We watch the Butlers roll out of the camp. No revving engines this time, no fishtailing. It’s a funeral procession.
‘Right,’ Jude says and looks around. ‘Let’s get organised before everyone else turns up.’
Rafa doesn’t move right away. He’s waiting for Jude to talk to him. Or for me to. And I know there’s something I should say—give him some clue about where I’m at—but I don’t know what it is. So I follow Jude across the camp and pick up two canvas chairs. I dust them off and set them near the fire pit. After a beat, Rafa grabs another two and does the same. Wordlessly, we set up the chairs and spread the swags over ash-smeared grass. Jude does a quick stocktake of Mick’s weapons cache and Zak stands watch, focused on the forest. I’m on my way to help Jude when my insides plummet.
I draw my weapon again, just in case, but it’s Ez who emerges between a flatbed truck and a dented four-wheel drive. Everyone else is behind her.
‘Take a seat,’ Jude says. ‘And keep your backs protected.’ Ez heads for Zak and the other Rephaim file into the campsite, carrying or wearing their weapons. Taya’s hand is still wrapped in bandages but there’s colour in her cheeks again. Malachi’s tidied up his goatee and finally dragged a comb through his hair. Taya sits in a canvas chair and he stands behind her. Seth rests a boot on the bumper of a pock-marked station wagon and the vehicle tips to take his weight. I search for red hair, find Daisy with Jones. She’s carrying a katana, and the hilts of her twin-bladed sais poke up over each shoulder.
‘So you didn’t leave town?’ she says when she reaches me. ‘Good to know.’
‘I’ll explain. Just stick with me.’ I hold her gaze until she nods.
‘I’ve got her covered,’ Jones says. He’s wearing his black beanie low on his head, dark feathered hair framing his face. ‘She’s not going anywhere.’
Daisy clicks her tongue but doesn’t contradict him.
‘Anyone spoken to Micah?’ I ask.
‘He knows where we are.’ Daisy scans the crowd, spins her sword hilt. She’s wary around the Outcasts—old habits die hard—but she relaxes a little when she sees Jude. He’s standing in front of a sedan with two flat tyres and grey undercoat flaking from the door panel.
Ez breaks from her conversation with Zak. Her knives are strapped to her arms, the leather biting into her skin. ‘Where are the Butlers?’
‘Looking after their dead,’ Jude says.
Almost everyone’s found a place now, in a chair, on a swag, or leaning against a car. I consider joining Daisy and Jones on the ground but one look at Jude and I know he wants me with him. I cross the clearing and sit on the edge of the sedan bonnet. Rafa follows and props next to me, avoiding eye contact. He’s close enough that I catch a familiar hint of sandalwood. It stirs the storm under my ribcage. I try to ignore it, focus on the gathering. Our crew.
The Outcasts should seem different to me now that I remember my history with them. For a decade, they represented all the shadows in my life—the reason my brother left me. But now…Now I’ve fought beside them, seen what it is they fight for. Had them at my back. I punished them over the years, and yet when Rafa took me to them—when I needed them to not see Gabe when they looked at me—they found a way. I never thought I’d look at the Outcasts the way I do now. As allies.
And the loyalty they’ve shown Jude, the belief that he didn’t betray them. Out of the entire Sanctuary, only Daisy and Micah extended me that faith. And even then it came with conditions.
Rafa slides himself further onto the car until he’s right beside me. Then he leans back and takes his weight on his elbows, lets his knee rest against mine. I can’t tell if he’s keeping up appearances—hiding the fact there’s weirdness between us—or if he’s reverting to form and trying to get a reaction out of me. Before I can decide how I feel about it, my stomach drops again. Someone else is here.
We’re on our feet in an instant, all of us twitchy. I scour the forest, catch movement in the flickering shadows a second before Micah steps into view. ‘Don’t shoot,’ he says, and holds his hands up in mock surrender.
‘How did you go?’ I ask as he reaches the clearing.
‘Daniel was more than happy to take a stray Immundi off my hands.’ Micah lifts his eyebrows—I told you so—and joins Daisy and Jones on their swag. ‘He’ll let me know if our ugly little friend has anything useful to say.’
Rafa scoffs. ‘Help us? That’d be a first for Pretty Boy.’ He’s pushing, testing—he can’t help himself. He wants to know if I’ll defend Daniel. I don’t bite. I sit back on the car and, after a few seconds, Rafa does the same. Everyone settles again.
‘Where’s your mate Jason?’ Seth asks.
‘He’s in town,’ I say. ‘And so are Maria and Dani.’
‘That’s a good thing, right?’
‘Yeah, but Maria doesn’t trust any of us, so we need to keep the two of them safe but also keep our distance.’
I feel a spark of resistance from Seth, reflected around the group. They want to meet the girl who can find them in her mind; who has visions of imminent demon attacks.
Jones clears his throat. ‘What about Mya?’
All movement stops.
The last time we talked about Mya was at the Sanctuary. After Nathaniel dropped the news that she was related to the women who built the iron trap in Iowa. Jude looks to me. I press my fingertips against the chalky car. ‘They want to hear it from you.’
His lips flatten. He’s not ready to say it out loud.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Rafa says, leaning forward to glare at both of us. ‘I’ll do it.’ He cracks three knuckles with his thumb in quick succession and faces Jones. ‘Mya was born on that farm.’
Jones stares at him. Nobody else utters a sound. The silence stretches out, interrupted by creaking springs when Seth repositions his boot on the station-wagon bumper.
‘Says who?’ Jones demands. ‘Nathaniel?’
‘No, Mya. And her family.’ Rafa shares what we learned at the Sanctuary from Virginia and Brother Stephen. How Mya’s grandfather Heinrich was a Lutheran minister back in 1874. How he was so horrified his daughter had taken a roll in the corn with one of the Fallen that he murdered her after she gave birth and then burned her body. How good old Heinrich was all set to kill the baby—Mya—when his wife went into convulsions. And when it passed, she claimed she’d had a vision from the Archangel Michael telling her their family was the key to protecting the world from the Fallen—and from us.
While Rafa talks, Jude’s attention is fixed on a clump of churned-up grass. I try to read the Outcasts. There’s confusion, disbelief…and a slow stirring of resentment.
Taya lifts her bandaged hand to get my attention. ‘In the commissary, you said those women in Iowa believe we’re the key to finding and releasing the Fallen.’
‘No,’ I say carefully. ‘Not finding, just releasing. The family agrees with Nathaniel—the only thing they agree with him on—is that the Fallen are trapped in another dimension. But they believe the only way the Fallen can be freed is if we all agree to it: each and every one of the offspring who are alive, if and when we find them. That’s why the old man didn’t kill Mya when she was baby. He needed her alive, but separated from us to guarantee we’d never be able to free the Fallen if we found them.’
‘And they knew about Jason, too?’
‘Not until 1940. Someone in the family had a vision and they found him in New York. They warned Jason he had to stay away from the rest of us. Until this past week, he didn’t know about Mya and Mya didn’t know about him.’
‘There’s been a lot of vision-having over the last century or so,’ Taya says, ‘between this family, Jason’s family.’
‘But what about Mya?’ Jones presses. ‘How are we supposed to feel about that? About her?’
Ez crosses the grass and positions herself between us and the rest of the gathering. ‘Mya spent her life with people who treated her as an abomination. Try to imagine what that was like.’
‘I thought she ran away from home when she was seventeen,’ Malachi says, ignoring the black look Daisy gives him.
Ez shakes her head. ‘Something bad happened then, but she didn’t leave.’
I picture Mya in that barn as a seventeen-year-old. Defiant and angry. Scared. I imagine her older cousins circling her, predatory.
‘She got her own back,’ I say. ‘Brother Stephen said she torched the family church in the forties—we saw the photos.’ I feel Rafa and Jude watching me but I keep my eyes on Malachi. ‘And meanwhile, Brother Roberto and then Brother Stephen were playing spy at the Sanctuary, keeping the family in the loop on what the rest of us were up to.’
The mention of the traitor monks brings more muttering.
Brother Stephen, so frail now. It must have been tough for him when Virginia finally sent Mya to the Sanctuary. Had he even met his infamous relative before that? Did he talk to her? Was Mya so aggressive towards Nathaniel and the Five because she knew he was watching and would report back to Virginia?
Malachi scratches his neck, frowning. ‘If she was meant to stay away from us, why’d she end up at the Sanctuary?’
I think about what the old monk told us. ‘The family needed an insider to replace Brother Stephen, who would’ve retired by now if everything had gone to plan. Mya was meant to win our trust and then “sow seeds of discontent”.’
‘So she came to the Sanctuary to cause a rift?’ Malachi’s wrestling with it all, maybe trying to reframe his brief and disastrous hook-up with her.
‘Pretty much.’
More silence, heavier now. Even Taya and Daisy—always so quick to sledge Mya (they learned that from me)—keep quiet. Jones slides off his beanie, runs his fingers through his hair. ‘Then why did she stay with us after we left the Sanctuary?’
‘That’s something I hope we get a chance to ask her,’ Ez says.
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘The last we heard she was with Virginia and Debra. And Jess.’
Jones frowns. ‘LAPD Jess?’
‘She’s Virginia’s other daughter.’
Ez lets the Outcasts absorb that piece of news: that Mya’s contact in Los Angeles—one of only a handful of humans who know about demons—is connected with the farmhouse in Iowa. ‘But…’ Jones looks to me, confused. ‘You’ve met her, Gabe. Jess isn’t a psycho. If her family thinks Mya’s an abomination, how can she and Mya be so tight?’
‘Maybe the rest of the family isn’t as hardcore as Virginia.’ And then I remember Sophie, Virginia’s teenage granddaughter. All lip gloss, jangling bracelets and righteousness. Butchered alongside her mother by Zarael and his horde. The old rage rises up. Blasting that farmhouse with a rocket launcher wasn’t enough. We should’ve turned it to rubble.
Jones drags a knuckle down the middle of his forehead, presses it between his eyebrows. ‘I don’t get it. Mya must have known about the iron room…’ He’s looking to me for answers. Me. The person who blames Mya for everything that happened eleven years ago and everything that’s happened since.
Last year, I would have used this information as a weapon. I could pretend otherwise, but I’d be lying to myself and I’m done with that. If I’d known the truth about Mya while I was still at the Sanctuary, I’d have phoned Jude, dropped the bomb, and sat back and watched the Outcasts implode. Waited for my brother to admit I’d been right all along about her.
It’s not like she doesn’t have it coming. She intentionally tore the Sanctuary apart. She took my brother from me, my friends. She screwed Rafa in the training room and spent a decade gloating because he and Jude chose her over me. Always so full of herself. And all the while, a traitor. Just thinking about it tightens my chest: another muscle memory.
But.
The same Mya saved my life this past week. Twice. Both times she could have walked away. And I’ve seen what being an Outcast means to her—watched her convince her crew to return to that godforsaken club in LA to save damaged kids from a fate worth than death. I’ve argued with her and fought beside her. Copped her criticism and her backhanded compliments.
‘You should hear her out.’ I say it quietly. ‘If she wants to explain, you should let her.’ I can feel Rafa staring at the back of my head.
‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Daisy says. ‘You don’t remember what she did. What it felt like.’
I swallow. Feel clammy.
Shit. I have to tell them. Nothing I say now means a thing if I don’t.
But I can’t. They’ll turn on me. All of them. They’ll forget the past week and go right back to judging me on the Gabe scale.
I’m taking too long. I should say something—anything—but all I do is stare at the flaking rust on the car behind Daisy, aware of every muscle on my face, hoping I don’t look as rigid as I feel.
Jude leans in, turns his face away from the others. ‘Do it.’ He says it so only I can hear. A parrot squawks down in the valley. Our eyes lock. I see understanding—and a glint of fear. He doesn’t know what will happen either, where the conversation will lead. I chew on my lip. He leans even closer, his shoulder touching mine. ‘Carefully.’
I wait three more seconds—everyone’s watching, now, waiting—and then I blow out my breath. ‘Actually, Daisy, I do remember.’
Her mouth drops open. ‘What?’ She looks around, sees that this is as much a surprise to everyone else as it is to her. ‘Since when?’
‘Since we shifted here this morning. Something happened to Jude and me on the way. When we came out this side…we remembered a lot of stuff.’
I feel the heaviness of those words in the silence that follows. The implication. And the reality that I can’t unsay them.
Micah stands and walks towards me with startling purpose. I slip from the car, tensed. The only sounds around the camp are his footfalls. He reaches me in six steps, and I instinctively lift my hands, defensive—but then he grips my wrist and drags me into a hug. I resist for all of a second and then lean into him, my throat closing over.
‘I’ve been wanting to do this since I saw you at the cabin but I didn’t fancy a punch in the head.’ He pulls back to look at me. ‘God, I missed you.’
I blink once, twice. If I start crying now nobody’s going to believe I remember being Gabe.
‘Thanks,’ I manage. ‘For everything.’
He knows what I’m talking about: taking risks for me, even though I wasn’t the Gabe he remembered; reassuring me I wasn’t a complete tool in that other life. Being willing to come to Pan Beach, to protect this town I care so much about.
‘The least I could do.’ Micah kisses the top of my head and steps back.
I feel a pang of regret. How would he feel if he knew Jude and I tried to free the Fallen on our own?
‘So what happened last year?’ Malachi asks.
I glance at Jude. Do we—
‘Bel and Leon caught us off guard,’ Jude says before I work out how to answer. ‘Gaby took a blade to her spinal cord.’ He pauses for a second, takes a breath. ‘Next thing I know I’m in a world of pain in hospital, thinking I’m a backpacker and I’ve been in a car accident—and that my sister is dead.’
‘That’s all you remember?’ Daisy directs the question at me and I nod. It’s not a lie: that’s all I remember.
‘But we remember everything else before that.’
Rafa repositions himself on the car so he’s facing Jude and me. His eyes are storm-dark. ‘Where were you when you were attacked?’
‘Idaho.’ I try to say it casually. Fail.
‘What the fuck were you doing in Idaho? Is that where Goldilocks took you to see Dani?’
The mood in the camp slides sideways again. This is news, even to Ez and Zak.
‘Yes.’ I hold Rafa’s gaze, hope the tension between us doesn’t cloud his judgment.
Somewhere to the west, an explosion shakes the mountain. Rafa turns towards it, briefly, and when he looks back he seems to register my expression. He lets his breath out loudly through his nose.
‘It’s been a year,’ he says, his voice gruff. ‘Why remember everything now? What happened to miraculously bring it all back?’
I feel the solid blackness again, that icy touch. If an archangel took our memories, it was most likely an archangel who gave them back.
‘I have no idea,’ I say, and I know Rafa doesn’t believe me.