The Dark Divine by Bree Despain

realized the house was surrounded by singing children from the orphanage where Carolyn volunteered. The Bordeaux family was so touched they built this memorial for her. They say there is an angel for each of the people she helped. There are hundreds of them throughout the garden.”
    “Wow. How do you know all that?”
    “It says it on that plaque over there.” Daniel grinned, as devious as ever.
    I laughed. “You had me going there. I was starting to think you were some kind of intellectual, what with all this knowledge of obscure local history and quoting religious scholars.”
    Daniel bowed his head. “I had a lot of time to read where I was.”
    The air felt thick between us. Did Daniel
want
me to ask him where he’d been for the last three years? I’d wanted to—since the moment I first saw him. That question was just as important as finding out what happened between him and Jude. No doubt those two answers were connected. I told myself to seize the opportunity—to finally find the answers I needed so I could fix things for good.
    I clenched my hands, digging my fingernails into my palms, and asked before I could change my mind, “Where did you go? Where have you been all this time?”
    Daniel sighed and looked up at the tall statue next to him. This angel was a young man—early twenties, maybe—who was accompanied by a stone dog that sat at attention at his side. The dog was tall and slender like the angel, its triangular ears stretched to the man’s elbow. It had a long snout, and its bushy coat and tail seemed to get lost in the intricately carved folds of the angel’s robes.
    “I went back east. Down south. Out west. Pretty much every other directional cliché you can think of.” Daniel crouched down and studied the dog. “I met him when I was back East. He gave me this.” He brushed his black stone necklace with his fingertips. “He said it would keep me safe.”
    “The dog or the angel?” I goaded. I should have known better than to think Daniel would give a straight answer to my question regarding his whereabouts.
    Daniel swept his shaggy hair out of his eyes. “I met the
man
this statue was carved for. Gabriel. I learned a lot from him. He talked about Mrs. Bordeaux and the things she did for other people. He was the one who made me want to come back here. To be close to this place again … and other things.” Daniel stood and sucked in a deep drag of foggy air. “Coming here always gave me such a high.”
    “You mean you used to come here to get high,” I said, hazarding a guess.
    “Well, yeah.” Daniel laughed and sat on a stone bench.
    I instinctively took a step farther away from him.
    “But I don’t do that anymore.” He tapped his fingers on his legs. “I’ve been clean for a long time.”
    “That’s good.” I dropped my hands to my sides and tried to look casual and unshaken by his admission. I knew that he was no saint. I knew that his life had gone to a dark place long before he’d disappeared. I’d seenhim only three times in the six months after he moved away to Oak Park with his mother—the six months that led up to his vanishing altogether. The last of those three times was when the Oak Park public high school called Dad because Daniel had been expelled for fighting. They couldn’t reach his mother, so Dad and I had to escort him home. But in some ways it was like thinking of my own brother doing drugs or something worse.
    I glanced at the tall statue of Gabriel the Angel looking down on us. His carved eyes seemed to rest on the crown of Daniel’s head. That thread of curiosity pulled me to the seat next to him on the bench. “Do you believe in angels? Real ones?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t think they have feathery wings or anything like that. I think they’re people who do good things even if they get nothing out of it. People like your father … and you.”
    I looked up into his glinting eyes. Daniel reached out his hand like he wanted to brush my