Raoul swiped off his hat and threw it on the ground. “You owe me.”
“Absolutely. We both wil .”
He glared at Vayl, like he’d had something to do with my uppity attitude. “Guard us.” The request struck me as weird, until he grabbed my arm and wrapped the fingers of his free hand around the back of Cole’s neck. “Oh,” I whispered, dizzy with the rush of separation as he swept me out of my body.
CHAPTER SIX
I immediately relaxed. Never had I broken from my physical self so wilingly, even though I knew the return trip would feel like a fal into thorn-covered bushes inhabited by army ants and kil er bees.
I flew up and up, the rush of flight so extreme I nearly forgot why I’d forced Raoul to yank me off this edge to begin with. He obviously hadn’t, his spirit form even more forbidding than his physical one as he pul ed Cole and me toward a distant star.
I looked back, reassuring myself that, yes, the golden cords that signified every relationship binding me to life stil stretched from the world to my spirit. Dave was safe, wherever he wandered.
Albert, too, along with Evie and baby E.J. I savored every connection, but most especial y Vayl’s, because it meant he hadn’t given up everything, or maybe that he’d earned something back, by creating a relationship with me.
I couldn’t see Cole’s cords, which wouldn’t have been alarming, except that he seemed to show no interest in them either. “Raoul? Has he lost everything?” I asked, motioning to my own lifelines.
“They’re fading,” Raoul said shortly. When I realized he was done talking, I slipped my hand into Cole’s, such as they were, and whispered, “I’m here.”
He didn’t look at me. Only nodded and kept his eyes glued to that star, which was growing brighter as we approached it. Soon we could see it was a plane portal, similar in shape to the ones that seemed to appear near me wherever I went. But instead of being wreathed in flames and black at the center, this one shone with light so bril iant that human eyes would’ve been blinded by it.
Raoul began to chant as we jetted toward the light. Everything in me said to turn away before my brain fried, but the light had begun to
We burst through the doorway accompanied by a chorus of voices so utterly beautiful that tears would’ve streamed from my eyes if I’d had them. Cole and I looked at each other. And smiled. How could we not? We stood in a meadow of wildflowers beside a stream so clear we could see the fishes’ shadows. Music stil echoed in our ears and now we knew the source—it was the combined orchestra of al the cords that touched our souls to those of the people we loved.
Raoul said, “Cole Levon Bemont, hear me and know the truth of my words. Your futures lie before you.” He picked a ripened dandelion and blew the white seeds into the air. Suddenly we saw Cole in twenty different places. But al of them shared one common denominator. A flame-swept sky covering a landscape of mutilated creatures who’d once been human.
Cole staggered backward, shaking his head. “No. No. There has to be another way.” Raoul came to me and whispered in my ear. I jerked my head away from his. “Are you serious?”
“You asked for this,” he said.
I hesitated, watching the man who had taken beating after beating for me, who’d fol owed me into this career after his business had been burned to the ground because of me, fal to his knees as his eyes darted from one hel - scene to the next, searching, searching, and always finding the demon he would become marching among the forsaken, a blood-drenched whip clutched in his hand. And I did as Raoul asked.
I strode to the newest golden cord to be added to my col ection. It was only four months old, but its beauty outshone that of the others in this place like a rose among the clover. I strummed E.J.’s cord, playing the song my niece had begun to sing for me, and with me, since the moment she was born. I’d heard it before, when I battled a demon cal ed the Magistrate. Then it had sounded out pure and fine as a fresh snowfal . Now, in this place of wonder, her song had changed. Become ful of interesting harmonies interspersed with drumbeats so intense I half expected an army to take the field. Instead the cord began to vibrate against my non-hand so painful y that I backed away.
“Raoul?”
“Behold,” Raoul said to Cole.
He turned away from the nightmare spread out before him just as the cord seemed to separate and rebraid itself into a new shape, that of a woman whose dark brown hair swept in ringlets down her back. When she looked up, as if in amazement that a sky so blue could exist anywhere in the universe, the sun glinted off her red highlights.
“I’ve never seen eyes so green,” Cole whispered. His hands had dropped, palms up, into his lap, as if he were a beggar pleading for her mercy. “What’s her name?” Raoul looked at me. “Her name is Ezri…”
I finished it for him. “Ezri Jasmine. E.J. for short. She’s my niece in, what, twenty years?”
“Twenty-three,” Raoul told me.
Cole didn’t seem to have heard. His jaw had dropped slightly, as if he’d been hit by an armored truck. He whispered, “She’s an angel.”
“You could say that,” Raoul agreed.
I riveted my eyes to his. But he avoided my gaze. Suddenly random events in my life clicked together in new ways. I understood why the Magistrate had gone after E.J. during that battle back in Tehran. Why the part of her that connected to the cosmos was able to resist his attack so wel for so long. And maybe even why her father did his best to avoid me during those rare times that Evie blackmailed me into attending a family event.
Cole stretched out his hand as if he wanted to touch her but knew the museum guards would kick his ass if they saw him defiling the fine art. He said, “Ezri? She’s—”
