Reaching out, he brushed her cheek—

Marisol jerked her head up and looked directly at his ethereal self. But then she shook her head as if to clear it and refocused on those parts of him that were in the hospital bed.

“I would have come right away.”

How did he get back in there, he thought. His body was like a house he was locked out of, and no matter how much he wanted in, he couldn’t get through the door.

“I have missed you so much.” She leaned forward and snapped a tissue free from a box, pressing it against her own cheeks. “I have been down there in Miami, staring at the bay at night…wishing you were with me. I didn’t expect you in my life. I never expected…you.”

Marisol, he moaned.

“I should have told you before now, I should have said something…but I was afraid to. I’ve never…” She cleared her throat. “I never thought I would feel like I do…it just wasn’t supposed to be this way for me.”

As her thumb rubbed slowly back and forth on his hand, the stroking resonated through him and he tried to feel every nuance, and use the sensations as an entry point.

“People like you and me, we don’t have happy endings with picket fences and dogs and kids.” She breathed in deep. “That is never the future for us. Still, if it had been just me, I maybe could have stayed after Benloise was killed. I might have been able to—but my grandmother must come first. I can’t risk myself because without me, she has nothing—and I have to take care of her.”

I understand, he said to her. But she was always welcome to be with us. I would never have asked you to choose, and I would have taken care of you both.

“You took off before I could say goodbye to you. That night she and I left, I looked for you in the house, but you…you’d left.”

Untrue. He had hidden in the shadows behind his house and witnessed her departure in private. He had not trusted himself not to beg, and even though it had been agony, he respected that she had her own course to choose and steer.

But it had destroyed a part of him to see her go.

As she continued to murmur to him, and tell him about her condo down in Miami, and her grandmother, and the Catholic church they attended, he kept trying to will himself back into that body of his…to animate that flesh…to gain access once again. Pushing, pushing, pushing, he sought to regain entrance into that form that had clothed his soul.

He had never understood that there were two parts to the living.

And only one part to the dead.

He did the now.

Yet the harder he tried, the angrier he became, and that seemed to work against his efforts. With his temper rising, he could feel less of Marisol’s touch, smell less of her scent, hear less of her voice.

“…prayed for us.” Marisol smiled sadly. “Can you believe that? My grandmother, she prayed to God that we would be reunited, and then your cousins came to me.”

Bracing himself, Assail marshaled every resource he had, his vantage point shifting until he was face-to-face with himself, his closed eyes and shaved scalp and pale complexion horrible reminders that any physical attractiveness he might have had was now gone.

Now! he ordered himself. I must return now!

But there was too much resistance. It was as if a force field surrounded his flesh, and the harder he pushed against it, the stronger it became. There was pain, too, as he threw himself metaphysically at the barrier over and over again, an electrical shock as if the effort were causing static friction.

Eventually, he lost the energy to keep going and drifted back.

This is not to be, he realized. This is not—

“So I should have told you this before,” she whispered. “But…I was afraid. I didn’t trust you, I didn’t trust myself…sometimes I wonder how much of my leaving Caldwell was really about you…”

What, he asked. What are you to tell me?

“I love you, Assail. I love you with all that I am and all I will ever be, and if you die tonight or tomorrow or the night after, I just want you to know that you will always be with me. Right…here.”

And then it happened.

As she touched her heart, a marvelous peace overcame him, and instead of fighting his way back into his earthly home, he moved as a light breeze into the spaces between his cells, filling up that which had been emptied, enlivening that which had been on the verge of demise…

* * *

—

The croaking sound was so soft, Sola wasn’t sure she had heard anything—or maybe she had made the sound? There was so much pressure in her chest and constriction in her throat that her every inhale and exhale was an effort.

“I love you,” she said again—because as sad as this situation was, it felt good to let the secret she’d kept out—

Click—cough.

Sola recoiled. “Assail?”

Those eyes of his were open once again, the red and black depths at once scaring and reassuring her.

“Are you back?” she said, leaning up to him.

She brushed her free hand over his forehead, as if his once thick and beautiful black hair still existed. “Hi.”

Her voice was wavering and her body was shaking, but she didn’t care. He was with her for this split second—and she knew without medical advice that this could be over at any moment.

“I’m right here.”

Click…click…

He was trying to communicate, his tongue moving in his dry mouth.

“Shh.” She smiled at him—in what she hoped was a halfway normal fashion. In reality, she was bracing herself for another seizure, and a rush of medical people coming into the room, and a horrific sorrow that it was all over.

“No, don’t try to talk. There’ll be time for that. You have all the time in the world.”

As she spoke the lie, it was for the both of them. Otherwise, she would be bursting into tears—

His hand jerked in hers, and she squeezed it harder. “I’m right here.”

She stroked his face. Pressed her lips to his forehead. Smoothed his brows.

“Stay with me,” she said tightly. “Please don’t leave me…”

Assail started shaking his head, yet his eyes were sticking with her and no alarms were going off—so it was not a seizure. No, he was communicating with her, she realized.

“You’re going to stay?” she whispered.

When he nodded, she started to cry, her tears falling on his cheeks. “Good. That’s good…” Sola smiled. “I’ve missed you.”

Staring into his face, it didn’t matter that he’d lost his hair, or that his eyes weren’t right. It didn’t matter that he was in a hospital bed and his body had shrunk to half its size.

Love transformed him back into the man she knew.

To her, he was beautiful no matter what he looked like.

SIXTEEN

“It is not for me to say.”

As Lassiter let that no-comment fly, Vishous considered the merits of pulling a haymaker on the fallen angel in front of everyone and their uncle.

On the fuck-yes side: The Audience House’s dining room was definitely big enough for V to get a good running start at it; Lassiter more than deserved a punter for lesser infractions ranging from hogging the remote to those zebra-print, David Lee Roth–from-1985-wants-his-pants-back leggings; and, as V was the son of a deity, there was a chance that he would survive the retaliation that would inevitably come to him.

Not-so-hot-idea side: Wrath was probably not going to appreciate this meeting devolving into a cage match; Lassiter had tricks up his sleeve that would hurt like a motherfucker; and it wasn’t going to get that angel’s mouth flapping.

If he didn’t want to say shit about those shadows, nothing was going to open that piehole of his.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” V demanded around the wad of Nicorette in his mouth. “Do you know what the fuck they are or not?”

As the Brotherhood and the Bastards went Wimbledon on the situation, all heads swinging back to Lassiter as if they were waiting for a line-drive response to that lob, Vishous looked over at Wrath. The King’s brows were down behind those black wraparounds, his massive body overflowing that armchair like he was an adult in an infant’s car seat.