Chapter 44
“YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’VE HAD a night,” Eri says at two a.m. when Dez stumbles into the bar, legally sober but spiritually drunk on Rafe’s wings. She can still taste him, still feel him between her fingers. Her whole body tingles with the memory.
Flying back from the Veil, Rafe returned Dez to her tower window.
They kissed in midair, his mouth sensational, his arms cradling her in the sky.
Everything felt dangerous and divine. But then, climbing in through the window, passing back the golden scarf, when Dez invited him in, Rafe said he didn’t have the time.
In the months that they’ve been hooking up, he hasn’t yet taken her up on her offer to stay the night. It’s beginning to drive her crazy. What she wouldn’t give to roll over in the midst of a dream and draw him into her.
But Rafe has other plans, his own agenda that doesn’t include her.
She couldn’t sleep after he left, and since her roommates were nowhere to be found, Dez sought them up the ski lift, at the bar. And here they are, in Yael’s favorite booth, getting smashed like fools.
Dez has never needed a drunken gossip session more than she does tonight, but the bartender’s smile arrests her. She meets Eri’s dark, spellbinding eyes.
“I’m on probation,” Dez says. “They’re threatening to send me to someplace called—”
“Sheol.”
“What is it?”
“A place of peace and stillness.”
“You don’t make it sound so bad,” Dez says.
Eri pours something into a martini glass, rose-colored on the bottom, violet on the top. She slides it toward Dez. “Don’t let them send you there. You have too many important things to do.”
“The films?”
“Bigger.”
“What are you talking about?”
Eri raises an eyebrow. “Your boyfriend’s stitches in the Veil won’t hold forever.”
“You know about the tears? Rafe said—”
“A word of advice?” Eri says, wiping down the bar. “Pay as much attention to what Rafe doesn’t say as you pay to what he does say.”
And then, before Dez can press her further, Eri waves at a crowd of angels coming into the bar.
“Here,” Eri whispers, setting a small white pill on the bar in front of Dez.
“What’s this?”
“Soma compound in capsule form,” Eri says, leaning in. “If it comes down to it, take this before you let them send your soul to Sheol. It’ll buy you time to get free.”
Then she turns away to make the angels’ drinks.
Unsettled, Dez shoves the pill into her pocket, takes a breath, and carries her cocktail to her roommates’ booth. She finds them on the same side of the table, doubled over laughing. Across from them is an untouched glass of white wine.
“Someone sitting here?” she asks.
“You,” Simon says, and moves the wine to the side. “That was Esther’s, but she was being dull.”
“Meaning she cried when Simon dumped her.” Yael snickers, taking a glug of Esther’s wine.
“Simon, why?” Dez says, taken back. “Esther’s great. The two of you are good together.”
He shrugs. “I feel nothing for her. It’s weird. She used to be cool.”
“I’m not sure she’s the one who’s changed,” Dez says, narrowing her eyes at Simon, who used to be cool. “Did Jet tell you to do this?”
“Please. Jet wishes I had someone else to booty call.” Simon sighs. “Unfortunately for his ass, no one holds a candle to it.”
“Look, I’m glad you’re having good sex—” Dez starts to say.
“Not good. Next-level phenomenal. The sex of gods.”
“I hear you,” Dez says, and for the first time, tonight, after her visit with Rafe to the Veil, she truly thinks she does. “But you and Esther have so much in common. Does Jet even like J-horror?”
“Who cares?”
“Do the two of you even talk?”
“We speak our own language,” Simon says.
Yael palms her face. “Dez, please change the subject. We’ve been here for two hours, and I can’t stomach another metaphor about the tightness of Jet’s—”
“I touched Rafe’s wings tonight,” Dez confesses.
“No shit,” Yael says, eyes wide. “That’s huge.”
“Huge,” Dez agrees. “I had no idea it would be so good.”
“I could have been having a mortal stroke my wings right now.” Yael thrums fingertips pensively against her chin. “Fucking Alice Quinn. I make bad choices. I choose bad women.”
“I know it sucks that Alice is gone,” Dez says. “But can’t you hook up with whoever you want, whenever you want? Esmeralda or Kitty or Felipe?”
“Fine in a pinch,” Yael says. “But nothing compared to what I would have had with Alice.”
“Mmm … chimerism,” Simon says, fishing for the cherry in his cocktail.
“What’s chimerism?” Dez asks.
Yael punches Simon. “Something this neophyte wasn’t supposed to drunkenly blurt out.”
Dez puts down her drink. “Tell me.”
Yael laces her fingers together, stretching them out to crack her knuckles. “I’ll try to keep this spoiler-free for Rafe’s sake. Not that I owe him anything.”
Pay attention to what Rafe doesn’t say, Dez hears the bartender’s words. She senses something glacial beneath Yael’s cool expression.
“Chimerism is when two bodies share genetic material. It happens to mortals most often during pregnancy—DNA flows easily back and forth between the baby and the mom. Sometimes it can happen to fraternal twins in the womb. Or after something like a bone-marrow transplant. But for angels, chimerism happens at ascension. It’s what makes that first time such an ecstatic experience, both for the mentor and the protégé. You actually flow into each other.”
Dez is on the edge of her seat, aroused all over again.
“And afterward …” Yael continues, pausing to look at Simon.
“You said something after Simon’s ascension,” Dez fills in, “about him being bound to Jet?”
Yael nods. “That chimerism. Think of it as … a line of credit that can be drawn from in either direction. But it isn’t DNA we’re pulling.”
“What’s the currency?” Dez asks.
“Power. Your mentor can lend divine power to you, just as you can lend divine power back to your mentor. For as long as you both shall be angels.”
“Okay, where does this power come from?”
“Some’s innate, some earned,” Yael says. “You came in with your natural divine power. And everything you learn and do at Acheron either builds or draws on it a little more. Some mentors chose well, and their protégés are founts of power. Others, like yours truly, got fucked.”
“So, one side can draw on this power when they need it,” Dez asks, “and give it back when they have some to spare?”
It sounds kind of nice. Like good relationships should be structured. Like intimacy at its best. Sometimes one has extra bandwidth; sometimes you need some lent your way.
“In theory that’s how it works,” Yael says, “though the balance is delicate. Most mentors know how to manipulate the power flow so that it only moves in one direction.”
“How do they do that?” Simon asks.
“In the early days, sabotage is common,” Yael explains. “Mentors need you to fear them a little bit, always. To give of your power more freely than you’d ever ask for theirs.”
“That’s why you were upset when Alice left?” Dez says. She feels dizzy, though she’s yet to sip her drink. “It’s not because you cared for her; it’s because … you wanted to use her?”
“Don’t hate the player,” Yael says, polishing off Esther’s wine. “Hate the game.”
“And when you offered to help me with my films,” Dez says, thinking …
Yael looks down at her drink.
“You weren’t just being nice,” Dez says. “Were you?”
“I’m minus a protégé. And you were lacking a mentor. Maybe you still are.”
“You don’t care about me,” Dez says, finding it somewhat of a relief to put her suspicion into words. She thinks about Jet offering to help her, too, even though he’s Simon’s mentor. But she doesn’t want to hurt Simon by mentioning that now. “None of you care about anyone.”
“Look, Dez,” Yael says coolly. “I’ll level with you. Acheron is the place to be if you want immortality, the gift of flight, soul-bending orgasms, and a backstage pass to the Divine. But if you want to be loved, go home.”
Nope. Not an option either.
Dez feels ill, like she’s heard too much and also not enough.
She hadn’t come to Acheron to be loved. Not by any means. She came here to make great films, which she’s doing. Beyond her wildest imagination. And so much more. But the idea that no one cares about her here—by design—that no one cares about anyone? It leaves her feeling empty, then ashamed.
Unlike Yael and Simon, Dez is still human.
If she gives that up to ascend, will she also be giving up the human instinct to connect with others, to be seen, to be loved?
Tonight, on the mountain, Dez felt connected to Rafe.
Not that he loved her—and she doesn’t love him—but she felt close to him when they were flying, when they faced the Veil together, when she had her hands on his wings.
It felt like more than just getting off.
“Why would Rafe need power from me?” Dez asks. To her, he seems all powerful, needing nothing from anyone. Least of all her.
Then Dez remembers his goal. How there is one thing he really wants.
“The Angel of Death,” she says slowly. “All of you are fighting for it.”
“Not me, not anymore,” Yael says darkly. “But yes, everyone else.”
“And you get power from your protégés,” Dez says. “Like parasites.”
“And you’re strapped in with the hungriest parasite of all,” Yael says. “Rafe’s had a chip on his shoulder ever since the Garden. He wants vengeance, or something like it. And you showed up to make all his dreams come true.”
“What power do I have that could help Rafe become the Angel of Death? I can barely make Life Review films—”
“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Yael says. “Rafe needs you. Why else would he have staged that elaborate catastrophe at the Dairy Barn?”
Dez stares at her roommate, the words like cotton in her mouth. “What did you say?”
Yael stares at Dez like she’s wanted to say these words for a very long time.
“You didn’t know Rafe was the puppet master of that unforgettable evening?
Setting everything up so first you’d turn on your brother?
And then, when a sexy stranger showed up and said you’d been selected for the mysterious program of your dreams, you’d have nothing to lose and everything to gain?
If I may, Dez, what kind of fucking idiot are you?
Does that sound like a naturally occurring phenomenon? ”
“Shut up,” Dez whispers, clutching her hands to her head. “I don’t believe you.”
But the blood is pounding in her ears. She thinks of that night, her traumatized confusion, her unhinged vulnerability. She thinks of the whirlwind afterward—the hospital, the police, her mother’s absolute rejection of her—everything that led to Dez getting into Rafe’s obsidian jet.
Dez had left everything, everything behind. Because she’d been desperate. And because a stranger said her film was special, told her a top graduate school was going to give her a full ride to come and join them. He said Acheron would protect her.
Now she thinks of Moriah and Zarlengo swapping glances earlier tonight when Dez mentioned Glimpse in the director’s office. Like they’d never heard of the film Rafe said got her selected for the program. Like it didn’t matter anyway.
“Go ahead, ask Rafe,” Yael says, laughing under her breath. “God knows he can’t lie to you.”