I wake up to an empty bed, and no part of me is surprised.

I feel wrung out. Between the toxic magic that tore through my system, dredging up long buried memories and the dream-like encounter with Elissa, I still don’t feel like myself.

I wonder who that even is anymore.

I can still feel her on my skin. Her scent surrounds me in this tangle of plain white sheets, and it’s so tempting to stay. To hope for just a bit longer that last night was a new beginning and not the ending we were both denied for so long, but Caila is still missing.

As Elissa said, it’s not about me.

The house is worlds away from the villa by the cliffs, and I quickly realize that every personal touch in this small structure is from Caila’s hands. I duck into Caila’s bedroom to retrieve my shirt from floor, grimacing at the stiff patch of dried blood decorating the front, and I can’t help pausing at the difference in the spaces.

This room is a museum or a temple to the strange and beautiful objects humanity creates for their own amusement. Each item in Caila’s space is perfectly curated from the artfully weathered wood of the platform bed and the tangle of pale pink blankets to the trinkets and books lined up on the gold and glass of the side table. Yet for an angel, it’s all unneeded. Nothing but noise and distraction from our duties.

Even those of my brothers and sisters who spend years or even decades stationed on Earth rarely live like this. I spent a year with Elissa in Sidon, and though I left my mark on her life and her soul, there was nothing to leave behind in the house.

A chunk of hematite carved into the crude shape of a bird sits on the windowsill, the light bouncing off it making the stone look like quicksilver. I pick it up, turning the warm stone over in my hands and wondering what about this tiny thing entranced her so. Angels have no use for things, but I’m beginning to wonder if this was yet another lie I told myself.

Caila surrounds herself with things. The living room is still a wreck. The damaged furniture has been flipped upright and the shattered crockery swept away, but Elissa left the rest to be dealt with later. And while I don’t pretend to know Elissa’s tastes anymore, I can’t picture her concerning herself with selecting coordinating armchairs and porcelain teacups.

A thick book rests on the cracked and charred surface of a desk, the leather cover worn soft by years of handling. I flip it open and see the Enochian text filling up the page. I expect spells or even angelic lore, but instead I find a diary. The first entry is dated 1963, and my name on the page catches my eye.

My garrison would say I care too much for these humans. Perhaps they’re right. But each time I return home I see nothing but Uriel descending deeper into madness and rage. As he hides in the garden, Raphael spends his days studying lore and prophecies so much that he fails to see the world outside his cloister. And Gabriel hasn’t been seen for years.

Then there is Michael. I don’t speak his name to Elissa. This tentative partnership we’ve created in the aftermath of California isn’t yet strong enough to bear such scrutiny. I wonder if she thinks I’m unaware of her history with Heaven.

In Heaven, Michael is like a ghost of his former self. He follows orders without question, accepting mission after mission and the trail of blood and bodies behind him grows.

I cannot be the only one who remembers the days when the world was young and the archangels were whole – when Lucifer lit the stars and Uriel coaxed the first seeds to life. When Michael was not a broken solider with dead eyes.

I slam the book shut.

I never noticed her. One more angel in the crowd of thousands. I vaguely recall pale hair and a wistful smile, but beyond that nothing. Yet somehow she saw it all and has been by Elissa’s side for sixty years.

I almost open the book up again. Hundreds of pages filled with her tiny hand. Her history. Elissa’s history. I want to know it all, but I want to hear it from her lips and not cold paper and ink.

I stalk away from the book’s temptation and back down the narrow hallway. I pause in the doorway to Elissa’s Spartan quarters. Only the trunk and a single painting give any hints of the occupant’s personality.

I’m not foolish enough to touch the trunk. Elissa had a similar one back in Sidon that held her most powerful tools. The surface of the wood nearly shimmers with magic, the wards wrapped around it as thick as those surrounding the mansion.

The painting beckons me closer. The large canvas is covered in swirls of black and the deepest blues and greens. A storm nearly boils the ocean, and the waves caught on the canvas are the type to dash a ship’s hull upon the rocks and pull sailors to their deaths. It’s nature’s violence barely contained within a frame, and I can almost hear the sea crashing against the cliffs as the thunder rumbles around me.

A few of the clouds near the edge of the canvas are lighter, as though the sun is fighting to cut through the screen of black clouds. No beacon of hope splits the sky though, no bright ray of sunshine to promise the storm has passed. The sea is still in control.

The sea always wins.

I shake my head at the thought and force myself to walk away, out the back door and into the bright midday sun. Elissa’s boots are missing from the yard, but I see the ruined black scraps of her clothes in a messy pile beside the charred metal of the firepit.

In the harsh light of day it’s just a patch of overgrown grass hemmed in by a sagging chain-link fence, but last night. . . last night it felt like we were at the edge of the world again. Alone but for the wind and the fire and each other.

I walked away once. I let myself be called to heel and I smiled obediently as Metatron and Heaven and Father tightened the leash. Thousands of years, and what have I done but bring more death to this world? Many that I killed deserved death, but did they all?

Was Lucifer truly so wrong to question? He called me God’s most favored son. We Archangels have always been the most favored in Heaven’s eyes and yet one of us is Fallen, another lost to madness and death, one lives in books and scrolls, and one hides from us all.

And then there is me.

God’s Cudgel.

God’s Blade.

God’s Mortar Shell.

If this is what it means to be the favored son, I don’t want it anymore. I’m not sure if I ever did.

I spread my wings, already seeing that poisonous mansion in my eyes and ready to tear down the walls to prove myself to her.

“Are you stupid or just suicidal?”

The bored drawl of my brother’s voice stops me. I turn back to the house to see Lucifer standing on the porch, looking immaculate as always in his black suit. He descends the stairs slowly, perfectly looking the part of petulant younger brother.

“Neither,” I reply curtly.

Lucifer scoffs. “You’re headed back to the place where you nearly died twelve hours ago. The Michael I knew was a better strategist than that so that just leaves death wish.” Lucifer thrusts a black button-down shirt into my hands, giving the ruined tee I’m wearing a disdainful look. “Even in New Orleans you can’t exactly walk around the city with a stab wound through your shirt without raising a few eyebrows.”

Rolling my eyes, I yank off the shirt and drop it on the ground next to the torn remnants of Elissa’s clothes. The shirt Lucifer brought is snug across my shoulders, no doubt one of his, but it’ll do.

Lucifer is staring down at the pile of ripped black cloth by my feet. A wry smile curls across his lips as he realizes just what they are, and I prepare myself for the inevitable onslaught of snide comments. “Did you just come here to give me a shirt and mock me?” I ask.

The smile on Lucifer’s face melts away, and his face is serious when he speaks. “I always had a soft spot for her. She reminds me of myself.” Lucifer lets that comment hang in the air for far longer than is comfortable for either of us before pushing on. “How do you think she stayed out of the Pit for all these years? I couldn’t take a truly good soul even if I wanted to, remember? And under all that anger and all that blood, hers is still pure.”

The sun beats down on both of us, the sky bleached white from the unrelenting rays, but Lucifer doesn’t blink as he takes another step closer to me, trying to goad me into backing up. “You don’t deserve her. You never did.”

Hot jealousy uncoils in my stomach like a poisonous creature. I’ve always known it was Lucifer who gave Elissa the double-edged gift of immortality, but I never allowed myself to consider just what she traded for it. Was she just his protégé? Yet another tool for Lucifer’s vengeance on Heaven and most of all me?

Or had she ever been something more?

“What is she to you?” I hiss.

Lucifer’s brow furrows for just an instant before fading into a look of astonishment. “Are you serious?” he demands. A look of hurt flickers across his face for an instant before sliding into familiar anger. “Betrayal was your domain, Michael. Not mine. And certainly not hers.” Lucifer takes a step back, but keeps his black gaze fixed on me, making sure I’m well aware that this isn’t a retreat. “If I had found my way inside your great love’s robes all those years ago do you honestly think I would have waited until now to throw it in your face?”

I can’t disagree with that fact.

Lucifer doesn’t pause in his diatribe. “You chose our Father and two thousand more years of Heavenly bullshit, and for what? You can’t tell me you enjoy being God’s chosen pitbull anymore, if you ever did in the first place.” When I don’t interrupt, Lucifer trails off. The neighborhood symphony of blaring car horns and muffled bass from a rattling car stereo a few houses down cuts through the silence, but Lucifer is as unrelenting in his search for answers as he ever was in Heaven.

His voice is low when he speaks again, the perpetual anger that suffuses him draining away into a look of resigned weariness that could be my own. “Tell me the truth, Michael.”

I could lie. Once I was good at it, at least at lying to myself. Lucifer would see through the deception as he always did, but maybe for once he’d let it go.

Not likely.

“I envied you.”

Lucifer chuckles, the familiar mockery rising to the surface again. “You do remember I was in Hell?”

I smile sadly at that. As if I could forget. “You weren’t just a good soldier. You questioned. You made your own choices.”

“And you saw how well that worked out for me until recently,” Lucifer replies before adding, “Grace would say we’re having a moment.”

“I can knock another house on you if it helps.”

Lucifer lets out a bark of laughter, and it’s so genuine that I’m taken aback at the sudden flood of memories of who we both were long before the Fall. Some tiny part of me dares to hope that maybe I can recapture some semblance of that again.

“Where is she?” I ask, finally relenting.

“Where do you think?” Lucifer answers. “She showed up at our door this morning with grass in her hair and immediately started plotting with Grace. I’m guessing the arrow was the least eventful portion of your night.”

I can’t help glowering at him and Lucifer rolls his eyes. “I’m the one who spent eons locked in Hell, Michael, but most days you seem more maudlin than I do.”

“Last night doesn’t matter.” I want to believe in second chances, that something more than random fate crossed our paths again after all these years, but I still have far too many doubts. “She still hates me. She should hate me.”

Lucifer stands still in the middle of the yard, the amused banter quickly giving way to irritation. “I’m going to say this once, brother, and once only,” he snaps. “Make a fucking decision.” I bristle at his insinuation, opening my mouth to interject an argument, but Lucifer’s patience has run out.

“You made the wrong choice all those years ago. You’ve regretted it ever since, and it’s taken you this long to admit it.” Lucifer paces, the dying grass crunching under his feet as the frenetic energy that always seems to follow him boils over. “You convinced yourself what you did was right and proper and for her own good, but all those lies you told yourself have finally come crashing down, and you have to face the cold hard reality of truth.” Lucifer’s eyes narrow as he finally pauses, and I want to put my fist in his face, tentative fraternal affection be damned.

“You did all this for what?” he spits. “Father? We don’t matter to him anymore than they do. He’s gone somewhere and found himself a new toy, and the humans are left in the dust just as we were. You threw away your one chance at happiness for that?”

I round on Lucifer, wildly telegraphing my punch. Lucifer dodges easily, but doesn’t bother throwing one of his own. Instead he rocks back on his heels, just out of arm’s reach and waits in infuriating silence.

I want to yell, want to scream in my true voice until I splinter all the glass in the city and the car alarms drown out Lucifer’s words.

But I don’t. My voice is barely above a whisper when I speak, finally giving voice to the decision that I’ve let haunt me for centuries.

“You think it was easy?” Something in Lucifer’s face changes, some flicker of understanding, and it gives me the strength to continue. “I did it to save her. I didn’t choose Heaven. I chose to keep her alive.” The words fall out of me like the purging of sickness, and I sit down in the grass, the weight of admitting the truth after so long pressing me into the earth.

Humans say they feel lighter after confession, as though their burdens have been eased. All I feel is the weight of every last year spent without her.

The bright sun burning through my closed eyelids darkens, and I feel Lucifer’s hand on my shoulder. I peel open my eyes to look up at him.

Once, years beyond telling ago, we were closer than twins. When the world was young I watched my brother light the stars, watched his joy at bringing light into the darkness. He was my confidant and my closest friend until humanity and pride became the wedge that drove us apart.

Pride. It was always seen as Lucifer’s sin, but I’m just as guilty.

The Lucifer staring down at me isn’t the angry, vengeful creature I remember clashing with over the years or even the wary ally of the last few weeks. Looking down at me with dawning comprehension of just what I did is the Lightbringer, the brother I thought lost to the darkness forever.

For the first time I can look at him without hearing the crack of wing bones breaking.

“Metatron,” he says.

I nod stiffly, and Lucifer takes my hand, pulling me none too gently to my feet. He is, after all, still Lucifer.

“You get something very few do, Michael. A second chance.” Lucifer spreads his wings, and I follow suit. We’ve wasted too much time already. In the moment before we take to the skies, Lucifer pauses, fixing me with that black stare and pinning me to the spot. “But unless you truly want that chance and intend to follow through, don’t even try. She won’t give you a third.”

Then we’re airborne, and I’m following Lucifer, our wings cutting through the skies as he traces the path back to the home he shares with Grace. He tosses his last comment into the wind.

“And I’m fairly sure she still has that crossbow bolt.”

Lucifer eases open the front door with a casual familiarity, stepping over the ginger cat lounging on the welcome mat. The animal blinks at me, eyeing me for a moment with its bored green stare before stretching exaggeratedly and going back to sleep.

“Honey, I’m home!” Lucifer can’t keep the amusement out of his voice, and I wonder what my chances are at ever regaining that easy intimacy with Elissa.

“Back here!” Grace’s muffled voice comes from the other end of the hallway, and we walk through the narrow passage.

Elissa’s voice filters back to me, sure and offering no space for argument. “It has to be me. We saw what that place did to Michael, and Fallen or not Lucifer is still an angel.”

“I’m not an angel,” Grace protests.

“And I’m not going to be the one who suggests to Lucifer that I take you in there.”

The small space of Grace’s kitchen comes into view, and both women are sitting at the table as they plan. Grace’s back is to me, but there’s no hiding the frustration in her voice. “Look Elissa, I’m in this now too. I’m not a child or a weak little human anymore. Are we all conveniently forgetting that I killed an archangel?”

Elissa notices the two of us skulking in the doorway. Her gaze slips coolly over me before she shoots Lucifer a look that says, I tried.

Her hair hangs in wet waves as though she just stepped out of the shower, and when I move into the room I smell the sweet scent of ripe pomegranate that emanates from the damp stands.

Grace cuts her eyes between the two of us, and there’s no mistaking why Lucifer adores her. She may look like sweetness and light on the surface, but there’s a streak of deviousness in her that my brother is no doubt encouraging.

“Do you like my new shampoo, Michael? I think it smells lovely on Elissa,” she purrs, getting up from her seat to twine herself around my brother. Lucifer is nearly choking as he tries to hold back his laughter.

We have too much history to turn into blushing fools, stammering over our words at Grace’s rightful insinuation. But I’m well aware of her tells enough to know that the slight flush coloring Elissa’s cheeks isn’t due to a hot shower or the humidity the ancient air conditioner struggles to overcome.

It only lasts a moment before she shutters the heat simmering between us with the ruthless efficiency of slamming a lid over a boiling pot. She’s all business when she pushes the piece of paper she and Grace were huddled over towards me. “Grace is right,” she says, taking extra care to keep her fingers from brushing mine. “She and I have a shot at getting past the wards and disabling them from the inside. You and Lucifer won’t make it through the gate until we do.”

Scribbled across the paper are hasty drawings of dozens of wards, every sigil a mystical Keep Out sign screaming from the page. Without the magic infusing them they’re harmless, but there’s no mistaking that this is very bad. Last night was such a blur that I never got a decent look at them, but seeing every symbol sketched out in black and white proves that we certainly aren’t dealing with an amateur that made one lucky shot.

“I’m sure that isn’t all of them, but I took a closer look when I picked up my bike,” she continues. One bare nail taps on the largest of the sigils, a circle cut through with a jagged line like a lightning bolt. “They’re very angelically targeted. Whoever she is, she doesn’t want Heaven seeing what she’s up to or getting in.” Her finger slides across the page to another drawing, this one made of several interlocking six-pointed stars. “Or getting out,” she adds.

Lucifer’s eyes haven’t left Grace, and I wait for the inevitable ultimatum when he forbids her from taking part in this plan. It never comes. Instead, he steers her into the shadows of the hall, far enough away from us both to give the illusion of privacy.

His voice is a low murmur, but it’s still impossible to miss. “I’m not going to try to stop you from going.” The plea to be careful hangs unspoken, unneeded. I glance out of the corner of my eye to where they stand and see Lucifer twisting one of her blonde curls around his finger, a gesture I’ve seen him replay a hundred times. “Even if I tried, you’d just knock the door down anyway,” he remarks.

Grace giggles at the private joke before pulling Lucifer back into the planning session.

My mind wanders as Elissa rattles off a list of increasing obscure ingredients she needs, scrawling them on the back of the paper strewn with the sigils.

Equals. Every expectation I’ve had about my brother has been flipped on its head. Lucifer is still impulsive and arrogant. He still indulges himself in whatever vice suits his fancy with little regard for the rules of Heaven or man, but somehow she has tempered that scorching anger that boiled down into cold hatred over the years into something new.

If the devil himself deserves a second chance, maybe I do as well.

Grace plucks the page from her hand and stares at the list. “Do you have this stuff? Because I’m guessing we won’t find-” she squints at the word “-asphodel petals at the local Whole Foods.”

Elissa shakes her head, the movement tousling her hair just enough that I can smell pomegranates again. “I have a few of the ingredients, but not close to everything we need. Caila and I haven’t been back long enough to get all our contacts in order, but this city has a hundred botanicas and we don’t have the time to waste sifting through the fake ones.”

“Erzulie’s as real as it gets,” Grace interjects.

“Erzulie’s still kicking around here fleecing tourists then?” Elissa asks. “Good for her. I can’t see her going anywhere else.” Elissa’s on her feet and heading towards the front door an instant later.

Lucifer makes a move to follow her, but Grace stops him with a pointed look. The King of Hell rolls his eyes before affectionately muttering, “You’re not subtle, you know.”

I emerge into the bright sunlight to find Elissa leaning against Grace’s car, her head tilted upward to face the sky. Her eyes are closed, and she doesn’t open them when she speaks. “Grace is a meddler.”

“She means well.”

Elissa takes a deep breath before turning to me. She looks over my shoulder at the gaping front door, down at the ginger cat winding its slender body around my feet, at the car that roars a bit too fast down the residential street.

Anywhere but at me.

“I can’t do this again, Michael.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, and that hesitation is so unfamiliar, so wrong on her I want to destroy whatever caused it.

It’s becoming easier and easier to understand Lucifer’s hatred for Heaven.

I take a step closer, and her eyes flicker upward, finally meeting mine. The hot metal of the car presses against her back, and she’s so close that the scent of pomegranates wafts around us, bringing me back to lazy days in her bed, Elissa’s tongue curling around my fingertips as I press the ruby seeds to her lips.

I crush my lips to hers, and she tastes of black coffee instead of honey sweet fruit or bitter wine. Her hands stay pressed against the side of the car for too many seconds, and I nearly pull away until I feel her lips part beneath mine. My hands are in her hair, and her arms curl around my neck, dragging me down to meet her. I’m dimly aware of the creaking of Grace’s feet on the front step and her hasty retreat back into the house, but then Elissa arches up against me and it all falls away.

There is no campfire, no flickering shadows to hide behind, and we are both as whole as we ever are. We don’t have the excuse of a brush with death to explain away this sudden desperation for touch and taste. In the blazing sunlight on a sidewalk in New Orleans there is nothing to hide behind anymore.

I break the kiss first, pulling back the barest inch. Her breath is on my lips, and I want this to be a beginning, but I already feel her pulling away, shuttering herself against me.

I take a step back, giving her the space she’s silently asking for.

She presses her lips together and takes a breath. This time she meets my eyes, and that icy blue stare tells me all I need.

“Tell Grace I know where that shop is. I’ll meet you there.”

I’m left standing on the sidewalk as she revs her bike engine and peels down the street alone.