Rapture

feel it if she stayed submerged. She didn’t want to feel. It was like Penn had died all over again, fresh pain exposing old pain that still felt fresh to Luce.

After what seemed like a long time, she felt hands slip under her arms to pull her up. The surface of the water was a film of gray dust. It didn’t shimmer anymore.

Luce didn’t take her eyes off it until Annabelle started tugging her sweater up over her head. She felt it lift off her, followed by the T-shirt she’d been wearing underneath. She fumbled with the button on her jeans. How many days had she worn these clothes? It was strange to be free of them, like slipping off a layer of skin and looking at it on the floor.

She ran a hand through her wet hair to wipe it from her face. She hadn’t realized how grimy it was. Then she sat on the bench at the back of the tub, leaned against the side, and started shivering. Annabelle added more hot water to the pool, but it did nothing to stop Luce’s tremors.

“If I’d just stayed out in the hallway like Dee told me to—”

“Then Cam would be dead,” Arriane said. “Or someone else. Sophia and her clan were going to make dust one way or another tonight. The rest of us knew that going into this, but you didn’t.” She sighed. “So coming out and trying to save Cam? That took serious guts, Luce.”

“But Gabbe—”

“Knew what she was doing.”

“That’s what Daniel said. But why would she sacrifice herself to save—”

“Because she’s gambling on Daniel and you and the rest of us succeeding.” Arriane rested her chin on her arm on the edge of the tub. She trailed a finger into the water, breaking up the dust. “But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier. We all loved her very much.”

“She can’t really be gone.”

“She is gone. Gone from the highest altar in creation.”

“What?” That wasn’t what Luce meant. She meant that Gabbe was her friend.

Arriane’s brow furrowed. “Gabbe was the highest of the Archangels—you didn’t know? Her soul was worth . . . I don’t even know how many others. It was worth a lot.”

Luce had never before considered how her friends were ranked in Heaven, but now she thought about the times Gabbe had looked out for her, taken care of her, brought her food or clothes or advice. She’d been Luce’s kind, celestial mother. “What does her death mean?”

“Way back when, Lucifer was ranked first,” Annabelle said. After a pause, she glanced at Luce, registered her shock. “He was right there, next to all the action.

Then he rebelled and Gabbe moved up.”

“Though being ranked next to the Throne is a mixed blessing,” Arriane murmured. “Ask your buddy ol’ pal Bill.”

Luce wanted to ask who came after Gabbe, but something stopped her. Maybe it had once been Daniel, but his place in Heaven was in jeopardy because he kept on choosing Luce.

“What about Molly?” Luce finally asked. “Does her death . . . cancel out Gabbe’s? In terms of the balance between Heaven and Hell?” She felt callous talking about her friends as commodities—but she also knew, right now, the answer mattered.

“Molly was important, too, though a little lower in the ranks,” Annabelle said. “This was before the Fall, of course, when she sided with Lucifer’s host. I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dusted, but Molly really used to bug me. So much negativity.”

Luce nodded guiltily.

“But something changed in her recently. It’s like she woke up.” She glanced at Luce. “To answer your question, the balance between Heaven and Hell can still be struck. We’ll just have to see how things play out. A lot of things that matter now become irrelevant if Lucifer succeeds.”

Luce looked toward Arriane, who’d disappeared behind the door and sneezed three times in a row. “Hello, mothballs!” When she emerged, she was holding a white towel and an oversized checked bathrobe. “It’ll have to do for now. We’ll find you a change of clothes before we leave Jerusalem.”

When Luce didn’t move from the tub, Arriane clucked her tongue like she was coaxing a horse out of its stable, and held the towel out for Luce to step into.

She stood up, feeling like a kid as Arriane engulfed her in the towel and dried her off. The towel was thin and coarse, but the robe that followed was thick and warm.

“We need to skedaddle before the tourist cavalry arrives,” said Arriane, gathering Luce’s boots.

By the time they left the baptismal room and walked back into the chapel, the sun had risen, and it cast colorful rays of light through the stained-glass depiction of the Ascension in the window.

Beneath the window lay the bodies of Miss Sophia and the two other Elders, bound together.

When the girls crossed to the front of the larger chapel, Cam, Roland, and Daniel were sitting on the center altar, talking softly. Cam was drinking the last of the starshot colas from Phil’s black leather satchel. Luce could actually see his bloody ankle scab over and then the scab begin to flake away. He swallowed the last drop and rotated his shoulder back into its socket with a snap.

The boys looked up to see Luce standing between Annabelle and Arriane. All three of them hopped off the altar, but Cam stepped toward Luce first.

She stood very still as he approached. Her heart was beating fast.

His skin was pale, making the green of his eyes look like emeralds. There were sweat along his hairline and a small scratch near his left eye. His wing tips had stopped bleeding and had been bandaged with some kind of fancy gauze.

He smiled at her. Took her hands. His were warm and alive and there had been a moment when Luce thought she might never see him again, never see his eyes shine, never watch his golden wings unfurl, never hear the way his voice rose when he made a dark joke . . . and though she loved Daniel more than anything else, more than she ever thought possible, Luce could not bear to lose Cam. That was what had sent her bounding into the room. “Thank you,” he said.

Luce felt her lips quiver and her eyes burn. Before she knew what she was doing, she fell into Cam’s arms, felt his hands wrap around her back. When his chin rested on the top of her head, she began to weep.

He let her cry. Held her close. He whispered, “You’re so brave.”

Then Cam’s arms shifted and his chest pulled lightly away. For a second, she felt cold and exposed, but then another chest, another pair of arms replaced Cam’s. And she knew without opening her eyes that it was Daniel.

No other body in the universe fit hers so well.

“Mind if I cut in?” he asked softly.

“Daniel—” She clenched her fists and squeezed her arms around him, wanting to squeeze away the pain.

“Shhh.” He held her like that for what might have been hours, rocking her slightly, cradling her in his wings until her tears had tapered off and the weight in her heart had eased enough that she could breathe without sniffling.

“When an angel dies,” she said against his shoulder,

“does she go to Heaven?”

“No,” he said. “There is nothing for an angel after death.”

“How can that be?”

“The Throne never anticipated that any angel would rebel, much less that the fallen angel Azazel would spend centuries in a deep Greek cave over a fire, developing a weapon to kill angels.”

Her chest shuddered again. “But—”

“Shhh,” he whispered. “Grief can choke you. It’s dangerous, something else you have to beat.” She took a deep breath and pulled back, enough to see his face. Her eyes felt swollen and exhausted, and Daniel’s shirt was soaked with her tears, like she’d baptized him with her sorrow.

Beyond Daniel’s shoulder, resting on the altar where Gabbe had been bound, something silver gleamed. It was an enormous goblet, as big around as a punch bowl, but oblong in shape and made of hammered silver.

“Is that it?” Was this the relic that had cost her friends their lives?

Cam walked over to it, picked it up. “We uncovered it at the base of the Pont Saint Bénézet right