She knelt on the cold, bare earth of a fresh grave. He took a position out of sight, his footfalls silent. She unwrapped the scarf from her face; it trailed on the ground, too long for her. She reached into the pocket of her baggy black coat and took out a black candle in a glass holder painted with an icon of the Judge. Asher suppressed a smile. If the ritual would comfort her, who was he to mock her?
She set the candle in front of the headstone and lit it with a wooden match. Asher bowed his head, expecting her to pray.
But she didn’t. When he opened his eyes, she was taking something else from her pocket—a bottle of whiskey. She uncapped it, drank deeply, then set it down next to the candle, wiping her mouth with the back of her gloved hand. She took a folded letter from her other pocket and kissed it, holding it against her lips for a long time. Then she soaked it with whiskey, spilling some on her coat in the process. She was shaking, he realized, shaking and silently crying.
She lit the letter on the candle’s flame and dropped it on the ground. Watching it burn, she did pray, her hands clasped like a child’s under her chin. Asher was touched; he whispered his own prayer on her behalf. Grant her comfort, he prayed. Show her the way. As Your seraph, I ask it.
When the letter was consumed, she blew out the candle and stood up. She stamped out the last glowing ember of her little burnt offering and wrapped the scarf around her face again—it was snowing harder now. She tucked the candle and the bottle back into her pockets and started back down the path toward the gate.
Asher turned away, sad for her but satisfied he had seen and done enough. He did feel for her, poor creature. Her grief and her faith had touched him deeply. Then a snippet of song came back to him on the wind. She was singing under her breath, her voice too soft for any other mortal to have heard her, almost tuneless, but ragged and sweet.
“…can my baby be? The Lord took him away from me…”
He turned back toward the path, but she was gone.
He stretched out his hand toward the headstone, summoning the scattered ashes of the letter. They rushed back to him, their nature changing as if time were running backward, drawing back together and turning from black to white, every stroke of the closely-written text intact.
“That’s a good trick, brother.” A bearded man in paint-spattered clothes was standing on the other side of the gate, smoking a cigarette. “But I think that letter is mine.”
“You shouldn’t be here.” The man could see him because they were on the same plane—the crossroads between worlds. Asher looked down at the headstone. “I’m guessing this must be you.”
“The late, great Jacob Marlowe,” he said. “Jake to my friends.” He reached through the gate. “Now how about you hand me my letter, Gabriel?”
“It’s Asher.” Most souls of the mortal dead passed on to their afterlife or next mortal life without ever stopping at the crossroads. Very few souls were contested, and most were ready to move on. If Jake was lingering here, he must believe he had unfinished business. “Trust me, whatever it says, you don’t want this,” he said. “You’re headed to a good place, or you wouldn’t see me now. Whoever she is, she’ll be fine.”
“You don’t know that.” He grabbed the bars of the gate and flinched with pain as the hands of his spirit form smoked. “Angel—Asher. Give me my goddamned letter.”
Thunder rumbled from the snowy sky. “Bad choice of words,” Asher said, going to the gate. “This won’t help. It will only make things harder.”
“Things can’t be any harder.”
“Promise me you’ll move on after you read it.”
“I’m not promising you shit.” He held out his hand again, the palm now branded from the gate. Asher handed him the letter.
Watching him read it was surprisingly hard. Asher had made a two-hundred-thousand-year-old habit of staying out of human business. He watched, but he didn’t let himself care. He wasn’t a guardian. He protected souls in transit from one world to the next; he didn’t need to help their bodies cross the street. But the woman’s grief had touched him, and seeing the pain of the man she had lost was worse. What am I doing here, Boss? he silently prayed. This is not my area.
Jake looked up from the letter with tears on his face. “I’ve got to go back.”
“It’s not possible.”
“Just for one day—one night—an hour!”
“Jake, I’m sorry. It can’t be done.” A possibility he had never once in all his endless life considered sneaked into his head, but he pushed it out. “Once a mortal is on that side of the gate with no connection to a living body, it’s over. There’s no going back.”
“You don’t understand,” Jake said. “She needs me.”
“Every bone in this field was important to somebody once,” Asher said. “All their hearts were broken. But they healed.”
“She won’t,” Jake said. “Not if I don’t talk to her. Not if I never have a chance to explain.” He held out the letter. “Read this.”
“No.”
“You put it back together for a reason,” he said. “So read it.”
Dear Jake,
Your sister is worried about me. That’s really sweet of her, considering. That was the thing we didn’t think about when we were deciding not to tell anybody you were sick until we absolutely had no choice. We never thought about how all the people who love you would feel about me after it was over. After you were gone. Dead. After you, Jake, my husband, were dead and gone and buried, and I, your wife, the one who helped you keep your secret, would be by myself with everybody hating me.