Vengeance was backing away from Miss Virtue, and Bitter could see calculation simmering in its yellow eyes. Miss Virtue—the angel that used to be Miss Virtue—was hovering in the air, all her eyes fixed on Vengeance. It was an impossible tableau; one angel made of smoke and ash and Bitter’s bloody wants, crouched low and wary with survival in its eyes, while the other angel floated like a sharp point ready to strike, many-eyed stone and still protecting the students she loved. Vengeance had tried to kill Miss Virtue. Only one angel was going to leave the atrium alive, and though it was instantly clear to Bitter that the atrium and the humans inside most likely wouldn’t survive the fallout, this fact seemed to have escaped Miss Virtue. Bitter was fairly certain that at this point Vengeance just didn’t care.
Miss Bilphena started hustling the Assata and Eucalyptus kids back into the safety of the house, her voice low and urgent. The two angels were fixated on each other, and the air around them was beginning to sound an insistent discordant note.
“I have to stop them,” Bitter said out loud, the words falling from her mouth unexpectedly.
Aloe’s hand tightened around hers. “Can you?” He sounded scared, and Bitter didn’t blame him. Fear was a fist around her heart, clamping it painfully.
“I have to try,” she said. Blessing and Alex came up to them, and Blessing wrapped her arms around Bitter.
“We’re here, babes. Idk how any of this shit works, but if you can find a way to make them stop, you gotta.”
Alex nodded grimly. “The little kids are upstairs. These two could take down the whole safe house.”
“Miss Virtue wouldn’t,” Aloe said, his voice wavering. “She loves us, even if she was lying. She wouldn’t hurt us.”
Bitter looked over at him. “I doh think that’s Miss Virtue anymore,” she said softly, and it hurt her chest to see his face fall.
Ube rolled up to them as the last of the others filed out of the atrium. “I don’t think so either,” he said. Sunflower walked behind him, her face calm. Ube looked at Bitter. “Think you can get ’em to back off? We officially got too many angels in Lucille right now. They gotta get the fuck outta here.”
“I don’t think Vengeance will listen to me anymore,” Bitter replied.
Sunflower chuckled, and the sound was out of place, disjointed. She put a hand on Bitter’s shoulder, and Bitter looked up into her dark eyes. Specks of light seemed to float deep within them as Sunflower leaned down to whisper in her ear. “You can close the gate,” Sunflower said, then she straightened and glanced up through the roof of the atrium. “I have to go tend to my shields.” She gave Bitter an easy smile before releasing her shoulder. “Good luck, little one.” As Bitter stared in confusion, Sunflower turned and left in a flurry of crisp black.
“What did she say?” Aloe asked, but Bitter didn’t answer, Sunflower’s words echoing in her head. What did closing the gate mean? If the angels had come in through the work, then was that how were they going to leave? Would closing the gate leave them trapped in Lucille? Or did Sunflower mean closing the gate behind them so they couldn’t come back to this world again? A familiar spike of panic started in Bitter, but she refused to let it take root. She didn’t know what she had to do, but she knew she had to do something, and she had to do it fast. The two angels were making small advances at each other, hisses and growls lacerating the air around them.
Bitter closed her eyes and stopped thinking of Vengeance as an angel. It was a painting. It was a smash of smoke trapped inside a piece of wood. It was something she had made, it was hers, to make alive and to make … unalive. It was eggshell and ash, casein and chalk, wax and blood. It had taken this form because she painted it that way, had climbed out of the panel because she told it to. A small suspicion began to blossom in Bitter’s mind. Back in the alley, as she’d knelt weeping beside Mr. Nelson, Vengeance had been with the rest of the angels. It clearly didn’t care about Mr. Nelson, but it had come when she’d called for it. That was the rule with the things Bitter made. They came when they were called. They obeyed.
A wild epiphany shot through Bitter. That was it; that was the key she had been missing. Her creatures obeyed her. Vengeance had come to that alley because she had told it to. She was not just a gate; she was the gatekeeper.
Bitter took a step forward, knowledge buzzing at the back of her neck like effervescent lightning. Aloe tried to grab her arm, but she shook him off.
“Vengeance!” she called, her voice steadier than she’d expected. The angel snaked its long neck in her direction, seven eyes burning, and Bitter reminded herself that it was a painting, it was a thing she had made. “You eh want me to know, ent?”
Miss Virtue frowned, dust dripping off her stone brow. “Know what, child?”
Bitter didn’t take her eyes off her angel. Her angel. The one she had made and called, the one she could command. “Yuh doh want me to know what I could do. This whole time you been here, you probably hoping I go never find out.”
Vengeance slithered to her with uncanny speed, eating up the distance between them and dropping its face to hers, mouth stretching in threat. Bitter heard Aloe and Blessing gasp behind her, but she didn’t turn, didn’t flinch. “Careful, child,” Vengeance hissed. “Your world is full of monsters.”
Bitter wasn’t afraid anymore. If there had been a miracle in any of this, then surely that had to be it, that she wasn’t afraid anymore. All the terrors Lucille held, they were nothing compared to what she had pulled out from her heart, what she had brought to life with her monster blood, her father’s stain, her mother’s legacy. Vengeance was a part of her, born from her wants, just like it had said. But she wasn’t trapped. There was always a choice, there was always time to realize that you had been so very wrong, and yes, there would always be costs. Next summer, there would be no Mr. Nelson handing her a carefully grown watermelon like it was a precious secret. Time was strange that way. There could be time and it could be too late, all at the same time. Bitter knew what she had to do.
“Do not move,” she said, then she placed her hand carefully on top of the angel’s scaled head. Vengeance’s smoke rippled violently, but it didn’t move. It narrowed all its eyes, its mouth distorted, and growled so hard that the ground of the atrium shook. Bitter didn’t take her hand off its head.
“Bitter, what are you doing?” Aloe had both Blessing and Alex holding him back.
Bitter glanced at him and smiled, stroking her hand over the angel’s scales. They had their own heat to them, something damp and thick. It was hard to believe that she’d painted them, but she remembered each small curve. “Don’t worry, Aloe.”
“Foolish little gate,” Vengeance hissed. “We are trying to save you.”
Bitter felt like she was floating. Miss Virtue had come down to the ground and was watching curiously, her head tilted to one side. “I can kill it for you, child.”
Bitter shook her head. “I doh need you to.” She could sense tangible energy from Vengeance, dangerous tendrils that just wanted to hunt and hunt, all reaching into Lucille and connected to the other angels that were out there. “Maybe we don’t need you to save us,” she told it. “Maybe we can save ourselves.”