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  Scott looked up, stunned, shaking his punching hand. Helo retracted his arms and calmly took a sip of dark cola. He resumed his breathing to appear normal, and the spectators relaxed.

  “That all you got?” Helo asked.

  “No way,” Scott said, face pained. “You’re made of iron, dude!”

  Helo shrugged, enjoying Aclima’s touch as she slid her arm around his waist. “Looks like I’ll be staying with my original companion this evening. Thank you for your interest, Scott.”

  Scott wandered off rubbing his wrist, his companions just as shocked as he was.

  “Not exactly by the book,” Magdelene said.

  “But good fun anyway,” Dolorem added.

  The line they stood in finally moved toward the ticket takers. Scott kept looking back over his shoulder. Helo suspected the young man was waiting to see if he would double over or vomit. Or maybe he wanted another look at Aclima. She removed her free arm from around his waist and fished out a box of peanut M&M’s from where he had shoved it in his back pocket.

  “These will do for now,” she said. “But for future reference, I prefer black licorice.”

  Helo preferred red. “Got it. So what brings you two to us this evening?”

  “Her Active Mission Evaluation was to find you,” Magdelene said.

  Helo turned to Aclima. “You went through training?”

  “I did. The AAO wasn’t keen on letting me go, anyway. They were following me around everywhere.”

  “I told you,” Dolorem crowed. “No way they would let their most valuable resource out of their sight.”

  Helo agreed. As a Dread, Aclima had been a Loremaster, a guardian of Dread secrets and rituals. She knew Cain intimately and had been involved in his operation to provide Lucifer—calling himself King—with a body to rule in the physical world. It was generous of the AAO to let her go anywhere at all.

  “Seems an easy AME to me,” Helo said. “At least compared to mine. Anything I should know?”

  Her answer was delayed as they surrendered their tickets and found seats. When they were situated on the back row in the middle of the theater, she explained, “I did want to see you again, but there is a more pressing reason. And it concerns both you and Dolorem. Magdelene has informed me of Tela Mirren and her prescient songs, as well as her relationship to Dolorem.”

  Dolorem perked up.

  “Is she in trouble?” Helo asked. He had worried the Dreads might try to eliminate her if they found out how her gift had aided the Ash Angels in foiling their plot.

  Magdelene leaned around Dolorem. “She’s safe. We actually have Corinth leading the protection services that guard her.”

  “I’m sure he loves it,” Helo said. Corinth was happy with any assignment that put him in close proximity to beautiful women. “So what’s the problem?”

  “She’s been singing again,” Magdelene answered.

  Helo and Dolorem kept tabs on her work. She hadn’t put a new album out since the fall of the previous year, and they hadn’t seen her perform anything new. “Haven’t heard of any upcoming releases.”

  “The song’s not public,” Magdelene replied. “Corinth reported it to us and asked us to analyze it.”

  “I’d love to have a listen,” Helo offered. “Aclima’s probably better at this kind of thing than I am, though. You’re good at symbolism and stuff, right?”

  “Better than average,” Aclima replied, putting her hand on his thigh, “but don’t doubt your own perceptiveness. I think you’ll be very helpful with the topic of her latest song.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s about you.”

  Chapter 2

  Bucket List

  Magdelene fished a phone from her bag on the floor and leaned across Aclima to hand it to Helo. “The phone has the recording. The phone’s yours. An actual Ash Angel phone, no less.”

  Dolorem rolled his eyes. “Smooth, Maggie. Trying to reel him back in already?”

  Helo took the sleek, silver phone. It was a gorgeous device—classy, thin, and made to take punishment. He tapped the screen, and it lit up, asking for his seven-digit password—an Ash Angel ID.

  “Wait,” Helo said. “You mean I actually have an AAID now?”

  Magdelene’s eyes widened, and she put her finger to her lips. “Keep it down. Yes, you do. Whisper it to him, Aclima.”

  “Why does she get to know but I don’t?” Dolorem complained.

  “She’s part of the AAO,” Magdelene answered. “If you want to join back up . . .”

  “No, thank you.”

  Aclima leaned in pleasantly close, her spice-scented hair tickling his nose as he kept up the pretense of breathing. “Your very special number is 7717727.”

  Helo typed it in, and the screen sprang to life.

  “It’s the only video in the media folder,” Magdelene informed him. “Corinth secretly recorded the song while she practiced in a hotel room. The quality isn’t great, but the Scholus analysts have superimposed the lyrics to make them clear.”

  Dolorem moved to the other side of Helo to get a better look. “Let’s see what my girl’s up to.”

  The video was shot from a stationary position on a table, the phone leaning at an odd angle. A blurry soda can ate up half the screen space, the rest showing a shadowy arm and guitar neck. When the song began, Tela’s velvet voice was unmistakable.

  Seven hides but six are watching

  Seven laughs but six are screaming

  One a tree the six are chopping

  Seven is free but six are binding

  Seven rises but six are crushing

  Two the blossoms six are freezing

  Seven the root six are cutting

  Axes hack both branch and root

  Blossoms crumble in the frost

  Cruel beaks clutch the fallen seed

  Dead leaves blown away and lost

  The video clicked off, the short song unfinished, only the birth of an idea. Aclima and Magdelene were staring at him. The first word at the start of each line of the first stanza spelled out his AAID.

  “Which came first?” Helo asked. “My ID number or the song?”

  “The number,” Magdelene answered. “It was assigned to you almost nine months ago when you left. No one knew it, especially not her. I didn’t even know it until a few days ago. The song is no more than two weeks old.”

  Dolorem whistled through his teeth. “Have the Scholus robots come up with what it means?”

  “They have some ideas,” Magdelene said. “But this isn’t the place to go over them. We want to bring Helo in. Don’t give me that look, Dolorem. I think even you can see this is necessary.”

  “Necessary?” Dolorem retorted. “Please. You just want your hooks in him again.”

  Magdelene opened her mouth, but the dimming lights and brightening screen brought on the movie trailers, and they lapsed into silence. Bracketed between Aclima and Dolorem, Helo felt torn. Stay with Dolorem and take over the Redemption Motorcycle Club, or return with Aclima and Magdelene to the Ash Angel Organization?

  The AAO had certainly done little to win his good opinion, but as much as he hated to admit it, that’s where the action was. He liked doing good at the club, but he felt like he was stranded on an island and losing contact with the world. Dolorem hardly bothered to check up on the news. The other Old Masters who visited had little to tell. What were the Dreads up to? What had happened to all the weapon shipments? Where were the other six Dread Loremasters now that Cain couldn’t control them? Had Cain called it quits? Was he plotting something?

  Aclima’s hand slipped over the top of a hand he didn’t know he had clenched into a fist. He loosened it, allowing her to slip her fingers inside his grip.

  “Relax, Helo,” she whispered. “This is your afterlife. You own it.” She shoved a peanut M&M in his mouth. “Now enjoy the show.”

  He tried. Dolorem chewed on his candy with a troubled expression. Magdelene kept checking her phone. When he turned to
look at Aclima, her gaze was directed at the screen, but she didn’t even smile at the funny parts. Whenever she noticed him watching her, she would smile warmly and lean on his shoulder or feed him M&Ms.

  He wanted to enjoy her attention, but ever since Terissa had cheated on him, flirtation seemed like a prelude to betrayal rather than a promise of future pleasure. Besides, something seemed off about the way Aclima approached it. It felt deliberate, like an act she was putting on. Maybe part of her assignment was to seduce him back to the AAO.

  When the movie ended, they remained in their seats while the other patrons filed out of the theater. Helo could barely remember what the movie was about. Just as with her other songs, Tela’s lyrics stuck in his brain, his subconscious mining the words for meaning. If this one followed the pattern of her other songs, it was a warning. The six had to be the Loremasters, and Helo the target of their violence. Was he in danger? Was the message a sign he should return to the AAO, or perhaps avoid it?

  “Dolorem,” Magdelene said after the theater had emptied. “I need to speak with you privately.”

  Dolorem stood, loose popcorn falling from his lap to the floor. “I’m not interested in your arguments, Maggie.”

  She grabbed his arm to keep him from moving off. “You need to hear what I have to say. You’ll want to. It’s important.”

  The two exchanged a meaningful glance, Dolorem’s expression softening. “Okay, Maggie. Wait for me outside, Helo.”

  “Not a chance,” Aclima said. “Our date’s not over. He’ll meet you back at the club. I promise not to break his legs and drag him off. Let’s go, Helo.”

  Aclima grabbed his hand and led him out of the theater. She was up to something. A troubled mind lurked behind her playful expressions, some part of her she was trying to hide. Out in the parking lot, he straddled the motorcycle, and she hopped on behind him without comment.

  At first all she wanted to do was drive around. She sat behind him, pressing into him as they wandered through the city streets without destination. The cool air slid over their bodies, but the lights and sounds of the city were almost invisible to Helo’s preoccupied mind. Aclima’s arms wrapped around him, but not in an awkward or stiff way. It was an embrace, her head against his back, hands wide against his chest and abdomen, almost as if she were comforting him or seeking comfort herself.

  They passed a park, and she tugged on his shirt and pointed. Helo pulled the motorcycle over and killed the ignition. On a school night in March, few people were left on the short-cropped lawn. A few middle-aged men played basketball in the cool evening, the sound of their laughter and braggadocio an incoherent murmur on the wind. One couple lay on a blanket watching the sky, though the artificial illumination all around them veiled all but the strongest of stars.

  Aclima led him to a weathered metal bench. He sat while she fished a piece of notepaper out of her back pocket. She threw him another not-quite-genuine smile apropos of nothing and joined him on the bench, exhaling.

  “You don’t know how many times as a Dread I sat on benches like this staring off into the night. Half the time I hoped one of the AAO’s Blank operatives would sneak up on me and put an end to it all. So many Dreads off themselves out of boredom. I’ve come close.”

  Her melancholy turn caught Helo off guard, though it felt more honest than all the flirting. “What kept you going?”

  “Different things at different times,” she said, turning the paper in her hands. “When you live as long as I have, you really have to find a new reason to live every forty years or so. I’ve thrown myself into so many endeavors it would take volumes to tell it. I even took time once to learn about landfill management.”

  Helo grimaced. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, that was a bad year. But don’t feel sorry for me,” she said. “I’m glad I made it this far. I’m glad I’m an Ash Angel, though I don’t deserve it. I feel like a bird now instead of a snake, though I am still afraid my sins will get the better of me. There’s simply too much weight on the wrong side of justice’s scales to ever be compensated for.”

  “The fact you’re an Ash Angel says differently,” Helo said. “What inspired you to make the final decision to turn?”

  She smiled wistfully at him. “Well, what I did in the bottom of that miserable ship was to save you. I had no idea at the time it would effect this change in me. But”—she took his hand—“it was you, of course, who set me on the path. I’ve had guys fight over me plenty, to be sure, but an Ash Angel who would try to protect me, a Dread, from other Dreads, made no sense.”

  Helo chuckled. “Yeah, Cassandra had a good laugh at that one. If I had been thinking straight, I probably wouldn’t have done it.”

  “Exactly!” she said, eyes brightening. “It was a horrible, foolish mistake! You have no idea how it bothered me in the following days. What you did was pure instinct, born of an unthinking disposition to help someone in need. I’ve since learned of your heroics with Prescilla and Tela Mirren. You have an innate impulse to rescue, one that doesn’t need incentive or orders or even reward. There have been men like you throughout history, but they are rare. And you’re the first in six thousand years to stand up for me. It was a hammer blow to the icy sheet of cynicism in my heart, and for the first time in a long time, someone actually caught my attention.”

  Wow. Words failed him. A surge of pride warmed him. Helping rescue a Dread—and not just any Dread—felt good, and hands down the best thing he’d done in his afterlife. She leaned her head on his shoulder again and turned the folded sheet of paper over in her hands. Something melancholy roosted on her features, her eyes soft and distant. It was as if an idea was screaming in her mind, stealing her attention from the outside world.

  “What’s on the paper?” he asked.

  Her eyes refocused, and she looked at the college-ruled paper. “This is my bucket list,” she explained. “It’s dreadfully low-tech, I know. I wrote it after I left Deep 7.”

  “Oh yeah, you were going to feed the ducks.”

  “That I accomplished,” she grinned. “There are only two items left, and I have to choose one or the other. It is the proverbial path diverging in the yellow wood, and I cannot travel both.”

  “What are they?” Helo asked.

  “The first is a wedding. I know it’s corny, but I want to be married in a cathedral. I want stained -glass windows. I want bridesmaids. I want flowers. I want cheesy music and a ridiculous gown and punch and caviar and everything. I want a honeymoon I can’t afford. And then I want to disappear. I know a place—several of them, actually—where my husband and I could live without seeing an Ash Angel or a Dread or any of it ever again and just live and love and forget.”

  “Sounds nice,” Helo commented. “The other?”

  “Help the Ash Angels kill Cain.”

  “Can’t you kill Cain and then get married and run off?”

  She sighed and straightened, pulling her legs up to her chest. “I can’t see it. Chasing Cain is to run headlong into a world of pain, Helo, the likes of which you do not know, even after all you’ve seen. I know him. I know those loyal to him. I know what he has done and will likely do. It will be labor and toil and horror to find him, and he knows how to exact his pound of flesh from his enemies. I do not think I will walk through that war and come out on the other side. He hates me, probably more than anyone, especially if he knows I am an Ash Angel now. I’m sure you’re high on his list, too.”

  Helo felt his heart clench. The weight of her words felt prophetic, her countenance like an oracle’s staring into some future abyss he could not fathom.

  “But you’ve already chosen,” he said. “Isn’t that why you’ve joined the AAO?”

  “Yes, but now that I am graduating, the choices have come calling for my consideration one last time.”

  “How will you choose?”

  “You will make the decision.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “You heard me. Look, I’m not asking you to fulfil
l my marriage fantasy, but we can go, right now, and leave Cain and the AAO. You and I can forget this whole dirty war and dirty world and content ourselves with whatever bliss we can scrape out of this afterlife.”

  Helo reeled. The bizarre and unexpected request emptied his mind of thought for several moments. Then the memory of Rachel the Unascended popped into his head. Aclima was to save him. Something about the tone of her proposal held an undercurrent of a rescue attempt, a sailor standing on the deck throwing a life preserver to a man tossed by the sea. The whole evening was starting to make more sense. She wanted to spare him pain and suffering. It felt like the plea of a parent begging a child not to go out into a driving snowstorm but stay inside where it was safe and warm.

  Helo finally met her eyes, eyes that were old and determined and tinged with sorrow. Gratitude filled him, but he knew what his answer had to be. “Aclima, look, I can see what you’re doing here, and I’m grateful, I really am. I know chasing Cain will be hard. I’ve been hurt plenty—”

  “I know,” she interrupted. “You don’t need to carry any more burdens.”

  “Look, I’m good. My head is clear. I’ve put Terissa behind me. I haven’t been torched in months, and I am ready to help. Cain has to be dealt with. And there’s nobody better than you to lead the effort. We can’t abandon the Ash Angels now.”

  She grabbed his hand, tone pleading. “Helo, listen to me. You don’t know how bad this will be. Please reconsider. I want you to be happy. I can help.”

  He squeezed her hand. “I know. Thank you. I hope it won’t be as bad as you think. But if it is, we’ll get through it. When it’s over, you can have your big wedding and spend your afterlife with some guy you want to be with, not one you feel obligated to because he helped you out.”

  She released his hand and sat back. “It’s not like that, Helo. I don’t feel obligated. I honestly want to help you. I’ll admit I don’t know you very well, but I do know you are someone who deserves happiness. And if I spend the next few years doing nothing but getting to know you, I don’t think they would be wasted years. Besides, anyone as reckless as you has to have some good stories. The graveyard battle, for instance. A fascinating read.”