“No kidding. When the heck did the sun set?” I asked, hitting the light against my palm. It finally came on, shining a bright beam through the darkness. “I don’t remember it setting. What time is it?”

A neon green light appeared at my side as Glitch checked his watch. “It’s after seven.”

“Grandma’s gonna kill me.” My insides seized with anxiety and a special torturous kind of dread. “I told her I’d be home before dark.”

“Well, she can’t do any worse than my parents.” Brooklyn shivered. “When they find out I skipped again…”

Glitch pushed open the front door. “It’s not locked. Maybe he really is here.”

An excited thrill shot through me like a bolt of lightning. What if Jared was here? What would I do? What would I say to him? Somehow, Thanks for saving my life; sure hope your near-fatal concussion is better, seemed a tad trivial.

After a thorough search of the first floor, I stood with Glitch and Brooklyn at the bottom of a wide staircase leading to the second. The house was in a sad state of disrepair, crumbling from time and a serious lack of TLC. Trash and debris cluttered the floor, and tattered curtains hung uselessly over dirty windows. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said it looked haunted.

In a word, it was beautiful.

“Do you think it’s safe?” I asked nevertheless, studying the stairs doubtfully.

“They look okay.” The uncertainty in Glitch’s voice did not inspire confidence. “Stay close to the railing just in case.”

We tiptoed up the staircase single-file: Glitch, me, then Brooklyn. An eerie creak echoed against the walls with every step, the boards cracking just enough to push our stomachs into our throats. I didn’t even want to think about the hundreds of spiders it would’ve taken to weave the heavy curtains of webs that hung listlessly overhead. Surely they were out doing important spidery stuff.

Brooklyn had a death grip on my arm. “The two key vocabulary words for this evening are extreme and danger.”

“Sure gets the blood pumping,” Glitch said.

After we reached the landing, we began our search again. Carefully, as there was a lot of space between the first and second floors. But five rooms, seven closets, and two bathrooms later, my heart began to sink. I’d been wrong. He wasn’t here. I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever see him again.

With a sigh of despair, I opened a door to one of the smaller rooms at the end of a long hall. A dark silhouette sitting on a windowsill turned toward me. I knew immediately it was Jared. The knowledge sent a jolt of delight surging through my body. Finally, I had found him. And he was alive.

“Jared,” I said, elated. But when I raised the flashlight to illuminate his face, I thought my knees would give beneath me.

His face was swollen, bloodied, and bruised. He squinted against the harsh light and tried to shield his eyes with an arm. The arm he raised was just as bad. His T-shirt was no longer white. Stained with dirt and blood, it looked like something the cat dragged in after the dog had mangled it to shreds.

“You found him?” Glitch asked as he and Brooklyn stumbled into the room.

Without a word, Jared spit into the darkness at his feet, folded his arms over his chest, and studied me, his gaze unwavering.

I lowered the flashlight and walked to him. “I was hoping we would find you here.”

Despite his bravado, pain lined his handsome face. His jaw stiffened with every breath he took. He didn’t reply, but he seemed almost pleased that I’d found him, proud.

Suddenly the room brightened. We turned to see Cameron light an oil lamp. He sat on an old desk in the corner, rifle in hand as though guarding a prisoner. He was beat to oblivion as well, holding his side with his free hand, his fingers covered in blood.

The realization of what these two buttheads must have been doing for the past two days sparked a fury inside me. I had been so worried, sick with it. And these two geniuses spent the entire time in a pissing contest?

I turned on Cameron. “Have you been fighting for two days?”

He shrugged. “Off and on.”

I couldn’t believe it. After all the anxiety and guilt. I blinked back my astonishment and turned to Jared. “May I ask why you two jerks feel the need to beat each other to death? Or do you think an explanation is too much?”

“What about it, Kovach?” Cameron said. “Got an explanation?” He chuckled humorlessly, then winced. After a moment of recovery, he added, “Oh, wait, that’s not even your real name.”

“No,” I said as I turned back and fixed him with a cold, hard look, “it’s Azrael.”

Jared snapped to attention. It was his turn to stare in disbelief.

I tamped down the self-doubt that threatened to swallow me, suddenly worried about what he might think of my visions. Of my bizarre gift. Would he be appalled? Wary? “I see things,” I explained hesitantly. “Sometimes when I touch people, I see things. I get visions. And I had one with you. In it, your name was Azrael.” When he continued to stare, I added, “I didn’t remember it at first. I was so shocked by what I saw, but then it came to me. I was in your head and your name was Azrael.”

After a lengthy pause, the initial shock of my statement seemed to ebb. He sized me up for another few seconds, then turned toward the thick darkness outside, something more than physical pain haunting his eyes. He didn’t seem appalled, so that was good.

“Please, tell me what’s going on,” I said, my voice cracking with my plea.