A raw wail spills out my mouth like pieces of sharp metal. From far away, a car alarm goes off, then another, until the street is full of their steady throbbing. There’s the dull popping noise of a street light exploding. The noise travels down the block, fainter and fainter, mixing with the shimmering sound of glass on the sidewalk.
Beelzebub takes me by the arm and pulls me to my feet. Truman’s body goes sprawling out of my lap onto the pavement, and with it, there’s a huge splash of blood.
“Get a hold of yourself.” He gives me a shake and I don’t do anything. Even as he holds me, my knees start to buckle.
“Daphne, listen to me. This is the best thing for him. It was the only way for him to receive grace, the only way to give him what he needed. ”
I can feel the blood on my skin, trickling down my arms, dripping from my fingers. This can’t be me shrieking. This is not me.
PART THREE
HEAVEN
GRAY
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Home is colorless. Clean, and smaller than I remembered. It’s peaceful and perfect like a snow globe, like a dream I had.
I’m still wearing Truman’s sweater. It’s the only thing I have left.
THE TRAITOR
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
When I cross the plaza with the mural of the giant snake coiled at the center, it’s because there’s a hollow in my chest, and because I can’t think where else to go. Time feels like a never-ending loop, winding back on itself.
The doors to the museum look forbidding in the gray light. I step inside and he’s there like always, my teacher, my friend. Truman’s father. He hasn’t even bothered to alter his routine. He just sits there at his desk, like everything is normal. He glances up, flies buzzing around him. From where I stand at the end of the gallery, I can’t even tell if he looks sad.
“What have you done?” I say, letting the door slam shut behind me.
When he answers, it’s with absolute courtesy. “I shot my son in the head. You don’t have to ask—you were there.”
“Why?”
I want to scream it, but it comes out thin and hoarse. I want to feel angry, but my crying is insistent, constant. It soaks everything.
Beelzebub just watches me walk up the aisle toward him, looking so serene, so untroubled. I expect him to say “c’est la vie,” or something else in French, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything. He spreads his hands in a gesture that reminds me so much of Truman that something aches in my chest.
“You gave my brother to Azrael,” I say. My voice is louder now, echoing all around us in sharp, horrible fragments. “How could you do that? How could you just give someone away to be tortured and killed?”
Beelzebub shakes his head, smiling so gently. “We all have to make a few sacrifices to get what we want.”
I step closer, holding my arms around myself. “What could you possibly want from Azrael?”
“Heaven,” he says, and the word sounds wistful. The way he says it, he might as well be saying oblivion.
“That’s ridiculous. It’s not even possible. We don’t get Heaven.”
“It wasn’t for me.” Beelzebub sighs and leans back in his chair. “When I sent Truman home from the terminal, I knew if I didn’t do something, he’d wind up right back here, so I went looking for a favor. I told Azrael that Obie was messing around on Earth. There may or may not have been talk of an address. All the arm-waving and the theatrics, though, that was pure Azrael.”
I stand in the doorway to the office, shaking my head. “You used my brother as a bribe—to what? Buy Truman’s way out of Hell?”
Beelzebub’s face hardens. “I would have given Azrael Obie and your sisters and anything he wanted, rather than let that kid scream out his eternity in this house of horrors.” He smiles and it’s the most awful thing. “My heart may be black as rot, Daphne, but I’m not about to let my children suffer.”
“You deceived me.”
Beelzebub shakes his head. “I tried to keep you out of this, every step of the way. If you want to lay blame, blame your mother. You never should have been involved.”
But it’s absurd to blame any of this on my mother. Even if I’d been obedient, stayed here and waited for someone to fix things, I’d have lost Obie. I’d still be grief-stricken. The only difference is, I wouldn’t be stuck crying.
“How could you expect to just get away with something like this?”
Beelzebub looks frankly shocked. “I don’t. That’s really the trade-off, isn’t it? We all have to make sacrifices from time to time—if not our safety or our belongings, then our pride or our principles. I mean, look at Azrael. He’s spent the last year trying to make Truman worthy of Heaven and losing the battle every step of the way. But despite everything, he never gave up. After all, we had an agreement.”
“He terrorized Truman. He spent the last year telling him how bad he was.”
“The method may have been a little lacking. Truman strikes me as the type who could have used a softer touch. Ironically, I think it was his love for you that finally made him worthy.” He smiles easily. “I’d imagine that made Azrael absolutely furious, so good work there.”
I cross the office and slam my hands down on Beelzebub’s desk. “Stop—stop acting like nothing happened! Truman is dead.”
“Yes, he’s dead—for the only reason that matters. He died for redemption. I gave him redemption, even if I will never be forgiven.”
I turn and stare out into the gallery at all the miscellany, the trash. The museum, full of nothing but cheap, worthless clutter, artifacts that are only precious to him. Somewhere in the crowded shelves is a piece of every life he’s ever lived, everyone he’s ever lost. The museum is a constant reminder of all the things he cannot have.
“You sacrificed everything,” I say, shaking my head and turning to look down at him. “Even the things you should have protected. You might have saved Truman, but you ruined me.” I fold my arms across my chest, and even though the tears are running down my face, I feel my mouth turn ugly. “What’s it like, not caring about anyone but yourself?”
His smile is gone as though I’ve slapped him. “I’ve always cared about you. I’ve loved you like my own blood.”
And I laugh at that, at the sheer absurdity of it. He put a bullet through his own son’s head to save him. His love means nothing. “I believed you once.”
He smiles, reaching across the desk to touch my face. “Of course you did.” Sighing, holding my face in his hands. “I remember the first time I saw your mother. She was distant and pale, standing on the surface of the ocean. There was a look on your father’s face when he saw her, like he was already forgetting our war, seeing his next conquest. It seemed like I was bleeding from everywhere. I knew everything would be terrible from then on.”
I want to start sobbing, but I’m stuck. The tears just keep dripping down my cheeks, running over Beelzebub’s hands. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell him not to go to her, to walk away?”
“When it comes to your mother, nothing has ever been simple. She and your father are so alike. Can you imagine refusing them anything?” He looks at me, looks, looks, looks, and his face is so open and so full of sorrow. “The strong prevail. This is just the way of the world.”
He kisses me on the forehead, then lets me go.
The cold is terrible. Worse than Chicago, or anything I’ve ever felt. My tears freeze before they have a chance to fall. The screaming in the pit is so loud suddenly that I think I’ll go deaf from it. For a strange moment, I believe that Beelzebub has done this with his kiss. That he’s frozen me, a reverse fairytale. I should be waking up now, but instead the world is grinding to a halt.
Then I see that the door to the museum is chocked open. My father is leaning in the entryway, hands in his pockets. His face is as calm and as sculpted as Greek statuary, but his eyes are dark and hot like coals.
“So, it’s come to this,” he says.
&
nbsp; Beelzebub turns in his chair, turns his back on my father. He’s staring off at the tidy rows of drawers and the filing cabinets. “Are you really here to punish me over a few dead Lilim? They weren’t even your daughters. He wasn’t your son.”
“Don’t presume to tell me about family,” my father says, removing his hands from his pockets and adjusting his shoulder against the door frame. He’s holding something dark and narrow in one dangling hand. “What you’ve done is unforgivable. Now turn and face me.”
Beelzebub only sits, facing away. “You’d have done the same thing for your children if you had a chance to save them.” His voice is resigned and he still doesn’t turn around.
I see through a trembling film that the thing in my father’s hand is an onyx-handled straight razor. He looks at me a long time, face blurred. With his thumb, he caresses the razor, and the blade opens like it’s unfurling its wings. He steps forward, moving around the desk to stand beside Beelzebub’s chair.
Beelzebub remains motionless, and through the film of my tears, he could be anyone at all. “Get on with it,” he says, voice like stone. “Don’t waste your time.”
My father holds the blade in his right hand. With his left, he reaches out. “Turn and look at me.”
But Beelzebub doesn’t. I’m not breathing. I never breathe, and Truman’s sweater feels thin, almost insubstantial.
“You will turn and face me,” my father says, in a voice that has made stars collide.
Beelzebub only keeps his back turned, his head bowed.
My father squares his shoulders. “Are you redeemable?”
“No. How can I be?”
My father rests his palm on top of Beelzebub’s head. I’ve never seen him touch anyone but my mother. “There’s never only one answer,” he says, and slides the blade under Beelzebub’s chin.
From outside comes the sound of the furnace door slamming open. The sky glows red again and my tears begin to thaw. When I blink, they slip solid from my eyelashes. The sound when they land is like pebbles scattered on the tile, but the floor of the museum is already growing hot, burning my feet through my slippers. The tears melt and sizzle where they fall. Beelzebub is jerking, sighing out.
Out in the gallery, the artifacts are going up in flames—all the remnants of the collected souls. The wooden shelves collapse and clatter to floor, blackening to ash. The metal ones only stand solid as they’ve always done, shining silver, while the flames lick brightly around the edges.
My father steps back and Beelzebub slides down in his chair. Above his slumped body, flies go off like match-heads, exploding to life as they burn, settling to the floor—ash, then nothing. A violin smolders peacefully, its strings snapping one by one. The front of my father’s shirt is smoking as the blood begins to burn off.
He grabs my wrist, yanking me up. Around me, the burning wool of Truman’s sweater crumbles off my body in the scorching heat, burning like all the other artifacts, because of course, now the sweater is just the lost property of a dead boy. Everything’s unraveling now. Everything has become temporary.
I scrub my eyes with back of my hand, then with my fingertips, trying to scrape away the tears. They’re sizzling on my cheeks now, steaming away into nothing. Everything is too hot, but not painful, never painful. I close my eyes, once, twice.
He crosses the gallery and shuts the door, but the damage has been done. There’s nothing left of the collection but charred metal and ashes.
With the stasis of the museum restored, the screaming in the pit seems muted again, but harder to ignore. It sounds real. Temperature is gone, leaving my arms numb. I’m wearing my shift, my slippers, nothing else. Truman’s sweater is long gone and the blood has burned away from my fingernails, just like it’s burning off the desktop now, smelling vague and slippery. Beelzebub is slumped on the floor beside his chair, the gash in his neck open wide like a mouth. His skin is blistering, his hair smoking.
“But you closed the door. How can he be burning?”
“Because he’s dead.”
I look down at the body, someone’s body. Beelzebub is nothing but a body. The flames are so hot they don’t look like separate flames at all, but one burning pool of fire.
“Was it like he said?” I ask. “Did you really damn us all?”
“I must have, if this is what it’s come to.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I loved her,” my father says.
The shape of Beelzebub is shrinking, getting blacker.
“When do you stop loving someone?”
He looks at me, shaking his head. His mouth is open, just a little. He makes the shape of the word never but no sound comes out.
I wait for him to say something aloud, all the things people are supposed to say upon the death of a comrade. “O Captain, my Captain.” “Goodnight sweet prince.” Even Yeats, “The center cannot hold. What rough beast.” His mouth is a hard line.
“Say something,” I whisper.
He slides his hand into mine. He says nothing and doesn’t need to. His hand is everything. I lean against him, resting my head on his arm.
LOSS
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Truman dies again and again inside my head. It’s a bright, wet death, and I sit on the floor of my room and watch it happen.
My father’s answer was revenge—has always been revenge—and the outcome was just, but not better. Nothing is fixed.
Across the room, Petra is a dark shape, blurred around the edges. She’s walking back and forth, touching the walls. I wish she would sit down. We’ve been here forever.
I’m dressed like I belong here, in one of the silver tunics I used to wear, glossy and reflective. My Freddy sweater is lost somewhere on Earth. Truman’s is nothing but ash.
“Daphne.”
I look up and Obie is standing in the doorway, just the way he did before, when he came to tell me he was leaving. Only now he’s disheveled and bloody, holding Raymie in his arms like he’ll never let her go. His departure seems like a lifetime ago.
He crosses the room and sits down beside me with Raymie in his lap. She waves shyly at me, but doesn’t say anything.
“You have to stop crying,” Obie tells me, as though he doesn’t understand that I can’t. “I know this hurts, but they’re gone and we have to manage without them now.”
His voice is steady, but I can see the devastation in his eyes. He’s only pretending, saying the words he’s supposed to say. He’s ministering to me when he should be crying alongside me.
In his arms, Raymie is quiet. I barely remember the moments after Truman’s death, but it was loud and bright and messy. She must have seen.
“Daphne,” Obie says. “You have to find a way to live without him now. You have to carry on.”
But he has someone to carry on for.
Out the window, everything is dim. Petra gets out the paint set, crouching on the floor beside us. Her first strokes are mysterious, but the picture quickly becomes a horse. Its tail is long and soft. Then, under her careful brush, the horse sprouts a single horn. The sky is as dim as it ever gets and the furnace will come on soon.
I watch Petra, with her wide eyes and silvery skin, her liquid-looking hair, and suddenly, I see that she’s very beautiful bending over her unicorn. With the tip of her brush she shapes its flank as carefully as she once rendered my face in eyeliner and now I know, undeniably, that time passes. It was a different girl who sat on the hassock while her ugly sister drew pictures.
She touches the picture and the paint rubs off on her fingers, leaving round depressions along the unicorn’s body. Outside, the furnace hums and the sky glows red.
Obie is quiet, looking at us both with painful tenderness. I watch to see if the blood on his arms will catch fire and smolder to nothing, but it doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t. The cuts are his condition now. He brought it like Beelzebub brought his flies. Like the tears dripping slowly and constantly down my face.
The four o
f us sit quietly, staring down as Petra’s painting begins to bubble and crack. Thin columns of smoke rise up from a unicorn glowing red. The brush in her hand becomes a torch.
She looks at me over her burning picture. “Unicorns can’t last here.”
On Earth, Alexa Harding, with her muddy-colored hair and skinned knees, is already forgetting about Truman Flynn. Putting on eye makeup, fumbling in someone’s backseat. Truman was a boy she knew once when she was young. I want to scream suddenly, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out.
“There was a girl,” Petra says, putting her hand in the fire. “A girl who fell asleep, and when she did, so did everyone around her. The whole kingdom just fell asleep.”
I nod because it sounds real and possible. It sounds like a story I know.
Truman was like that once, motionless, diverting people from his pain, reassuring them and soothing them, sinking farther into the depths of his own grief.
But then one day, he woke up.
More than anything, I want to wake up from this.
On the roof, my mother is sitting on her filigree bench like she’s waiting for me. I want to climb into her lap. I want to lie against her shoulder and never get up again. This is what Earth has done to me. But I know that’s not true. It’s what I’ve always wanted, but never understood.
Instead, I sit next to her and stare blankly down at the sundial. My face stares back at me, red-eyed.
“Tell me what to do,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking.
“What makes you think I know?”
I had almost forgotten how her voice has the power to cut through me. She looks over, looks right at me with grim, silvery eyes and I see a black hollow in her, like seeing the future. Like looking down the barrel of a gun.
“I’m not kind-hearted,” she says. “If I had my way, I would tell you to stop loving that boy. I would tell you to stop being sad.”
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