Page 160 of White Lights
A single tear falls on Asher’s chest. She puts her hand over it, over his heart.
A gust of wind whips Dez’s hair into her face. A sound carries on the gale. A sound like laughter. Laughter she recognizes.
Rafe.
She looks up into the sky as what feels like a cloud passes over the sun. But it’s not a cloud.
Rafe’s enormous golden wings fill the sky as he descends through a swath of fog and lands on the path in front of her. Around him, in the brush, bushes combust into spontaneous fire, forming a circle of flames around Rafe, Asher, and Dez.
“Sorry, I’m late,” Rafe says. “I was finishing up a project back at school.”
Dez could scream at him, could charge and try to fight, but it’s clear that she has only seconds left before Asher is taken from her forever.
“He seems like he’s in bad shape,” Rafe says, and even through his sarcasm, Dez hears his jealousy.
“Heal him,” Dez says, meeting her mentor’s eyes as the fire blazes around them. “I know you have an antidote.”
“It’s too late for that. Check his pulse.”
“No.”Dez puts her fingers to Asher’s throat, lays her head on Asher’s breast. She listens. But even as she waits, holding out hope, she knows. His body feels different, cooler and stiffer than it did only a moment before.
A sob freezes in Dez’s chest. If she lets it out, this will be real.
When a human body dies,Moriah told them the night of the gala,the process mimics sleep: the muscles of the mind slacken, the blood cools.
The mind becomes more focused than it’s been since the moment of birth. This makes the dying an ideal audience, open and receptive …
No. Not yet. This can’t be happening.
“I do happen to have Asher’s film with me,” Rafe says, holding open his trench coat, revealing rows of smoke-filled syringes.
“Youcorruptedhis film,” Dez says with hatred. “I felt you doing it even before the rattlesnake.”
“Nevertheless,” Rafe says, “itwillbring him the peace he needs to enter the White Light. You want peace for him, don’t you, Dez?”
Dez bites her lip until it bleeds, and when it does, the deep, searing sting she feels reminds her of the poison she brought into her mouthwhen she tried to suck it out of Asher. Fear takes hold of her. For herself, but mostly for Asher.
“What happens if he doesn’t get a Life Review?” she asks.
“He becomes a frag.”
Dez squeezes her eyes shut. Unimaginable. “Give him his film.”
“On one condition.”
Dez lifts her head off Asher’s chest to look into Rafe’s azure eyes.
“Kiss me first,” he says.
Her hands tighten around Asher. “No way in hell.”
Rafe lifts a shoulder, smirking. “Your choice. You know, if you ever want to see Asher, you can always come visit him in the river behind Villains. I’ll give him very special treatment.”
“Wait,” Dez says desperately, letting go of Asher. “I’ll do it.”
As she rises to her feet, her balance teeters, and her vision swims with stars. Rafe has to catch her arm to steady her.
He studies her. “You didn’t do something stupid like suck the poison out of your boyfriend’s ankle, did you?”
