Dez can see it in her mind—a sudden, outrageous wave, Rafe floating on another board nearby. Then the flash of the syringe as it empties into Asher’s cerebral cortex.
Dez needs to find out exactly where he’s going.
Oasis rises on the stereo when Asher starts his car. “Live Forever.” Tears sting Dez’s eyes.
He backs out of the driveway, steering slowly through a beachside town. She looks for signs, geography. Rows of nondescript houses. A tall palm tree with a split trunk marking a traffic median. She knows he’s somewhere in Ventura. But where is he headed? She needs moreclues, but every second she spends here, watching Asher on her Lens, a thousand miles away from him, he gets closer to death.
At a stoplight, his fingers reach for the center console, for the navigation system.
Dez holds her breath as he types in his destination.
Point Mugu Beach.
She watches as the Jeep’s console screen fills with a map. She notes the marker for the beach off the Pacific Coast Highway. It’s a fifteen-minute drive.
She’s got to get out of here. Got to get to Asher before the worst happens. She’s got to find a way to keep him out of the ocean, away from any angels. But how?
The only time she’s left Acheron—the only time she’s ventured beyond thebarbeloin the months since she’s been here—was on wings. Rafe’s wings.
Who else could take her to Asher?
Yael has offered to help Dez before, but not for something like this. She’d never violate the angels’ code.
Would Simon?
He’s changed since he ascended, but once upon a time, when this place scared the shit out of them both, they were friends. His friendship mattered to her, and she knows it mattered to him, too. He’s distracted these days, sure, but Dez decides he’s her only chance. All Simon has to do is get Dez there, drop her off, and fly away. Dez will take the blame for any trouble he gets in. If she can save Asher, she won’t care what consequences she has to face.
Even Sheol.
She runs for the Towers, taking the stairs three at a time. Lungs burning, she rushes inside her suite and barges into Simon’s room.
Where she finds him in his bed, wearing his golden scarf like a blindfold, and going down on Jet.
“Don’t you know how to knock?” Jet says, dropping the mask of false kindness he’s put on since she got to Acheron. She sees how much he hates her.
“I need to talk to you, Simon,” she says. “Alone.”
“Kind of busy now,” her roommate says with his mouth full.
“Please,” Dez says. “This is important.”
“So is this,” Simon says.
“Simon,”Dez pleads.
“Get out,” Jet says, without even lifting his head off the pillow.
Dez looks into Jet’s two different-colored eyes. The black one she’d first seen at the Dairy Barn through his ski mask. And the blue one, a glass eye he’d had transplanted after Dez tore the other one out.
In her mind, she sees it in her mother’s pill bottle. Under her mattress.
She turns to leave, walking—then running to her room. She plunges her hand under her mattress and finds it. Opens the pill bottle’s top and pours Jet’s eye into her hand.
It never decomposed. Because it’s aeviternal. Its integrity is unchanged from the day she wrenched it out of his head.
She’s holding his security clearance toeverythingat Acheron. Including one of those obsidian jets, right outside on the landing strip.
There’s no way I can get away with this, she thinks, but for the first time in a long time, Dez smiles. Jet, the reason her brother is dead, is going to pay her back. He’s going to help her save Asher’s life.
