PROLOGUE
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February 30th. Year of the Miser.
Sunday?
9:00 am. No, might as well say 11. I’m never up early on a Sunday.
I’m going to die someday.
I don’t know when I became particularly aware of this. I could have been five and heard about my grandparents passing away in faraway Armenia. I could have been nine and our fourth grade teacher broke down in the middle of class, struggling to get out the word “cancer.” We don’t know how it will happen. We don’t know when. We only know why.Our bodies are fleeting.Our time on this Earth will be as well.
I will always love my mother. Especially since the older I get, the more I realize just how crazy she was. For example, she never let me ride roller coasters. Chinar Abajian didn’t trust any man-made machine without a perfect safety record, which is probably why it took her forever to get anywhere.
She also believed in guardian angels. I blame Father Adonis of our third church, who convinced her that guardian angels follow us around, scribbling down our every misdeed, or Tweeting it for the amusement of the Heavenly Host. If you did dangerous things that threatened the sanctity of life, aka, pogo-sticking, then you threatened your chances of getting into heaven.
“So how many dangerous things can you do before they won’t let you in?” I’d asked. I’d fancied my guardian angel (who wore a Yankees cap and munched on a never-ending supply of candy corn) enjoyed the side adventures Mother didn’t know about: double-dipping on movies at the theater, trading a pair of her earrings for a baseball card, staying up past twelve on a school night. Yep, I was a badass.
She’d mussed my hair. “When you become a monster, Ishmael. When you look in the mirror and don’t recognize yourself. Monsters don’t belong in heaven.”
I didn’t ride a roller coaster until I was sixteen.
What my mother didn’t tell me was that things tend to come in pairs. We have Heaven and Hell. So it follows that there’d be guardian angels…and monsters. The kind who do the opposite of your guardian angel. The type who enjoy screwing up your hard work, who trip you right before you’re about to cross the finish line. It’s easier to destroy than to create.
Or so my own personal monster tells me now.

-INCUS-

“All aboard?”
“Check.”
“Even Cyprus? She got away from you last time, Incus.”
Incus scowled. “Just get this lot on the tracks, Ortio. I showed her to the compartment myself.”
Ortio raised his hands. “Alright, cool it, big guy! I’m just saying: they blame both of us if we don’t come through, you know?”
Incus grabbed his scanner and clomped back toward the passenger cars. “I’m already stuck here with you, what more could they do to me?” he muttered.

Chapter 1: The Stowaway
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-ISHMAEL-

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I knew I shouldn’t have stowed aboard the train when I hit my head on the luggage rack.
My long arms propelled backwards like an octopus doing the backstroke, and I clocked an old Jewish lady over the head. The verbal tirade of seismic proportions, including: “Can’t you see out of those squinty Arab eyes of yours?” and “Just because you’re as hairy as a donkey does not certify you as a bulldozer!” was enough to knock me back to my feet, but there were more pressing problems to be had.
“Excuse me!” I called to the bustling train car. It was like trying to bring a bunch of pit bulls to attention. “Has anyone seen a black case?”
“A case that’s black?” someone mocked. “Could you be more specific?”
My temper strained. God, this train car was insufferably hot. “It’s long, black, and it isn’t yours.”
“You looking for this?”
The man speaking had a Brooklyn accent and a face that looked like a smashed sausage pizza. He might have been military personnel of some sort, judging from the arrow-straight collared shirt and his air of alertness, like that of a dog hungering against its leash. His boot rested on my slim black rifle case.
Yes. This looked bad.
The man leaned forward so his legs flanked my innocent luggage.
“What’s a kid like you doing carrying a rifle case on board a train?”
“Dude, it’s none of your business—”
He flashed me his badge. A detective. Off-duty. But keen as hell on making a Good Samaritan arrest.
I blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “Well, it was the only thing long enough to carry it—”
“Is that agun?” One redheaded girl near the window decided to fill in the blank for me. She would have been cute if she hadn’t been wearing a grimace of horror, as if witnessing the arrival of the Antichrist in olive-skinned, curly-haired form with a too-big shirt that said: “What part of 'R£|<$' don’t you understand?”
“Ohmygod, you don’t think he’s a terr—Jesus, he’s Middle Eastern-looking—”
Actually, I’m pretty dark for someone of Armenian background. My deep olive skin tone comes from my Italian father, a descendant of the southern Sicily region. I also inherited his green eyes like sea glass, which give me the look of “a wise seer,” according to my friends, or, from the unkinder ones, “some blind dude.” When I was younger, I used to feel guilty that I reminded my mother so much of him.
Hoping I struck the former, respected figure, I spread out my arms before whispers of the “T-word,” started. “Please, guys. I don’t have a gun. That’s an early-century Hebrew clerical staff for my mother.”
Everyone stared at me. Someone asked, “The Bleep is a clerical staff?”
“It’s a birthday present for my mother. She’s really into old church artifacts. Please don’t— It’s made of crystal, highly fragile!”
The detective rattled the case around until the latch fell open.
Light rebounded within the staff’s crystal body and gleamed from the eyes of twin “snake-things” I called them, for lack of a better word—dragons, serpents, whatever—that wound around the headpiece, crafted of jade.
I’d been tracking the auction for a while. My mother could give the Catholic Church a run for its money with her obsession over religious artifacts. She inherited a scribe pen and ink holder from her mother in Armenia and has added a scarlet silk altar curtain, a chalice, and several bronze crucifixes to her collection since then. I knew she’d love the staff, particularly deciphering the Hebrew inscription the serpents guarded.
The detective reluctantly handed the staff over. “Tell your mother happy birthday.”
Tension leaked from the over-boiling hate pot, and I swear, people whistled through their teeth indisappointment.
There came a hiss from the front compartment door, and I jumped. I stood staring stupidly at the powerful man standing in the doorway: the conductor. Maybe the trouble started now.
The conductor was two times as wide as me and cast a shadow twice as long. However, there was more off about him than that. Those powerful arms wound down into spider-leg-thin fingers. His nose was too pointy. And his eyes, two blue pinpricks, jumped erratically over the glowing screen of the scanner he held, as if he were being shocked by electricity.
Not yet. I couldn’t get kicked off yet.
“So it’s ticket collecting time, huh?” My voice cracked during my chuckle. The detective cocked his head, a cloud of confusion descending over his face. Great. Was it possible to be any more suspicious? I headed for the back.
I didn’t have a clear plan of how I would stay aboard the train. Ideas jumbled around in my head, and I discarded them just as quickly. Stow away in the bathroom? Bad smell. Bribery? If the conductor was enough of a cheapskate to accept five bucks. Make a friend who could cover for me? Yeah, I had a likeable face. It was one that had been accused of terrorism, but hey, someone had to be feeling guilty over that.
And running. Running was always easiest.
Pretending not to notice the mean little eyes following every swing of my black rifle case, along with one’s hilarious wisecrack—“Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out”—I emerged from the car into cool, fresh air. Scratch the “making friends” part. God, what the Bleep waswrongwith those people?
It had to be my imagination. Rumor of a gun on any form of public transportation would spark some fear. Or, I thought, glancing toward the large brass “W” on the door, spark a fight with the people of Car W.
This was karma. Some people are on her radar, and some aren’t. Take my cousins: the twins Alessio and Aris. Alessio breaks into cars and leaves them in tow away zones for his brother to pick up. You’d be amazed at how much money they make off of it. Alessio’s specialty is Ferraris. The twins would never admit to the set-up, of course, but when you walk through the lot of A&A’s Big Toe, the sunlight bounces off enough butterfly doors to make a kaleidoscope. True to the family name, they love Italian cars. The worst thing that’s happened to them is being forced to share a Maserati after Aris crashed his into an ex-girlfriend’s house. Me, I catch a ride on earth-saving public transportation and nearly end up paying for it with my mother’s birthday present.
My name is Ishmael.

Chapter 2: What’s in a Name
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I continued musing to myself: “If I’ll have the chance to see our father’s face. My entire life, I’ve felt like I was running from a ghost.”
“Don’t—!” Bice raised a finger at me, but was silenced as wind slapped hair across her face. “Trust me, Iz. I’ve seen enough of him for both of us. Christ, my boobs are frozen! Weren’t we going to get shitfaced tonight? We’re doing a pretty crappy job of it.”
I glanced toward the thrumming night club. “Do you need money for a cab or anything?”
“You’re cutting out early?” She stared at me in amazement.
I gestured helplessly. “It’s my mother’s garden party tomorrow.”
“Your mother’s—”
“You know she’s been feeling under the weather lately.” I shrugged. “This will mean a lot to her.”
Only the wind and I succeeded on leaving Bice speechless on a regular basis. “To hell with that! All those girls in there and you’re thinking about your ma’s troop of nuns from church? Saggy Tits and the End Prophet?”
“Yes, they’ll be there.” I smiled. “I find experience and zealous premonitions of the end times exhilarating.”
She looked at me for a moment, and then laughed so hard that she nearly spit out her cigarette. “You’re one of a kind, Iz,” she told me. “This is why I’ve never been able to set you up with a girlfriend.”
“Let’s see. Klara? Wanted to watchJersey Shore. Mirabelle? Couldn’t locate Armenia on a map. Justine? Um…had very elaborate role plays she liked to act out…um…in the bedroom…” I stopped as Bice began to snicker. “You knew! God, thewhinnying! It’s impossible for a girl to like horses that much!”
“I was running out of options! What, do you expect a woman out ofCharlie’s Angels?”
“Actually, I was thinking someone more along the lines of Anna Kravinoff.”
“Who?”
I hurried on before she lost interest. “She’s a BBC journalist on the frontlines of the conflict between Palestine and Israel. She’s extremely insightful and diplomatic but always adds a touch of humor to her reports— She’s been onThe Daily Showtwice.”
Bice poked me in the chest. “You, Iz, are such a snob. Now come get one more drink with me so you can stop pretending you’re so much smarter than the rest of us.”
By the time our empty glasses clinked on the bar, I knew Bice was in a bad way.
“Already empty, and I can’t remember what it tastes like!” She laughed and fiddled with the glass. “Once we go through with this, it will be the same. We won’t remember how it was before. Everything will be forgotten in the night. A bad dream.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I gave her wrist a quick squeeze. “And you’ll be free to come to church with us like my mother always wanted.”
Her laughter hung over garbled conversation, the neon lights of the dance floor, and the musk of aftershave mixed with dreamy perfume. “Thanks, Iz. How am I related to you again?”
“Well, for one, we look so much alike…”
She favored me with another smile—a real one, not the big, fake ones she wears in public, sealed with apple-red lip gloss. It felt safe to leave her in the pulsing, multi-colored shadows of her techno kingdom.
I’d just slipped off the stool when her voice, suddenly sharp and cold, cut through the alcoholic haze: “Ishmael.”
“Yes?”
“If anything goes wrong…” Her finger wiped the lipstick stain off her glass. “You have to run.”