I smirked at the others. “Yes, they did.”
“The trickster has changed.” Re put his serious face on. “It's been a year. They've been planning. They took Ty and are now stealing souls. Are you sure you can trust them not to attack us?”
“That might put a damper on their relationship with Ty,” I drawled.
Jesus chuckled. “The power of love, man. No one is immune.”
Right on cue, two female Angels sauntered out of the corridor dressed in bellbottom jeans and beaded tops. They grinned and finger-waved at Jesus as they passed through the living room on their way out.
“Catch you later, ladies!” Jesus called after them. Then he saw us looking at him and shrugged. “Free love.”
“They're diggin' the buff bod, huh?” I waggled my eyebrows at him.
“You know it, sister!”
Azrael cleared his throat. “Anyway, I agree with Vervain. I don't think the trickster will attack.”
“The trickster is crazy. We can't count on them to act sensibly.” Re shook his head. “Are we at least going to vote on this, La-la?”
“We will talk about it.” And then I realized that none of us had the right to make this decision. I amended my statement to: “We will talkto Trevorabout it. I think we should leave thedecision to him. Fenrir is his father, and Ty is his brother. He should decide.”
Re nodded. “That's fair.”
“Back to Heaven.” I motioned to Jesus. “Can I see the soul?”
“Sure.” Jesus spun about and headed for the front door. “Follow me. We've kept him out of general pop.”
I glanced at Az. “Did he just say, general pop?”
“Like a prison,” Re muttered.
“That's what the Greek Underworld is,” Hades said. “Good or bad, you aren't getting out without my approval.”
“Whoa, you sound like the Man,” Jesus said.
“I am the man.” Hades puffed out his chest.
I rolled my eyes. “You're both out of date.” I pointed at Jesus while I spoke to Hades, “He means 'the Man' as in the authority, and not in a complimentary way.” I looked at Jesus and pointed at Hades. “He's saying that he's awesome.”
Jesus chuckled, looked over his shoulder to respond, and careened into the wall. A flash of light blasted from him as he straightened. “Shoot!” He held his arms out to steady himself. “I'm still getting used to this body and,” he waved his arms, “my new magic.”
Viper snickered, and I shot my arm behind me to smack him while keeping my gaze on Jesus. “It must be disorienting.”
“It's the muscles.” Jesus shrugged his shoulders and motioned at himself. When he accepted his father's magic andbecame Heaven's head honcho, Jesus had taken on aspects of the Christian God, including a thickly muscled body. “Muscles are groovy, but there's so much more of me now. Sometimes I lose my balance. It's my body, but not, you dig?”
“Yeah, I do. I'm lucky I didn't have such an extreme change when I became a goddess.”
“Whoa, that's right!” He smacked me on the shoulder, making me sway, and then turned around to lead us out of his house. “I forgot you went through a change too. Far out! We've got something in common.”
“Sort of.” I glanced at Az again.
Az leaned in to whisper in my ear, “He's a little out of sorts because of the lack of souls.”
“Totally out of it,” Jesus agreed as he led us out of the main door, down a path between two high walls, and then around the Throne of God. “Things were so copacetic.” He walked over the glass panel in the floor—a window onto the Guf, and then to the edge of the holy platform. Or was it a dais? Veranda? Whatever. It was a huge pavilion of sorts. Staring across Heaven, Jesus slumped. “We were jiving. Heaven was at peace.”
I hurried past the Guf, and all the souls swimming through the mist. The Guf connected to the Void, drawing souls from it as the Norse Well of Souls did. I wondered if the stream allowed travel in both directions. Could I jump into the Guf and swim to the Void? It was an interesting question, but I didn't need to answer it. I had a much safer path to the Void—one that I could follow home.
We stepped up beside Jesus at the edge and looked across Araboth, the Seventh Heaven. An extreme number of steps led down from the holy pavilion to the golden streets below. I had walked those streets as an enemy of Heaven and as its ally. Somewhere down there, an Angel had tortured me, and I had kicked his ass with a teacup. I had to do it. I promised him I would when he began the torture. But then Azrael had come to my rescue. Wait, no. Az had come and released me, then I sliced up the Angel with a teacup. Oh, what a life I've lived.
