“She’s the one who called the angels out,” the snakebite kid was saying, pointing straight at Bitter, who flinched as everyone’s eyes swung to her.
“Why did you call them?” Miss Bilphena asked gently.
Bitter drew her knees up into her chest and looked down at her feet. She felt like bursting into tears. “They hurt Eddie,” she managed to say, and her voice cracked on her friend’s name. “I just wanted them to stop hurting people.”
Alex reached over and put a hand on Bitter’s shoulder. “It’s okay, B.”
Bitter shook her head, wiping tears out of her eyes. “It’s not. They’re just going to hurt more people, and it’s my fault. I’m so sorry I started all this.” The silence in the den was heavy, and she was afraid to see what was in the Assata kids’ eyes, but Bitter still forced herself to look up. To her surprise, they were all staring at her without any animosity, with some warmth even.
“You did all that for Eddie?” Ube asked, and Bitter nodded.
“I eh mean for it to go this far. I was just really angry, and then Vengeance showed up. I eh know the other ones would come too.”
“It’s all good.” Ube gave her a small smile. “Thank you for trying.”
His kindness just made Bitter want to cry even harder, but she choked it back and nodded, sinking deeper into the couch.
“D’you wanna go see Eddie?” he asked, and Bitter’s heart leaped.
“I can see her?”
A familiar voice interrupted, startling her. “Actually, she’s sleeping now.” Aloe was standing in the doorway with his arms folded, his face stony.
A small shock ran through Bitter as she realized that with everything going on with the angels, she’d completely forgotten to wonder where Aloe was in all of this, ever since he’d left to drop off supplies for Eddie. Had he been at the safe house when the angels arrived? How much had he heard of what the others had just shared with Miss Bilphena?
Aloe’s eyes fixed on hers. “Can we talk out here for a minute, Bitter?”
She nodded and climbed off the couch, trying to ignore how awkward she felt. She could tell that Aloe was upset, but she couldn’t figure out why. They stepped out of the den, and he walked down the hall a little, then stopped. “Were you even going to tell me you were here?” he asked.
Bitter looked down. “I forgot,” she said. “There was so much going on—”
“With the angels. I know.” A corner of Aloe’s mouth quirked as Bitter glanced up at him in surprise. “What, you thought I’d be as out of the loop as you kept me?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“Isn’t it? You literally told everyone else about it before you told me. You didn’t call, didn’t answer any of my messages, nothing. And don’t tell me you’re bad with your phone this time.”
Bitter patted down her clothes, realizing that she didn’t even have her phone on her. “I must have left it at Eucalyptus.” She took a step toward Aloe. “I’m sorry you feel left out—”
He barked out a laugh and shook his head. “You don’t even get it.”
“How you find out about the angels?”
“What, you mean the angels you apparently called out and didn’t bother telling me about? I was here when they arrived, and one of the other kids updated me after they left. I couldn’t enter the seclusion because I’m not Assata, so I stayed with Eddie.” A small but bright resentment burned in his eyes. “Somehow you got into seclusion, though. I thought you didn’t even fuck with Assata, but I guess you get privileges for setting all this off in the first place.”
Bitter felt a tendril of anger curl through her. “Yuh think I’m lucky to be in the middle of this shitstorm?”
Aloe shrugged. “You seem real comfortable here for someone who was talking shit about Assata the whole time.”
She didn’t understand why he was angry. “Aloe, you upset because I eh tell you about the angels or because Assata gave me access, which one? Blessing and I came here with Alex, and we involved in this angel business. That’s the only reason Ube let us into their seclusion thing.”
“That’s exactly my point!” Aloe burst out. “You started this whole angel thing, and fine you didn’t tell me because it’s a big deal and you turned to your girls like I’m not part of your crew, but we can talk about that later. But whether you like it or not, you are at the center of this, and that’s what got you into Assata, and you don’t even care. You don’t want to hunt, you don’t want to be part of it, and it’s not fair, because I’ve been out there with them on the front lines, I’m the one who patches them up, and I didn’t even get a chance to decide if I wanted to go with the angels!”
Too many thoughts were crowding Bitter’s mind, noisy and overlapping. “I never knew you felt left out by Assata. You could have joined them if you wanted to,” she heard herself saying. “Who holding you back from it?”
Aloe stared at her incredulously. “I want to make art, Bitter. I want to be at Eucalyptus, with you. I don’t think that means I should have to choose between Eucalyptus and Assata or be cut out from shit like this as if I’m not part of their community. What if they get hurt on the hunt?”
“It’s fine—the angels can heal. They doh need you.” Bitter spoke quickly, trying to reassure Aloe, so she didn’t realize what she’d said until she heard it out in the air and saw his eyes go stony. She clapped her hands over her mouth. “Wait, no—”
Aloe’s jaw was tight. “No, it’s fine. You said what you meant.”
How could they be having their first fight in the middle of this? Bitter had never seen this side of Aloe, where he sounded not just jealous but sour. It felt like the angels’ arrival had shaken something loose in their relationship, and Bitter couldn’t understand it. “I just want you to be safe, Aloe. Why you vexing over this? It doh sound like you.”
Aloe gave a brief and empty laugh, then ran his hand over his short locs. “I just want to be helping people, Bitter. I don’t think you understand how important that is to me. I would have gone with the hunters, and to be very honest, I get that you don’t like doing frontline shit, but I don’t understand how you can just stay behind.”
Bitter drew back from the accusation in his voice, even though she could tell that he’d said it as gently as he could. “I dare you to go and say that to Ube,” she snapped, her voice tight. “He chose to stay behind too, but I eh see you lashing out at him just because you didn’t get to go watch people get killed.”
“Ube didn’t call the angels through,” Aloe shot back, ignoring the last part of her jab. “You did. You really don’t see how this is your responsibility? Bitter, you didn’t talk to anyone, you didn’t call us. I didn’t even know you could do shit like this! And now I’m finding out all these … these secrets about you. Like, what the fuck, B? How are we together and I’m the last person to be looped in?”
Bitter stared at him in shock. She hadn’t been keeping secrets from him—the things she drew and what happened with them couldn’t be secrets if they were only real in her world. Aloe was part of another world, with Blessing and Alex and Eucalyptus, and Bitter had never planned for the two worlds to collide so disastrously. She could see the hurt steeping behind Aloe’s eyes and she wanted to make it better, but it also seemed so trivial in the face of what Vengeance and the other angels were about to do. Aloe didn’t understand. He hadn’t been there—he’d never seen Vengeance in its full and unfurled form. All he had to work with were the secondhand accounts he’d overheard from the Assata kids in the den, and Bitter didn’t know how to tell him that this was so, so much worse than he could imagine. It was bigger than his feelings; it was bigger than her feelings, and she was the one who would have to reckon with the truth of what he’d said. She had called the angels through. If they couldn’t be stopped, that was blood on her hands, and Bitter had no idea how she could stay sane after something like that. She wasn’t Assata—she hadn’t been prepared for frontline costs.