Page 99 of White Lights
“What about you? You said thebarbeloprotects first-years. Why not last-years?”
“Because we don’t need protection.”
“Why don’t you need protection?”
He swallows, opens his mouth but takes a moment before he speaks.
“Rafe?”
“Because we’re angels.”
He raises his arms to block his face just before Dez clocks him.
“Asshole,” she mutters, starting to stand up. Once more, she’s a fool for trusting him to tell her the truth. Her brother is dead, and everything’s a joke to Rafe. “I’m getting out of here.”
“I know the instinct to disbelieve is powerful,” he says quietly. “But doesn’t any part of you know it’s true?”
She stops walking and turns around.
“The first time you saw me,” he says, a strange look in his eyes, “on the Ventura pier, the day you were filmingGlimpse.”
“What?” she says—but his words jog something in her memory. She doesn’t know what he means … and then she does.
“I walked right by you while you were setting up a shot,” Rafe says. “And yousawme. You weren’t supposed to see me. I should have been invisible to you, like I was invisible to every other mortal on that pier. Like all angels are to all mortals outside of abarbelo. But you saw me. I didn’t believe it at first, but then, the night of Mo’s accident, when I found you on the road, and youspoketo me? There was no denying it.” He smiles at her, sadly. “You have the eye, Desdemona. It’s a very rare gift. It led you here.”
“Can’t all the first-years—”
“No.” He shakes his head. “None of them can see what you can see. The others—Simon, Esther, Alice—they can only perceive angels inside thebarbelo.”
“Rafe, none of this is making sense.”
“Then let’s just go back to the beginning,” he says. “That day on the pier, didn’t you know, when you looked at me, there was something about me that was different from anyone you’d ever met?”
Slowly, she nods. She’s still glaring at him, but he’s looking at her like he needs her to hear this, like he needs her, period. Slowly, she sits back down.
“Tell me the truth,” she says.
“My given name is Malach Rafael. It meansGod heals.”
She shakes her head, tears burning her eyes again. “I don’t believe you,” she whispers.
“May I show you?”
Rafe puts out his hand. She looks at him. He nods. She understands to place her hand over the top of his. He threads his fingers through hers.
A strong and sudden current courses through her, forcing Dez toshut her eyes. It starts in her hand but moves throughout her body, her neck and her feet, her elbows and her eyes.
“Oh,” she says involuntarily. It’s something like warmth, but not precisely warmth. Dez doesn’t have a name for what she feels, because it’s beyond anything she’s experienced before. Tranquility floods her, pure and transcendent. It reaches deep into her core, deeper than she even knew she went, pouring into all the broken, empty places inside. She breathes, but it’s not like normal breathing. Her chest feels open, light, her body receptive to a new sensation of wholeness that spreads all the way to her broken heart. It’s sobeautiful.
So clearly divine.
She whips her hand away.
“What the fuck was that?” she gasps.
Rafe looks down at his empty hand. “Healing.”
“Don’t heal me. My brother is dead. I’m supposed to be cut open.” Her voice hitches. “Why couldn’t you heal him?”
