I reminded her, “Yeah, my baby. But it wasn’t cheap. And in the end nobody else wanted to assume the cost.”
That shut her yap. Uriel looked away. Even a lion can look chagrined from time to time.
“I miss him,” she said in a voice more quiet than the hiss of the cosmic microwave background.
“Me, too,” I said. “Me, too.”
An awkward silence crept up on us. She staked it in the heart, changed the subject.
“What happened to the Cherubim? I hear they came back with their tails between their legs.”
“Those roosters? Flametop pulled the old dipsy-doodle on them.”
Uriel flapped a half-dozen wings, like a trio of opinionated pigeons. “Would you give it a rest with the slang?”
“Sorry. Hard habit to break.”
“Anyway,” she said, “I find that difficult to believe.”
“Believe it. She’s no paper flower.” Uriel’s ox face snorted at me again. “What? Oh. Sorry. I mean, she’s tough. And she’s clever.”
Okay. So maybe I like to crow just a little.
“Not clever enough to piece things together.”
“Trust me. She’s getting there.”
By slow freight, said the scowl on Uriel’s human pan. The lion visage let loose with a growl.
I said, “She’s the naturally suspicious type. And believe me, I just sent her one dilly of a telegram.”
Uriel rolled her eyes, all eight of them. She asked, “So she’s back on track now?”
“Right now”—I glanced at my watch—“I figure she and dollface are having a swell little dustup. But once they talk each other off the ceiling that nickel will drop soon enough.”
“And will she do what we brought her here to do?”
I lit a pill. Tossed a smoke ring at Uriel. “Trust me. She never passes up a chance to take a swipe at me.”
* * *
“That son of a bitch. That unbelievable motherfucker.”
Molly ran fingers through her hair while pacing the tiny confines of Anne’s kitchen. Saint Elmo’s fire crackled through her hair, making it snap and writhe like Medusa’s asps. “That deranged piece of shit.” She reversed course at the refrigerator. “Sexist two-faced asshole.”
Anne said, “Molly.”
“Arrogant shit-faced prick. Smug, oily, self-centered dick-licking alcoholic.” About-face at the stove.
“Molly.”
“That duplicitous, cocky, goat-humping, weaselly backstabbing pervert.”
Anne opened a window. “Molly.”
“I’ll kick his ass. More than that. I’ll kill him. They can die, you know. Yeah. I swear I’ll take the Trumpet and—”
“Molly!”
Molly paused in her circuit, the unfinished rant piling up behind her like boxcars in a derailed train of thought. Anne looked frantic. “What?”
Anne said, “Just stop a second, would you? Look at what you’re doing to my apartment.”
She pointed at blistered fake linoleum left in the scorching wake of Molly’s halo. Fury had energized her heiligenschein. The apartment reeked of melted plastic. Molly tasted a dusting of dioxin on the air, released by the smoldering polyvinyl chloride. Chlorine atoms raked fractured atomic bonds across her tongue.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Some of us have security deposits, you know.”
Molly knelt. She ran a hand over the damaged floor as though she were brushing the wrinkles out of a bedsheet. It became whole and unblemished under her touch.
“Well, thanks,” said Anne.
“Uh-huh,” said Molly, remembering the cigarette burn Bayliss had left in the floorboards of her Magisterium. The cigarette burn she had repeatedly tried and failed to fix. The blemish he’d wrought on one of her safest, warmest memories. Jesus. Her dead body had still been steaming on the snow when that son of a bitch tossed a filthy fucking cigarette on Ria’s handiwork. She’d do so much more than kick his ass. She already knew where to find the Trumpet. Anne’s Plenary Indulgence contained a piece, and the rest was scattered through the Nephilim. She could reassemble it. All she had to do was—
“Hey!” Anne shook her by the shoulders. “Enough!”
Molly blinked, shook her head, tried to see through the scarlet haze of her rage. Anne stepped back. She had donned a pair of oven mitts. They had googly eyes and were mottled black and white like Holstein cows. One cow nostril exhaled a wisp of smoke.
Anne hung them back on their magnetic hooks on the refrigerator. “Calm the hell down before you burn this place to the ground.”
Molly blinked again, this time in an effort to clear away the annoying dampness in her eyes. “I can’t. Don’t you see? He killed me, turned me into this, this, this whatever I am, just to populate this messed-up house of cards he built. Like a, a, a fucking toy doll.” She ran a hand across her eyes. “Like a monkey in a zoo.”
Anne shook her head. “Why would he do that to you?”
“I don’t know!”
“I’m just saying maybe it’s not as bad as you think. Consider all the things you’ve seen and learned. We continue after we die! Isn’t that something wonderful?”
“Oh, Anne, you don’t understand—” Another surge of frustration killed the words in Molly’s throat. Her eyes watered with the effort to muffle her exasperation; venting it with a scream would shatter the windows, knock the building off its foundation, divert the nearby river, jolt the orbit of a passing comet. But poor Anne truly didn’t understand. She thought she’d be like Molly someday. Thought something would persist after her body was nothing but cold jelly.
“No, I don’t. So help me understand.”
Molly took a long, shuddery breath. “I’m afraid everything that happened to me since I died has been nothing but manipulation, and—”
“Uh-huh. I get that things have been kind of messed up for you. But it’s not what I’m talking about. Because, and I’m gonna be really honest with you here, I’m a little less interested in your own problems than I am in understanding why those guys wanted to hurt me yesterday. I’m done with being patient. My turn.”
Molly sighed. She took a chair at the kitchen table. And then a thought: “You didn’t happen to ask Bayliss about it, did you?”
“He said I should ask you.”
“Of course he did,” Molly said to herself. “Dickwad.” Then she added, “You’re taking it really well.”
“I was a little overwhelmed, what with the running through shadows and stepping from Chicago to Minneapolis and finding out I was dating a ghost, to have much chance to let it all sink in. But somehow all along I still felt safe with you, even when it was confusing.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the counter. “That is until you decided to freak out with the realization you have no idea what you’re doing. It gives a woman pause.”
“Yeah. I suppose it does.”
“Yeah,” said Anne. She cocked her head and set her jaw, clearly waiting for an answer.
“Those penitentes were under the control of—sort of, like, possessed by—a pair of Cherubim.” In response to Anne’s frown, Molly added, “A kind of angel. They have fire where their faces should be.”
Anne shivered. “And they wanted to hurt me, why?”
“Not just you. Everyone who received a Plenary Indulgence from Father Santorelli.”
“My parents’ dead priest.”
“Dead … Oh, shit.” An unbidden insight made Molly gasp. It was cold. She coughed. Her breath tasted like acid. She covered her mouth and said through splayed fingers, “Bayliss killed him.”
“Christ! Are you serious? And you asked him to protect me?”
“Now maybe you’re starting to see why I’m so angry,” Molly said. “Anyway, it’s complicated, but those Indulgences were metaphysically tainted. Such that when the recipients die, it has an effect on the Pleroma. Where the angels live.” She made air-quotes with her fingers. “‘Heaven.’ But it’s misleading to call it that.”
; The aura of fascination still clung to Anne. Her frustration dissipated a little when she asked, her voice balanced on the edge of a reverent hush, “Is it beautiful?”
“Really weird. But don’t get hung up on the angels. They’re mostly assholes.”
Anne looked stricken. She hadn’t expected this and had probably hoped for something a little more uplifting. “Gee, don’t you paint a lovely picture of the afterlife.”
Molly couldn’t bring herself to voice the truth: There is no afterlife, Anne. Not for you, or Martin, or Ria, or Mom and Dad, or anybody else. Instead she cradled her head in her hands.
“So they’re doing this because they’re trying to change Heaven?” Anne asked.
“I think so,” said Molly.
I might have been closer than I thought when I wondered if Gabriel’s murder was part of an elaborate jailbreak. But how do the Nephilim fit into that scheme? Something shivered in the back of her mind …
“Okay, then. No offense, but why do they need you?”
Molly said, “Because—”
But then she realized she didn’t have an answer. What was Bayliss up to, and why did he need a human to do it? Merely knowing that he was a lying piece of shit provided no answers. Only questions. Molly considered trying to wring the truth from him with a liberal application of the Trumpet, but abandoned that speculation when it led her to a place that made uncovering his lies seem as innocuous as stumbling upon a surprise birthday party.
Bayliss must have figured out what had become of the Trumpet long before Molly did. After all, he’d seen the connection between the Indulgences and the Nephilim, too. More than that, though, he implicitly understood the rules of the Pleroma, the inhuman multidimensional logic of the Choir, in ways that Molly still didn’t. What took her days to deduce would have been obvious to him. Intuitive. So why didn’t he go retrieve it, then?
Because he wanted Molly to find it.
She cast her memory back to the conversation they’d had in the aftermath of METATRON’s punishment for attempting to reverse time, when Bayliss first told her about the Trumpet. What had he called it? A tool of righteous fury.
Molly looked at Anne, to the floor, to the oven mitts.
Righteous fury. The kind that had her raring to go teach Bayliss a lesson. Like the blistering halo she wore while pacing Anne’s kitchen. Like the enraged indignation she felt upon realizing she’d been a dupe.
The heat from her simmering anger instantly turned very, very cold. Cryogenic. Anne shivered again. She closed the window.
Bayliss set this whole thing in motion so that I would find and use the Trumpet.
And if not for Anne, Molly would have. If not for Anne, she’d be doing it right now.
But what’s so special about me? Why is he doing this?
Anne said, “It’s happening again. Your halo.”
Molly concentrated on absorbing the glow into her human form. It got a little easier every time she did it, but at the same time the boundaries between her human and other loci felt blurrier. Undefined. She’d worry about that later. No choice.
She said, “I’m sorry I left you with Bayliss. I wouldn’t have, if I had realized what he was doing.”
Finally, Anne took a seat at the table. “Am I still in danger?”
“I doubt it. If Bayliss had wanted you…” Molly trailed off, unable to look Anne in the eye. “Um, dead … Well, it would have happened the minute I left you alone with him.”
Anne scowled like somebody tasting something foul. “You really need to work on your reassurances.”
“I should also be thanking you. If not for you, I would have blundered straight into whatever Bayliss has planned for me. I still don’t know what that is, but at least I’ve opened my eyes. Thanks to you, we might have just dodged a bullet.”
“Huh. Who knew reading all those detective stories would pay off someday.”
“Oh, believe me, it did,” said Molly. She took Anne’s hand. “In fact, maybe now you can tell me this: how does the story end?”
21
FAMILY REUNION
“Uh, can I come in?”
Molly gestured toward the apartment she glimpsed behind Martin. He’d done nothing but stare since opening the door. It was awkward. And the hallway smelled like piss.
He retreated. She entered. He tackled her in a bear hug. The toes of her boots left the ground. Had she still been mortal her ribs would have creaked beneath the mountainous weight of his relief, her breath snuffed by his desperation. But she was something different now, something whose lungs were no less an affectation than her earrings.
Not that she had kept every last vestige of her human body. She hadn’t had her period since she died.
“I was starting to think I imagined it,” he said into her hair. He clung to tactile proof of her presence.
“Hey. Didn’t I promise to come back?”
A sheepish pause. “Yeah.”
“I keep my promises. Also?”
“Yeah?”
“You can put me down now.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He did, more gently than he’d ever done anything in her presence. More gently than when Blue, their slobbery Newfoundland, was dying of bone cancer, and had to be put down, and Mom and Dad had given them a final chance to say good-bye.
She sniffed his breath, tasted nothing more damning than beer and cigarettes on his aura. She wasn’t crazy about the beer—he shouldn’t be having any alcohol. But it was an acceptable compromise under the circumstances. She couldn’t expect him to abandon all of his vices. Not all at once, and not after what he’d been through. After what she’d put him through.
Martin looked her up and down. “Moll. You look … healthy.” To his shoes, he added, “Alive.” And then he blushed in embarrassment for stating something so obviously impossible. It was something a strung-out junkie might have said. Might have believed.
“I’m glad one of us does. Because you look like hell.”
“I know.”
His shoulders slumped, the big goof, so she chucked his chin with her thumb. “It’s a huge improvement compared to what I saw when I first came to visit. After the accident.”
Martin looked at her, wide-eyed, looking again like a confused and eager puppy. “You were here?”
“You were”—She started to say “out of it,” but decided delicacy would do him no favors.—“stoned out of your mind. I didn’t let you see me.”
He closed the door. She kicked her boots into a corner and flopped onto the futon, one leg folded under her. The wooden slats of the futon frame pressed straight through the useless mattress into her shin. Martin looked ready to cry. He’d seen her do this a thousand times.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s really me.”
“Do you want something to drink? Or eat?”
She remembered the roaches in the kitchen. A slight funk wafted from that direction, noticeable even to her human senses. “No. I want to catch up with my brother.”
The futon creaked under his weight. He fidgeted, cracking his knuckles, lacing and unlacing his fingers. She let him take his time. This had to be done on his terms. Plus, she admitted to herself, the more time she spent with Martin the longer she could put off dealing with Bayliss.
Finally, Martin said, “I watched you die. The memory is so bad, so vivid … And it’s not just that. There was a funeral. A memorial service.” He reached over to pluck the program from the wall. More tactile proof that he wasn’t nuts. The tape made a gentle tearing sound.
“You didn’t imagine it,” said Molly. “It wasn’t a hallucination. It wasn’t a bad trip. It happened.”
It was supposed to be reassuring. Instead, it terrified him. His nostrils flared; his heart rate spiked. He was trying to be logical about this. Good for Martin.
“I’m afraid this means I’ve gone crazy. Or maybe I’m still high and hallucinating now.”
“The fact you realize this is crazy probably means you’re sane. A crazy person would think it�
��s sane to have a conversation with his dead sister.” She gave a smile that she hoped was comforting. “And you’re not tripping, are you?”
He thought about it. “No. I did, a lot, right after … whatever it was … happened. But then it was like somebody pressed a button and I couldn’t get a fix any longer. It hurt. I needed it so bad.”
“That was me. I’ve been watching over you.” At this, he stared again. “Please don’t be mad,” she added.
“I wasted a lot of money.”
She touched his elbow. “Your life is worth more.”
Martin scraped the back of his hand across his eyes. “Every time I close my eyes I see you falling off the platform. It’s like a movie playing behind my eyelids, stuck on an endless loop I can’t turn off. Your body hits the tracks, and the train skids over you, and the snow turns black, and the smell…”
The memory of anguish hit her in stereo, coming from both Martin and herself. Molly swallowed gorge. She tried to dodge the sensation of her body coming apart.
Desperation constricted Martin’s voice. “What did happen, Moll? What’s happening to us?”
“Do you remember a guy on the platform with us?”
“No.”
“Well, he was there. He came up to us earlier that night, in the laneway, to bum a cigarette from you. Remember? I was looking at the sky?”
“I guess. I dunno.” Martin frowned. “Maybe. Kind of a strange guy, right? He talked weird.”
“That’s him.”
“What about him?”
“He wasn’t human.” Martin blinked. Molly shrugged. “I told you this was going to be a long conversation.”
* * *
She drained the last of her iced tea. Martin plucked an abandoned sliver of pepperoni from the stone platter balanced on the oversized can of tomato paste set in the middle of their table. They had taken a taxi to Uptown, near the lakes. This had seemed a good choice: familiar surroundings; she used to cajole Martin into meeting her here every couple of months, so that they could catch up and she could keep an eye on him. Where else would they have this conversation? It would have been cheaper to take the light rail, if it served Martin’s neighborhood, but even so he would have refused to stand on another train platform with her. Nor was she terribly keen on it. It was a fucked-up memory for both of them.
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