“Ange, we need to talk.”

“We could talk about why you’re not with Christian,” she suggests.

“How about we not talk about that, but say we did?”

“What’s the holdup, C?” she continues like she didn’t hear me. “He’s hot, he’s hot for you, he’s available, and wait, hold on …” Her golden eyes widen theatrically. “Aren’t you available now?”

I hate that I’m blushing.

“And let’s not forget that he’s your destiny. Your purpose or whatever. Your guy. So make out with him already. Just be, with him. In a horizontal sort of way, like you said.”

“Thank you, Angela,” I say wryly. “This is so illuminating.”

“Sorry,” she says, although she’s clearly not in the least bit sorry. “I get annoyed watching the two of you torture yourselves.”

Here I started out determined to talk about her, and we’re talking about me. I let her change the subject for the moment, but I’m determined to get back around to this whole baby situation.

“We’re not—” I sigh. “It’s complicated. We don’t want to be together because somebody told us that we have to be.”

“And by ‘somebody’ you mean God, right?”

Of course it sounds insanely arrogant of me, insisting on a relationship on my own terms, when she puts it like that.

“It’s not so complicated,” she says. “You want to be together all on your own. It’s obvious, especially for him. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the way he looks at you, like he’d kiss the ground you walk on if he thought it would win you over.”

“I know,” I admit softly. “But—”

“But you’re still hung up on the cowboy.”

I check my mirrors. “I don’t want to bounce out of one relationship and right into another. Christian and I have time to become whatever it is that we’re meant—that we decide to be.”

“You don’t want him to be your rebound,” she says thoughtfully. “How very adult of you.”

“Thanks. I’m trying, here.” I change lanes, then speed up to pass a motor home that’s moseying along the freeway.

“But maybe you don’t have time,” she says, the first time she’s acknowledged what I told her about my vision. “And it’s been months since you ended it with Tucker, hasn’t it?” she points out.

Okay, that’s it. Enough discussion about me. “So how come you get to mandate that we don’t talk about your love life and then jump straight into talking about mine? That hardly seems fair,” I say.

Her whole body tenses. “I don’t have anything to say about Pierce. He’s a sweet guy.”

“I’m sure he is. But you’re not in love with him. And he’s not the father of your baby, right?”

She scoffs. “Come on, C. We’ve been over this.”

“I get why you’re saying that he is,” I tell her. “I understand, really, I do. I don’t know if it’s the best thing to do to Pierce, but I get it. You’re protecting your baby. The way my mom tried to protect Jeffrey and me by letting us think my dad was of the regular deadbeat variety.”

She looks into her lap. She’s determined not to admit it. Not to anybody. She made a promise to herself, a commitment to the idea of Pierce as the baby daddy, and she’s not going to break that for anybody. Not even for me. It’s safer that way.

“Okay, fine, be that way,” I say.

I’ll have to let her figure it out herself. But there’s nothing wrong with me helping.

I turn on the radio, and we listen without talking for a while, both of us deep in thought. I come up with a new approach. “Hey, you remember how I kept seeing that bird around campus, and it turned out to be Samjeeza?”

“Yes,” she says lightly, relieved because she thinks I’m changing the subject. “What happened with him, anyway? Is he still stalking you?”

“I threw a rock at him a few weeks ago, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“You threw a rock at a Black Wing?” she says, impressed. “Whoa, C.”

“I was mad. It was probably a mistake. He knows I’m a Triplare, and maybe I pissed him off enough that he’ll decide to tell Asael about me.”

Angela freezes. “Asael. Who’s that?”

“The big bad Watcher, apparently. He collects the Triplare. Apparently there are only seven of us at any given time, and he wants to own the entire boxed set,” I rattle off like it’s common knowledge.

“Seven of you …,” she repeats.

She’s finally getting it. “My dad said that there are never more than seven Triplare to walk the earth at any given time, and Asael wants them all. Christian said something about that once, too—seven Triplare, something Walter told him.” I look over at her. “What is it with the number seven, right? But like you said, it’s God’s number.”

“The seventh,” she whispers. She gazes down at her stomach. “The seventh is ours.”

“Now we’re on the same page,” I tell her, and speed up.

When I get back to Stanford, the first thing I do is try to find my brother. What Samjeeza said about Jeffrey—where’s your brother, Clara?—bugs me, and I don’t want to wait for him to call me to hang out. Part of me just wants to see him. Plus he should know about the seven-Triplare thing. So I take matters into my own hands and start Googling pizza places in or around Mountain View—let’s call it a hunch that Jeffrey’s hanging out in or near our old hometown. After all, that first time he showed up at my dorm room he said he thought he’d seen me, and that was the day I took Christian to Mountain View before we went to Buzzards Roost.

It turns out that there are three pizza joints in Mountain View, and Jeffrey works at the third one I check—right next to the train station, on Castro Street.

He’s not thrilled to see me when I come barging into his life. “What are you doing here?” he asks when I appear at the counter and sweetly ask for a Diet Coke.

“Hey, can’t a girl miss her brother?” I ask. “I need to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

“All right, fine. Hey, Jake, this is my sister,” he tells a huge Latino guy behind the counter, who kind of grunts and nods. “I’m going on break.” He guides me to a table in the far front corner, under the window, and sits down across from me. “Do you want a pizza?” he asks, and hands me a menu. “I get a free one every day.”