Asher was frowning; his eyes were closed. She could see the strain in him, see how much this effort was costing him. She reached up with a hand that now followed her commands and touched his cheek.
He looked down at her and smiled, all his power focused on her torn and broken brain. In his mind, he could see each precious cell as it healed. The optic nerve knitted itself back together. The doctors would call it a miracle and doubt the tests that had told them it was severed. He left the skull still broken for their sakes, as much as he hated leaving her in pain. But she would live now. She would be herself.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He kissed her tenderly. “Go to sleep.”
He stayed invisible as he walked down the hall past the excited nurse who was trying to make the doctor believe what she had seen. She was literally dragging him back to Kelsey’s room. He passed by Jason who was sitting in a chair in the waiting room with his face in his hands, softly weeping. Still invisible, the angel gave his shoulder a squeeze as he passed. Jason looked up, looking around, a hopeful smile on his face.
Alone in the elevator, he took on a human shape. Walking through the emergency room, he looked just like everyone else, another weary human headed home. He walked out through the ambulance bay, smiling at an old woman sitting in a wheelchair waiting for her ride.
A dog was sitting on the sidewalk on his haunches as if he were waiting for him. “Oh no,” Asher said, walking over to him. “They sent you back, too?” It was the hellhound Kelsey had let out of the dark lands, painfully thin but whole and alive. “She’s fine,” he promised, scratching him between the ears. “She’s going to be fine.”
The Opening
Kelsey stood in the cemetery at sunset with a bunch of summer flowers in her hand. Jake’s tiny brass marker had been replaced with a respectable black granite headstone, and his grave was completely covered over with lush green grass. She laid the flowers against the stone then kissed her fingertips and pressed them to his name. “I love you, baby,” she said softly. “Wish me luck.”
She straightened up, half-expecting to see a figure standing in the shadows of the willow tree, veiled in green this time instead of ice. But, of course, no one was there.
“Kelsey,” Jason called from the open gate. “Come on, sweetie. We’ll be late.”
“Coming right now.” She trailed a freshly-manicured hand over the top of the stone one last time, smiling through tears as she left.
Asher watched the sunset through the window of a hotel room in Buenos Aires. He was holding a postcard with an image of Kelsey and Jake’s painting, an image of Kelsey and Asher himself. “The Guardian Approaches,” the postcard called it, advertising a gallery in Kelsey’s city half a world away and an opening tonight for a new exhibit: Corpus Delecti: The Works of Jacob and Kelsey Marlowe.
He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number of his own apartment. “Hello?” Marilyn’s voice asked, bright but impersonal.
“Hey, Marilyn,” he said. “It’s me.”
Her tone warmed immediately. “Boss!” He smiled. “How are you?”
Over the past year and a half, Marilyn had healed from her years of possession. Healthy in body if not always in spirit, she lived in his old apartment now and spent hours every day on the computer and the phone, tracking down people who needed a half-fallen angel. “I’m good,” he said. “I got the postcard.”
“Ah, okay,” she said. “Was I wrong to send it?”
“No.” He hadn’t seen Kelsey since he had left her at the hospital. “I’m glad you did.”
“So, are you going?” There was a pregnant pause while she waited for him to answer. “You know you want to go.”
He looked at the image of the painting, remembering the fear in Kelsey’s eyes when he’d shown her what he was. Was she afraid of him now? “I don’t want to scare her,” he said. “I want her to get better.”
“She is better,” Marilyn said. Against his specific instructions, his assistant just happened to walk by Kelsey’s apartment building every once in a while, just to “look around,” as she called it. “If she weren’t, she wouldn’t be painting.”
“She doesn’t need me.”
“Oh, I doubt that.” Another pause. “Maybe you need her.”
He put the postcard in his pocket. “Thanks, Marilyn,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Excellent,” she said. “I’ll bring doughnuts.”
She hung up, and he smiled. The dog was looking up at him expectantly. “Fancy a flight?” he said. “It’s going to be cold as hell, you know.”
The dog wagged his tail, jumping up to paw at the angel’s chest. “Yeah, yeah,” Asher said. “I kind of miss her, too.”
The narrow gallery was packed with more people spilling into the street. No one seemed to want to leave. Jake’s mother and sister had been there earlier, but they had already gone back to the apartment. The sight of Jake’s canvases had been exhausting for them both. Half the canvases were already marked as sold, and people Kelsey hadn’t seen for years kept coming up to hug her, to express their condolences on Jake’s death, to compliment the paintings and congratulate her on “finally finding her voice.” Everyone’s eyes eventually strayed to the spider-shaped scar over her temple, but so far, no one had asked.
She turned around in the midst of the crowd, looking for Jason, and found herself face to face with Sylvia and Nate. “Oh my God,” she said, hugging them both. “Thank you so much for coming.”