Another thought struck me as I approached the museum. Why tell me to take the Camino Real unless he knew exactly where I was driving from in the first place? If I was hiding out in the hills or down by the Bayshore, the Camino would be a pointless detour. But that meant he didn’t know only about my new phone but also suggested he knew where I was staying, and I had made sure none of my associates ever, ever talked about Caz’s apartment on the phone. Even the Amazons had known and respected that rule.
For a moment real fear rose up inside me. I almost pulled over to the curb, ditched the cab, and made a run for it, but a moment’s consideration showed me that even if he knew a lot more about my life than he was letting on, Temuel certainly wasn’t trying to keep it secret from me, or he would have kept his mouth shut about the Camino Real. No, something else was going on. In fact, it almost seemed like he was trying to tell me something, give me a warning. But why not just wait and do it in person, since he was meeting me anyway? Would it actually be Temuel waiting to meet me, or had someone else made him call?
Thinking about Heaven and its ways really made my head hurt sometimes.
The Museum of Industry is a crazy place that used to be a rich family’s mansion in the Belmont neighborhood of North Jude. The centerpiece is an odd fountain made of the plumbing from an old building that once stood on the property, but minus the building itself; a phantom edifice of pipes that sprinkled water from every joint during the warm months.
I could see a figure I was pretty sure was Temuel as I walked onto the museum plaza, a small figure huddled by itself on the bench. That made me feel better. The sun had given up an hour ago and sloped off behind some clouds, leaving a cold, gray afternoon. Nobody else was in the area except a couple of women in business clothes just departing on the opposite side.
I waited another minute, watching from the shadows of one of the museum’s wings, but Temuel only sat. He didn’t talk on the phone. He didn’t look around. (“He” is perhaps a little misleading, because this time, he was a she: Temuel appeared to be wearing the older-Hispanic-woman body I’d seen once before. The archangel liked disguising himself, but this time he hadn’t bothered to fashion a new one.)
At last I took a deep, calming breath and started across the open plaza. Temuel looked up as I approached. It was indeed the same body he’d worn once before, the one Young Elvis had so charmingly referred to as a “cleaning lady.”
“Doloriel,” he said as I got near. “I’m glad you made it.”
For some reason, this plunged me right back into paranoia again. Because we’d met several times outside of Heaven, and during all those visits Temuel had never, never, never called me by my angel name—only “Bobby.” I slid my hand into my pocket, so I could feel my gun.
He gave me a look of mild disappointment. “Don’t do that, please. It’s not going to help anything. Look, I’m putting my hands up.” And he did, lifting them slowly into the air, those brown, hard-callused, working woman’s hands. Then he slowly dropped them again, but this time they left trails of burning fire down the air.
Two angels stepped out of the Zipper on one side of him. Three more stepped out of the Zipper on the other. All five had the cold, serious look of Counterstrike veterans, and all of them were pointing serious-looking weapons right at me. They had been there all along. Temuel must have hidden them Outside before I arrived.
“Please, don’t do anything foolish, Advocate Angel Doloriel,” my boss said. “Just let them do what they have to do.”
I could barely talk, I was so angry, so miserable. “And what if I don’t?”
“Then they’ll shoot your body to pieces, I expect—but your soul will still be going with them.” He gave me a look that I could not read for the life of me, flat and emotionless. “Please, don’t, Doloriel. It’s a waste of materials, and you know our department is always up against budget constraints.”
Before I could think of any reply to this amazing statement, someone grabbed my arms from behind and someone else stuck something sharp into my neck. I had time to open my mouth, the words “Fuck you!” forming on my lips, but I never got to say it before nothingness came and swallowed me.
thirty-four:
deep inside it
SHE WAS sitting beneath a tree in a patch of filtered sun, the gold of her hair so pale it looked almost . . . almost . . .
I felt like I might cry. “You’re so beautiful. Oh, God, you’re so lovely, Caz.”
“Trite,” she said.
I laughed and dropped onto the ground beside her, leaves and fallen evergreen needles crunching beneath me. I kissed her cheek, then down to her neck and the curve where neck met shoulder in an expanse of smooth skin.
“Don’t bite!”
“Sorry.” There was indeed a small drop of blood where I had been too fierce, too careless, a glitter of red. “I got carried away.”
“You’re so right.” She pushed me back.
I didn’t understand why she was upset with me—it was just a little blood. “Come on, don’t take it that way. Come back.”
“Forget it. You’re tight.” And suddenly she was walking up the slope, leaning forward a little to keep her balance. The sun falling on the hill above her seemed too strong, too powerful. It wasn’t the sun at all, it was something else, something blinding.
“Caz? I haven’t had a single drink all day. Come back. Don’t be silly.”
“I don’t want to fight,” she called.
I got to my feet and scrambled up the slope after her, but already I was having trouble seeing where she’d gone. A mist rolled slowly downhill toward me, a great, ground-hugging cloud.
“Caz?”
“Something’s wrong with my sight!” Her voice rolled down the hillside, this time with a note of terror in it, but I couldn’t tell the direction.
I was stumbling over stones that blended into the gathering fog. I fell and got up. “Caz? Caz, where are you?”
Her voice was fainter now. “I think it’s turning to night.”
But it wasn’t getting darker at all. Rather, the mist was rising up all around, stretching itself like an animal just awakened from hibernation. I was lost in a sea of cottony nothingness. “Caz?”
“Bobby, I’m getting really fright—!” Something cut her off in mid-cry. I shouted her name again, but no reply came. I charged uphill, but something went wrong, and I was staggering downhill instead, far too fast. I swung my arms to keep my balance, but I was out of control. It was no longer just mist that surrounded me, it was something colder. Snow. Flurrying, whirling, making everything the same, turning everything . . .
Where was she? Had the Frost King come to take her back? Or had that only been a story?
And all around me, silence. All around me, nothing but . . .
White and more white.
“Where did you go?”
Nothing but white.
“Caz!”
Just white.
“Caz, come back!”
White.
• • •
It was like rising slowly through milk, or from the center of a pearl toward its outer edge. For a long time I didn’t even realize I was awake, because the difference between the white dream and a real dream was so small. It was only when I realized I was thinking the same kinds of thoughts over and over that I finally knew I was actually conscious.
Still, it wasn’t exactly the kind of consciousness you could stake a claim to, or build a house on. Nothing that satisfying. More like being an iceberg in a sea of other icebergs, the slow bumping of thought on thought, the unending and unchanging surroundings. I wanted to be alive again, to do things, to be something, but instead I could only float.