***

  Gabe is running late to MMA practice, which means there’s not time to drop me off at the house. On the way over I try to predict which particular scowl Tarren will use on us when we arrive. I think I do a pretty good Tarren impression. I clench my jaw, press my lips together tightly, and squint my eyes just a little. I stare down at Gabe.

  “Nah, that’s not it,” Gabe says. “He’s more like: ‘You.Are.Late. Does not compute. Does not compute.”

  We are giggling stupidly like kids by the time we reach the gym’s parking lot.

  “Who dares flaunt the sacred rule of Tarren?” I boom.

  “You fools! Your insolence has torn open a vortex in the space-time continuum,” Gabe mimics the same tone.

  “Now the entire universe will collapse unto itself. All of humanity will be destroyed.”

  “Thus is the penalty for not following my orders. The great Tarren is never wrong.”

  “Stop, stop, stop,” I say, trying to catch my breath. We reach the door of the gym. “We’ve got to be cool,” I wheeze.

  “Totally…totally cool. No emotion, like the Tarren-bot,” Gabe says, and that starts us all over again. We are forced to retreat back to the truck where we both sit on the hood and try to compose ourselves.

  This takes a while, but when the laughter drains away I’m left in a strangely somber mood.

  “Can I ask you something?” I whisper to Gabe, who is leaning his elbows on his knees.

  “Shoot.”

  I don’t really know how to approach this; if I should even bring it up at all, though it’s one of those nagging question that won’t leave me alone.

  “The scars. Isn’t there some kind of…um, treatment? You know, something that could help him?”

  Gabe’s aura flutters and turns dark. We never talk about Tarren’s scars. He hides them beneath long sleeve shirts and pants, and we all endure the silent tension of his pain.

  Gabe is quiet. Real quiet. I don’t think he’s going to answer. Then, without looking up, he tells me a story.

  “When, uh, when Tarren was recovering from his…wounds, I went out and did a job. I was going stir crazy with Tammy dead and Tarren all drugged and mummified at Dr. Lee’s house. It was an easy job. New angel. Didn’t know nothing about staying under the radar. Had this huge mansion in Los Angeles. I actually hotwired a BMW, pretended to be a harried personal assistant to get past the front gate. That was pretty awesome.”

  Gabe’s aura remains dark, and the words stream out of him like he’s afraid that if he pauses he might not make it to the end.

  “Got to his house, and the maid was dead, iced, on the floor in the kitchen. Wife was dead out back. Her little Chihuahua or whatever was running around barking like crazy. The husband, the angel, was in the bedroom in a panic, packing a whole set of suitcases, ready to get out of Dodge. I gave him two bullets in the back of the head. And there was this duffle bag on the floor next to him. I opened it up, and it was full of cocaine, jewelry and cash.”

  “No way,” I interject.

  “Scout’s honor,” Gabe holds up his hand. “Just like in the movies. Well, I left the jewelry and coke, but I grabbed the cash.” He whistles low. “Dude was loaded. There was three hundred grand in that bag.”

  “You just took it?”

  “It was cash. The guy cleaned out his bank account. None of that is traceable.”

  “So, then, what? We’re rich?”

  “Well,” Gabe looks down, and the color runs up to his cheeks. He fiddles with the sleeve of his jacket. “I put it all into a safe deposit box for Tarren. I haven’t touched it since then. I wanted to use it to…” Gabe takes a breath, powers through, “to pay for whatever he needs to get rid of the scars. I’ve looked into it. There are some options—laser treatments, skin grafting, even stem cells—but it’s pretty damn expensive. I mean, they can’t completely get rid of them, but they can do amazing things. Only, Tarren doesn’t want it. He won’t even talk about it. He’s just so fucking stubborn!”

  “He feels guilty about Tammy,” I say, “that he got out of Grand’s clutches and Tammy didn’t. The scars are a way to punish himself.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Gabe says. His voice is rising and so is his aura.

  I’m bewildered that he hasn’t made this connection before. Then again, the fact that Gabe is not a very intuitive person is one of his most endearing character traits as far as I’m concerned. If he ever knew me for what I truly was, I would never see those lovely lavender shades in his aura again.

  “What’s the point?” Gabe goes on. “Him being miserable and unhappy isn’t going to change what happened. Doesn’t he know that I’d do anything, anything to bring her back too? Or that maybe it tears me up inside just like him?” Gabe clenches his hands into fists. “It still hurts every fucking day, but Tammy would have beat the living shit out of the both of us if she saw us going all teary-eyed over her. Fuck.” The energy around him blooms bright, flickering at the edges. I shiver and look away.

  “Tammy was always the strong one, you know,” Gabe says after a while, his voice softer. The colors of his anger, deep reds and elastic yellows, merge together and begin to dim in his aura. I keep my hands balled into fists, but the orbs are sinking back down.

  “Anyway,” Gabe finishes, “I put that money away for Tarren. Never even told him about it. He’d just insist we buy more guns, more supplies, or whatever. But when he’s ready, when this thing is over, and the angels are all gone, I’m going to make him forgive himself. I will.” Gabe’s voice wavers, and he ducks his head away from me. “Whatever’s left we can, I mean it’s not really a lot of money, but we can start over.”

  Even though this is stupidly dangerous and I have to clench every single muscle to control myself, I lean over and reach out to my brother.

  “Gabriel is an angel’s name,” I tell him and pull the devil horns out of his hair. At least this is what I try to do. The headband gets tangled in his wavy locks, and my hands are kind of shaking, so Gabe has to lean his head toward me and help.

  “Nice try,” he mutters as I get the headband free of his hair. I make to put it on my own head.

  “Don’t!” Gabe’s aura flares again. I freeze with the headband right in front of my face. “There aren’t any angels in this family or devils,” he insists.

  We look at each other. Beneath the weight of our shared sorrow, even Gabe’s nearly invincible shield of sarcasm can crumble, his Teflon smiles can buckle, and his mischief brown eyes can fade and grow distant.

  I drop the devil horns. We stand up together and walk into the gym.

  ***

  Tarren does give us a grandiose scowl when we arrive, which is impressive considering that he’s wearing a mouthpiece. His displeasure, however, is the least of my worries. Upon entering the building, I know I’m in trouble. There are entirely too many people here. In front of me, a class of men spar against each other on a black mat that covers three quarters of the room while an instructor barks corrections. On the other side of the mat, a group of rangy teenagers watches a lithe black woman demonstrate an arm bar submission technique on an unlucky volunteer. Each person is filmed in bright energy that flows in stark peaks and valleys as they practice. The noise of grunts, groans, and sudden yells breaks over my eardrums, and the scents of sweat and hormones mix a stiff soup in the air. I pause just inside the door, dazed. Then I force all the shaking pieces of myself together and demand that the cogs of my mind get back on the track.

  This is going to be bad though. That dark part of me, Monster Maya, purrs inside my head.

  One hour, I think to myself. I don’t consider the hour after that or the rest of the day or, you know, the rest of my life. Just one hour. One hour, one hour, one hour.

  Gabe changes into long shorts and a tight muscle shirt and pops in a mouth guard while Tarren practices by himself against a punching bag. In the proper spectators area, the teens’ overweight mothers sit in folding chairs and flip through beauty magazines. I don’t need a frown from Tarren to know I should stay away from them, so instead I sit Indian style against the wall on a strip of hardwood floor next to a lot of gym bags that assault my sensitive olfactory sense.

  When Gabe is ready, the brothers stand apart from the classes and spar. Facing off against each other, they hardly look like brothers at all. Tarren is tall, thickened with long, lean muscle. He so often reminds me of granite or steel or some other unbending, impenetrable element. Gabe is at least five inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter than his brother, but seems unconcerned by this discrepancy. He is a whirl of energy, amazingly quick and flexible. His speed and agility seem to always get him out of trouble. It’s really his lack of discipline that hurts him the most. I can see it now — how he fixates on the attack and lets his guard down — and I think I understand why it worries Tarren so much.

  Today, Gabe is distracted, and Tarren methodically breaks through his defenses and gets him down onto the mat into a submission hold. As soon as Tarren releases his grip, Gabe bolts up, and they go again. Gabe ends up back on the mat in short order.

  “Concentrate,” Tarren tells his brother. “You’re slow today.”

  Gabe’s eyebrows knit together and his energy flares enough to make me wince. They begin again. Faster. Without warning, Gabe latches onto Tarren’s arm, pits his shoulder into Tarren’s sternum, and, with a sharp jerk, sends Tarren sprawling onto the mat. Before Tarren can recover, Gabe is on top of him throwing hard punches. Tarren takes two in the jaw before he brings his arms up and twists from beneath the windmill of Gabe’s arms. The brothers scramble away from each other to recover.

  Gabe’s whole body vibrates with anger. His aura is polluted with electrified hues of yellow and red —anger, frustration, ferociousness. It’s more than a little terrifying. Gabe doesn’t get angry. Gabe doesn’t lose his cool. Gabe’s energy is always waves of beautiful blue.

  Tarren stays crouched on the ground. His eyes run over his brother’s face. The tides of his energy smooth out, the colors flattening as he recalibrates. He gives a tight little nod, accepting that their practice has turned into the real thing.

  The adult class is over. The fighters break up and meander off the mats. Gabe waits. Tarren stands up and relaxes into his fighting stance. As soon as the adults are off the mat, Gabe moves in, and suddenly my brothers are fighting. Really fighting.

  No one leaves.

  Gabe’s energy is bright, erratic, and violent, like when he’s playing a really hard level in a video game. Tarren’s energy is low; fluid and controlled.

  The fight is not beautiful and continuous like some choreographed movie caper. They start and stop and grunt, grapple then disengage. They end up on the mat a lot, twisting around each other in little knots; pulling limbs, wrapping legs, breaking holds, rolling away, and jumping back up. Within the choppy rhythm of the fight, there are bursts of synergy where they move in harmony with and against each other so that it looks like a dangerous, violent dance. And sometimes it looks clumsy and dirty, but even this, I know, is highly skilled.

  I watch and absorb and lean back against my hands because their auras, the collective cacophony of energy in this room, is washing out all the other noise. It is the song. Only the song.

  It quickly becomes obvious that Tarren is offering no offense. Gabe goes at him again and again, but Tarren blocks, dodges, breaks holds, and pushes away limbs. Red coals briefly flare up in his aura when he absorbs Gabe’s blows into his forearms and shins.

  “Fight!” Gabe commands, though the word is muffled behind his mouth guard. A little spark, like a hidden smile, responds in Tarren’s aura. The fighting goes on and on, all over the mat. Tarren keeps ducking, keeps blocking.

  The teenage class breaks up, and the kids scurry off the mat out of the way and then watch with awe. The female instructor stands in front of me, arms folded across her chest, and observes the fight. Her energy is a smooth blue that hums swiftly. I wonder how she can fight with such long, wicked-looking nails.

  On the mat, the battle continues. Tarren lets down his guard, and Gabe’s kick connects to his abdomen. Tarren goes down, rolling backward with the momentum. Gabe presses his advantage, only it isn’t Gabe’s advantage at all. I see the beauty of it all patterned in Tarren’s aura, the luring, the trapping. As Tarren hauls himself to his knees, Gabe kicks. Tarren catches the foot, swipes Gabe’s other leg out from under him and uses Gabe’s momentum to slam him hard into the mat. I hear Gabe’s breath whoosh out of his lungs and watch his energy pulse with wild reds.

  Tarren snakes his legs around Gabe’s stomach, pins him to the floor, and plants an elbow across his neck. The teens break out into cheers. Tarren unwinds his legs and rolls off his brother. Gabe sits up, ducks his head between his knees, and pulls in slow, shaky breaths.

  Tarren takes out his mouth guard. “You let your emotions get in the way.”

  “Shut up,” Gabe whispers hoarsely. “For once in your life, just lay off.”

  Tarren is quiet for a moment. “Are you hurt?” he finally asks.

  Gabe lifts his head, and his cheeks are red. “I’m going home.”

  Tarren offers his hand, but Gabe ignores it. He hauls himself up and steps off the mat. I stand up quickly and fall in line behind him.

  “Leave me alone,” he growls at me.

  Growls.

  Gabe.

  At me.

  I don’t actually stagger back dramatically or clutch at my heart, but it’s a strong impulse. Gabe grabs his duffle bag, pushes the front door open too hard, and leaves. I turn to Tarren, who has stepped off the mat next to me.

  We don’t say anything to each other.

  Tarren works with the female instructor. Her long limbs give her movements grace, and her hair is plaited in many small braids that dance around her head as she moves. They drill each other and then spar, but Tarren is holding back, just like he holds back with me, slowing down his moves, blocking more than attacking. Now that I know what he is truly capable of, I wonder if I can ever match him.

  After a short while, a class of adults filters in with a new instructor. My hour is up, and my muscles are sore from clenching. For no discernible reason—there are a few empty folding chairs in the spectator area—a woman sidles up next to me. I don’t know the color of her hair, what clothes she’s wearing, how old she is. All I see is her energy. A brazen cornflower blue with teasing threads of green.

  “Gary just started. My husband,” the woman beckons to someone in the new class.

  I nod noncommittally and stare straight ahead.

  “But he’s no fun to watch. They’re amazing,” she exclaims, meaning Tarren and the instructor who spar in front of us.

  “I’ve seen him and the other boy practicing with the instructors,” the woman continues without an apparent need for any acknowledgement on my part. “They’re both so good, but that one,” she nods toward Tarren, “he should teach. Bet he’d bring more girls into the gym.” The woman giggles like a hyena.

  I clench my hands hard, feel the press of my nails through my thick gloves, and look at the woman. Blonde hair, dark roots, orange Halloween sweater, mid-40s.

  “Brother, right?” she asks.

  I stare at the grinning pumpkin on her chest. In ten pages or less?

  “Yes,” I respond.

  “I can always tell,” the woman chuckles. “Same eyes. You must be proud of him.”

  I follow her gaze and watch Tarren move — the epitome of precision, grace, and confidence. When he’s in his element his energy can turn such soft shades of blue. Tarren has moments of beauty, I know this, but I still always see him as he was that first night when he and Gabe rescued me—how he stood over me covered in blood, pointing a gun at my head.

  “Does he compete?” the woman asks. She leans toward me just a little, and I flinch back.

  “Excuse me,” I say and walk out of the gym. Outside, I sit on the curb and roll up my pant legs to absorb the thin stream of sun. Weak winter rays, and Gabe took all the rats with him.

  Half an hour later, Tarren is done. We drive home. He’s all sweaty and smelly, because he refuses to shower at the gym, so I put my window down all the way and let the wind whip against my face.

  Silence pervades, and it’s a heavy, dragging sort of silence, like quicksand. I hate how Tarren always makes it a point to control his energy whenever we’re together, how he hides his emotions away lest I begin to understand any little part of him.

  I consider turning on the radio to some funky country station just to annoy him, but I’m not in the mood.

  “Do you know why Gabe was upset?” Tarren asks when we’re halfway to the house.

  “Probably because you whupped him in front of all those people.”

  “No, before. He was upset when he came in.”

  “You should really loosen up sometimes,” I snap back. Tarren looks at me. His mouth sets tight, and I can’t help but follow the sweep of the broad, glossy scar that starts under his left ear, traces his jaw, and curves up his chin, ending just below his bottom lip. It’s not that the scar is even that bad really, it’s just that his face would be perfect without it.

  Tarren surprises me. “Maybe.”

  He sighs. I sigh. We both stare straight ahead out the windshield.

  “Were you okay in there? With all those people?” Tarren’s question is anything but casual.

  “I didn’t go berserk and kill anyone if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “It isn’t.” Tarren’s jaw tightens. We stop at a light, and he gazes at me. Could he tell that I was struggling? What would he do if I told him the truth? How very hard it was, how loud the song can get sometimes?

  I know what Tarren would do; he’d finish what he started that night they rescued me from Grand. I slouch against the window and shrug. “I felt fine.”

  The light turns green, and Tarren’s eyes move back to the road. We don’t say anything the rest of the ride, and that’s just the way it is between us.