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pocket.
    “What’s that?”
    He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “What’s what?”
    “ That shiny thing in your pocket.”
    Giovanni dropped my bag and his hand jabbed into his pocket as if to check it was still there, and to make sure it was deep within and unseen.
    I stared at him. “Well...what—”
    “ You ask way too many questions.” He turned his back to me and finished gathering up our things. Too many questions? Based on all that had happened in the past few months, I felt I was entitled to my questions. The shimmer in his pocket looked like a memory. It was obviously a memory that mattered to him, one that he clung to, one that he wouldn’t share. I exhaled as I followed him a few strides as we left our makeshift camp behind.
    “ So what direction do we head?” I asked, grabbing my things from his hand.
    I looked at Giovanni expecting to see his careful, steady expression. Instead, he blinked.
    I blinked right back at him. “You do know where we need to go, right?”
    “ I haven’t been navigating. I’ve been training.”
    “ What?” I nearly yelled at him, but held my calm just in case the flying demons were still within earshot. “All this walking and you don’t know what direction we need to go?”
    “ I am an angel. How am I supposed to know where the pit of Hell is?” he said evenly, but it was obvious that he was flustered and unfamiliar with uncertainty. It was also obvious he didn’t like it.
    “ I can’t believe it......I—”
    “ I am not the child of Hell. Why don’t you figure it out!” he snapped, his nostrils flaring, eyes blazing.
    Child of Hell. He had said it. Said it with the disgust and ferocity that it deserved. I couldn ’t respond. The words crept in and slashed through my insides. I stoically controlled my features, forcing them into a blank expression. He couldn’t see how his words were like tiny knives tearing me apart. He couldn’t see my tears chase my shame down my face. I just turned my back on him and walked away, uncaring if he followed or not. I shut off my mind, pushed aside my feelings, and walked in the dark.

     
     
     
    10
    CONNOR
     
     
     
     
     
    “What the hell , man? Are you serious?” Matt looked at me in his strange, scrunched up way.
    I sat on the edge of my bed, fiddling with my shoelace-less sneakers. “Yeah, I’m serious.” I hadn’t expected him to be able to take the news easily. In fact, I was pretty floored he hadn’t run out of the house screaming and flailing his arms around like some crazed chicken, but right after I told him everything, and I mean everything about Jade and I, and well, the world, Matt’s face was a hot mess of freaked out.
    “ So, you didn’t just go all Romeo and try to kill yourself when Jade stepped out?” The one thing I did appreciate about Matt was that the whole time I told him the story, even with the nitty-gritty details, he didn’t once roll his eyes or give me a skeptical eyebrow raise. His eyes just got wider, his blinking faster, and his wheezing sound just a bit more hurried. He pulled out an inhaler and took a long drag.
    “ So, we’re on the brink of the freakin’ apocalypse? That is what you are telling me?”
    I felt stupid when he said it like that. I hadn ’t used the word “apocalypse” but that was exactly what I was saying.
    We were silent for a second.
    “Well, that blows,” Matt said.
    I peered up on him and was surprised that his freaked -out face had turned into a pissed off one, but I was even more surprised with what he asked next, “So, what do we do?”
    “ I—I am not exactly sure.”
    Matt ’s exasperated sigh was like a punch to the gut.
    I tried to be quick. “I don’t know, but I do know that if we can translate these, we could get some answers. I do know we can figure it out.”
    Matt eyed the stacks of old scrolls precariously balanced on my bed. “You want us to translate those? All of them? The ones your dad spent months trying to decipher?