Page 130 of White Lights
Out of the billions of halos, Dez calls on one.
She plummets deeper, so deep she can’t see her platform anymore. But she doesn’t lose sight of her faith.
A hundred halos gravitate to her, as if they want to be seen. Gently, she pushes all of them away. She’s looking for just one.
It comes first as a glow in her heart, telling her she’s near. Her eyes are closed when she reaches out, grasping in one focused direction. Her hand hinges on a halo. Her fingers hook around it. Yes. At the first touch, she knows it’s him. The particular heat is familiar. It feels like she’s found what she’s been seeking for longer than just this life.
She opens her eyes. Smiles at it in her hand. She endures the burning pain it causes as she uses her other hand to grip new halos, pulling herself and Asher’s halo up to her platform.
Soon, she’s climbing out of the realm beneath the Vault, sitting down breathless on the platform with Asher’s halo in her hands.
It’s like a miniature handheld Lens. She can’t control it with her mind, but her touch can navigate its contents. She’s looking for one scene. One day.
And after several moments searching, she finds it.
At first Dez almost doesn’t recognize it. It’s the same beach, same pier, same Pacific waves. But the way Asher sees Dez makes everything feel unfamiliar. Almost as if her features have been transformed, augmented under his gaze. She’s beautiful … and strange. Her smile seems ever-present, which she knows it never is. He focuses often onher hands, her lips, the freckles on her nose. She likes the way she looks, even if she’s never seen this version of herself in a mirror. The Dez Asher sees appears fresher, more magnetic and profound than the woman Dez thinks herself to be.
But is she that woman? Could she be? With him?
There are so many fresh details, things Dez didn’t catch on film and hadn’t noticed in person, because she was too busy noticing him. The way her eyes match the ocean crashing beyond the pier. Her chipped burgundy nail polish pressing the jukebox buttons in the bar. The shiver in Asher’s voice when he said, “I like everything I’ve seen about you so far, Desdemona Rae. What else you got?”
She hadn’t heard his nervousness, only the pounding of her heart.
Laughing with some guys he knew, regulars at the bar, all of them curious about the woman Asher brought in. And then the harsh lights of closing time, which meant Dez had to leave.
In the parking lot, his thumb on hers.Pulse. Pulsepulse. Pulse.
Don’t forget me.
Asher didn’t say that, but now she hears it, feels it in his thoughts.
Don’t forget this. Come back.
That’s what he meant.
The scene ends, and Dez watches it again. Again. She’s gutted by its beauty. How had she not gone back to Asher the very next day? How had weeks gone by and neither of them called? How had Dez let six months pass before she knew his side of the story?
It changes everything.
THEY’RE ALL WAITING IN MORIAH’Soffice when Dez arrives—Zarlengo, Ezekiel, Moriah, the cobra Hanachesh. Even Rafe sits on the front of Moriah’s desk, his expression inscrutable.
“Sit,” Moriah commands.
Dez lowers herself to the edge of one of the tufted green chairs. She looks at her hands, which, only a little while ago, held Asher’s halo. That scene when they met glows in her heart like a secret weapon.
They’re going to punish her, surely. They can kick her out and mess with her memory, but they can’t take away Asher’s experience of the day they met. They can’t erase the connection Dez has now seen through his eyes. So even if they do send her home, even if all this ends tonight, she can still find him. And once she does, she’ll have something to live for again.
“Start talking,” Moriah says.
Dez sets her hands over the armrest of the chair and gazes straight ahead. She considers playing dumb, but what’s the point? She knows what this meeting is about.
“You want me to say I’m sorry. I’m not sorry.”
“An inauspicious beginning,” Moriah says.
“You teach us that the Vault contains everything, but that’s a lie. You hide important moments from us. Without explanation. If we’re supposed to make sense of mortal lives, to prime them to enter the White Light, why do you censor their Lifelines?”
“Death isn’t a democracy,” Moriah says.
