I looked up again. Ex was pulling Curtis away. The flames were in the living room now. The Christmas tree would go up like fireworks, I thought. Another argument in favor of Hanukkah. A few candles, but no kindling. I was aware vaguely that I’d blacked out for a moment. That I was dying. Ex got Curt out. I smiled.
I win, I thought. Curt’s safe. It’s okay if I die now.
Only there was my mother, still on the floor. Still with her hands clasped to her ears, her eyes squeezed closed.
“Mother,” I called, but it hardly came out as a groan. Help me, I thought. Help me this one last time. And the Black Sun, exhausted as I was, brought its will to bear. I took a breath, the superheated air searing my lips and throat.
“Mother!” I shouted. We shouted. “Mother!”
And my mother moved, shifted. Her head turned and she opened her eyes, weeping, staring. The eyes of a trapped animal. She closed them again, shaking her head. Her lips were moving in prayer.
“MOTHER!” we screamed for the last time.
My mother opened her eyes once more.
They were black as the desert night. I felt a wave of cool air wash over me. The Graveyard Child, lost in its killing fury, noticed nothing, but I could breathe again. The fire was all around us, consuming the walls. I could see it spreading up the stairs toward the bedrooms. The whole house would be engulfed in minutes if it wasn’t already. But I was not burning. My mother stood, looking at the conflagration as if it were something surprising and mildly distasteful. She was clearly my own mother, the woman who had packed my lunch box in the mornings and who said my prayers with me at night, only proud now. Sure of herself and her power. When she unfurled her massive black-feathered wings, she was beautiful.
“Abraxiel,” she whispered, and it carried over the roar of the flames.
The Graveyard Child looked up, its face a mask of shock and dismay. It looked around the kitchen as if seeing it for the first time. I rolled away, my ribs bruised and aching. I smelled the bright chemical smell of the smoke. The linoleum I lay on was curling up now, the flames traveling along it. At the sink, the bottle of dish soap was melting, the soap pushing the fire around like napalm. I sat up and my clothes were on fire, the cloth of my jeans searing and falling away in black clumps. The leather in my overcoat getting hard and black as armor. I felt the cool air of the desert against my skin.
“Sonnenrad,” the Graveyard Child said.
“What have you done to my children?” our mothers asked with a single voice.
“You can’t stop me,” it said. “I’ve beaten you before. You aren’t stronger than me.”
She stepped forward and the flames retreated from her. I rose to my feet and she put her hand out, resting it on my shoulder. I had a sense of massive affection, of boundless love colored by regret and even jealousy. It was a complex and wordless emotion, and it made sense to me in a way I couldn’t fit in language. With our mother behind us, we turned to look at the Graveyard Child. It stood in the heart of the flames now, like a comic-book Satan. Its wide hands were balled in fists, and its mouth twisted with rage.
“I beat you!” it screamed. “I beat you!”
“There was a time you deceived me,” our mother said. “It will not happen again.”
With a shout of despair, it launched itself at her, its arms outstretched. I stepped into the attack. My body felt whole and perfect, and I plucked it out of the air and slammed it down to the kitchen floor, which was also the wind-paved stones of the desert. My desert.
A black ichor dripped from the Graveyard Child’s mouth. It struggled to its feet, slipping a little. It opened its mouth too wide for any human anatomy and shouted. The world seemed to lose its coherence for a moment. A deep and nameless dread welled up in me, but my mother’s hand on my shoulder steadied me.
“You made a mistake,” she said. “You transgressed against me. I can forgive that. But you have transgressed against the ones I love, and that I will not forgive you.”
“Oh, really? ‘Don’t cross Mama Bear’? That’s the best you’ve got?”
It leaped, again and again. I caught it and threw it to the ground and it bounced up at once, shrieking like a mad animal. Its attack was constant, vicious, and unrelenting, and I stood before it calmly, my arms and legs moving swift and sure and perfectly. In the house, something burst, a bloom of fire jetting out from under the sink. In the desert, everything was still. The two didn’t contradict, and that was what we were, all three of us.
And the moment I understood that, I saw him. Jay. My brother. His fear and his misery. The loneliness at his core and his fear of a God and a father who did not approve of him. I saw him as a boy and as a man, grown empty.
And beneath him: Eric. For a moment he was alive again. He smiled and winked. I hadn’t remembered him as being such a handsome man, but he was here before me as he had been. And more than he’d been. I saw the love in him, the joy, the certainty that he was special, and the desperation that filled him when he wasn’t. Everything he’d done—to my mother, to Aubrey and Kim, to me, to Jay—became explicable in an instant. Not forgivable. Never that. But I knew him, and I saw how he had become evil. I saw the hurt at its base, and the blight that had come from it, and then he was gone too.
For a space of time that lasted years or seconds, I saw them before me. Men and women. I saw their narcissism and felt their need, their fears and hurts and irrational angers. The pain of a lost love or a lost child or an assault that betrayed the deepest trust. None of them were healed. All of them were degraded and debased and made less than they should have been. And all dead now. Gone past redemption.
I stood witness, neither passing judgment nor offering comfort, until the last one—a woman with a round face and wide blue eyes whose name I never knew—revealed her pride and rage and faded away. Like ripping a book apart page by page until nothing was left, the Graveyard Child was gone. The desert empty except for us.
I turned to our mother then. She looked down at me with black eyes as bright as wet stone. There were two of her as there were of me. The first and greater was the Black Sun. Not the child that lived and grew with and within me, but the vast mother in the fullness of her power, vast and inhuman and terrible. But with her was my own mother, and I saw her as I had seen the others. Margaret Fournier, who’d loved her father and resented her mother. Who’d married Gary Heller because she was in love and because she was afraid not to. I saw the irrationality of her faith and the depth of her guilt, her pride in her children and her jealousy of them. I saw all that she could have been and wasn’t. And would never be. And I saw that the remnant of her—the twisted and unhealthy woman that she had become—was also beautiful in her way. Was also capable of moments of transcendence and grace.
I saw her looking at me, I saw her reacting to what she found there, but she did not say what it was.
“The time’s come,” we said, the Black Sun’s daughter and I.
The desert faded but it did not vanish. I was aware of a vast fire all around me. The heat like a furnace, held away only by the will of our mothers. I stooped down and gathered the still form of my brother, cradling him in my arms. He felt as light as a child. Or a memory. Together, we walked, and the fire grew less. I felt other things. Wind. A biting coldness. A vast and angry weight of clouds and an invisible sun beyond them that radiated heat and light instead of purification. I heard sirens and a dog barking furiously, frantically, and filled with delight.
And then we were there, standing on the icy front lawn in a snowstorm while my childhood home went up like a torch. I staggered under Jay’s sudden weight, and Ex appeared at my side, helping me lower the weeping, scorched man to the ground. Ozzie forced her way up to me, licking my face and barking like a puppy. I put my arm around her. She stank of smoke and wet dog. Chogyi Jake came to me too.
“We thought you were dead,” he said.
“It was the safe bet,” I said. “Did we all get out?”
“For some definitions
of out,” Ex said. “The Smith woman got a decent burn along one arm, and she’s not focusing very well. Martinez is alive and breathing, but I’d bet you a week’s paycheck he’s concussed. Rhodes is getting them out before the officers of the law show up.”
“Dad and Curt?” I asked.
“Well, their central nervous systems are fine,” Ex said. “Some nasty scrapes and bruises. Nothing compared to the no doubt intense psychological trauma.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well. That’s not just this. That’s the world.”
“Your coat looks like it got broiled. What was it like in there?”
“Weird,” I said. “Effective, though.”
“Graveyard Child’s banished?”
“More than that,” I said. “I’m pretty sure we killed it.”
“Good,” Ex said.
To my left, my mother stood looking at the burning house. Her spine was straight and her expression beatific. She’d had her angel again. I knew it wouldn’t last. Nothing we’d done would change who she was. Or what any of us were. I didn’t know whether that was wonderful or depressing. Dad came up to her and put his arm around her, offering protection and comfort just in the way he stood. A few seconds later she noticed him. The sirens were getting closer.
Jay coughed and his eyes swam, trying to focus. His face had the too-pink look of a burn. I took his hand.
“Jayné?” he said, and tears filled his eyes.
“Hey, big brother.”
“I think . . .” he began, then stopped. “I think I may have done something very bad.”
“You did,” I said. “But there were some extenuating circumstances. And I still love you regardless.”
“I think I did something bad to Carla?”
My mother put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me gently away, taking my place at Jay’s side.
“You had an angel in you, didn’t you? The glory of it can overwhelm. You can do things that you never imagined that you would. I understand. I know.”
“Mom,” Jay said, taking her hand. “I don’t . . . I didn’t . . . An angel? Was it an angel?”
I felt a flush of rage. The Graveyard Child was no more an angel than a wild dog was a good babysitter. But there was no point making the argument. They were going to have to make whatever sense of all this they could. What I had to offer wasn’t going to be particularly more comforting or useful just because it was true.
I turned away and walked to the SUV. I needed to get someplace warm. And then I needed some new clothes. And then I didn’t know what I needed. Ozzie trotted along beside me. A fire truck pulled up to the curb, and men in fire suits started making everyone get back to a safe distance. Chogyi Jake and Ex guided my mother back from Jay and the fire while paramedics descended on my big brother. While my father talked to the firemen, pointing angrily to the flames, Curt walked over to me, shivering. I opened the front passenger’s door and let him in.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” He swallowed, sighed. Something collapsed on the second floor of the house and a roll of flames poured out of the windows where my room used to be. Curt was crying. I took his hand.
“You gonna be okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. And then a few seconds later: “This family is seriously messed up.”
“You know,” I said, “it really is.”
chapter twenty-three
Whatever I thought about the rest of the church, I had to agree that they were great in a crisis. My family’s house burned to the foundation, the flames shrugging off water and snow and burning with a heat that surprised and confused the fire department. The family albums were destroyed. The Bible with the names of my ancestors turned to ash. All Mom’s dresses, all Dad’s suits. The site of almost all my memories of childhood was just gone. And then Pastor Michael put out the word, and from all around the city, help just came. Curtis went to stay with his best friend, Billy Taft, since they went to the same school and played the same console games. Mom and Dad went to Jay’s new house, and the director at the church day care center dropped off a foldout couch that Jay could keep. Food came in, and sympathy. One of the parishioners was a lawyer and stepped in to help Dad hash things out with the insurance company.
It was like watching a massive family rise up out of nowhere, and I would have been amazed if I hadn’t already known it worked that way. We were an imperfect, broken family made from imperfect, broken people, and our place in the community was the same as everyone else’s. They took care of their own without complaint or debating whether they should have to. It was a good thing to see, and I would have liked to be part of it.
“Your father was very clear about it,” Pastor Michael said. “I can’t take your money.”
“I have a lot of it. I won’t miss it.”
“That isn’t the issue,” he said. In his full-on wedding suit, he looked like a kindly lawyer. “Your father made a decision, and I’ve agreed to it. I know you want to help him, but maybe you can find another way to do that.”
Down the hallway, Carla leaned out of the dressing room and gestured frantically to me. I held up my hand in a just-a-minute gesture.
“Do you have a suggestion?” I asked.
“You can pray for him,” Pastor Michael said.
“I’m a lot better at cutting checks.”
“Then praying for him is probably what you should do for yourself too. Don’t you think?”
He put a hand on my shoulder, then headed off to the chapel. I rolled my eyes and trotted back to the dressing room.
New Year’s had come and gone, and now even the most tenacious of the holiday decor had been put back in its boxes for next year. The wedding had come upon us. I still could barely bring myself to believe they were going through with it, but as Jay pointed out, it wasn’t just a question of the two of them. It was like my father had taken up residence in Jay’s brain, which, in context, was even creepier. And to make it all just that much more awkward, Carla had insisted that I be maid of honor, and I hadn’t had the presence of mind to say no.
“How do I look?” she asked when I came in the room.
Pregnant, I thought.
“You look great, Carla. That’s an amazing dress.”
“I can’t find the shoes. Have you seen them? The ones with the pearls?”
I glanced at the floor and then up, catching myself in the mirror. My black eyes were almost healed up, and the makeup covered the majority of what was left. I told myself that someone who didn’t know wouldn’t see it at all. And then, less charitably, that they wouldn’t be looking at me anyway. Carla was starting to get a panicky look around her eyes.
“Hold on,” I said, and dug through the tiny little accessory purse for my phone. Chogyi Jake picked up on the first ring. “Have you seen Carla’s pearl shoes?”
“They’re in the car,” he said. “Would you like me to bring them?”
I gave Carla the thumbs-up. “That would be great,” I said, and let the connection drop.
She sagged against the table, putting her hand to her belly. A week ago my brother had taken her shoes and her purse so she couldn’t leave the house. Now she was getting ready to marry him. Granted, he’d been through some pretty big changes in between, but no transformation is ever complete. In her position I’d have been looking for my walking shoes, not the pearl heels.
“You know,” I said, “I’ve got a car and enough money to get you a ticket anywhere you want to go. You get cold feet, I can get you out of here right now, and no one’ll know it before you’re in the air.”
She laughed like I was joking. I hadn’t really expected anything else.
“Thank you for doing all this,” she said. “You’re going to be the best sister-in-law God could have sent me.”
“You’re welcome,” I said with a smile as her sister, Maria, pushed into the room.
“Carla! Where are your shoes!”
“They’re coming,” Carla said. “Come here, let me fix your ma
keup.”
“My makeup’s fine.”
I snuck out to the hallway and took myself down to the drinking fountain even though I wasn’t thirsty. Outside, the sun filled the sky and set the snow glowing. Even with the ice and snow, it looked warm. Nothing that bright could be cold. I watched Chogyi Jake walk briskly across the parking lot with an ash-gray shoe box in his hand. He looked great in a tuxedo. I’d seen Ex earlier. In deference to Pastor Michael, he’d skipped the clerical collar, but he’d kept the black shirt with his suit. With his hair down, he was looking more angelic than usual. And he was smiling more.
Truth was, I was feeling a little lighter about the shoulders too. For years I’d been hurrying from place to place, trying to answer questions I barely knew how to ask. I’d been a believer and a doubter, a refugee from my own home, a college coed, a college dropout, a demon hunter, a businesswoman, a victim, a heroine, and probably about a hundred other things that I’d forgotten about. I’d had everything I knew about myself blown up at least twice. My heart had been broken by loss and it had been broken by guilt. I’d done things I will regret to the day I die, and things I’m proud of, sometimes in the same moment.
Chogyi Jake pushed the door open and, seeing me, lifted the shoe box.
“Thank you,” I said, stepping forward to take it from him.
“How is it going?”
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