Tucker doesn’t see Asael or the others immediately. He only has eyes for me. “You came back,” he says, such relief in his voice that I want to cry, and then before I can warn him Asael is by his side, moving faster than the human eye can perceive, blocking the way out.
“And who is this, come to join the party?” Asael asks.
For a moment nobody speaks. Tucker stands up straighter, and I know he’s wishing that he’d brought the shotgun this time. Not that the shotgun would do any good.
Lucy approaches from the back, giving us and the glory a wide berth. “This must be Tucker,” she says, coming to stand on the other side of him. “Jeffrey’s told me all about him. He’s Clara’s boyfriend.”
“Ah. And a fragile human one at that,” Asael says. “Interesting.”
I find my voice. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Oh, no?” Asael turns to me with an amused expression, like he can’t wait to hear what I’m about to say. He’s enjoying this, the way he’s got us all standing so completely still, afraid. He thrives on this.
“We broke up. It’s like you said, he’s a human. He didn’t understand me. It didn’t work.” Christian’s hand tightens in mine as he registers how, even though what I’m saying is technically the truth, it’s also a lie, and he can feel how desperately I want to be convincing in this lie. Because if Tucker’s not worth anything to me, he can’t be used as leverage.
But then, if Tucker’s not worth anything to me, he can also be discarded like an empty paper cup, used and thrown away. I have to be careful.
“She’s with me now,” Christian says. He’s so much better at lying than I am. There’s no telltale catch in his voice.
“It’s true that you two seem awfully fond of each other,” Asael says thoughtfully. “But then it begs the question: Why did you come here? Why, out of all the places on earth you could have gone, did you send yourself here, to this boy?”
I meet Tucker’s eyes and swallow. This is the lie I’m not going to get away with.
Because he’s my home.
“Lucy, be a dear and hold the human, will you?” Asael says, and now there’s a black blade at Tucker’s throat. Lucy takes his arm and pulls him a few steps away from Asael, her own eyes glinting with the excitement of it all. I hear the sorrow that makes up the blade sizzle slightly as it touches Tucker’s neck, and he flinches.
Asael appears happy, like his day is looking up.
“Now,” he says, suddenly all business. “Let’s negotiate. I think a trade might be in order. A life for a life.”
“I’ll go,” Angela volunteers immediately. She clears her throat and says it again louder. “I’ll come back with you, Father.” Her voice wavers on the word.
Asael scoffs. “I don’t want you. You’ve been nothing but a disappointment since I found you. Look at you.” His eyes sweep up and down her body, lingering at the markings on her arm. Bad daughter.
She doesn’t answer, but part of her seems to shrink inside herself. No one loves me passes through her mind.
“I want Jeffrey,” Lucy says, like a child demanding her favorite toy. She looks at him, smiles. “Come on, baby. Come with me.”
Jeffrey takes a deep brave breath and starts to step forward, and I catch his arm and pull him back.
“Dear, sweet Lucy,” Asael says as Jeffrey and I argue without words for a minute. “I know you have a crush on the boy, and I know you’ve put a lot of work into him, but I think I’d rather have that one.”
He points at me.
“No,” Christian and Tucker say at the same time.
Asael smiles wickedly. “Ah, you see? She’s valuable. And easy on the eyes.” His gaze on me is like a touch, and I shiver, draw my arms over my chest. “I’m looking forward to hearing how you managed to cross out of hell. You’ll tell me, won’t you? Who’s been teaching you?”
“Take me,” Christian says then.
Asael waves his hand dismissively. “I don’t even know who you are. Why would I want you?”
“He’s the one who killed Liv,” Lucy accuses.
Asael’s eyes flash. “Is that true? You killed my daughter?”
I understand Christian’s intention about a second too late. “Christian, don’t—”
“Yes,” Christian says. “But I’m your son.”
His son.
Oh, boy. I didn’t see that one coming. But Christian, I realize, has been seeing this moment. This is his vision, facing down the man who killed his mother. His father.
Lucy gasps, her face turning up again, eyes wide. If Christian is Asael’s son, it means that he’s also her brother. Her brother and Angela’s brother. It’s quite the family reunion we’re having in here.
How long has he known that? I wonder. Why didn’t he tell me?
Asael’s eyes widen. “My son? Why ever would you think that you’re my son?”
“You’re the collector, right?” Christian looks down at his feet. “You collected my mother. Bonnie was her name. A Dimidius. You met her in New York City, 1993.”
“Ah, I remember,” Asael says. “Green eyes. Long, pale hair.”
Christian’s jaw clenches.
“A shame what had to happen with her,” Asael continues. “I hate to destroy beautiful things. But she simply would not tell me where I could find you. Tell me, do you have black spots on your wings?”
“Shut up,” Christian mutters. I’ve never felt that kind of rage from him before, and it’s a frightening thing. He’d kill Asael, if he could.
Asael squints at him thoughtfully, oblivious. “Well now, that does change things. Perhaps I want you, after all. Even though you’ll have to be punished, I suppose, for killing Olivia.”
“No,” I say firmly, shaking my head. “I’ll go with you. Tucker is my responsibility, no one else’s. I’ll go.”
Clara, Christian growls in my mind. Stop talking and let me do this.
You are not the boss of me, I send back fiercely. Think about it. What you did just now, telling him that, was unbelievably brave and selfless, and I know you did it for me, but it was … stupid. I don’t care what the vision told you. We need to be smart about this. Out of all of us, I’m the most likely to be able to get out of hell on my own. I can get out.
Not without me, he says. You’ll go crazy in there without someone to ground you.
He has a point, but I try to ignore it. Find my dad, I say. Maybe he can come for me.
I remember Dad’s exact words last time we talked. I can’t interfere, he said. He can’t save me. Still, it’s what I have to do. And I’m actually starting to form the beginnings of a plan.
I’m going. No more arguing, I tell Christian. Besides, you’re the one holding the glory, I say, and then before he can answer, I step out of it.
Tucker groans when I walk toward them.
“Let him go,” I say, my voice traitorously thick. “A life for a life, like you said.”
Asael nods at Lucy, whose dagger disappears, but she still has hold of Tucker’s coat.
“Let him walk to the glory,” I say.
“First, you come to me,” Asael insists.
“How about we do it at the same time?”
He smiles. “All right. Come.”
I step toward Asael, and Lucy steps toward the circle of glory with Tucker.
Don’t let him touch you, Angela whispers fervently in my mind. He’ll poison you.
That’s a problem I don’t know how I am going to avoid. Asael holds out his arms like he’s welcoming me home. I can’t help but let him touch me, and within seconds his hands are on my shoulders, then his arms are around me like he’s embracing me, and Angela’s right—my mind fills with regret. All the failures, every wrong move I’ve ever made, every doubt I’ve ever had about myself, they all rise up inside me at once.
I was a selfish girl, selfish at the core, spoiled, flippant with the people around me. I was an ungrateful, disobedient daughter. A bad sister. A terrible friend.
Weak. Coward. Failure.
Asael murmurs something under his breath, and his wings appear, an ebony cloak that he draws around me. The world is fading into blackness and cold, and I know that in one more moment we’ll be in hell again, and this time there will be no way to fight the sorrow. It will swallow me whole.
I turn my head to get a final glimpse of Tucker through Asael’s oily black feathers.
I lied to him. I broke his heart. I treated him like a child. I wasn’t faithful. I hurt him.
“Yes,” Asael says, a snake’s hiss in my ear. He strokes my hair. “Yes.”
But that’s not all, a small, bright voice in my head chimes in. My own voice.
You sought to protect him. You’ve sacrificed yourself, your very soul, so that he may live. You’ve put his welfare ahead of your own.
You love him.
I love him. I will pack that thought away inside of me where nothing can touch it. I will preserve it, somehow. I will shape it into something I can use, to protect me when I’m taken to hell.
Asael makes a choking noise. I push back against him, the weight of his wings heavy around me, and struggle to see anything but black. His mouth is open, gasping like he’s out of air, and still he makes the thick, wet noise in the back of his throat.
“Father?” Lucy asks uncertainly.
He staggers, taking me with him. His wings drop from around me, and that’s when we all see my glory sword buried in his chest.
I have struck his heart.
The blade brightens as I readjust my grip on the handle. All around the wound his flesh sizzles, it heats and burns, the way it did that day in the woods with Samjeeza so long ago, when I destroyed his ear with glory, but this wound is on a much greater scale. Asael’s mouth opens and closes, but no words come. The light of my sword is pouring into him. He looks at me like he doesn’t recognize me, his hands grasp at my shoulders, but he is suddenly weak, and I am strong, so very, very strong.
I push the sword in deeper.
He screams, then, a boom of agony that rattles the walls of the barn and makes everyone but me cover their ears. The lightbulb over our heads shatters and rains down on us. Smoke pours off Asael as he leans against me, and I want to get away from him. My teeth come together as I put my hand against his collarbone and draw the bright sword out of his body. I step back. He falls to his knees, and my arm moves almost with a mind of its own, a mighty sweep that severs one enormous black wing from his shoulder. It bursts into bits of feathers and smoke.
Asael doesn’t even seem to feel it. His hand is still at his heart, and suddenly he lifts his arms toward the sky in some sort of silent plea.
“Forgive me,” he croaks, and then he falls onto his face on the dirt floor of the barn, and disappears.
No one speaks. I bow my head for a minute, my hair falling wild around my face, the heat of the glory sword still moving through me, up my arm, curling around my elbow in bright tendrils. Then I look up at Lucy. She’s still clutching Tucker by the arm, her face slack with horror and dismay.
“Let go of him,” I say.
She pulls him closer. The sorrow blade appears in her hand again, wavering but there, substantial enough to do damage, and she holds it out, gestures at all of us.
“Get back,” she says, her dark eyes wild with panic. She’s outnumbered now, outmatched without her big bad father to get her what she wants, but she’s still dangerous. She could kill Tucker, easily.
She wants to.
“Let go of him,” I say again more firmly.
“Luce,” Jeffrey says gently, stepping forward. Christian has dropped his circle of glory, and the barn feels plunged in darkness. I don’t even know what time it is, day or night, the pale light outside the barn window sunrise or sunset. Since time is wonky there, I don’t know how long we were in hell.
“No,” Lucy says. She glares at me, dashes tears from her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “You. You have taken everything from me.”
“Luce,” Jeffrey cajoles her. “Put down the knife.”
“No!” she screams. “Get back!”
I raise the sword, threatening, and she shrieks. Her wings are out in a flurry of black feathers, like Christian’s but the opposite, obsidian with spatters of pure white across them, and she lifts Tucker effortlessly, caught by one arm and the front of his coat, her wings beating furiously, carrying them upward, crashing through the high window in the hayloft. For the second time that night glass showers down on us, and I cover my face with my arm to keep it out of my eyes, and when I look again she’s gone.
My glory fizzles out.
She’s taken Tucker.
Without a word I’m after them. I’m flying before my wings are all the way unfurled. I pause in the air above the ranch, turning, searching for where she’s gone, and to the east I see a small black smudge against the light of the sun rising in the east. It’s morning, then. I hear Christian’s voice somewhere behind me, his cry of “Wait! We’ll go at her together!” but I can’t wait. I streak off after her, flying harder, faster than I’ve ever flown before. I fly and fly, following her, over the mountains, high, where the air grows thin and cold. I follow her as she veers north and then east again, and it becomes clear to me that she doesn’t know where she’s going. She has no destination. She’s simply flying to get away. She’s running scared.
Anywhere you go, I will follow, I promise her silently. She’s strong, what with the sorrow blade and the speckled wings and all, the child of Asael and some unfortunate angel-blood like Christian’s mother. She’s fast, and powerful.
But she can’t fly forever.
Within minutes we’re deep in Grand Teton National Park, Jackson Lake appearing below like a long gleaming mirror against the land. Lucy pushes higher, moving more upward than out now, and I wonder what she’s planning. The air is very thin, and my throat feels dry with each labored breath I take; my lungs complain for oxygen.
Stop! I scream at her.
She slows and hovers, her wings threshing the air almost gently. She’s tired.
“Enough,” she pants when I’m about twenty-five feet away, her voice ragged. She turns to me in the air. Tucker is limp against her, his arms and legs dangling, his head thrown back. We’re so high up, seemingly level with the tops of the Grand Teton. I worry that he can’t breathe at this altitude. I worry that she’s stabbed him with the black dagger. I worry about that half-crazy look in her eye.
“Give him to me,” I say.
She smiles slightly, ironically, and I can see Angela’s “oh yes, I’m scheming” expression on her face. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to see Angela the same way again, as only herself and not related to these people.
“Then come and take him,” she spits out.
The sorrow blade singing through the air catches me off guard.
It’s a bad throw, but it clips my shoulder and part of my left wing. The pain is intense, piercing, the kind of pain that slows the mind, and so it takes me a few beats longer than normal to understand what she’s done.
She’s flying off again.
And Tucker is falling. Down, down, he’s falling.
Toward the lake, so very far below us.
I forget about Lucy. There’s only Tucker, and I know the moment I start for him that I’m not going to be able to catch him.
I try. I narrow my body, I push toward him through the air, but he’s still too far away to stop him.
It’s terrible, those few seconds, but a peaceful kind of terrible, the way he turns over and over in the air as he falls, gently, gracefully, almost like a dance, his eyes closed, his lips parted, his hair, which has grown longer over the months I haven’t seen him, caressing his face. The world opens up below us in a rush of blue and green.
And then he strikes the water.
I’ll hear that sound in my nightmares for the rest of my life. He comes down on his back, hits the surface so fast, with so much force, that he might as well have hit concrete. The splash is enormous, obscuring everything. I hit the water a few moments later, only thinking to retract my wings at the last second. The water closes around me, over me, cold as a knife stabbing me, knocking the air out of my lungs. I push upward, break the surface, gasping for air. There’s no sign of Tucker. I turn in the water frantically, searching, praying for a sign, some bubbles, something to give me an idea of where to look, but there’s nothing.
I dive. The water is dark and deep. I kick downward, my eyes open wide, my fingers out and groping.
I have to find him.
Feel for him, comes that voice in my head. Feel for him with more than just your hands.
I push deeper, turn in a different direction. My chest asks for more air and I deny it. I dive deeper, reaching for him with my mind, a tiny flicker of something that might be him, and when I’m about to give up hope and go for more air, my fingers catch his boot.
It takes an agonizingly long time for me to get him to the surface, then to the shore, then out of the water. I drag him up on the rocky bank, screaming for help at the top of my lungs, then fall to my knees beside him and put my ear near his chest.
His heart’s not beating. He’s not breathing.
I’ve never learned CPR, but I’ve seen it on television. I’m crying raggedly, stifling my sobs so I can breathe into his mouth. I press on his chest and hear a bone crack, which makes me cry harder, but I keep doing the compressions, willing his heart to pump. I can feel when I touch him that he’s already hurt so badly, so many bones broken, organs inside of him injured, maybe beyond repair. Bleeding inside.
“Help!” I scream again, and then stupidly remember that I’m more than a human girl in this situation, that I have the power to heal, but I’m so shaken that it takes me a few tries to summon glory. I lean over him, the glory shining through me like a beacon on the shore of Jackson Lake, where anybody out on an early morning hike could see me now, but that doesn’t matter. I only care about Tucker. I put my glowing hands on his body and will his flesh to mend. I stretch my body along his, my cheek to his cheek, my arms around him, covering him with my warmth, my energy, my light.
But he doesn’t take a breath. My glory fades with my hope.
I hear wings behind me. A voice.
“Now you know how it feels,” she says, and I raise my arm to block her dagger, but I’m not quick enough. She’s going to kill me too, I think dazedly.
But then she doesn’t. There’s a strange noise, something whistling by my head.
And then there’s a glory arrow sticking out of Lucy’s chest.
Jeffrey’s standing behind her, his face resolute but also shocked, like he didn’t even know what he was doing up until now. He drops his arms.
Lucy’s dagger is gone. She crumbles to the ground, gasping like a beached fish.
“Jeffrey,” she says, reaching for him. “Baby.”
He shakes his head.
She turns onto her stomach like she’s going to drag herself away from us. Then without warning she rolls into the lake, and she’s gone.
I turn back to Tucker and bring the glory again.
Christian comes down on the shore next to Jeffrey.
“What happened?” he asks.
I look up at him.
“Can you help me?” I whisper. “Please. I can’t make him breathe.”
Jeffrey and Christian exchange glances. Christian goes to his knees beside us and puts his hand on Tucker’s forehead, like he’s feeling for a fever, I think numbly, although that’s not what he’s feeling for. He sighs. Puts his hand gently on my arm.
“Clara …”
“No.” I pull away, grasping on to Tucker more tightly. “He’s not dead.”
Christian’s eyes are dark with sorrow.
“No,” I say, scrambling to my knees. I pull up Tucker’s T-shirt, lay my hands on the strong, brown expanse of his chest, over the heart I’ve heard beating under my ear so many times, and pour my glory into him like water, using all of it, every bit of life and light there is inside me, every spark or flicker of light that I can find. “I won’t let him die.”
“Clara, don’t,” Christian pleads. “You’ll hurt yourself. You’ve already given too much.”
“I don’t care!” I sob, swiping at my eyes and pushing at Christian’s hands as he tries to pull me away.
“He’s already gone,” Christian says. “You’ve healed his body, but his soul’s gone. It’s slipped away.”
“No.” I lean down and put my hand to Tucker’s pale cheek. I bite my lip against the wail that wants to tear out of me, and taste blood. The ground shifts under me. I feel dizzy, faint. I gather Tucker’s body into mine, hold him against me, my hands curling and uncurling in his coat, spilling out jelly beans on the wet rock beneath us. I stay that way for a long time, letting my tears run against his shoulder. The sun gets warmer and warmer, drying my hair, my clothes, drying his.
Finally I raise my head.
Christian and Jeffrey are gone. The lake’s so clear that it makes a perfect reflection of the Tetons on the water, the pink-tinged sky behind them, the lodgepole pines along the opposing shore. It’s so incredibly still in this place. No sound but my breath. No animals. No people. Just me.
It’s like I’ve stopped time.
And Tucker is standing behind me, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, looking down at me. His body has mysteriously vanished from my lap.
“Huh,” he says bemusedly. “I had a feeling you might be in my heaven.”
“Tucker,” I gasp.
“Carrots.”
“This is heaven,” I say breathlessly, looking around, noticing at once how the colors are brighter, the air warmer, the ground under me more solid, somehow, than it is on earth.
“It would appear so.” He helps me up, keeps my hand in his as he leads me along the shore. I stumble, the rocks on the bank too hard for my feet. Tucker has less trouble, but it’s difficult for him, too. Finally we make our way up to a sandier spot and sit, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the water, looking at each other. I’m drinking in the sight of him unbroken and healthy, perfect in his beauty, warm and smiling and alive, his blue eyes even bluer here, sparkling.
“I don’t think this dying thing is half so bad as it’s cracked up to be,” he says.
I try to smile, but my heart’s breaking all over again. Because I know that I can’t stay here.
“What do you think I’m supposed to do now?” he asks.
I peer over my shoulder at the mountains. On earth the sun would be on the other side of them as it rises, to the east, but here the light is behind them. Always growing. It’s always sunrise in heaven, the way that hell is in perpetual sunset, never breaking into the full light of day, but there’s the promise of it, soon, maybe.
“Go into the light,” I say, and scoff at how cliché it sounds.
He snorts. “Get out of town.”
“No, seriously. You’re supposed to go that way.”
“And you know this because …?”
“I’ve been here before,” I say.
“Oh.” He didn’t know that. “So you can come and go? You could come back?”
“No, Tucker. I don’t think so. Not where you’re going. I don’t belong here.”
“Hmm.” He stares off at the lake again. “Well, I’m glad you found a way this time.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
He reaches for my hand, takes it in both of his, strokes my palm. “I love you, you know.”
“I love you, too,” I say. I would cry, but I don’t think I have a tear left in me. “I’m so sorry this happened. You had this beautiful life in front of you, and now it’s gone.” It’s good to be here with him, to see him safe and sound, but my heart hurts when I think of Wendy and his parents, the way his death is going to open a big black gaping hole in their lives, a wound that won’t ever fully heal.
I hurt when I think of spending my whole long life on earth without seeing him again.
He tilts my chin up. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“If I’d just left you alone …”
“Don’t do that,” he says. “Don’t regret us. I don’t. I won’t, ever.”
We sit there together like that for I don’t know how long, our hands tangled, my head against his shoulder. He tells me about all the things I missed this year, how he took up bull riding at the rodeo, for the adrenaline of it, he says, because he wanted something to make him feel alive when he was otherwise feeling pretty low.
“You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck,” I say.
He grins. Shrugs.
“Okay, not so lucky.”
“I missed you every minute. I wanted to drive out to California and grab you by that pesky hair of yours and drag you back to Wyoming and make you see sense. Then I thought, well, if I can’t bring her to me, I’ll go to her.”
“So you applied to UC Santa Clara.”
“Wendy told you about that?” he asks, surprised. I nod. “What a tattletale.” He sighs, thinking of her. Sobers. “You sure we can’t stay here forever?” he asks wistfully.
“No. You’re supposed to move on.”
“You too, I guess. Can’t hang out with a dead guy all your life.”
“I wish I could.”
“Prescott’s a good egg,” he says, his voice strained. “He’ll take care of you.”
I don’t know what to say. He stands up, brushes the nonexistent heavenly dirt off his pants out of sheer force of habit. “Well, I should let you go, I think. I’ve got a hike ahead of me.”
He pulls me into his arms. We’ve had some good-byes, Tucker and me, off and on again, but nothing like this. I cling to him, breathing in his smell, his cologne and horse sweat and hay, a hint of Oreo cookies, feeling the solidness of his arms, knowing this is the last time I’ll feel that, and I look up at him all desperate and heartbroken, and then we’re kissing. I hang on to him for dear life, kissing him like the world’s about to end, and I guess in a way it is. I kiss him like I probably should be embarrassed to do in a place like heaven, which feels like church, a place where God is looking right at you, but I don’t stop. I give him my whole heart through my lips. I love him. I open up my mind and show him how much I love him. He gives a startled, agonized laugh, and breaks away, breathing hard.
“I can’t leave you,” he says hoarsely.
“I can’t leave you either,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t.”
“Then don’t,” he says, and grabs me behind the neck and kisses me again, and the world is tilting, tilting, and everything goes black.