This time the crowd’s roar made Bitter’s eardrums ring. She had never heard so many people so ready to die. Ube’s words sent fear skittering through her body. He was calling them angels, and Vengeance’s voice echoed in her head. The language would change, it had said, the world would bend. In the distance, she could hear faint sirens.
Blessing tugged at her sleeve. “We need to get out of here now.”
Bitter didn’t move. She was terrified, she was weeping silently, she was entranced by Ube’s voice. He was looking over the crowd, somber, his words falling calm and smooth now, spilling over them like dark honey even as the sirens wailed closer and closer.
“We are each other’s harvest,” he said, his voice soft as he recited the Gwendolyn Brooks lines, and the crowd picked it up, their voices a swelling susurrus.
“We are each other’s business,” they chanted as one. “We are each other’s magnitude and bond.”
Chills raced up Bitter’s arms as she watched Ube put down the megaphone. The crowd dispersed like a scattered breath, flames folding into the night. Blessing tugged on Bitter’s arm, and Bitter let her best friend pull her out of the park. Marigold petals littered the ground, dropping from their garlands. Bitter wiped tears from her face, following Blessing blindly as they headed back to Eucalyptus. Blessing didn’t slow down until they were safely on school grounds, where she sighed with relief and turned to Bitter, taking her hands.
“Eddie’s going to be okay,” she said. “Aloe texted me and said to check in on you. I thought you’d want to see her for yourself.”
Bitter sniffed and nodded. “Thank you,” she said.
Blessing pulled her into a hug. “I know it’s scary,” she whispered, and Bitter almost laughed because Blessing didn’t know about Vengeance yet, didn’t know what Bitter had done, what Bitter had unleashed into Lucille. There were no words to start explaining it—where would she even begin? With the blood and the little girl inside the lost years? Bitter wrapped her arms around Blessing and tried not to feel like she was losing her mind because she had made an angel and there was no one she could tell about it because her secret was too old, too big, and now it was going to kill someone. She could feel the panic unwinding inside her, a wild and fraying thread.
“Breathe,” Blessing ordered, and Bitter tried to obey, squeezing her eyes shut as she dragged air into her tight lungs.
They were interrupted by Alex’s voice, high-pitched and frantic in a way Bitter had never heard it before. “Blessing!” she was yelling, and Bitter looked up in time to see Alex running across the lawn, her eyes wide as she skidded to a stop in front of them. “Blessing, Bitter, y’all have to come right now.”
“Babe? What’s wrong?” Blessing let go of Bitter, and they exchanged a quick worried look. Alex was never like this. Alex was cool and calm, not harried and … frightened?
“Are you okay?” Bitter asked.
Alex shook her head. “My—my workshop,” she stuttered. “It’s in my workshop. You have to come.” She grabbed Blessing’s hand and pulled her along. Bitter followed them back to the workshop wing, ducking between the hedges of the outdoor garden. Stone sculptures towered over them as they headed for the entrance. Alex paused at the door, then pushed it open slowly, and the three girls crept into the hallway.
“What’s in the workshop?” Blessing whispered.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Alex replied. “I need to know I’m not losing my fucking mind.”
They came to her studio door, Alex’s face pale in the fluorescent hallway lights as she put her hand on the doorknob. Bitter was beginning to have a really bad feeling about this. It was too many things in one night, and whatever had the power to shake Alex up this much was something she wasn’t sure she wanted to see, but it was also too late, because they were already there and Blessing was pushing the door open impatiently. “It can’t be that bad, whatever it is,” she was saying as she stepped into Alex’s workshop. Bitter followed her, and then they both stopped in their tracks. Alex looked over their shoulders.
“Told you,” she said. Blessing’s jaw had dropped open, and Bitter’s heart was racing faster than she thought possible.
Half of Alex’s studio was taken up by a winged metal creature pacing back and forth. It swung its face toward them, and its eyes were liquid mercury, rippling in the light as they settled on the girls.
“What the fuck is that?” Blessing whispered.
“It was a sculpture, and I don’t know what I did, but that motherfucker came to life, yo.” Alex looked like she was ready to dash out of the door at any moment. “Y’all can see it, right? Like, this shit ain’t in my head?”
“I can see it,” Bitter answered, her voice soft with shock. Vengeance had kept saying we like it wasn’t alone, and apparently it wasn’t. “Does it talk?”
Both Blessing and Alex turned their heads sharply toward her. “Does it do what, now?” Blessing replied, her voice alarmed, just as Alex asked, “How did you know it talks?”
Bitter couldn’t stop staring at the creature. “I’m Bitter,” she said to it.
It opened a mouth full of needled teeth. “Yes,” it said, and its voice was like many voices tightly stitched together. “We know. You are the first gate.”
Blessing grabbed hold of Bitter’s arm, her fingers digging into the skin. “Bitter? What the fuck is going on?”
“See, it said that gate shit to me too,” Alex chimed in. “I have no idea what it’s talking about.”
The creature glanced out of the floor-to-ceiling workshop windows. “The first gate knows,” it said. “The hunt begins.”
Bitter closed her eyes for a second as a terrible and certain foreboding washed over her. “Please don’t,” she whispered. “Please don’t kill more people.”
Blessing’s voice grew shrill. “What?”
The creature hummed a low sound. “The world changes when angels return,” it said. “All monsters must die.”
Bitter could feel hot tears leaking out of her eyes again. How was she supposed to stop this? How many more of them were here? “I don’t want people to die,” she said.
“Full of wants,” the creature said. “Blind with want, what does your world need?” It looked out of the window again, out to Lucille. “Vengeance calls.” It flexed its wings and went translucent, just as Vengeance had in Bitter’s room. “The hunt begins.”
As the girls looked on in shock, the creature took flight, its body passing through the glass of the windows as if it was nothing, like a ghost. They watched it disappear, and then Bitter took a deep breath and turned to Blessing and Alex.
“I have something to tell you,” she said, trying not to sound as nervous as she felt, trying to be brave. There were angels roaming Lucille, hunting the monsters. There was no time for secrets anymore.
After Bitter finished telling the girls about her drawings and the blood and Vengeance’s arrival, the three of them sat on the floor of Alex’s studio. Blessing looked at Bitter with a soft concern.