It took me a second, then I finally got it. Evan wasn’t talking about the lack of overhead lighting. He was talking about me. Apparently, I was the source of negative energy, a walking, talking black hole.

Given how tired and scared I currently was, that made perfect sense.

“Evan, can you tell me how you fight the dark?”

“Call upon the angels,” he reported. “Close your eyes. Picture a white light. Call it to you. Seven hugs from seven angels. They will help you.”

“Can you do that for me? Call the angels? Then, when you feel the light, can you ask the angels a question?”

In the gloom, Evan blinked at me, curiously.

“Andrew has hidden a gun,” I said quietly. “The angels know where it is. We need to find that gun, Evan. Can you ask the angels to help us?”

“Guns are bad,” said Evan.

“So is Andrew. Help us, Evan. Your mommy and daddy need you.”

Evan’s chin came up. He regarded at me solemnly. “I will help you.”

I hid Evan, still bound, inside his closet, beneath a pile of pillows and clothes. Ten minutes had to be up. Andrew was coming. With the gun. Without the gun. I scoured Evan’s room for possible weapons. Maybe a lamp, clock radio, or a framed picture. Victoria ran a tight ship. No feasible weapons in her violent child’s room.

Think, think, think.

My heart was beating too hard. I felt a dull roaring in my ears, becoming hyperaware of too many things at once: Evan’s low whisper, “Breathe in, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven…. Exhale, one, two, three, four, five….” Myself, standing unarmed in the middle of his darkened bedroom.

Then another sound, farther down the hall. The creak of a floorboard.

Andrew, coming up the stairs.

My father, singing as he approached my room. My father, blood spattered across his cheeks—my mother’s, my sister’s, my brother’s.

I wouldn’t curl up under the covers this time. I wouldn’t hide in a bedroom.

I wanted to fight.

I needed to fight.

If I just had the damn gun …

Then, in the next heartbeat, it came to me. I didn’t need Evan. I didn’t need to visit the celestial superhighway. This was all about my father, right?

I knew exactly where the gun was.

I’d dumped my father into the damn sewer system, and the son of a bitch had been trying to escape ever since.

When Andrew topped the stairs, I was waiting for him in the hallway. I sat cross-legged on the floor, hands quiet on my lap. I had my eyes closed, listening to the low murmur of Evan’s voice from the neighboring bedroom. I could feel currents of air whispering against my cheeks. Cold and warm. Light and dark.