Chapter 31
MO’S DEAD, DEZ REPEATS TO herself silently as she returns to the Vault in a daze. She and Rafe hang back in the shadows of the room. He slips her a glass of champagne, and she swallows the whole thing down.
Mo’s dead. The words ring in her ears, drowning out Moriah’s lecture to the first-years. Each of them looks as stunned as Dez feels. Simon’s crying. Esther’s holding him. Paul Rowan looks like he’s going to be sick.
Rafe leans in to explain. “Moriah just told them about the angels.”
The angels. Dez is grateful she heard that from Rafe and in private. At least she got to hit him.
Mo’s dead. She scans the last-years’ tables, their black gowns and tuxedos, the golden scarves they always wear.
“The scarves,” she says, reaching inside Rafe’s jacket to run her fingers over the one he’s wearing now.
He flinches but doesn’t draw away. He nods.
“What are these for?”
“To conceal our sinister and dextral vertebrae.”
Dez stares at him.
He smiles. “The places in our backs where our wings come out.”
Wings.
Holy fuck. Dez hadn’t even let her mind go there yet.
“You have wings,” she says.
“Big ones,” he says in a low voice.
She gestures to the others, to the dozens of scarves on this side of the room. Her mind swimming, overwhelmed. “So all of them …?”
He nods. “Angels. Every last-year at Acheron.”
“Yael?” she sputters. Then turns to stare at him. “Jet? Felipe?”
He nods. “Angel. Angel. Angel. We have various ranks, lineages, and allegiances, of course, but all the angels here fall under the dominion of the Angel of Death. Everyone at Acheron does. We’re called White Lights.”
White Lights.
Dez doesn’t know what to do with this information. She’s barely standing from grief and shock. She’s just lost the person she loves most in the world. She lost him because of her own actions. And now she’s expected to accept that her next boss might be the Angel of Death?
She thought Uncle Bob was bad.
She nods in the direction of the portrait over Moriah’s head. Samael Sophus Abbadon.
“Is that him?”
Rafe lets out a breath. “That was him.”
“He died?”
“He relinquished his immortality.” Rafe closes his eyes. “To become a human man.”
“Angels can do that?”
“Once, it was considered unthinkable,” Rafe says quietly.
“But a number of years ago, that changed. It started as an isolated quest when two lovestruck fallen angels chose to fall further, into mortal life. They wanted to raise the stakes on their love, to know the ultimate passion. The idea caught on. I guess it appealed to Samael.”
“The Angel of Death fell in love?”
“No,” Rafe says, “but he wants to. Or something like it. And his resignation has opened up a vacuum of power. That’s why we started Acheron.”
“You’re not really a student, are you?” Dez asks.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so,” Dez says, pushing him gently, feeling his angelic body against her fingertips. “But I don’t understand. What are the first-years doing here? I’m getting the sense you don’t cross the earth rounding up mortals like this every fall?”
“Your class is unique,” Rafe says. “Traditionally, we seek the help of one mortal every couple of millennia. A woman named Thecla, most recently. But since Samael abandoned his post, we’ve had to rethink our methods.”
“Heaven is rethinking its methods?”
He lifts a shoulder. “Even eternity evolves.”
“Can you take me to my brother, Rafe?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“How does it work?”
“God only knows.”
“When did Samael leave?”
“Six weeks ago.”
“Acheron is six weeks old?” Dez says, then catching herself in the crowded Vault, lowers her voice to a whisper. “I’ve been here for four!”
“It came together quickly. Necessity, the mother of invention.”
She looks around in disbelief. “All of this is brand-new?”
“The building, yes, but of course our traditions are far older. Every last-year in this room has trained in Life Reviews for thousands of years. Now we’ve brought your class in to train you, too.”
With his head, he gestures for Dez to listen to what the director is saying.
“We understand,” Moriah speaks into the microphone, “that this is a lot to process. But something inside you rhymes with this work. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have made it this far.
Tonight you’ll be given the choice: stay here with us and continue your training, or leave for good in the morning.
Should you choose to stay, you will work at a faster rate.
Death waits for no one, and no one waits for death.
Each of you will be expected to complete fifteen hundred Life Review films by the end of the academic year. ”
Murmurs spread around the room. Dez shoots Rafe a look—this number is impossible—but he doesn’t meet her gaze.
“But as your speed increases, the quality of your work must improve, because the consequences of poor craftsmanship are dire.”
Rafe puts a hand on Dez’s back. “You need to hear this.”
“A poorly crafted film does not offer closure on the mortal’s life. It’s unconvincing. In such cases, the dying may turn back to life very late in the process.”
“Like a near-death experience?” Esther asks.
Moriah shakes her head. “NDEs occur early enough to remain harmless. What I’m referring to is a phenomenon known as Killing Death.”
A hush falls over the last-years’ side of the room. Even Rafe feels stiff at Dez’s side.
“Killing Death,” Moriah says, “occurs when the film has been shown in its entirety, where the soul enters the White Light and then still manages to turn back.” She looks up and across the room, almost as if seeking Dez’s eyes.
“Perversity corrupts the soul of a death-killer. On earth this perversity is known as evil. It means ‘being turned the wrong way.’ The death-killer’s existence is an endless struggle, and their perversity threatens the existence of everything we know. Everything there is.”
Dez watches as Yael refills her champagne from the bottle, her hand trembling as she drinks the whole flute down.
“To remain at Acheron,” the director says, “you must have a perfect record of successful films. No death-killers.”
Dr. Zarlengo steps from the shadows now to whisper something in the director’s ear. She nods, frowning, then looks back out at the crowd.
“I must also acknowledge a recent development,” Moriah says as her snake twists up and around her neck.
Dez looks at Rafe, at the quiet last-years. They seem to know already what the director’s about to say.
“The bodies that befell our campus in recent weeks were not suicides.”
Dez gasps.
“They were not even Acheron students,” Moriah says.
Dez’s fingers clench the stem of her champagne flute. Across the room, murmurs explode from the first-years.
“What about Alice?” Esther calls out.
“Alice Quinn is alive and well,” the director says. “But she was never going to make it as a filmmaker at Acheron. That became clear weeks ago when we reviewed her work. She took a nice severance package—what we call a Dream Expulsion.”
“What the devil is Dream Expulsion?” Paul Rowan asks.
“A special sleeping potion Eri concocted,” Moriah says, “from which Alice awoke remembering her time at Acheron as one does a fading dream. I know you were friends, and I am sorry. It was the only way to help us hold back the truth until tonight. Until we were ready to tell you.”
“I knew it,” Dez says under her breath.
“And Charles Costella?” Simon asks.
“He was never enrolled here,” the director explains. “A stranger to us.”
“To some of us,” Rafe says so quietly Dez almost doesn’t hear it.
“What you were told previously about the fallen bodies, you were told for your own protection.”
And to keep us here, Dez thinks. Who would remain if they knew the truth? Why should they remain now?
“These poor souls, these sorrowful creatures,” Moriah says, “they are signs of a broken Heaven. A Heaven that is falling apart at the seams.”
She looks up toward the sky, through the stained-glass tree, her face marked with reverence and fear.
“Without an Angel of Death, mistakes are inevitable,” Moriah continues.
“We have tried to compensate for Samael’s absence, but it’s not possible.
We believe some mortals may be dying without any film in place.
Without knowing one’s life as a story, one’s life has no meaning.
Without meaning, one cannot pass through the Veil.
And so, they fall back down to earth. But because a soul can’t touch earth without the protection of a body, they end up seeking”—she grimaces—“other body parts as they fall. Catch as catch can, if you will. An arm from a boneyard, a skull from a shallow grave.”
“That’s horrible.” Dez shudders, thinking of the body she saw the day of Alice Quinn’s fake memorial service.
“We call them fragmented resurrections,” Moriah says. “We are doing our best to help them. They are under our care.”
Dez shakes her head, at a loss for words.
“In closing,” Moriah says, “it is not an easy moment to enter into this work. Things are darker than they have ever been. But the future of death as we know it rests largely on you. We hope you will stay.” She pauses, stroking the tail of her white snake. “We await your decisions by dawn.”