“Why were you following me?” I snap.
“Because you made yourself easy to follow. What are you doing?”
“I was trying something.”
“Too vague.”
“I’m not a double agent, if that’s what you’re thinking. Give me the map.”
He doesn’t let up. “You can never be too careful.”
I sneer. “You really think the Angels would use Seraph to spy on a bunch of queers that’ll starve out by summer? Yeah, right. The map.”
Nick moves his foot off the map. I fold it up and shove it in my pocket.
I want to join the Watch. I need to prove I’m not a danger. I force my voice to steady and scrub all the anger from it, making sure it comes out quiet and calm.
I say, “I was trying to find a Grace. So I could practice.”
“Practice,” Nick repeats.
It sounds sad when I say it out loud. “I scared myself at the funeral. This is what I was talking about at the park. Being a monster and everything.” But even if it’s pitiful, I have to say it. “I want to help you. I want to join the Watch”—Nick blinks—”but I don’t want to hurt my friends.”
Nick says, “You’re not friends with Alex. Nobody is friends with Alex.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It’s not,” he concedes. “You want to join the Watch?”
“I do.” Make them suffer for it. Be good. “God, I do.”
Nick holds out his hand. “The map.”
I give it to him. He points to an unlabeled spot nearby. “There’s a homeless shelter here. Let’s go.”
* * *
“So what was that at the funeral?” Nick asks. We’re walking down the middle of the road; feral Graces can be heard from a block away, and death squads don’t usually roam at night. No need to stick to the sidewalks. “If you know.”
I stick my hands in my pockets. “The Flood messes with your head.”
He glances at me. The starlight really brings out his eyes. People never talk about how pretty dark eyes are, especially the so-dark-they’re-almost-black of Nick’s.
“How much?” he says.
“Not a lot,” I say. “Not yet, at least.”
“We’ll deal with it.”
We find the homeless shelter a few blocks away, squat and nondescript. I’ve never seen one in real life before. When I was younger, Mom would have hurried past it, giving me a lecture about the dangers of overpopulation and laziness, how some people refuse to take responsibility for their lives. They must have done something wrong for them to be punished this way. God is kind; God is just. That wouldn’t fly at the ALC. It’s been just a few days, and I know how they would react: “God sure as hell isn’t. People were poor because the rich wanted them to be, just like we’re fucked now because the Angels want us to be.”
The inside of the Acheson Rescue Mission is a massacre. The windows let in just enough light to see by, illuminating rows of stained beds and plastic chairs. It may as well have been a military barrack or maybe a low-security prison. No privacy, no human comfort, just four walls and a cot.
And the bodies. Always the bodies. The Flood is in their bones—splinters break off from femurs and jaws, strange structures grow through chest cavities. I mouth my cobbled-together prayer for the dead as we walk between the beds, because Mom isn’t here to stop me.
This is what Seraph was made for. To turn every human being into this. To destroy what’s left of the world.