But I can recite the Book of Revelation from memory, which I’m sure is an equally useful skill. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass…

“Were you involved with the death squads?” Nick asks.

“Only because my boyfriend was.” Calling Theo my boyfriend is easier than explaining that we were engaged, that we still are, even if I don’t wear a ring anymore, and I’ll die before I go back to him. “I went to his initiation ritual, if that means anything. He got kicked out, though.”

I went to Reformation Faith Evangelical Church and watched as Theo kissed the mass of flesh rooted to the altar. I touched his wing tattoos and pretended to love them because he did, and then held him when those wings were ripped off. He just believed so much. In the church, in the Angels, in Seraph, in me, because those were all the same thing, really. You could have cracked open his chest and read gospels in his entrails. If I hadn’t told him how much I hated Seraph, he probably would have died for me one day.

And no matter what he did to me, I still—

I still love him. The edge of the knife’s handle digs into my fingers.

For some reason, I still do.

I keep talking.

“I feel like I’m going to mess this up. Like I’m going to do or say something awful, because I was raised like that.” Nick grunts in reply. “I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t want to hurt anybody. And that’s hard when I’m some kind of monster.”

Nick finally turns his gaze on me. There’s a strange expression drawn between his eyes, one I can’t read.

“Are you a monster because you were an Angel,” he says, “or because you’re Seraph?”

“Shit, either? Does it matter?”

The flock of birds finds a spot in the tree with the body. Across the pond, Salvador throws a rock into the water.

Nick takes something out of his pocket: a toy lizard made of beads, about the size of his palm. The bright yellow beads border on ugly. He rolls them between his fingers a few times.

“I’m autistic,” he says.

I splutter, “Oh—” not because of anything bad, but because he suddenly makes a lot more sense. Autism was hardly talked about in New Nazareth. When it was, it got the “God never sends trials we can’t handle” and “I’m sure it’s a blessing in disguise” treatment. Sometimes it was accompanied by glances at the culling fields. I can’t make Nick fit that mold, no matter how much I twist him.

“If I can figure out how things work,” he says, “so can you.”

“Right,” is all I reply.

“And take these.” He presents me with a set of bobby pins from his jacket. His pockets are never-ending wells of little things. “Your hair is getting in your face.”