Dez turns urgently to Rafe. “Something’s wrong.”
“Give it time,” Rafe says, but his cheeks are so flushed, Dez can see something’s worrying him, too.
Dez panics. What’s happening is cruel and wrong. And she’s about to lose her closest friend. She shoves past the others, sickened to see that some of them are kissing, groping each other with a strange abandon that makes it seem like they’re under a spell. She pushes between two angels who struggle to separate because one has his hand down the other’s pants.
Are theygetting offon Simon’s incineration?
Everyone around her seems aroused beyond all reason. When she looks at Rafe, she realizes the flush in his cheeks isn’t fear.
Ascension turns the angels on.
And then, Dez thinks she understands. For months now, Rafe’s been telling her—promising her—that once she ascends, he can finally fuck her. She’ll be able to withstand his glory. Is it the same for Simon? After this, could he sleep with the other angels in this room?
Even though he’s committed to Esther. Even though angel sex probably won’t happen for him, at least not until Esther ascends. He would, at least, survive it.
And the angels’ bodies in this room know this. They want him. All of them. So badly the room’s become an orgy made of fire.
Dez reaches the doors of the crematorium. From within comes a strangled, gasping sound that stops Dez in her tracks. The sound of something being finished. Is Dez already too late?
All at once the roar of the fire silences, leaving a ringing in Dez’s ears. The doors swing open, and Simon and Jet stumble out, looking dazed.
Dez gasps as she notices Simon’swings. No, the wings themselves are invisible, but behind both Jet and Simon the outline of towering, majestic,angelwings are visible through the thin layer of ash coating their surface. Despite everything, Dez can’t help but stare at them in wonder.
Moriah steps forward, whispers something to Jet, and hands him a small box. Jet turns to face Simon, tenderly brushing the ash off Simon’s shoulders.
Rafe slips an arm around Dez’s waist and holds her to him. “I think you’ll like this part.”
Now Jet hands Simon the box. With shaking hands, her roommate opens it, pulls out a large, bright golden ring.
“Is that—”
“Simon’s halo,” Rafe whispers. “Mortality is finished for him,extra questionum. So we have other uses for it.”
“It’s hot,” Simon says with pleasure.
In his hands, the halo shimmers. Briefly, Dez catches a glimpse of a scene inside it: Simon on horseback, riding across an open plain. Now the halo dips and bends, almost dissolving as it settles into something soft and pliant.
A golden scarf.
“He’ll wear it now,” Rafe explains, “in memoriam of who he was before.”
As Jet places the scarf over Simon’s shoulders, somebody pops a bottle of champagne. Flutes are filled and passed around. Rafe hands Dez a glass, and she toasts, a little numbly, to her friend’s ascension. She drinks with everyone else, but she’s watching Simon and his mentor leaning in for a strangely intimate embrace.
After the celebration, Dez finds Simon in their suite playing a strenuous song on the violin. Listening to his rapid scales and pizzicatos, watching his bow blur like a hummingbird, he looks possessed.
“Paganini’s Caprice Twenty-Four,” Yael tells Dez from her place on the couch. “Famously the most difficult violin piece ever composed.”
Dez kicks off her shoes and flops next to Yael. A fire roars in the hearth as if it’s an ordinary night for three ordinary grad students. It’s not. Dez is still shaking from the ascension ceremony, even though Simon’s golden scarf and increased musical proficiency are the only signs anything has changed.
“So, you’re a virtuoso now?” Dez asks, watching Simon break a sweat as he plays. Over the past few weeks, Dez has often wondered what she’d be like as an angel, what would change in her and what would remain the same.
“I think this is just postcoital bliss,” Yael says.
Dez studies Simon. His eyes are closed, fingers moving manically up and down the instrument’s neck. His serene expression does glow with the look of someone who just got fantastically laid.
“Is Esther here?” Dez asks, confused. “I didn’t think an angel and a mortal could—”
“Look who’s au courant on the interdimensional sexual taboos,” Yael teases. “God, it must suck to want to fuck Rafe so bad and still be that far behind on your films.”
