Back when I thought I had killed him, all sorts of sticky emotions gummed up my brain. Guilt, shock, regret . . . but also relief. When he was alive, he kept trying to kill us — the flock, I mean. Me and my merry band of mutant bird kids. So if he was dead, that was one less enemy gunning for my family.

All the same, I felt horrible that I had killed someone, even by accident. I’m just tenderhearted that way, I guess. It’s hard enough being a homeless fourteen-year-old with, yeah, wings, without having a bunch of damp emotions floating all over the place.

Now Ari was dead for real. I hadn’t killed him this time, though.

“I need a tissue.” Total, our dog, sniffled, nuzzling around my ankles like I had one in my sneakers.

Speaking of damp emotions.

Nudge pressed closer to me and took my hand. Her other hand was over her mouth. Her big brown eyes were full of tears.

None of us are big criers, not even six-year-old Angel, or the Gasman, who’s still only eight. Nudge is eleven, and Iggy, Fang, and I are fourteen. Technically, we’re all still children.

But it takes a lot, and I mean a whole lot, to make any of us cry. We’ve had bones broken without crying about it. Today, though, it was like another flood was coming, and Noah was building an ark. My throat hurt so much from holding back tears that it felt as though I’d swallowed a fist of clay.

Angel stepped forward and gently tossed a handful of dirt onto the plain wooden box at the bottom of the big hole. A hole it had taken all of us three hours to dig.

“Bye, Ari,” she said. “I didn’t know you for very long, and I didn’t like you for a lot of it. But I liked you at the end. You helped us. You saved us. I’ll miss you. And I didn’t mind your fangs or anything.” Her little voice choked, and she turned to bury her face against my chest.

I stroked her hair and swallowed hard.

The Gasman was next. He too sprinkled dirt on the coffin. “I’m sorry about what they did to you,” he said quietly. His spiky blond hair caught a shaft of sunlight and seemed to light up this little glen. “It wasn’t your fault.”

I snuck a quick glance over at Jeb. His jaw was clenched, his eyes full of pain. His only son lay in a box in the ground. He had helped put him there.

Bravely, Nudge stepped closer to the grave and tossed some dirt onto it. She tried to speak but started crying. I drew her to me and held her close.

I looked at Iggy. As if sensing it, he raised his hand and dropped it. “I don’t have anything to say.” His voice was gruff.