this sentence. "What's the movie?"

"Cinder."

"And that's which one again?"

I humor him anyway, if only to see if I remember the book right. "Um, it's the one where Cinderella's a robot living in China-"

"I'm in," Gabe interrupts me. "What day, what time?"

I think back to last night and remember that those details haven't been set yet. "I'll call Fionna later and set it up."

"Why not now?"

"'Cause I don't wanna seem clingy."

Gabe chuckles. "Such a human thing to say. Are you sure you're a proper angel, Alex?"

"The question is, are you?" I laugh, remembering how we used to run through this particular pair of barbs all the time way back in the earliest days of our adolescence. It was the only teasing we endured that was actually in good fun. "But actually, they've got the school locked down right now. I dunno when they'll let us out again. Hopefully by this weekend, though."

"As your brother, and as a demon, I suggest you exercise your God-given right to sneak out if it comes down to it," Gabe says. "And seriously, though, there's no such thing as too clingy for us demons."

"I dunno if you've picked up on this," I say, "but Fionna isn't like the other demons you've found for me."

"Why do you think I picked her?" Gabe laughs. "You guys are so good for each other."

"Watch it now, you might jinx us!"

"All right, don't get too big for your britches, you cheeky bastard. Bye now!" I'm about to end the call when Gabe yells, "Wait! Uh...did you know the guy that died at your school?"

"Um...sort of," I say, a bit thrown by the sudden change in mood. "Steve was Marco's roommate, though. He and Luca knew him better than I did."

"Hmm." Gabe pauses. "Wow. That's awful. Um, maybe if you could...is Marco in the room right now?"

"No."

"Well, next time you see him, tell him I said I'm sorry," Gabe says. "Maybe pass my condolences along to Luca too while you're at it?"

"Sure."

"Thanks, bro. See you soon."

As Gabe hangs up, I start to feel a bit depressed again. But I feel a bit better when I go back to Luca and give him Gabe's message. After that, I ask him if he'd like to grab some breakfast. "They got the cafeteria open, right?" I ask Paul, semi-jokingly.

"Of course," Paul says. "Hey, maybe I'll come with you. I need to grab some grub myself."

Paul and Luca stand up and start walking with me to the cafeteria. Out of the lounge, down a flight of stairs, and back to the space underneath the lounge. It's officially called the dining hall, but it's not quite as majestic as it sounds. No soaring, arched ceilings displaying the cloudy sky. No long wooden tables. No candelabras in every nook and cranny.

The only really cool things about it are the DJ booth (which is empty today) and the large panoramic window. Just like the lounge window, it has a really nice view of the valley. Today, though, I'm not paying attention. Instead, I'm following Paul into the breakfast line, which right now is very short.

"You guys ever had crepes here?" Paul asks. "I've been trying to get them to give my mom the recipe for so long, but they won't give it up."

"No," Luca says. "They're pretty expensive. Which is kinda sad, 'cause Alex and I, we take French."

"Oh, so you guys get to make crepes in class, right?" Paul asks. "With powdered sugar and fresh batter and everything?"

I nod. "Yeah. Wait, you took French too?"

"Just until last year," Paul says. "Would've taken it this year, but since I was the only one enrolled in French 4, they cancelled it on me. And it was too late for me to even become TA, 'cause Juliet took the job first..." He stops long enough to order some crepes (one each for himself, me, and Luca) with Nutella and strawberries, then gently rebuffs our attempts to pay for our own. "Breakfast is on me this morning, gentlemen," he says.

"Thanks," Luca and I both say - not quite simultaneously (we're not nearly as well-connected mentally as, say, myself and Gabe), but more like one second apart.

"Don't mention it," Paul says. While we stand aside and wait for our breakfasts - these crepes are freshly made, not served in a buffet line like the waffles I usually eat - he adds, "Now I think about it, you guys were in the same class as me and Juliet last year, weren't you? Yeah, you were, 'cause it was sixth period, and French 2 and 3 were combined."

"I remember you, yeah," Luca says. "What about you, Alex?"

I give Paul the once-over, making him chuckle at the odd sight. "Yeah, now I remember you," I say. "But who was Juliet again?"

"Juliet Ripley," Paul says. "That brunette girl. The one who looks like Katniss with glasses. "

"Oh, her," I say, remembering Juliet not from French class - even though she's the TA now - but from yesterday's breakfast. She's Dani's friend, the one who was talking with her about Luca. I mention that fact to him, and Luca laughs, shaking his head. "Dude, isn't there some rule about TAs not being allowed to date the other students in their class?"

"I don't think so," Paul says. "Is there? If so, I kinda might be in deep shit. I went out with last year's French TA a couple of times."

We all start laughing our heads off at this point. I'm the first one to stop, though. It feels a bit wrong, having a laugh like this so soon after Steve's death.

"Aww, don't sweat it," Paul says, clearly picking up on my thoughts. "Steve wouldn't have wanted us to get all depressed and mopey on his account."

"Try telling that to Marco," Luca says.

"They were roommates, though," I point out. "Hell, if you died like that, I think I'd spend a little time in my room by myself, crying."

"You're too kind, Alex," Luca says, giving me an over-the-top hug.

"You're welcome," I say, returning the hug.

Paul starts laughing again, barely managing to keep it together as he takes the three crepes and hands ours out. "You guys are way too funny. I think Steve would be glad to know he's got some potential successors as Balthazar's master of ceremonies."

I slowly unwrap the foil from my crepe and inhale the scent of the Nutella and strawberries inside. "Hmm. You should see me and Gabe. We're a thousand times worse, believe me."

"Who's that?" Paul asks.

"My brother."

We start walking out of the cafeteria. "Does he not go here?" Paul asks.

"No," I say as we leave and head up the hall towards the staircase. "He goes to Castledown. He's a demon."

"Oh really? What, is he adopted?"

I shake my head and pull out my phone. "Nope," I say. "You wouldn't believe it, but Gabe and I are twins. Here, Luca, hold this a sec while I look for the picture..." Luca takes my crepe off my hands (pretending to bite it in the process), and I cycle through my phone's menus until I find the picture of me and Gabe, taken in April at the waterfront plaza on the Hell side of town.

"Angel and demon twins?" Paul asks, holding the phone up close to his face. "You guys don't look too much alike. I mean..."

"It's okay," I say, looking at the photo myself and seeing how Gabe's still got his dirty-blond hair (roughly the same color as Dani's) at shoulder length. He almost looked like a surfer dude last year. "Nobody ever guesses we could be blood-related, 'cause of the angel-demon thing. And 'cause we got different skin tones - we're half-Maltese, so who knows exactly what our ethnic background is if you look back far enough. A bit of Moroccan, I think, but I can't swear. We got the same eyes, though."

"Oh yeah, you do," Paul says. He returns my phone, allowing me to take my crepe back from Luca. "Huh. Who would've guessed, huh? That's cool. I've never seen angels and demons being blood relatives before. Well, I've heard of it happening a few times, but it's so rare...and now you got me rambling, so thanks for that."

"Don't mention it," I say with a grin.

"Bet that means your family won't mind so much if you guys get yourselves inked at seventeen," Paul says. He rolls up his right sleeve to show a tattoo on his upper arm - an intricate black design curving around his biceps and extending to about three inches above his elbow. It reminds me of a Shadowhunters rune.

"That's the one you guys' family always gets, right?" Luca asks.

"Uh-huh," Paul says. "It's etched on this sword that one of my long-distant ancestors used during some battle in Europe or something. Not one of the ones that's in our history books, though." He covers the tattoo again, then opens the lounge door for us. "Marco's still not gonna get a tat himself, is he?"

Luca shakes his head. "Nah. Our parents won't allow it."

"Too bad," Paul says. "Then again, I can sorta see why they wouldn't. It's more of a demon thing, anyway." He jumps over the back of the couch so he can take a seat again, then starts munching on his crepe. "Hey, I just got a really good idea. Okay, everyone gather 'round," he says to all the seniors still sitting around the TV. "You too, guys," he adds, gesturing to Luca and me.

As soon as everyone is turned to him (I notice that Juliet and Dani have joined the crowd since we were gone), Paul starts talking again. "Okay," he says. "We gotta do something to celebrate Steve's life. Sure, he's gonna have a funeral back home, but none of us are gonna get to go there. They'd never break a lockdown just for that."

I adjust the pillow that's bunched up behind my back. Is Paul making this whole thing up right here on the spot? If so, bravo to him. I'd never be able to do so myself. I suck at speeches. Especially the improvised kind.

"And also, because of the lockdown, our Halloween dance is getting cancelled," Paul says. "But that's okay, because now we'll have two things to celebrate this week. It'd be pretty appropriate, too, 'cause it'd be kinda New Orleans-style - lively and fun, not somber."

"You mean we're gonna have a Halloween-slash-funeral party?" Juliet asks.

Paul gives a sheepish smile. "Um, yeah. Maybe I should've gotten to the point a little faster, huh?"

Juliet looks around the room. "That would be cool. But where would we hold it? We won't be able to leave the grounds."

"Trust me," Paul says, "I know how we can get around that. There's a secret passageway into the woods that starts down in the basement."

"How do you know it's there?" I ask.

"Steve told me, actually," Paul says. "He, Marco and I know a lot of weird stuff about this place."

"These guys are kinda like a three-man version of the Marauders," Luca says out of the corner of his mouth.

"Another Harry Potter reference for the list," I say, pretending to check something off on an imaginary notepad.

"I dunno," a girl's voice pipes up. "Isn't it a little too soon to be planning a party?" Everyone's head turns towards the girl - who turns out to be Dani Cabrera. "I mean, it feels like we're trying to forget what happened, don't you guys think?"

Paul clears his throat. "Um, all right. Well-"

"And it seems like you guys are just trying to come up with an excuse to party," Dani continues. "God. I thought human teenager stereotypes were only for human teenagers."

"Dani...we're not trying to make light of what's happened," Paul says. "I can think of a number of great ways to pay tribute to Steve, but this is the best one I've come up with so far."

Dani rolls her eyes. "Are you kidding me? If you guys are really his friends, you'd break the rules and sneak out to go to his real funeral."

"Have you ever done that for your friends before?" someone else asks.

Dani turns to her questioner, a dark-skinned girl. "No," she says. "Before I came here, I had no friends."

"Then how would you know what it's like-"

Paul approaches the other girl and holds up his hand until silence is had again. "Guys, calm down," he says. "Sarah, let's not antagonize anyone. Dani, you don't have to come to the party if you don't want to. But if you do, we'd very much appreciate it."

"Oh, so you're gonna use peer pressure on me?" Dani grumbles.

"No, I'm not trying to pressure you-"

"Save it," Dani says, waving Paul off. "I'm done here. I think I've made enough of a fool of myself for one day." She turns away and crosses the room, disappearing into the girls' dorms and closing the door behind her with a loud slam.

"Okay," Paul says, rubbing his head. "Um, all right. So if you guys wanna chip in for the party...it's gonna cost me about a couple hundred bucks to get everything we'll need."

Everyone nods and says, "Yeah, uh-huh" or something similar.

"Be right back, then," Paul says. He goes back into the dorms for a second, then comes back to the lounge, carrying a baseball cap in one hand. The seniors all break open their wallets and drop bills of varying denominations into the hat - mostly tens and twenties, but I can spot a couple of fifties in there as well. Juliet even drops in a hundred bucks.

Paul comes to Luca and me last, and we each contribute twenty dollars to the party fund. All for a good cause, right?

"Thanks, guys," Paul says. "I think this is more than enough. So we'll be having the party on Friday night. In the woods, of course."

"And we're still on for that candlelight vigil you were talking about last night?" Juliet asks.

"Oh yeah," Paul says, turning to Luca and me. "That reminds me, we're having a candlelight vigil on Thursday night in the courtyard. Seven o'clock. You guys gonna be there too?"

"Of course," Luca says.

"Sure," I say.

"Thanks again," Paul says. "Nice doing business with you all!" he calls out to the entire lounge before going back into the dorms.

I turn to Luca. "Um, what just happened?"

"Dude, we've been invited to a party," Luca says. "Guess it's not all bad shit happening today, right?"

As if on cue, we're reminded of the bad shit when Dr. Saltz's voice comes on the intercom to summon us all to the assembly hall. No doubt he's going to formally inform us all of Steve's death. Sighing heavily, Luca and I follow the seniors trooping out of the lounge.