Angelos.

Neighbors pour into our apartment, muttering at the bullet hole in the wall. "What happened?" they ask, over and over, the doorbell ringing incessantly. They heard gunfire. They want to know why. I rest my chin in my hands.

Juniper can't keep them out, no matter how hard she tries. I sit on the arm of the couch, folding my wings against my back and praying no one notices. My hands trembling and my feathers bristling, I must look as shaken as I feel, but no one bothers to look at me. They just chat and whisper like they were invited into my home, which they weren't. Heaven's curled up on the couch, her face in her hands.

The guard grumbles on about how his gun misfired. "It's nothing. Nothing happened. It just went off. I would never shoot at anyone. I swear."

I sigh softly and count to ten. I can't get too mad at anything anymore. I'm responsible for my stupid aura now and I can't let it out no matter what happens. I put my hand on Heaven's shoulder. Her shirt's shredded, and her cold seeps into my skin. "You okay?"

Toby left to talk to "guests" and Storm's making coffee in the kitchen. We're all sleepy, but none of us are calling it quits until we get answers. Something. Anything at all. Heaven makes a sound between a whimper and a sob. My heart aches in my chest, like someone ripped it out and shook it. "You'll be okay," I say, so quietly I don't know if she can hear me. I clear my throat and force my weak little voice to sound smooth and deep, like Heaven's does when she's Galaxy. "Whatever happened, Gats will be fine. We'll make sure of that. Okay?"

Heaven grabs my wrist. My shoulders jolt. I expect her to dig her nails in and yank me down, but she doesn't. She just touches me, so lightly and with her skin so cold, it's like the brush of snow. "Angelos." My name is a rasp, like she has to fight to get it out. I swallow, and when I imagine her bleeding on the inside, my stomach clenches up and I want to do anything to take away her pain. "Th-they took him," she says.

My wings twitch. What? She tosses over and shoots me a miserable look. They took him.  I've never seen so much pain in her eyes. Not when her arm was all twisted up, not when she was bleeding to death, not when Poison hit her so hard she broke. My breath catches in my throat. "Heaven..."

For a minute, every thought leaves me. People are muttering now, cramming the apartment with noise. A few of them look long at me, absorbing my scars and eyepatch. I try not to squirm, dread growing in me like ice. 'They' took Gats. Someone always takes him. "Who?"

"I-I could've saved him!" She kicks the couch's arm, but it's weak, especially for her. People are really looking now, and she tightens her grip on my wrist. I feel her cold pulse. I pin my wings as tighty as I can against my back. We can't talk here, not with all the eyes.

"He'll be fine," I say, "I-I'm going to take you into my room to talk. Is that okay? Are you hurt too bad?"

She shakes her head, her mouth parted but the words silent. My muscles tense up. She's hurt, and Gatsby. Someone took Gatsby.  I exhale, knowing shouldn't move an injured Heaven. "I'm okay," she assures after a second. "I'm okay." I wrap my arms around her and scoop her up, the sheets twisting around her and dragging on the floor. My wings shudder, exposed. I press them even tighter against my back and bolt. Hopefully, the neighbors will only see a flash of movement or a flutter of black feathers and think they imagined it.

I slip into my room. Heaven hates it, always has. She says it's the place colors go to die, that the walls and the curtains and the furniture and the sheets are too white. I don't disagree. Juniper and Storm once said I should paint the walls and put up posters to "express me," but my room's job isn't to "express me." Its job is to be clean. Besides, it's the only part of the house Juniper hasn't decorated, and I like how empty and sharp it is compared to the rest of our apartment.

I kick the door shut and set Heaven on my bed. "You good?"

She nods and props herself on her elbows. I remember us sitting here as kids, making shadows on the wall with Storm's emergency flashlight. "Look," she'd say, pressing her fingers together in front of the light. "I made a bird."

I'd flop on the bed and flip my textbook open. "That's your hand, Hev, and it doesn't look anything like a bird. It looks just like your hand."

"Oh, poo!" She'd knock the book away. "You don't have an imagination, Angel."

I almost crack a smile, but Heaven's still bleeding and Gats is gone. I watch her shake out her tangles of hair, watch as she draws in a long breath like she's surfacing from a dive in deep water. "So..."

"Syndicate," she says, her voice breaking.

"Huh?" I blink. Syndicate. Syndicate like the organization my "mother" heads. Like the one that wants me dead.

"They have Gats."

For a second I just stand there, the words in my head, but none of them processing. And then they do. I almost trip over the empty carpet. Syndicate. Syndicate has Gats. My heart beats out of my chest, my head pounding. "Oh." And I know  it's true, I know Heaven wouldn't be a bloody mess trying not to cry if this was all a prank. My chest tightens, leaving me gasping painfully for breath. It's like I've been crushed, like some giant force knocked me to my knees. I grip the sheets of my bed for support, the veins standing out against the skin of my forearms, my knuckles gone white. "They kidnapped him," I say through gritted teeth.

"Of course they freaking kidnapped him!" Jaylin shouts. I whip around. She's standing in the doorway, leaned on the dresser. The heat drains from my face, and when I look down, my fists are clenched. I don't want to talk to Jaylin. I want to get my brother back.

"Get out of my room."

She shrugs and glides over. "I thought I'd hang around, you know. You took a drowsy, beaten girl who can barely speak above a whisper into your room and shut the door."

Heat bursts into my face. I wouldn't touch Hev. Just because I'm a supervillain doesn't make me a, well, whatever Jay thinks it is I am. I'm seething now, breathing coming in pants. Count to ten, Angelos, I remind myself. "I don't know what's going on in your head, but I'm not like that. I wouldn't so much as lay a finger on her. Okay?" I can't help the last thing I say. "I'm no villain. I'm not like you."

Jaylin grins and raises her eyebrows. She looks so perfect, with her wavy brown hair and almond eyes. The bruising on her face is already fading, crazy fast. My heart's thumping so hard I hear it between my ears. I loved this girl.  Love this girl. How could I? How can I? "Oh, touché. I'm just trying to be a responsible non-villain and perform my civic duty."

"Get out." I point at the door. She ignores me.

"You think the villains would let us get off scot-free!" She moves like a shadow over the cushy white carpet, her socked feet barely making a sound. Heaven growls something I can't make out.

"Get out of my room," I say, making fists so tight they're shaking.

"We're involved with a war, dammit!" She places her hands on her hips. I'm half tempted to wheel across the room and punch her in the face, anything for a second of silence. Gatsby. How could he be gone? Again?

And Syndicate? My hands shake, my forehead damp with sweat. The room whirls around me, my world thrown into chaos, yet again. What are they doing with him? Why won't they leave him alone?

I force my breathing to sound even. I have to think about this logically. To keep sane, I have to. "We're going to get him back," I say, mostly to myself.

Jaylin bursts into a fit of laughter. "Syndicate? You expect us to rescue him from Syndicate? Yeah. Good luck with that."

I don't even bother glaring at her. I just study my hands and try not to hurl. Owl is my mother, at least that's what I'm supposed to believe. She tried to kill me. I don't know what she wants to do with Gats, but whatever it is, I won't let it happen. Even if I'm weak, even if I'll never be a superhero, I can at least do that. I try to push back my angry feelings and focus on Jaylin. She knows something. She can help me. "What do you know about Syndicate?" She's my one shot at getting Gats back. I drag my hands through my hair and try to keep myself grounded in this moment. I can't run from my parents or the city's supervillains and I can't run from who I am or who I'm supposed to be. I've spent enough time trying.

I can't be a kid anymore.

Jaylin snorts, twirling a lock of hair around her forefinger. "Believe it or not, henchmen don't get that much intel."

"But you do know something?"

"Well, yeah." She leans her head on her hands, looking up at me with puppy eyes. I stare at her purplish bruises and I realize how scarless she usually is compared to Heaven. "Not enough though to—"

"Well, then tell me!"

"Angel..." Heaven says. My aura, I know. I start counting and creep over to my dresser, flinging the drawer open.

I'm not a particularly artistic person, but I draw sometimes. It's usually sloppy, with lines flying everywhere and an occasional sun squiggled in the corner.  But it's fun, I guess, and sometimes I stay up working all night, busy on some stupid picture of the city or Katniss nocking an arrow. I snatch a worn sketch, a Bank America pen, and plop on the ground. Jaylin looks down at me, and I twist the strap of my eye patch around my finger, wings twitching in a puddle behind me. "Well," I say, "spill."

Jaylin shoots a desperate look at the wall, and I click and unclick my pen for emphasis. My mind's racing. Should I have let her kiss me? Was I overreacting? I force out an angry sigh. It doesn't matter now. Gats is in trouble.

"Okay, um." She plays with her sleeve. "Syndicate is based in, I don't know, Asia, I guess. So, you know, Starlight is Snare's domain, but lately there's been some friction between the two."

I mentally filter through her filler words. "Snare has Starlight and Syndicate wants it?"

"Yeah-huh."

I write that down.

"I mean, Starlight's such a unique little super-loving snowflake any villain would love control over it. You think any other city worships heroes so much?" she rambles. "Some people think us supers are all freaks and we should die. Don't you think that's crazy?" It does sound crazy, but I'm not really listening. I'm thinking about Gats being locked up and hurt by that Owl lady, by my mom. "You know, this one city-state rounds supers up every year or so and harvests their powers. Then, people with sitting powers have their super-potential genomes cut and then they're stuck with injections that make them mutate 'back to normal.' And then the government uses those powers to—"

I tap my pen against the pad. "City-states don't have that much power, Jay."

"They do when people are paranoid of supervillains." She shrugs.

I bite the inside of my cheek. I don't have time for this. I don't have time for any of this. "Syndicate," I say. "Syndicate has Gats. I need to know about them. Jay! Now!"

"Angelos..." Heaven warns again. Aura, right. I count the number of knobs on my dresser. Eight. Eight knobs. One of them is a little crooked, and you can just make out the end of a rusty screw.

"Don't rush me!" Jaylin snaps. "And don't tell me what to do."

I grip the pen so hard the plastic shell cracks. "Sorry," I say through gritted teeth. Every minute she speaks Gats is suffering and it's driving me insane.

She nods, smiling a cute little polite smile. "Owl has bases across the globe. Ukraine, Southeast Asia, quite a few in the United Kingdom, you know. Have you ever been to the UK—"

"Get on with it," I say, filling the page with angry scribbles that tear the paper into poke marks.

She glares. "You shouldn't cut people off, Angel—"

"Shut up!" My breathing comes heavy, my head bursting with pain. The air feels hot. Doesn't she know Gats is in trouble? He's my best friend. If she keeps stalling I'll throttle her.

Her eyes light up. She jabs her finger into my chest. "Well, aren't you feisty." She smirks. "Just the way I like you, huh."

"Angel!"

The pen crushes in my fingers, spewing black ink all over my hands. Plastic pieces fly out like shrapnel, and my voice drops to a growl. "Please." I'm begging her to stop before my aura flares. Eight knobs. Ten fingers. Three notebooks on the nightstand. I'm counting and counting, but  I can already feel prickles of scorching heat on my skin. I should get out of my room before I kill something, but I can't until I piece together a plan for getting Gats back.

Jay eyes my exposed waist and her smirk widens. I shut my eye and mentally crawl into a hole. I hate the way she looks at me. I want to get away from her. One, two, three...

I hear her shift closer, the rustle of her sweater, her sneakers in the carpet. "Don't. Touch. Me." I grip my hands together so tightly they're shaking while ink trickles down my skin like blood.

"Jaylin," Heaven says, her raspy voice thick with reined-in rage. "I-I'm begging you. If you know something about where Gats is, tell us."

Jaylin puts her hand on my shoulder and my aura explodes.