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“I was taken… I had no choice,” I explained. Words failed me in front of this being. I felt like my tongue was too big for my body. Rational thought seemed impossible.
“What do you desire?” it asked.
“To go home,” I said, staring at the gates.
“That is your goal, but it is not what you want,” it said. The final word of its sentence rattled around in my head.
“I—I… I don’t belong here,” I said weakly.
The angel lifted one of its giant hands, then touched the tip of one finger to my forehead. In an instant, my nausea and headache were gone. I closed my eyes and gasped as visions flooded through me. I saw myself at the diner, my ponytail frizzy with bags under my eyes. I saw Beck playing video games on our couch. I saw us fighting as if I were a third party. I watched my face and my body language, how tired I seemed as I pleaded with him to change. I watched as I looked into a bathroom mirror, and I saw Gabe hovering behind me. His face was locked on my reflection, his mouth slightly parted. His expression was so different from the man who supposedly loved me.
I gasped and clutched my temples as the vision changed, plummeting me into Hell. I saw Gabe’s regret and panic as he saw me on the shore. I saw Lysandra towering over him, using her lacquered nails to trace the skeletal forms on his face and drawing blood. I saw him stripped of most of his clothes and given a collar around his own neck. I saw a vineyard full of skeletal vines and engorged fruit. Gabe was working the rotten earth. He looked exhausted. This was his new reality already.
“What do you desire?” the being repeated as the visions blessedly stopped. I opened my eyes to find that I had fallen to my knees.
“To help him,” I said. “I have to save him. How do I save him?”
“I can only tell you things that have already come to pass,” it said simply. “But know that you are not the only one who desires a chance to save him. You are not the only one who desires to destroy Lysandra. The balance needs to be restored on this plane and the next.”
Without warning, the seraph burst into a ball of light and then disappeared. I screamed and shielded my eyes, falling fully back onto the earth. I scrambled backward, stunned and nervous, as the golden gates began to open. Light blinded me once more, but then a figure emerged from the all-encompassing brightness.
It was a woman.
“Hello,” she said softly, and then her face broke into a smile. It was the most beatific, motherly smile I’d ever seen in all of my life. She looked like the paintings of the Virgin Mary—sad and awestruck and beautiful.
And she was beautiful, even though it wasn’t like she was a knockout. She was classically pretty, with a round, sweet face and big eyes. Her hair was black with a few silver streaks in it, and it had been pulled back in an elegant bun at the nape of her neck. She had on a simple light blue dress—it might have even been chambray or denim—and she had a white apron tied around her waist.
She held her arms out to me.
“I think…” she said softly. “I think I can help you save my son.”
19
MARNIE
“I—I’ve heard so much about you,” I said. I couldn’t stop staring at her. “Gabe said… He said you were the best person…”
She smiled as I stood up slowly, still staring. Her arms were still outstretched, and for some reason, I let her hug me. I mean, I wasn’t much of a hugger, but something about this woman radiated comfort. She was just like Gabe. She felt like home.
“Walk with me,” she said, letting me go and offering her arm. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
“Thank you—” I paused, realizing I didn’t know her name. I was sure I’d read it in an article, but it was escaping me.
“Maria,” she said with a small smile. “And I’m not the best person. That title goes to my boy.”
“How can we help him?” I asked. I clung to her arm as we walked through the sea of white. There was no ground, no sky, nothing but endless white.
“The Guardian was right. There is more than just your story at play here. All of Heaven, all of Hell… The balance is upset. You shouldn’t be here, but one single living soul isn’t the catalyst for—” She sighed as she searched for the word. “This.”
She stopped suddenly, then pressed against the wall of white. A rectangle appeared—a doorway. We stepped through into a nondescript waiting room, like something you might see at an eighties doctor’s office. Muzak piped through the speakers, and a fish tank even bubbled in the corner.
“Where are we?” I asked, looking around in confusion.
Maria shrugged. “Wherever we need to be. I’ve asked the Guardian to call forth the Order. The Order has apparently chosen this as their meeting place.”
“The Order?” I said nervously. “I—I keep hearing about these guys. Are they good? Bad?”
Maria patted my arm. “They are what they need to be.”
