Submitted for your approval.


“Go … good morning, Shateiel,” Leliel said.

“Morning, Lily,” Shateiel said. He had never called her by that name before.

“Guys! Guuuys!” Lucius screamed, barreling into Leliel’s room. “Guys, things are happening. I just saw on the TV, there’s a reporter who’s being eaten by the street and cars are turning into cherries and have you noticed” he took a breath, “that all the rocks are spongy?” He sank against the wall to illustrate the point, bouncing off with a dull squeak.

“We are aware,” Shateiel said. He glanced at Leliel’s bed, which was neatly made. “Where’s Ireul?”

“In his room,” Leliel replied.

“Right here, actually,” Donovan said, appearing in the doorway, fully dressed. “You need me?”

“No,” Shateiel said. “But she might.”

“I’m fine, Shateiel,” Leliel said. “I don’t need anything.”

Lucius tugged on Leliel’s sleeve. “Come see the sky! It’s terrifying!”

“Actually, I think I do need a bit more sleep,” Leliel mumbled.

“Rough night?” Shateiel said.

“Why don’t you back off?” Donovan said.

Shateiel shrugged. “I just don’t want Lily to nap through the fireworks.” He placed a peculiar emphasis on the nickname, an emphasis that made Donovan want to punch the older man in the throat.

“That’s her prerogative,” Donovan said.

Confused and bored by the current conversation, Lucius wandered off towards the kitchen, which left Donovan glaring at an impassive Shateiel. Leliel pulled back the sheets of her bed.

“I don’t feel well,” she said. “Mind clearing off for a bit?”

Shateiel mock-bowed, then left. Donovan lingered.

“I really am tired,” Leliel said. She was beneath the sheets, the covers pulled up to her chin. She wondered if he knew.

“I’d sing you a lullaby, but I can’t remember any,” he said. There was a forced lightness in his tone and step, as he crossed the room and kneeled by Leliel’s bed.

“Sure you don’t need anything?” Donovan said. “I scramble a tolerable egg.”

She laughed. “You should be in bed yourself, mister. I’m sure you’re not totally healed yet.”

“I’m perfect. See?” He turned his back to her and spread his wings. The bones were fully mended, and his back was free of scars. He coughed. “I, um, slept well last night.”

“Bet you did.” She rolled onto her stomach, had an irrational fear of crushing the baby, and then quickly flipped onto her back, holding her belly as if to steady the child forming there. Leliel would give birth in less than a month. But it didn’t look like the world would last that long.

Of course Donovan knew. Leliel watched his stiff posture, the twitch in his jaw, the tension strung taut like steel wires in his body. He was still smiling, lying as hard as he could.

“Hey, Ireul,” she said. His lips brushed over her hair, not enough pressure to be a kiss.

“Hm?”

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”

Donovan sat back on his haunches. “Doesn’t matter anymore, does it? We can’t stop it.”

She turned her cheek on the pillow so that Donovan was in her line of vision. “Is that why you ... gave in?”

“No,” he said firmly. “Just because I was delirious doesn’t mean I was lying.” After a moment, he added, “And I didn’t give in. I made a different choice. Because, I, I realized …” He frowned at a chink in the wall. Water spilled through the hole, glistening on the ground, slithering through the rocks. “I was determined to hate you when I met you, because I wanted to break that system. We kept getting put together, and I could feel fate tugging at me, pressing me against you. I wanted to hurt you … more than once.”

“I know.”

“But you never hated me, not for a second. And when I told you about my parents, you listened to me. Lily, you were the first person who ever listened to me.” He clenched his fists. “More than that, you didn’t treat only me that way, although I wanted you to, you know, irrational—but you’re like that with everyone.” He got quiet. “I just never saw anything like it, that’s all.”

“And that’s when you knew you were madly in love with me, right?”

“No,” he said. “I accepted that I was in love with you when you slapped me in the thirties. But I knew a while before that.”

Leliel closed her eyes. “Thank you. But if all that’s true, then why are you so agitated?”

He shrugged, muttered. “Because I’m going to lose you.”

“You don’t have to,” Leliel said. “We could … we could stop it.”

Donovan shook his head and stood up. “No, Lily. We can’t. I’ll let you sleep now.”

After he left, Leliel burrowed deep under the covers, until her body was completely ensconced in the comforter and blankets. For many people the dark was frightening, representative of hidden menace. For Leliel, darkness was a forgiving, velvety cloak, which obscured the pains made livid by daylight. Its quiet allowed space to think, and its loneliness allowed space to exist. Daylight was too crowded. Too many people shouting and talking and running during the day, but the night was given over to sighs and whispers that massaged rather than struck.

But now, alone, the fierce pull was free to act in force. A peculiar impulse gnawed at Leliel, starting at the base of her spine and then crawling quickly up behind her eyes, where it pricked at her vision, creating colored spots in the darkness. Leliel tried to ignore it, but with little success. The desire was in her blood now, as Lucifer had intended. It would swell and throb until she gave in, or was destroyed. With some effort, Leliel climbed out of bed. Her body, pleased by this, tried to go for the door, and then the exit, and the surface. Because, long before this situation, Leliel had already considered a contingency plan, should she ever change her mind about the revolution-by-extinction thing. She would seek out Cadmiel and Tialiel, tell them the machine’s location, and stand back while they located and neutralized it. The oath in her blood had found this information, and was now trying to force her to act on her thoughts. But, for now, Leliel resisted. She walked out the door, but not to the surface. Only to the kitchen.

She smiled wanly at Donovan, Lucius, and Shateiel, who were all seated around a wooden table. The leg of the empty chair had become a snake, and Lucius observed its confused wriggling with interest, since the poor snake was still fixed in the position of a chair’s leg. A rock in the ceiling turned to sugar, and spilled onto the table. Lucius dipped his finger in the fine, white crystal and then licked it clean, smiling contentedly.

Leliel opened the cupboards and the fridge, taking out everything that wasn’t rotten: bags of flour, sauce jars, tomatoes, frozen meats, juice, butter.

“Time for the last supper?” Shateiel said dryly.

“I guess so,” Leliel said. She just wanted to busy herself, reasoning that a distracted body would be less likely to betray her. She cracked an egg over a bowl filled with flour, and hoped that the mixture wouldn’t morph into a cat or a mop until she was done with it.


***

Sean sat with his mother for a while after she cocooned herself, just staring, perhaps willing her to wake up and offer a more detailed explanation. But even I could have told him that he wasn’t going to get anything more out of her. I sat beside him, following the line of his gaze, which was firmly on where Gabriel’s good wing obscured her face. But I was drawn to the bone wing, which seemed different now than a moment ago. A few seconds of thoughtful frowning and I realized that the feathers were growing back.

“Hey, Sean,” I said, and nudged him. “Look.”

Cadmiel, still hovering at the edge of the room, nodded. “No surprise.”

Sean blinked. “I … I thought that damage was permanent.”

“No,” Cadmiel said. “The cryo-crystal just halted her healing process. Along with all other processes.”

“Dad must have locked her in there after he finished playing doctor,” Sean said.

“What should we do?” I said.

Cadmiel ate a gummi worm that had once been a carpet fiber and said, “Not sure.”

“We must find whatever is causing these disruptions,” Necavi said. “And destroy it.”

“Easier said than done,” Cadmiel said, and then choked, as his gummi worm regained its original form in his throat.

“It is a machine, yes?” Necavi said. “Let us consider the properties of such a device.”

He spoke like a professor trying to lead struggling students to an answer. His neutral tone and stoic intelligence reminded me of Anael, but had Anael been alive, he would’ve simply given us the solution. He lacked the patience for pedantry, but Necavi seemed to think we had all the time in the (fast disintegrating) world.

My mind was, predictably, blank. I had seen the machine’s prototype several years ago, even watched Sean smash it, but its image was fuzzy in my memory. We were in a small room, in a building that had temporarily replaced my school. Where had that building gone? It must have been a secluded part of Heaven; all its walls were so white. But obviously that group no longer used it, because they had that underground lair . . .

“What did it look like?” Necavi said patiently, interrupting my thoughts.

“Cylindrical,” Sean said. “Ringed with liquid-filled tubes.”

Yes, that was right. The liquid, green and warm like blood, had splashed over my feet, after Sean broke the machine into pieces. Warm like blood.

“It … it’s filled with Sean’s blood,” I whispered, and they all looked at me. I detected a trace of pride in the upturn of Necavi’s mouth, but maybe I was inventing things.

Sean nodded slowly. “When I was in that illusion, I was strapped to a gurney, and I had needles pricking a million points on my body. I bled and bled …”

Back when we were dealing with the prototype, I had seen this memory displayed on a screen. Necavi’s head turned away slightly. That same screen had depicted his dead wife, on their wedding day.

Alistair whistled. “That ain’t right.” He paused. “Well, I mean, it sounds correct, or that is, the true answer, but certainly morally speaking …”

“We know what you mean,” Necavi said. “So we’ve established one fact. Now where might such a machine be housed? Where might it be immune to its own powers?”

“It could still be in Heaven,” Tialiel said doubtfully, and Necavi shook his head.

Honestly, I was surprised that Sean was trying to talk out this problem rather than storming off into the unknown with no plan besides kicking some unidentified ass. He sat with his hands folded over the hilt of his sword, his attention divided between our discussion and his mother, still resting in her wing cocoon. Flowers and vines had begun to grow around her, crawling up the couch’s arms, blooming from between the cushions. The flora wasn’t the result of a reality distortion, but Gabriel’s mere presence. Her wings had the sheen of buttercup petals. She became more luminous with every passing second, and in the midst of my windowpanes floating around as butterflies, I was jealous. The butterflies, by the way, settled themselves in Gabriel’s long blue hair and along the rows of her feathers, as though she were a rose bush.

Sean tapped his nails on the sword’s plain hilt, chewing his lip, his eyes full of his mother’s face. He stayed not because of maturity, or because this conversation was logically required, but because he did not want to leave his mother yet. He had no memories of her, so I tried to understand. But he had looked only at me for as long as I’d known him, and I couldn’t help the undeniable twinge of envy.

Then, suddenly, his hand moved from the hilt to the top of my palm, and I turned my wrist so that our fingers interlocked. He breathed, and I felt the current of air in my veins. I had not been forgotten. The heart was a vast labyrinth, capable of housing more than the mind can imagine.

The conversation stagnated. We couldn’t think of anywhere that fit Necavi’s criteria. On a whim, I named the strangest place in Vinton.

“The Cerberus Mansion?” I said.

“Two gold stars, Claris,” Necavi said, and I smiled nervously.

“What’s special about that place?” said Alistair, just as Cadmiel said, “Of course!”

“That’s where we came in,” Tialiel said. “The first time. There’s an entrance to Heaven in the attic.”

“I’ve heard rumors about the basement,” I said.

“Entrance to hell,” Cadmiel said. “It’s a nexus point.”

“Wouldn’t it be affected by what’s going on here?” I said, gesturing to the windows. My pool had become a swirling vortex, from which the screams of the damned and dying could be heard. My deck had melted, and its bubbling remains were boring into the piles of dead leaves that it once shielded from the sun. I wondered if the Polaris had survived its journey into the abyss.

“Hard to say,” Cadmiel said. “It’s an inter-dimensional space, but the whole problem here is dimensional tearing, so I don’t know.”

“Anything’s better than sitting here and waiting for our molecules to implode,” Sean grumbled, finally tired of the inaction. “Let’s roll out.” He looked back at Gabriel, who continued to sleep. “Will she be okay?”

“Don’t be fooled by the dewy eyes,” Cadmiel said. “Gabriel is one of the foremost seraphim. She’s been here since the beginning.”

“Killed a firstborn or two, even,” Tialiel said, and Cadmiel laughed like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

Uncomfortably, I imagined Gabriel’s heartshaped face contorted with the channeled fury of God. The imagery was at odds with the slight figure lying on my couch.

“I believe it,” Sean said.

“Why-why’s that?” I said.

He smiled a little. “Well, first of all, she’s my mom. Second of all, she went through this—” he lifted up the sword, “willingly, didn’t she?”

He had a point.

Sean grabbed Metatron’s arm and dragged him outside, followed closely by the rest of us.

That is unnecessary.

“The hell it isn’t,” Sean said.

I have never resisted.

“Exactly,” Sean said. “Look, I know two things: Teiresias here is involved in this, and he loves to pull the disappearing act. So he’s not going anywhere until all this is over—regardless.”

I have also never disappeared. And my name is not Teiresias.

Metatron’s thoughts were genuinely confused.

I’ve always been here. Or rather, there. He pointed at my house, while still walking placidly behind Sean. Well I was in the city once. And the back yard. But that is all.

“Whatever, bro,” Sean said.

The ground shifted beneath our feet, the grass glowed with a continuous rainbow gradient and had the consistency of sponge cake. The asphalt liquefied and reformed it, shot through with cracks shaped like fractals. Powerful winds buffeted our bodies, and lightning forked across the swirling, cloudy green sky. I heard shouting and crying, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the neighbors or the abyss in the yard. I shut my eyes and exhaled.

When I opened them again, I was in Sean’s arms, and we were flying.

“Dizzy,” I muttered.

“I’m not bothered,” he said. “I see stuff like this all the time.”

“When you’re asleep?”

“Oh,” he said. “Uh, yeah. Then.”

He tailed Metatron closely, though it strained him to do so, as Metatron had six wings that he used with great efficiency.

“Son of a bitch,” Sean said. “I need more wings.”

“Don’t know why you haven’t got them,” Cadmiel said. “Being the offspring of two seraphim and all.”

“He has them,” Tialiel said. “They just haven’t erupted yet. Your biology was tampered with, right?”

“Yeah,” Sean grunted. He shifted my weight, or tried to—I clung to him like kudzu on a fence.

“That’ll be it, then,” Tialiel said. “You’re lucky you’ve got the two on your back.” He flexed his own two pairs of wings. “Cadmiel was a bit late himself. Didn’t get his second pair til he was twelve or so.”

“Shout it into the ether, why don’t you,” Cadmiel said.

I struggled to hear all of this through the whoosh of wind gusts left by all the flapping wings, then gave up and pressed my cheek to Sean’s chest, frightened as I was that his wings could turn to butter any second.

But we were safe. Aside from the minor shifts in my house, nothing had changed any of us at all. I could reconcile it with the angels—divine superbeings etc.—but why not me? Why hadn’t my organs metamorphosed into clocks, or swiss cheese? Not that I wasn’t grateful, of course. Just confused.

The Cerebus Mansion was on the edge of Vinton, surrounded by dense, virgin forest that was menacing on even the nicest day. Right now the trees glowed red, as though the leaves were infused with blood, and unfamiliar cries echoed among the branches. The house itself did seem unaffected—it was dark and spooky as usual, but not more so. We went in.

In accordance with the house’s reputation, I felt very little surprise when the doors locked themselves behind us.

***

Shateiel stared at Leliel while they ate the massive feast she had prepared. None of them ate with her gusto: she grabbed cake and spaghetti and gulped or slurped them down eagerly, like a woman deprived.

“Wow, Lily!” Lucius said, when she swatted his hand away from a chicken drumstick. “You never eat your own cooking.”

“I was on fire tonight,” she said. “Just like the rest of the world.”

“I didn’t know a lady like you got so hungry,” Lucius said, full of reverent awe.

“Not so unbelievable,” said Shateiel. “Considering.”

“Considering what?” Lucius said.

“I haven’t eaten much in the past few days,” Leliel said. She wondered how heavy the child would be when the end came.

Donovan, who ate nothing, watched Leliel’s belly, which protruded slightly. Was he imagining the child, too? The color and length of its hair, the shape of its eyes, the contours of its face. Leliel contemplated this mystery as a hot roll slid down her throat. She didn’t want to die.

“I’m gonna go outside,” Lucius announced. “This is boring. Tasty, but boring.”

“I’ll go with you,” Leliel said.

“You should stay,” Donovan said in time with Shateiel’s “Bad idea.”

“Last time I checked, I don’t answer to either of you,” Leliel said. “Come on, Shamshiel.” She took his hand and they walked out together.

The surface was roiling. People were trapped in cars that had become the stomachs of wild animals, acidic blood hissed and burned through the cracks in the sidewalk. The store fronts were melting and reshaping themselves. It was as though the entire planet had eaten a bad dinner and then gone to bed.

“This is terrible,” Leliel said, while Lucius took it all in, eyes round.

“This is what we wanted,” Donovan said. He and Shateiel were behind her, both looking equally sour.

“Not long now,” Shateiel said. “Not long at all.”

“I’ve got to go,” Leliel said. She extended her wings, then turned on the two men. “It’s not too late.” She set her hands on Shateiel’s neck gently, before he could move to deter her. Shateiel was momentarily disarmed, and then he slumped against her, motionless.

“You’re next,” Leliel said to Donovan wearily.

“I won’t let you,” he said, dodging her grasp.

“What are we doing this for?” she cried. Her head ached. The powerful urge, the call to act, spiked. Her mind felt pierced by shards of vibrating glass. She wanted to blame her pain on Lucifer’s curse, but beneath the aching she kept hearing her own frantic voice. I want to live. I want to live.

“Because this world is rotten,” Donovan said. “Because we’re tired of being enslaved to fate.”

“Ireul.”

“Donovan.”

“It doesn’t matter—”

“Yes, it does!” Donovan said. “Last night, you said you never minded about any of this, and I’m fine with that. But I didn’t think you’d act against it. What exactly do you hope to do?”

“I’m going to tell Cadmiel where the machine is,” Leliel said. She shook all over, and leaned on Lucius, who wrapped his arms around her waist. He wasn’t contributing any arguments, but his breath was irregular, and Leliel noticed that his pupils were tightly constricted, even though they were surrounded by darkness.

“You can’t possibly know that,” Donovan said.

“I studied under Gabriel,” Leliel said. “Did you know that?”

“Wh-what’s that got to do with …”

“You’ve got no idea,” Leliel said. “I’ve read everything on the Metatron project. And I’ve kept up. For instance, on those nights you disappear, thinking I’m just hanging out here, playing mother to Shamshiel … ! You think I’m an idiot, don’t you? That I haven’t got a clue what you’re doing, where you go?” She had never shouted at him, not like this. Fury she didn’t know she had poured from her mouth like a geyser. She fought against Lucius, he held her fast. “Think again, Donovan.”

“So-so you just got in this to betray me at the last second, huh?”

Leliel broke free of Lucius and punched Donovan in the stomach with every shred of anger she could muster. “No, you idiot! I did this, I helped with this, because I loved you. Because I was so in love with you that I was willing to do anything to make you happy. And the reason I’m stopping it is because I still love you!”

Donovan sucked in air, surprised by Leliel’s strength. “What are you talking about?”

“All the time you worried about fate, and being forced or coerced—well, what happened? Did anyone show up to drag us back to Heaven after we left? No! The only problems we’ve had are the ones we created! We can do what we want. We’ve always been able to!” She helped him up and embraced him. “And what I want is that future you babbled about. I want this world, for us, and for our child.”

She pulled away, and Donovan collapsed. Carefully, she arranged him beside Shateiel, stroked his hair back from his forehead. She started towards Lucius.

“I remember my mother,” he said, before she touched him. “And you’re not her.” He bit his lip. “But you’ve been the closest thing possible, since she died.”

“I’ve done my best,” Leliel said. “I’ve tried to take care of you. And that’s what I’m doing now, you see?”

He nodded, but he was fixed on Shateiel and Donovan.

“They’re sleeping, that’s all,” Leliel said. “In a little while they’ll wake up, completely refreshed. That is, if I make it to Cadmiel …”

“I’ll go with you,” Lucius said. “I’ll protect you.”

Leliel smiled. “Thank you, Shamshiel.”

***

The inside of the house was dark. Sean tried the light switch by the door, and a chandelier lit up above us. The bulbs in the grimy crystal were dim and dingy, but managed to produce enough light for us to see. Sort of.

“Can’t see dick beyond the atrium,” Sean grumbled, taking a few steps forward, one eye locked on Metatron. He stubbed his bare toe on the edge of a banister and squinted. I came up behind him and my pendant glowed softly, shedding lavender light across a serpentine stairwell. Cautiously, Sean pressed one foot on the first step, then the other, then began to climb in earnest. We started to follow, but suddenly he jumped back, landing beside me, and pulled me away.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

He held up my pendant so that we received a fuller view of the stairwell. “Look.”

It—the entire staircase—was moving. Rippling, really, like a snake’s body on black soil.

“All right then,” Cadmiel said. “We’ll check the upstairs later. Still plenty of rooms down here.”

True enough—Cerberus had three expansive stories and seemingly endless rooms on every floor. Problem was that most of them were locked, presumably by one of its vast succession of owners. The place had changed occupants at least four times that I could remember in my own short life. People moved in, stayed for a short while, and moved on, after leaving a piece—or pieces—of themselves behind. As a consequence, the house was stuffed, filthy not simply with age and grime, but with a surfeit of things—frayed carpets, shabby couches, rugs heavy with stains, broken clocks, cracked mirrors, and layer upon layer of dust. I could barely see after ten minutes, from coughing and sneezing and terrible, knee-clacking fear. You’d think I’d be beyond fear by now, after all I had been through. But the feeling was as fresh inside me as the first spring daisy.

Alistair examined an obsidian candle-holder carved into a dragon and said, “I wonder how Septerra’s doing.”

“Worse than this, I hope,” Necavi said.

Sniffing the melted wax accumulated on the dragon’s head, Alistair said, “I thought you got over that. Anyway, Damien’s there, and he’s all right. Or I hope so.”

“Got over what?”

“Destroying the world.”

“I got over wanting to do it myself. That doesn’t mean I object to it happening.”

“Baby steps,” Cadmiel said dryly.

“There’s nothing here except a bunch of old, useless crap,” Sean said. He kicked at the front of a grandfather clock, adding another spidery crack to its pendulum case. Agitated, he swung Gabriel’s sword and the case shattered, littering the wooden floor with tiny, sharp bits of glass.

“Orifiel, that’s not a toy,” Cadmiel said, and in response, Sean brought the blade down on a tattered couch, slicing it in half.

Tialiel, who had been sitting on the couch, pursed his lips in disapproval and said, as his half collapsed with him still on it, “I think this was an antique.”

“Yeah,” Sean said. “Was. I feel like I’m inside that stupid store above Donovan’s evil lair.”

I imagine they know where the machine is.

“Imagine they do,” Sean said. “Let’s have them all over for tea and crumpets, shall we?”

Metatron shrugged. Just a thought.

“They must be giving you lobotomies when you wander off on us,” Sean said.

No. My brain is intact. Otherwise I would be unable to function.

“Moving on,” Cadmiel said, cutting off Sean’s retort, “Let’s have a look at the basement.”

“I th-thought you said there was a portal to hell down there,” I said nervously.

“Sure did. Through the parlor, if you please.”

Admittedly, I felt somewhat safe walking with the pack—three angels and two preternaturally skilled humans (never mind that one hated to fight, one took any excuse to fight, one was a recovering megalomaniac and another processed abstract concepts as well as an axe cut rubber) wasn’t a bad escort. But one of them—one of the most intelligent, most experienced of the group—had died. His demise, with its quick brutality, exposed how vulnerable we were, how little we actually knew about our enemy.

Cadmiel opened the basement door and went in first. Sean reached for me and I quite willingly accepted his protection, hiding behind his tall body, focused on the lean muscles of his back that had been worked by the exercise of his wings.

My pendant offered the sole light source in the basement, casting a purplish glow over the dank, airless room. Sealed boxes covered most of the available walking space, stacked precariously one after the other in no particular pattern. Shelves that were likely installed some decades prior to my grandmother’s birth were lined with oddments and loose ends—toys without children, books without readers, tools without projects. The errata of centuries was gathered in this house, and the basement was no exception.

We navigated the labyrinth of forgotten lives in single file, with Cadmiel at the front and Necavi at the back. A few paces in, Necavi conjured a sphere of light in his palm.

“That would’ve been helpful about fifteen minutes earlier,” Cadmiel said.

“I didn’t need it then,” Necavi replied.

Sean used his sword like a cane, slamming its point into the rotted wood benath our feet, satisfied by the splintering. I could tell that he was moments away from knocking down the stacks of boxes like so many Jenga blocks.

“It’s not here, either,” Sean said.

“Could be in one of these boxes,” Tialiel said.

“It’s not.”

“You sound pretty certain,” Cadmiel said, nudging a pyramid of dusty shoeboxes aside.

“This thing is full of my blood,” Sean said. “Besides, last I saw of it, it glowed.”

“What’s that?” Alistair asked. He pointed to the door next to Cadmiel, which was nondescript, so long as I discounted the heavy chains ranging across it.

“That would be the entrance to hell I mentioned,” Cadmiel said. “We won’t be checking there.”

“Why not?” Sean said. He rapped his knuckles in between the chains. “Hello, anyone home?”

“Orifiel—” Cadmiel said warningly.

The door opened. Instinctively, I cringed.

“Something you need?” Lucifer drawled, like he’d been waiting for us.

“As a matter of fact,” Sean said, but Cadmiel interrupted.

“No, nothing at all, O Great Betrayer. Go about your unholy business.”

“I’d say my business is your business right about now, wouldn’t you?” Lucifer said, unperturbed.

“How do you figure?” Cadmiel said.

“I have a vested interest in the apocalypse. On my terms.”

Cadmiel made no effort to mask his contempt. “Oh, really?”

“Yes, really. However, though my movements are unrestricted, my influence on the physical plane is much more limited than reports would have you believe. Therefore, I have arranged some assistance for this—” Lucifer cleared his throat. “Motley crew.”

From upstairs, we heard a crash, the sound of a frantic body tripping over itself.

“There she is,” Lucifer said. He smiled directly at me. “Claris, how lovely to see you again. Might I interest you in a fresh apple?” He produced a perfectly round, ruby-red apple from his jacket, and held it out to me. Sean swatted the gift away.

“No, you cannot,” he snarled.

“Th-thank you, though,” I said, because politeness never hurt, especially with princes of darkness.

“More’s the pity,” he said. “Best of luck, then.” He withdrew behind the door, pulling it shut after him.

“What was that all about?” Sean said.

“Can’t blame him for doing his job,” Tialiel said, although Sean was glowering at the door in a way that suggested he vehemently disagreed.

“Let’s just go upstairs,” Cadmiel said. “See what this ‘help’ is.”

I was grateful to escape the basement, which smelled of wet paper and cobwebs. The upper floors were musky as well, but at least the decay was slightly newer. We returned to the shifty stairwell, which had now divided itself in half, such that the bottom steps were on one side of the foyer and the top steps were on the other.

“Hello!” Cadmiel shouted. “Have you come bearing gifts?”

“Only if you have the wisdom to accept them.” Leliel descended from the second floor, with Lucius beside her. The shing of metal against leather echoed, as four swords were drawn from their scabbards.

Lucius swooped in close, his head cocked to one side, spectacles askew. “That is not a nice way of hello’ing.”

“Pardon,” Cadmiel said. “But we have little time for etiquette.”

Leliel landed a safe distance from us and lifted her pale hand. “When have I ever come looking for a fight, Cadmiel?”

“It isn’t you I’m worried about,” Cadmiel said.

“Yeah,” Sean said. “Where’s Donovan hiding?”

“He isn’t joining me,” Leliel said, regretfully.

Lucius landed next to me and whispered, “She put Dono and Shateiel to sleep.”

“Interesting,” Cadmiel said. “Have a little quarrel?”

“They don’t agree with this, I’m sure,” Leliel said. “But I have to do what’s best for me and my …” she exhaled. “A-and myself.”

Cadmiel shut one eye, looking at her as though through a periscope. “Right.”

“I can lead you to what you’re looking for,” she went on. “If you’ll let me.”

“Sounds good!” Alistair said. Necavi elbowed him in the kidney.

“I would have completely destroyed you,” he grumbled.

“The supervillain has a point,” Cadmiel said. “You could be leading us into a trap.”

“That’s true,” she said. “But I’d be leading myself into it, too.”

“You’re a doomsday cultist. Forgive me if I don’t find your self-preservation drive a little suspect.”

“Trust me or not, but I speak the truth.” She pointed to Metatron. “Look inside his dreams. That’s where Samael has hidden the machine.”

Cadmiel nearly dropped his sword. “What! That’s—that’s—”

“Perfect,” Tialiel said. “Dreams exist outside reality. What better place to put a reality-destruction machine?”

We all turned to face to Metatron, who seemed confused.

I am not aware of such a thing.

“That’s the point,” Leliel said.

No. I do not dream. I have never dreamt.

“Th-that’s not true,” I said. “I was in your dream … remember? It was like … Eden.”

I do not think so.

Another crash from upstairs, then another, heavier than the first.

“Please,” Leliel said, nervously backing into the shadows. The outlines of her form blurred, blending with the unlit corners. “You can dream, Metatron. Everything that’s happened is because of your dreaming.”

What does that mean?

“Nothing. Ignore her.” Shateiel appeared at the top of the steps. Leliel vanished.

“Lily!” Donovan leapt off the balcony and hit the ground hard, crouching, scanning the darkness. “Come over here, Lucius.”

“Don’t move,” Cadmiel said to Lucius.

“Lily!” Donovan said. “Come out, now!”

“Sad,” Sean sneered. “It’s only ‘cos of her that you keep surviving.”

“Shut up.” Donovan thrust his hands into a dark corner, grasped something, and drew Leliel out by the shoulders. Weeping, she fought him, pushing weakly against his chest.

“Kill her,” Shateiel said, and even Donovan recoiled at this order.

“What? No!” Donovan said, and suddenly hugged Leliel protectively, so tight that she gasped. “Lily, I’d never hurt you.”

The house began to shake, imperceptibly at first, but progressing rapidly to a severe quake in less than a minute. The staircase fell first, crumbling to a pile of ash. Veins in the walls pulsed and glowed, then ruptured, splattering red across the peeling paint job.

“Kay, so, touching moment,” Tialiel said, “but maybe you could elaborate on Metatron’s dreams a bit more?”

“Or not,” Shateiel said. He folded his great, dusky wings and touched Leliel’s cheek as his boots hit the landing. She stiffened in Donovan’s arms, and he let her go, causing Leliel to fall forward in an unnaturally rigid arc.

“What’ve you done?” Donovan said, kneeling beside her, his face worried.

“Silenced her,” he replied. “It is only temporary.”

“Why can’t she move?” Donovan said.

“I’ve silenced her at a cellular level. Her physical form cannot act, because her synapses cannot communicate with each other,” Shateiel explained, boredly. He had the detached, cultured voice of an Encyclopedia Britannica recording. Square glasses with thin frames hid his eyes, which were the color of a gathering storm. He looked older than the other angels, more mature. He said again, “Kill her.”

The quake intensified. I crashed against Lucius, who caught me and smiled. “Hi!”

“Hi,” I said, embarrassed. He was so much taller now, so much more defined in every way.

“Hands off, buddy!” Sean scowled at us, but he stumbled too.

“Don’t hurt yourself, honey,” Tialiel said, helping Sean up.

“Aren’t you worried about this?” I said to Lucius. The quake stopped, but it would return.

“A little,” he said. “But you have wrong ideas about Donovan. He doesn’t really like hurting people. He just doesn’t know what else to do a lot of the time.”

Donovan had no comment on that; in fact, he and Shateiel behaved like they were without an audience.

“She betrayed us,” Shateiel said. He picked Leliel up, held her body against his, one hand clamped on her thigh, the other across her throat. Looking at it made me uncomfortable. I could tell that Donovan agreed by his noise of protest.

“She’ll have to die,” Shateiel said, so softly that I barely heard him. His fingers caressed her throat, and Donovan lunged.

“No!” he shouted, and Shateiel looked up, bemused, as if startled from a pleasant dream.

“I see you don’t agree,” he said mildly. “Then you’ll have to die as well.”

Leliel twitched—the spell had worn off.

She inhaled a lungful of air and knocked Shateiel’s head with her own, causing him to release her in surprise.

“You were always more of a fighter than you let on,” Shateiel said, rubbing his temples. “I admire that about you.”

“You stay away from her,” Donovan said, stepping between the two.

“Ireul, be careful,” Tialiel said.

“I can handle this,” Donovan snapped at him, and Tialiel shook his head.

“It’s been a pleasure working with you,” Shateiel said.

He clapped his hands. An invisible wave rippled through the air, and I thought that nothing had happened until Donovan’s entire skeleton shattered.

“N…no!” Leliel screamed, drowned out by Donovan’s own cry of anguish, as every bone splintered into pieces, just like the rotted wood in the basement.

We could do nothing. Donovan withered, just as Anael had.

An explosion of feathers filled the room, settling on us like snow. Donovan reached for Leliel, took her hand as his turned to dust.

“Take care of her,” he said, and then he was gone.

Lucius’s nails bit into my arm, and he trembled, crying into my hair. Leliel’s wail rose to an alien pitch, then died down. Briefly, stillness reigned.

Then, Necavi’s lightsphere extinguished itself. My pendant stopped glowing, and Lucius’s inner light dimmed to nothing. The darkness was sudden, total, and absorbing, and it wasn’t because of the reality breaking. It was Leliel.

The feathers on her wings blackened to coal, her eyes deepened to dull onyx, her skin took on the raven sheen of her hair.

“I am the night,” she said, rising. “The eternal forgiveness. But not all things can be forgiven. For these transgressions, I provide oblivion.”

She wrapped Shateiel in her wings, and he stared at her in horror as his body dissolved, absorbed by the viscous dark.

“I should have been the one,” he whispered, before Leliel’s feathers covered his mouth.

When she was finished, the light sources returned. Lucius ran to her, and she crumpled against him, crying, both palms flat on her belly. I realized the meaning of Donovan’s last words.

“How did he know it was a girl?” Leliel cried. “How could he possibly have known that?”

Helpless to soothe her grief, we stood there, dumbfounded. Sean looked away, stared intently at some unknown point far away from the distraught woman and the young man struggling to comfort her.

“Don’t let this all be in vain,” Leliel said. “Metatron, take them to your dreams.”

But—

“Try!” she screamed. “Try, Metatron! There’s no time to question yourself.”

The quaking started up again. In the next room, the grandfather clock pitched forward, crashing on the edge of an armchair.

“Please,” Leliel said. “You have to!” Tears streaked her pale cheeks, her black hair was unkempt and matted with sweat. “Don’t waste what I’ve done. Don’t let Ireul’s death be in vain!” Her voice, already shrill and thin, broke. Lucius held her, trying to calm her down, but she shook so badly that he couldn’t keep still.

There wasn’t time to question Leliel’s motives. The house was literally falling apart around us. So much for its protected status.

I can’t. I can’t!

Panic and distress echoed in my mind, spilling over me like a pot of boiling water.

Though she was clearly exhausted, overwhelmed with grief, and unsteady on her feet, Leliel freed herself from Lucius and staggered over to Metatron. With her final reserve of strength, she touched her forehead to his, sagging against him, gripping his jacket with such fierce desperation that her fists left moist stains on the fabric. They fell together, Metatron fast asleep, Leliel comatose.

“What now?” Necavi said, as the roof groaned. He drew an arcane sigil in the air, spoke some words I didn’t understand, and a protective bubble blossomed around our group.

“Claris,” Cadmiel said. “You visited Metatron in his dream, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but,” I began, “Bu-but, I don’t know how he or I did it.”

Debris bounced off Necavi’s shield. He winced with each chunk of wood and metal that hit the shield, and when a support beam from the roof fell, Necavi dropped to his knees.

“Don’t suppose I could get some help,” he grunted. Alistair jumped outside of the barrier and used his bastard sword like a bat, knocking away pieces of the chandelier, antique paintings, and, before Necavi shouted at him, most of a full-length mirror.

“Get back in here, you fool!” Necavi was standing again, furious. “You’re going to die that way!”

“Since when do you care?” said Alistair, jovially.

Necavi scowled. “Just drop the heroics already!”

“Can’t help it,” Alistair said, as he whacked away a piece of the banister. Another support beam followed, and Alistair swung, but the piece was too heavy. The beam ignored his sword and crushed him.

“Alistair!” Necavi hissed through his teeth. “Damn it …”

“I’ll get him,” Tialiel said. He pushed the beam off of Alistair, then dragged him back within the barrier. Blood pooled around Alistair’s head.

“Idiot,” Necavi said, his expression pained. “Get up.”

“He’s out,” Sean said. “And we’re about to join him.”

The barrier was failing. I didn’t know what to do. I looked down at Leliel, a woman I barely knew, who had given everything to help us. I understood even less about the rebel angels than I did about Cadmiel and the rest, but I knew how much the last twenty minutes had cost her. What had compelled her to come to us? The information she gave us was crucial, I knew that—I just didn’t know how to use it.

Necavi faltered, weakened by the bombardment of his shield, and by the sight of Alistair, bloody and still.

His mismatched eyes met mine. “I could heal him if I didn’t have to keep up this shield.”

“What can I do?” I said.

“Summon.”

“No,” Cadmiel said. “Claris, you’ve got to focus on getting in Metatron’s head.”

“But … I don’t know …” I said. Everyone looked at me, expectant, weary. Sean put his arm over my shoulders.

“Don’t pressure her,” he said. “She shouldn’t have been involved in this in the first place.”

“If Alistair isn’t healed soon, he will bleed to death,” Necavi said.

“And if we don’t find that machine, then we’re all dead!” Cadmiel said. “Aren’t you people mortal enemies or something?”

“I won’t allow him to be killed by anything other than me,” Necavi said.

I took this as Necavi’s way of saying that they had become friends.

I tried to clear my mind, but the pressure to find an answer was shutting me down. Any more and I was liable to faint.

Necavi’s barrier failed. Alistair moaned. Sean gripped my shoulders, whispered something in my ear.

I couldn’t hear him: he was far away, and it was dark.

My fainting just then saved us, because I was back in Metatron’s garden, surrounded by ideal, lifeless forms.

“Metatron!” I said. “Bring the rest of us!”

Though he was sleeping in the center of the glass lagoon, he heard me, and the rest of the group appeared a moment after I spoke.

Necavi instantly chanted a healing spell for Alistair, though he was wan and pallid from mental exhaustion. Alistair’s wounds closed, and Necavi sighed, then stretched out on the tall grass.

“I’ve done all I could,” he said.

“Thank you,” Alistair mumbled, after he regained consciousness. He smiled at his friend, and Necavi suddenly found a giant fern to be of keen interest.

“I’ve been through enough,” he said to the fern. “So try to be less of an idiot.”

“I’ll do my best,” Alistair said.

“Now what?” Sean said. “I don’t see any dimension collapsing machines, do you?”

“No,” I admitted, though I hadn’t really searched. I was distracted with wondering how Metatron could hear me, or if the others appeared by coincidence. I decided to try an experiment.

“I’d like to see some purple roses,” I said.

“What?” Cadmiel said. “Claris, now’s not the time to be making decoration choices—”

Before he finished speaking, a rose bush sprouted, fully formed, on Metatron’s island in the middle of the lagoon.

“Ah,” Cadmiel said.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “But somehow he understands me.”

“Well—you’re a human,” Tialiel said. “We’re sustained by your belief.”

“That’s what Donovan told me,” I said. “That if everyone died, then they would also cease to exist.”

“I always knew I was your dream guy,” Sean said.

“Ask him where the machine is,” Cadmiel said. “We’re safe from the reality storms here, but eventually this plane will go as well. Dreams are supported by dreamers, after all.”

I walked over to where Metatron rested, seemingly asleep, arms folded in a cross over his chest. His sandy hair was undone, the long strands draped over the edge of his stone bed, swaying in the breeze like fringes of cornsilk.

“Did you hear all that?” I said. “Can you help us?”

The opaque surface of the lagoon shimmered and became transparent. The machine was beneath us, thrumming. Sean drove his sword into the lagoon’s false surface, and splintering cracks radiated from the weapon’s tip. Another solid hit and the surface would shatter.

“I have to admit,” Sean said. “I’m a little apprehensive.”

“It’s a trap, of course,” Cadmiel said. “But it’s the last trap. Overcome what’s down there, and this is over.”

Tialiel nodded. “Break it, Orifiel. We’re all here with you.”

“Yeah,” Sean said. “That’s what I don’t like.” He lifted the sword. “Hey, Claris.”

I was knotting my pendant’s chain around my wrist, as a distraction. I looked up at him, at his bright, ocean-green eyes. In all the time that followed that moment, I never again found eyes so depthless, so shining.

“You know I love you, right?”

I tugged at the metal tangles I’d created, my skin hotter than lava. “I know.”

“Then I’ve got nothin’ else to worry about.” He jumped, and came down with his full weight on the sword’s pommel. The cracks in the lagoon widened and split, and then it all fell away, tinkling in the air like so much glass. Our bodies dropped, weightlessly, into the machine’s chamber.

We landed gently before the machine. Sean approached it, but the space stretched out as he walked, like the room was on a rack. The room lengthened another foot for every two steps Sean took.

“Interesting,” he said.

“Sorry. Can’t let you do that.” Samael, the image of his son, materialized beside the machine.

“How’s it going, Dad,” Sean said. He took a greeting swipe with the sword, which Samael dodged. The older man drew a small knife from the sleeve of his long coat, then sliced open his palm. Blood poured from the wound, coating his hand like a liquid glove.

“You’ve made so many friends,” Samael said. “Did you have to invite all of them?”

He leapt at Necavi and Alistair, both still weak from their recent efforts. Sean dove to their defense. He brandished the bone-sword, but rather than allow a block or a parry, Samael drew back, as though confronted with a lit torch. Confusion, even fear, passed over his features.

“So you have that,” he muttered.

“You’re the one who made sure I got it, aren’t you?” Sean said. “Ordered Donovan to let his hand be cut off, so I could take it?”

“No, no,” Samael said, but his earlier confidence weakened. “Not I.”

“Who, then? Is there someone else at the helm of this?” Cadmiel said.

He and Tialiel closed in around Samael, swords drawn. Necavi, supporting a barely conscious Alistair, stared so intensely at the unfolding scene that I almost missed the subtle movement of his lips. I tried desperately to will myself into invisibility.

“How is my wife?” Samael said, and looked pleadingly at each of us, including me, which caused a series of uncomfortable acrobatics in my stomach. His face wasn’t like Sean’s, it was Sean’s, with fifteen years and an unscarred cheek.

Tialiel caught Sean’s eye and jerked his head at the machine, which hummed away peacefully at the edge of the space.

“She’s fine,” Tialiel said. “Resting comfortably.”

Samael turned to face him, and Sean inched towards the machine.

“Does she despise me?” Samael asked. His piteous expression contrasted sharply with the blood dripping from his hands.

“No,” Tialiel said evenly, maintaining eye contact. “She wants to help you.”

“She does?” Samael said, uncertainly. It was like another personality had surfaced, someone worrisome, regretful. “How could she, after all I’ve done?”

Sean raised the sword.

“She understands,” Tialiel said.

Samael blanched. “No, she never did that.” He grabbed for Tialiel. “Liar! She never understood what I had to do!”

Tialiel braced himself, but Cadmiel pushed him out of Samael’s reach, and took the brunt of the oncoming punch to the stomach. Samael’s bloody nails cut into Cadmiel’s flesh, leaving behind thin, swollen lesions, as from the swipe of a vicious animal.

The glow from the machine pulsed brightly as Sean brought down his sword. In a moment too fast for me to see, Samael was behind his son, seizing him by the waist. To his credit, Sean held fast to the sword, but he was unbalanced, and only nicked one of the machine’s blood-filled cylinders.

“That’s enough of that,” Samael purred.

Sean thrashed, trying to throw him off, but was thoroughly caught. Cursing, he drove the sword into Samael’s foot, and then stumbled away after Samael’s grip slackened from shock.

I sat down on the milky, transparent floor, which felt like hard plastic. Blurry images appeared in it, racing past like clouds in a summer sky. I was so frightened and tired that I could hardly breathe, but I couldn’t faint, because I had already done that. I rubbed my pendant for comfort, and metal shavings sank into the ridges of my fingertips. The necklace looked blurry too, as did Tialiel, now clutching Cadmiel in a panic, and Necavi, whispering another healing spell over Alistair’s body, and Sean, evading the whips of blood Samael had created from his gloves. I blinked heard, squinted, and my heart plummeted. They were fading.

“You have to hurry!” I shouted. “Destroy the machine, Sean. You’re sta-starting to disappear!”

Cadmiel groaned. “She’s right. Only a few minutes now.”

“What’s happening to you?” Tialiel said. Cadmiel’s skin was ashen, peeling, sagging on his bones. In the span of twenty seconds, he had aged hundreds of years. More lesions opened on his wrists, his neck, and his ankles—feathers fell from his wings like leaves from a tree. I crawled closer to them, and saw that Cadmiel’s wingbones were slowly dissolving. I could already see through to the marrow on the top pair. He was in agony.

“Pretty sure I’m dying,” Cadmiel said. He wheezed in a façade of a laugh. “Samael’s blood is necrotizing every part of this body.” His voice was a brittle whisper. Imagining the pain he felt caused a powerful nausea to rise up and lap at my throat. Shamefully, I turned away.

Sean sliced through the blood whips. They disintegrated on contact with the bone blade, splashing harmlessly down as purified water.

The blurring intensified, and it was happening to me, too. The edges of my arms and hands were smudged, like an oil painting disturbed. Panic mixed with the sickness in my throat, reflected in Tialiel’s and Cadmiel’s eyes.

“How do we counteract this?” Tialiel sobbed, holding Cadmiel as though that would save him. “What can I do?”

“Nothing,” Cadmiel said. “It’s just my time.”

“No!” Tialiel said, catching Sean’s attention.

Necavi touched the original wound. “The cut is shallow. But it will not heal.”

“Why are you accepting this?” Tialiel said. He cupped Cadmiel’s chin in his hands. “Why are you so eager to leave me?”

“I would never—” Cadmiel heaved; his first wing was all bone, and the virus was fast eating through it, “never want to leave you. You’re the most important person in my life.”

“You should have let him hit me. I should be suffering this.”

“I know. That was destiny,” Cadmiel sighed, curled his diminished frame against Tialiel’s chest. “But I got selfish. I didn’t want to live without you. Sorry.”

“What the hell is happening over there?” Sean said.

Samael had stopped attacking, and looked on, satisified.

“As he said, it is my blood. It kills all it touches. That is its nature. That is my nature.”

“But,” I said, in a moment of wild confusion, “but you created Sean, so how ca-can that be true?”

Samael glared at me, pain and fury creasing his face. “Only Gabriel can survive me. Only she can overcome me. Her blood cancels mine out. And together, we did bring forth life. Your life,” he said to Sean, “the one I dreamed would destroy me.”

“You’re not Cronos,” Sean said.

“And yet, through me, all will be consumed.”

By now I was nearly blind. The world was receding, and I was numb. This was it. Samael had stalled long enough.

“Maybe if you’re stabbed with that sword,” Tialiel was saying, his voice almost reduced to white noise.

“No,” Cadmiel said, with as much vehemence as he could muster. Only one wing remained. “The damage is too far advanced. Don’t do it, Orifiel. Destroy the machine! Now! This is my last request as your teacher. Listen to me, just this once, for God’s sake. For Claris’s sake! For everything!”

Sean hesitated.

“Damn it, Orifiel,” Cadmiel growled.

Sean hefted the bone sword, and swung. He whirled around with the swing, slashing Samael clean through. Gasping, Samael fell to his knees, and Sean scraped the sword against his father’s back, cutting through all six wings.

Samael smiled as his body became so many points of light. “Thank you, son.”

His expression inscrutable, Sean turned on the machine. He was only an outline to me then, a colored silhouette. My body was as loose as a pile of string. Just before I unraveled, Sean’s sword plunged into the machine’s central core, and the glow of his blood illuminated the world as the sound of breaking glass brought it back into focus. Feeling, glorious nerves and exhaustion, flooded into me, and I doubled over with relief.

“Congratulations,” Cadmiel said. “You managed to do something right.”

Sean didn’t move. “Learned it all from you.”

Tialiel cried out as Cadmiel’s last wing was consumed.

“Don’t cry over me too much,” Cadmiel whispered. He kissed Tialiel gently, with dry, shrunken lips. “You’ll ruin that beautiful face.”

And then, finally, he was gone, becoming a gust of wind that fled from Tialiel’s trembling arms.

Blinking furiously past my own tears, I hugged Tialiel, let him moan into my hair.

I was still hugging him when I woke up.

We were back in the mansion—Sean, Metatron, Tialiel, and me. Necavi and Alistair were gone, presumably returned to their homeland. Leliel and Lucius weren’t there, either. But the house was set to rights: the stairwell straight, the grandfather clock intact and ticking. Everything was calm, ordered, and awful.

Sean held his hands out to us. “Let’s go home."



EPILOGUE
Gold and orange leaves carpeted my driveway, shining wetly from last night’s storm. Water and soil squelched between my toes as I walked towards the mailbox, and I felt damp bits of twig and acorn tops tickle the bare soles of my feet. As a gesture of goodwill to my ever-tolerant family, Sean might rake the yard later today. But leaves tended to multiply of their own accord during Sean’s efforts at lawn care, and any bags stuffed burst upon tying them shut. Tidy piles retained their shape for only minutes, as a joke, and then localized gusts of wind blew them apart, drenching ours and the neighbors’ yards in leaves. I half-expected the neighbors to start paying him not to do any yardwork.

I smelled ozone, humidity, and the last traces of honeysuckle. Summer ended two months ago, officially, but in Vinton the heat clung to the air in a fretful embrace, and many more weeks would pass before the crisp, warning chill of autumn hardened the grass. I was home for the weekend, from the college I attended downtown.

I opened the mailbox and took out a small stack of envelopes and magazines. I flipped idly through them while I walked back to the house: bill, junk, bill, notice from Brandon’s university about an award he’d already won, junk, magazines about celebrities and golf, and finally, a slim package addressed to me. No return address anywhere.

I slid the package into one side of my jeans, then hid it under my shirt.

“Here you go, mama,” I said, and handed over the rest of the stack once I reached the kitchen.

“Thanks, hon,” Mom said. She was at the table, sipping coffee, a plate of burned toast and an open newspaper (turned to the Lifestyle section) before her. Eagerly, she pulled the gossip magazine from the mail pile and began to read about the various pregnancies and overdoses of people she would never meet and could freely judge. I would, of course, do the same after she was done.

Before I left to open the package, Mom said, “Is your little friend coming over today? I was thinking about pot roast for dinner.”

Mom termed everybody I ever met as a ‘little friend,’ even if the friend in question was two and a half feet taller than her.

“Dunno yet. Probably,” I said.

“Well, let me know.” She focused on the magazine, and I went upstairs to my room.

I set the package flat on my bed and considered it. I had some guesses as to who might have sent it, and so felt anxious and excited all at once.

Nothing unusual had happened since that day in the mansion, inside Metatron’s dreams. That day marked the true end of the summer, the longest of my life, the four months that felt like ten years. I had spent the rest of that night crying over what we had lost, and what we had preserved.

Gabriel, fully recovered, returned to Heaven with little fanfare. She was working on a truce with Lucifer, and had invited Sean to live with her. He told her that he preferred his shed, but he spent a lot of time with her now, and sometimes disappeared for days. But never more than that.

Tialiel was Gabriel’s assistant, a diplomat and ambassador, not only to Hell, but to all over beings the angels might need to contact. His skills were useful at the negotiating table, because, as in battle, he always predicted the other party’s next move. He visited still, and did my makeup, while wearing less and less of his own.

Metatron had gone to find himself, and sent regular postcards. I did not think the package was from him: he loved writing his name in the return address space, and exactly where he was, even if he didn’t stay there long enough for me to send a response.

Ungraciously, I tore open the package, too impatient for a letter opener. I pulled out a CD, a set of concert tickets, a letter, and a photograph. The letter was written on thick, cream-colored paper that had been distressed to mimic an old parchment. Calligraphic writing, almost too lovely to read, covered the page. The CD art was simple—a black background with white, bodiless wings in the center, and the name ‘Lily Donovan’ stamped on one corner. I put the photo on top of the jewel case: Leliel smiled back at me, a baby in her arms, with Lucius beside her, also smiling.

I read the letter, which was short, inviting me and “anyone else I liked” to her concert in October, here in Vinton. Leliel wrote that she hoped we were well, and she looked forward to seeing us. Beside her signature, Lucius had drawn a smiley face with a sunburst ring. The postscript read, “By the way, her name is Phanuel. But to interviewers, her name is Hope.”

“What’s that you’ve got?” Sean said from my doorway.

I held everything up for him to see, and he read the letter with wide eyes.

“Guess I’d better find a suit,” he muttered.

“You want to go?” I said.

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” he said. “She sings some operatic-style crap, right? I like that. I have very refined tastes, Claris.”

I turned the CD over in my hand. Half the tracklist was in Italian. I’d had no idea.

“Wait—she’s the Lily Donovan? Like on the radio?” I said.

“College is making you dull,” Sean said, with a disappointed affect. “Just as I’d feared!”

“Oh, ha, ha,” I said. “I just wasn’t thinking about it. I didn’t expect her to start a singing career.”

Sean shrugged. “Well, do you want to go?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Definitely. Let’s ask Tialiel and Gabriel, too. And Delilah.”

“I bet she’ll show up in a rainbox tux,” Sean said, fondly, and I laughed.

He helped me off my bed and said, “Let’s go downstairs. I’ve made you a turkey sandwich.”


THE END

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

My heartfelt thanks to anyone who's ever given this story, which means so much to me, a moment of their time. I have not the words to express my thanks.

Final tallies, if you're into that sort of thing:
Words: 131,350
Pages in MS Word: 332
You may find all the chapters here, if you wish to refresh yourself, though I don't recommend reading the first seven-day sequence if you want to spare yourself. It has some amusing points, but I'm going to cut out most of it in the revision :|