Then at last my brain found the levers, and I could move again. I ran to her, grabbed her arm and spun her around. Her eyes flared open, a moment of fear before the gasp of recognition. Then we were holding each other so hard that it hurt. We kissed and kissed and kissed.
If you’ve ever had this kind of reunion, you know the frustration and the glory. You can’t say what you’re thinking, because the words wouldn’t make sense. You can’t do what you really want to do, because there are laws and things, and the police would come, and also you’d wind up in a dozen people’s internet videos. So all the energy and surprise and sudden need went into our kiss. We had our mouths pressed so tightly we were breathing through each other. Caz was crying, ordinary tears of water and salt, not the icy flakes that had dotted her eyes the last time I saw her. I might have cried a little, too. I’m not usually the weeping kind, but it is a human body I’m wearing, you have to remember. I’m not a stone.
At last I loosened my hold on her; then, holding her lip with my teeth until the last gentle second, I ended the kiss. I looked hard, but I already knew. Even Hell couldn’t make an imitation this good, this real. “It’s really you, isn’t it? Really you this time.”
Her eyes were shiny. “I could hit you, if that would make things feel more ordinary.”
I might have been laughing, then. Might have been crying again. “I don’t have the words, baby,” I said when I could talk. “But let’s . . .”
“Oh, God, yes!” she said. “Take me somewhere. I don’t care how squalid. It can even be your apartment. Just take me somewhere and fuck me until I faint.”
Sexual need shook me like a terrier shakes a rat. I struggled for a second before I could string words together. “I have the perfect place, actually.”
“Then let’s go. Now! I only have the weekend, then I have to go back.”
“Back?”
“To Kainos. The angel told me I have to go back Sunday night. Don’t let’s waste time talking about it, Bobby!”
I steered her across the station and toward the parking lot, our steps echoing up in the high ceiling with hundreds of others. For the moment we were just two people—two people who could do what they wanted, at least for a short while. “Sunday, huh?”
I was drowning in happiness even as I realized what a perfect trap I had fallen into. I should have known Karael was too smart to make the kind of mistakes Anaita had. He had me in a way that fear could never accomplish. He was going to use Caz to keep me on a leash.
At that moment, though, I didn’t particularly care. Did. Not. Care. If I was Heaven’s dog, I was now officially the happiest dog on Earth, at least for the next forty-eight hours. I threw my arm around Caz’s shoulder and pulled her to me, smelled the back of her neck and kissed her there, smooching and sniffing and biting until she squirmed.
“This perfect place,” I said. “You’ll like it.”
“I’m sure . . . I will.” She forced herself to concentrate on walking.
“A friend helped me hang onto it, through all the shit.” I realized I could actually say it and mean it. “There was a lot of shit, as it turned out, but just enough friends.”
She wasn’t really listening. “Where’s your car? That one? Oh, Bobby, not really!”
“No remarks,” I said with what I hoped was a quiet dignity. “It runs. It will get us where we’re going.”
She turned, sweetly hiding the grin that had spread across her face. “No, really, it’s lovely, Bobby—so yellow! But where are we going?”
“I told you, it’s perfect. My friend helped me hang onto it and keep it secret, and I only just figured out why—so I’d have a place to be with you, with neither Heaven nor Hell to bother us.” I grinned. “Don’t worry, you’ll approve of the furnishings. In fact, it’s your own apartment.”
epilogue
YES, I know you’d like details, but for once you’re not going to get them. I mean, come on, don’t you have any imagination? I will tell you this much: We barely kept our clothes on long enough to get inside the apartment, and we didn’t make it as far as the bedroom. (Not until early Saturday morning, anyway.) We broke a couch, kicked over the coffee table, and pulled down a couple of very pretty silk hangings, and all that while we were just getting started.
Later, we were lying on the carpet, naked and shiny with sweat. I had an upended lamp pressing against my rib cage, which was a tiny bit uncomfortable, but I didn’t have the strength to move. Also, I had my face buried in the side of Caz’s neck, just behind her ear, so that I could feel her pulse beating against my cheek as it finally slowed to something approaching normal.
No offense to the Highest, but that is my true idea of Heaven.
“What are we going to do?” I asked when I could stop inhaling the fragrance of warm Caz long enough to form words. “What are we going to do when Sunday night comes?”
“We’re going to do what we’re told,” she said. “You’re going to put me on the train, and I’m going to magically go back to Kainos. Because then we’ll get to do this again. And again. And again.”
“But I don’t want to let you go. I want you to live here with me, not go back to some cold, empty, wild place. I don’t ever want to let go of you again.”
She was silent for a long time, but it wasn’t the dreadful kind of silence I’d been forced to endure so many times before, the silence of hopelessness. “Actually, I’ve come to like it there,” she said. “It’s quite beautiful. And there are still people. The Third Way pilgrims all survived—thanks to you and Sam and Haraheliel.”
“Don’t you dare get the kid’s name right. He’ll expect me to do it, too.” I rubbed my cheek up and down on the back of her neck. “Do you really like the place?”
“It’s quiet. Oh, Bobby, after hundreds of years in Hell, that’s such a blessing. And the weather’s real, and it changes. Changes! One day sunshine, another day rain—and the rain is actual water. Clean water!”
“Yeah, I get it. I went through a few of the rainstorms in Hell. Like an amusement park ride built around Montezuma’s Revenge.”
“But it’s not just that. The people living there have a purpose. They’re rebuilding, and when they finish with that, they’ll keep going. They’re making something new. Something no one’s ever seen before. And when I’m there, I’m part of it.”
I wondered what the pilgrims made of Caz. They couldn’t know she was a demon, could they? “So Karael’s just . . . letting Kainos be? Not interfering?” I’d filled her in on what I’d learned earlier, when we’d staggered to the kitchen at one point in search of water and food.
“I don’t know. For now, anyway.”
“Huh. Hearing you talk about it, I almost wish I could go back with you.” And thinking of her going back without me on Sunday evening made me hold her even tighter.
She laughed. “I don’t think it’s your kind of place, Bobby. Not a single poorly lit street corner or dive bar on the whole planet.”
“Hey, there’s slightly more to me than that!”
“I’m teasing.” She reached down to stroke me, to show me she was sorry. She held on and squeezed. She was clearly very sorry. “I’d be happy to be anywhere with you, my beloved angel.”
“He’s not going to let me, anyway.” I held her close, marveled at how well we fit together, like two puzzle pieces that had come off the lathe side by side but had been separated for years. “Karael doesn’t strike me as the kind of dude who does things for sentiment or even amusement. He’s kept me around for a reason.”
“I know. That scares me.”
“Why?”
“Because. Oh, let’s just not talk about it. Let’s pretend we only have this one time, this one weekend, and let’s not waste a second of it.”
Something chilled me then, and I half lifted myself off her. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
She looked at me in concern, and for a moment I thought I saw the old terror, but then her eyes widened as she understood. She smiled and I saw it was all right. “Oh! No, Bobby, I didn’t mean anything! We’ll do what we’re told, and we’ll see each other again and again. I just didn’t want to waste too much time talking. There are better ways to communicate.”