Page 17 of Trick Of Light

Sitting up, I saw that we were on the side of a wide road that people were walking on both ways. The grass I was lying on was soft, and when I removed my goggles, I took in a deep, rich indigo sky with big, white, fluffy clouds but no sun as far as I could see.

“This is weird,” I told Raphael.

“This is the third heaven. It’s always like this. I prefer Cerviel’s fifth heaven because she includes seasons, and I would miss those. Anahel likes it this way, so here we are.”

He helped me to my feet, gave me a kiss, and then we joined the four others. I was startled to see that Julian who, I realized now, had looked tired and drawn for weeks, at the moment appeared just as he had when I first met him.

“Holy shit,” I said, gesturing at him. “Jules, you feel okay?”

He nodded, turning away for a moment to wipe quickly under his eyes. “I feel great. I hadn’t realized how long it’s been since I felt like me, not tired or depleted, not in a fog, until I opened my eyes here and—thank you, Raph.”

My mate smiled at him.

Simon cleared his throat. “My lesion is gone too, like it was never there, and I’m so thankful, but I thought you said it just wouldn’t get any bigger, Raph. I didn’t get from you that it would disappear.”

He shrugged those wide shoulders of his. “It’s hard to know for sure what would happen. But the person who’ll know is Anahel, so we need to get to his home. We’ll bypass the hall of his Throne, which won’t be hard.”

“And how long a walk is it from here?” I asked.

“We should be there by nightfall if we make good time.”

“Well, I’m ready to go,” Julian said excitedly, turning to Simon. “Aren’t you?”

“Hell yeah,” he said, then jolted, looking at Raphael. “Shit, I just said hell. How bad is that to say here?”

“Okay,” Raphael said, smiling. “Let’s huddle up, guys.”

It was funny, like we were at one of our Sunday football games in Jael’s backyard.

“This isn’t heaven like you’re thinking.”

“How are we thinking?” Julian asked.

“Like the eternal reward for a life well-lived or whatever. This ain’t that,” he made clear. “That’s a different place. And I’m not even going to go into what heaven is when you die because that’s a whole other conversation and is dependent on an entire other set of circumstances. I mean really, heaven can’t be the same for everyone no matter what people on the earthly plane seem to think.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “So this isn’t some celestial kingdom where everything is good and perfect. That’s what you’re saying.”

“Exactly.”

“Then what is it?” Leith asked.

“This is the third heaven, which Anahel has chosen to make neutral. That means that if you’re good, you can be here, and if you’re bad, you can be here, and as long as you follow the rules, no one is going to give you any trouble. It’s why there’s a lot of traffic through this heaven because you can come and go.”

“But there are no demons here,” Leith said, sounding wary.

“Oh no,” Raphael assured him. “But there are folks who aren’t good, and they can exist here because being not good doesn’t equal evil.”

“So a regular cross section of humanity is what you’re saying,” I clarified.

“Except for the fact that you guys are the only humans here, yes.”

“Everyone looks human,” Julian pointed out, gesturing at the people walking on the road we’d soon be joining them on.

“But they’re not. They’re other…but not any form of angel.”

“This is weird,” Simon said, grinning.

“It’s weird for you, yes. Not for anyone else. This heaven is just like most of the planes in hell. Most of them aren’t places of evil. They’re places that are neutral, and those same rules that apply here, apply there. Not everything in hell is evil. Not everything here is good. Does that make sense?”