NINE

"Ah, yes. Smog, sweet smog," said Iggy. Then he sniffed and frowned. "Dare I say even smoggier than the days of yore?"

Gazzy made, of all things, the sign of the cross, a glum expression on his face.

"Corporate America," he said gravely. "It'll be the death of us all."

"Wow," said Nudge, peering down at the grid system below us. Her voice held a sliver of nostalgia, but in a deeply ironic way. "I can't believe it's been fiveyearssince we were here. It feels like it was yesterday or something."

"Yesterday…" The voice of Paul McCartney himself came crooning from the Gasman's lips; blessedly Iggy smacked him before he could go any further.

We'd decided that rather than heading straight for the old Applebee's restaurant and barging our way through their potentially blown-up basement to seek out a source we knew would likely have reliable information: good ol' bartender Jamie.

I may have mentioned in the past my pretty cut and dry rule of never visiting a stranger twice, but it seemed that a lot of things were changing in this new life of ours, and if we wanted to somehow regain normalcy back, this was looking like it'd have to be one of them.

Doesn't mean I was happy about it.

An anonymous call to the restaurant told us he no longer worked there. I was nervous that he'd be nearly impossible to track down, but when we Googled his name it slapped us right in the face: Jamie had moved up in the world from bartender to assistant lacrosse coach.

"What was the name of the college again?" Gazzy asked.

"Hofstra University," said Fang.

"And it's in New York City?"

"Long Island," Fang replied.

Gazzy, God love him, looked like he'd just been told the sky wasn't blue after all.

"Isn't… isn't that New York City?"

"Yes," I said. "Well, actually no."

A long pause.

"I'm confused."

"New York City is on Long Island, but Long Island isn't only made up of New York City."

"I thought New York City was in Manhattan."

I resisted the urge to rip every last strand of my own hair out.

"New York City is part of Manhattan, which is part of Long Island. It's kind of like how squares are rhombi, but not all rhombi are squares. They aren't mutually exclu—"

Blessedly, Gazzy sighed and shook his head defeatedly. "You know what? Forget I asked. Why does everything have to be so hard all the time?"

There you have it, folks. Welcome to the reality that is being an undocumented mutant birdkid.

We flew for another few minutes, Angel chatting in hushed tones with Fang, Nudge blabbering to Iggy about the most recent gossip she's left behind at school, and Gazzy apparently lost in thought. I took a moment to absorb the quiet around me, to revel in the New England fall air, to marvel at the fact that I could even do this—that I could fly hundreds of feet in the sky and stare down at the world below me, a world I'd never fit into and still struggled with knowing whether or not I'd even want to.

Lucky you! Instead of being a boring ol' human, you get to fly—oh, and worry about your next meal, have meltdowns over the traumas from your past, and likely never return to any of the places you've ever considered home due to the danger of it all, I thought at myself.

Real bittersweet.

Gazzy swooped closer to me, evidently having recovered from his existential crisis regarding his lacking knowledge of US geography.

"How the heck are we gonna find him on a giant college campus? He could be anywhere. Like in science class or something."

"Well, he's a coach, so that seems highly unlikely," Iggy deadpanned.

"There's a game today," I said. "I figure if we get there early enough, scope it out some, we'll be able to catch him alone."

Nudge dove a bit from her place next to Iggy so she could talk to us better.

"What do you think he's even gonna be able to tell us?" she asked. "It's not like he was a part of Vector… right?"

"No, but he was there that night." It was a pitiful rationale, and since I was working on being more transparent as a leader, I stifled my pride and added, "Truthfully, I don't have any better leads."

To my surprise, Nudge nodded with a smile. A seal of approval. At least I was doing something right.

"I don't think we exactly made a great impression on him," said Iggy. I turned to glare at him; he sensed my gaze with those freakish new senses of his and smirked. "Well, maybe Max did. He was ready to throttle me."

My entire body was threatening to turn fuchsia with embarrassment. Iggy was referring to the night I'd gotten drunk to gain information from Jamie, making myself look like a complete and total ass in the process (I encourage you to revisit our past adventure for more exciting details). I didn't dare look at Fang—I could feel the fury rolling off him in waves.

I set my shoulders and put on my best Leader Voice despite the fact that at this point it was moot.

"I like to think I'm a good judge of character—"

Iggy, who'd pulled out his water bottle, started choking on the swig he'd taken.

"—and I think we can trust him," I added testily.

"Guess we'll find out," Iggy said.

We were almost to the field when Fang made his way next to me, so close that our wings were almost clipping each other on the downstrokes.

"I still don't like this idea," he murmured.

"I don't exactly love it either, but I don't hear you spouting off any better ones."

Fang looked at me levelly.

"That's because I don't have any either."

I balked at this. The days when Fang barely spoke at all felt like yesterday; a day when Fang would admit weakness was yesterday. Maybe my willingness to accept defeat and display vulnerability were rubbing off on him.

He noticed my surprise immediately and shrugged.

"You're right," he said. "What's the point in all the bullshit? Still don't like it, though."

"Oh, neat!"

Gazzy's cry of joy jarred me from our conversation. He was staring wide-eyed at the field below us where—you guessed it—the Hofstra University lacrosse field was. The players had started warming up and the Gasman's eyes had lit up like a kid who'd dreamt of normalcy his entire life and never seen it.

Huh. Wonder why.

"This is sick!" he cried. "Can we watch, Max? Please?"

Nudge was equally as googly-eyed, although I assumed not at the sport itself.

"I'd love to watch. They're so…"

"Dreamy?" Iggy asked.

"Sweaty, more like," Angel chimed in with a look of distaste.

"I don't know, guys," I said nervously. "We seriously need to lay low."

"Oh, c'mon, Max," Nudge whined in all her sixteen-year-old glory. The accompanying eye roll was so dramatic that it looked almost painful to execute. "We're not stupid. I'm not saying we should climb into the bleachers and start cheerleading. We can just, you know… slide in somewhere inconspicuously."

"Nudge. We are anything but inconspicuous."

I could see her frustration with me growing—she still wasn't over the fact that we were here, that her phone was gone, that she wouldn't be taking her AP US History midterm next month. But I couldn't risk our cover being blown any more than it already was, so Bad Guy Max prevailed over the softer parts of me.

"Can just I go?" she bargained. "I'll blend, promise. And you guys can just—"

"Nudge," I said impatiently. I saw her wilt immediately at my tone. "You know how I feel about splitting up. And besides—you're probably the most conspicuous of all of us. The second someone lays eyes on you they'll be trying to take you out for a drink or recruit you for a modeling agency."

I didn't say it to flatter her—I said it because it was the truth. At any rate, it worked: she acquiesced.

"Yeah, I guess," she said shyly. "Alright. Fine."

"You don't think the nine-foot albino ginger sticks out a little more?" Gazzy said, snickering.

Nudge took this as an insult to her beauty, but Iggy leaned right into it.

"Excuse you. I happen to be a nine-foot albino brunette these days." He ran a hand through his wind-tousled hair with great flair.

"I hate to break up the little humble brag parade going on down there," Fang called smugly, "but I think we missed our window, folks."

He was right. There was Jamie, marching out from the athletic building and across the field to the bench. The countdown clock until game time on the scoreboard read three minutes.

I sighed heavily and drew a hand to my face.

"Okay. Fine. We can head down and watch," I said against my better judgment. This was met by loud whoops and cheers from Nudge and Gazzy.

"Just be—" I watched as the pair of them dove excitedly toward an isolated clearing a couple hundred yards from the field. "Inconspicuous!"

Gazzy's voice swirled up at me.

"We knoooooow!"

It took us all of five minutes to corner him after the game was over: he dipped behind the bleachers to, of all things, smoke a cigarette. Like, hello? Aren't athletes supposed to be able to, you know, breathe?

So as to not overwhelm him, I instructed Nudge to take the younger kids to the bleachers on the other side of the field—out of earshot but very clearly in my line of vision. Surprisingly, she did this with no complaints, but I suspect that had something to do with the crowd of shirtless college lacrosse players not far off.

I slipped through the shadows and found myself next to him; he startled so badly that he dropped his cigarette.

"Bummer," said Iggy, who clearly hadn't gotten over the last time he'd met Jamie. "I mean, it's an awful habit anyway."

Jamie whirled and took a defensive step back before coughing back a shriek of surprise.

"Max?" He eyed Fang and Iggy behind me but didn't address them, clearly shaken enough that I'd materialized in front of him.

I wasn't sure, exactly, how I felt. A huge part of me felt overwhelming dislike for him—but why? It had been obvious from the get-go that he'd been totally oblivious to Vector. He'd been nothing but a gentleman to me last year, and his head butting with Iggy has been well-intentioned, albeit annoying.

Swallowing the bitter taste in my mouth, I settled on, "The one and only."

He was still too overwhelmed to even blink.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"I need your help." Fang snorted; I rolled my eyes. "Or information, I guess. Both, really." I took a deep breath and plunged on. "The FBI—"

"Yeah," he said, blanching. His eyes darted from side to side. Clearly the shock was wearing off and the good ol' sympathetic nervous system was kicking in. "They want you. I know."

I felt myself flush and deflate. This wasn't great news.

I felt the pangs of flashbacks, felt my heartbeat take off and my blood pressure climb, but I shoved it all down, down, down to deal with later. I heard Iggy shift behind me—he could sense the change in my demeanor—but I shook my head ever so slightly, knowing he'd pick up on the minute change in atmosphere.

"Tell us everything," Fang demanded.

"What do you mean, 'everything?'" Jamie asked sourly. "Awful bold of you to come in here making demands after I—"

"Dude, spare us," Iggy said, sounding bored.

I resisted the urge to punch them both—we needed his help and harassing him didn't seem like the most fruitful way to obtain it.

"What happened after that night?" Fang pressed.

Jamie sighed and finally stomped out his wasted cigarette.

"They did a massive investigation. It was all over the news back home. The FBI kept it all under wraps, though. They never told anyone what they found down there. Rumor was that it was a cult or some shit."

"What about us?"

He blinked. "What about you?"

"Did they mention us?" Fang said through gritted teeth. It was obvious to me that he was biting back insults. "Anything about us?"

"No," Jamie said. I believed him. "Like I said—the FBI kept it under wraps, back then. I had no clue they knew about you until…"

"Until what?" I demanded, but I already knew the answer.

"They came around not too long ago with that photo of you from that night, asking if I knew you."

Fang glared at him. "And?"

Jamie's face answered for him: he turned bright red and averted his eyes.

Iggy groaned. Fang threw his hands in the air and walked away, looking ready to punch something.

"I'm sorry!" Jamie blurted. "What the hell was I supposed to do? Everyone there that night saw me walk into the basement with you, and right after that is when it all went to hell. I couldn't lie to the fuckin' FBI! They would've arrested me for—for—I don't know—" I watched him dig deep into the part of his brain reserved strictly for reruns of Law and Order— "for obstruction of justice or something!"

"What did you tell them?" I growled, stepping forward, wanting to absolutely strangle him despite the fact that what he was saying made perfect sense. "Verbatim."

"That you came in for a drink the night before and then came back looking for a job," he said, levelly and matter-of-fact. He held his hands up innocently.

I was starting to feel better. He didn't blow our cover with anything incriminating. This seemed like something we could handle. Things, for a moment, seemed positive.

Until he opened his mouth again.

"I didn't tell them you had, you know," he dropped his voice to a volume he clearly thought only I'd be able to hear, "wings or anything—"

"WHAT?"

I looked back at Fang, who'd made it about twenty-five feet of angry-marching away. He spun around and was as wide-eyed and more furious than I'd ever seen him. He looked inhuman, animalistic.

Not far from him, Iggy's jaw hung open comically wide.

"Max…" he said in disbelief.

"Guys," I said weakly, grasping feebly into the depths of my mind for an explanation, but I knew I'd totally screwed up.

You see, friends, it had never quite come up in the post-Vector debrief that I'd been painfully transparent with Jamie the night of the takedown. By that, I'm referring to the fact that I'd actually shown him my wings.

Like. Showed him. My wings.

"You—?" Fang choked out, but couldn't find anything else to say.

"Guys," I tried again, but once more nothing came.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Fang roared. He was in my face now, glaring down at me so angrily that I half expected lasers to come out of his eyes and burn me alive. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say more but Jamie cut us off.

"Hey, buddy," Jamie said in warning, but Fang, not looking away from me, held up a hand in his direction. Jamie frowned. "Seriously. C'mon. Back off."

It was actually kind of cute that he was coming to my defense. Cute in the condescending way, of course. Not the puppy kind of way. I ignored him.

"I didn't have a choice, Fang!"

"That's your excuse?"

"I needed his help—"

"His HELP? You should've knocked him out!"

"And then what?" I shouted back. "Left you guys no way in?"

This was such a stupid argument that Fang didn't even counter me.

"He wasn't believing anything I said, and I had no time to mess around," I said. "If he was working for them, you guys were walking into a trap—"

"We already knew we were walking into a trap!"

"—And if he wasn't working for them, I was about to open a secret door that led to a secret company responsible for making secret recombinant life forms and superhumans!"

But Fang was only shaking his head in total disbelief; something had changed dramatically in the air around us.

"I cannot believe we're having this conversation."

"Well, better believe it," I snapped. "Because it's too late now, isn't it?"

Jamie cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. "Sounds like you guys've got some shit to work through, huh?"

"Oh, you don't know the half of it," Iggy said chipperly.

"Shut up," Fang and I snapped.

I looked at Jamie, ready to throttle him for solely for existing.

"Okay," I continued, trying desperately to table the domestic shitshow that would be waiting for me after this, "so if you didn't tell them that, then what did you tell them?"

"I told them you found the door down there and threatened my life if I said anything to anyone about it."

I groaned. So they thought I was a murderer.

Jamie threw his hands up. "What was I supposed to do? Do you realize what sort of position you put me in? I wanted to help you—I did—but the fact that I didn't say anything to anyone when you found that place came back to bite me in the ass."

"This doesn't add up," Fang said lethally. Jamie looked genuinely fearful of him. I didn't blame him. "There had to have been an investigation immediately afterward. You didn't tell them anything about her then?"

"She wasn't a relevant part of the equation back then. Nobody remembered you. When the basement blew up, none of the employees remembered you even existed. It was when they came around with your picture a couple weeks ago that people started remembering. The feds didn't find any of my DNA in that place, and I had an alibi for the hour leading up to the explosion. I was fully cooperative. They couldn't get me on anything."

"But me…" I said, dread creeping from my toes all the way to my chest.

He looked at me sympathetically, shaking his head.

"I have no idea," he admitted. "I don't. Truly. They asked me what I knew, I told them everything I just told you, and then they left. They said if you ever contacted me again to notify them."

"Fucking hell," Fang growled, raking a hand through his hair. "Great."

"I'm not going to," Jamie barked at him. He turned to me and hiked a thumb in Fang's direction. "Jesus Christ. What the hell is wrong with this guy?!"

In four steps, Fang had advanced on Jamie and pinned him against the support beam behind us with his forearm jammed against his Adam's apple.

"Fang!" I hissed, grabbing his shoulder and tugging. He didn't budge.

"If you say one word about us to anyone ever again, and I mean ever again, I swear I will hunt you down and—"

I yanked on Fang's shoulder again; he still refused to move.

"Fang, get the hell off him! He's not going to want to do jack shit for us if you fucking strangle him!"

"Dude," Iggy said from behind me. "Max is right."

Fang didn't turn to face us, but I could see his rigid jaw and gritted teeth; his eyes were full of the murderous rage I only ever saw in the direst of situations, when his protectiveness came out in full swing. Mixed with his disappointment and distrust in me, his demeanor was a level of intensity I hadn't been exposed to in years, if ever.

He let go of Jamie roughly. Jamie crashed to his knees, groping at his windpipe and wheezing.

I shoved Fang out of the way and knelt next to Jamie, bending to his eye level, locking my pleading eyes on his petrified ones.

"Please," I begged. Horrifyingly, I could feel the thickness of anxious tears building up at the back of my throat—I shoved have an overly-emotional and guilt-ridden panic attack deep into the back of my mind where my infinite to-do lost sat waiting with unchecked boxes. When I couldn't formulate another sentence to express what I needed from him, I tried to let my body language do the talking. "Please."

"Max," he coughed out, looking up at me earnestly with his freckled face, "you have my word. Your secret is safe with me."

I tucked my chin to my chest and prayed to a nonexistent god that he was telling the truth.

"Yeah," Fang said darkly from somewhere deep in his chest. "It had better be."