Tears threatened to overflow, but I couldn’t give in to them, not yet. I was too furious—at Iggy and Gazzy for leaving, at Fang for not even bothering to say good-bye, at Angel for starting this whole thing.

I stomped across the yard and glared up at our little towheaded mystic. Angel was crouched like a gargoyle, her lips pursed into a pout.

“Are you happy with yourself?” I snarled. “We could’ve figured out a plan. A place to go together. Instead, you broke up the whole flock!”

She looked down at me sadly, unblinkingly, for a long time. Finally, she stepped off the lightning rod and fluttered down to the ground. “I should get going, too,” she said.

With those words, the reality finally hit home: I was going to lose her—again. As hard as I’d tried to keep us together through the years, she was leaving, along with everyone else—my mom, Ella, Dylan, Akila, Fang, Gazzy, Iggy…

The anger disappeared, and I reached out and clutched her to me in a fierce hug. What else could I do?

“Please,” I whispered. “You can’t go.”

Angel wrapped her arms around my neck and I pressed my face into her ashy, once-fluffy locks, remembering how I use to smooth her hair from her face when she was little, how I’d promised I would protect her. I imagined Angel out in that awful new world alone, without her flock. Without me.

I’m not your baby anymore, Max, her voice said in my head. I never really was.

She wriggled out of my grasp and turned to Nudge and Total. “Take care of each other, okay?”

Nudge nodded and hugged her tearfully, and Total licked her face, leaving odd clean streaks. Angel unfurled her wings, her primary feathers still tipped with crud from the ash and rain. But before she took off, she turned back to me.

“One day you’ll understand,” she said, her face an infuriating picture of Zen confidence. “You might even thank me.”

“I seriously doubt that,” I muttered.

I guess we can’t all be enlightened. Angel grinned. See you in Russia.

Moments later, I watched the little kid I’d raised and loved and butted heads with fly away from me. I watched her curls bouncing as she pushed off, waiting to see if she’d turn her head again, but she never did.

Instead, Angel’s white wings rose through the ash, and soon she was a speck I couldn’t tell apart from the rest of the sky.

24

I STOOD NEXT to the mound where we’d buried Akila, staring up at the churning sky and biting hard on the insides of my cheeks as I tried to keep from screaming.

They’ve left. They’ve really left.