Page 127 of White Lights
Dez kicks Yael. “Once one learns that getting laid by an angel is lethal, one tends not to forget it.”
“Anyway,” Yael says. “It wasn’t Esther.”
Then who? Dez thinks of the host of turned-on angels surrounding Simon earlier. It’s hard to think back to the frightening ceremony. How Simon disappeared inside that crematorium. How Jet was in there with him. She thinks of the consuming fire. Of the sounds she heard.
“You fuckedJet?” Dez demands.
Finally Simon stops playing.
“It’s calledapotheosis,” Yael explains, “the culmination of a mortal’s passage into immortality, where mentor and protégé fuse together in a congress that connects them forever.”
Dez thinks of Rafe promising to fuck her if she became an angel.And not a second later.
It wasn’t foreplay. It’showshe’ll become an angel.
“You’re saying every first-year fucks their mentor during ascension?” Dez asks, desire unlacing between her legs.
“Hot as shit, right?” Yael says.
Simon puts down his violin, comes to sit on the couch, and stares into Dez’s eyes with a new intensity. She’s a little bit afraid of him.
“I had no idea Jet could be so giving,” Simon says. “I am forever changed.”
“And that’s why we love to fuck you.” Yael sighs. Dez can’t tell if she’s wistful or bitter. “There’s really nothing like an untouched angel. Second only to mortal flesh, so I’m told.”
“I have questions,” Dez says.
“Tell her the whole story,” Yael tells Simon. “Leave nothing out.”
Simon sprawls back dreamily on the couch. “One minute, I thought I was dying. Then Jet put his hands on me, and he—I think he brought me back to life. I don’t know whether I kissed him first, or whether he kissed me, but it felt like I wasrememberingsomething important and long forgotten. Not like I’ve been with that many people, but nothing’s ever felt so right. It’s like I’ve been eating sawdust all my life and suddenly someone handed me white truffles—”
“I think I get it,” Dez says.
Simon laughs. “Respectfully, no. Talk to me when you’ve had an angel up to the hilt in you. Owning your body and giving you theirs. Talk to me when you’ve feltgloryon a nuclear level. Talk to me when you’ve come in every—”
“Please stop before our human friend explodes,” Yael says, unamused. There’s a darkness in Yael this evening, and Dez wonders if it has to do with Alice Quinn. Her protégé. Never to return to Acheron.
“One day you’ll get your angel shafting, too, Dez.” Yael sighs. “But don’t think it’s free.” She turns to Simon. “Jet got just as much out of you tonight as you got out of him.”
“Well, I hope it was okay for him,” Simon says. “It was my first time with a celestial being.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Yael says. “It’s deeper than the sex.”
“Hah!” Simon laughs.
“I’m serious,” Yael says. “You’re linked now. You’re bound by an everlasting cord.”
“Bound?” Dez repeats. “What does that mean?”
“There’s nothing Simon can do about being stuck with Jet forever now.”
“Other than, I don’t know, enjoy it?” Simon says.
“But, Dez,” Yael says. “Consider eternity.”
“I’d be bound—for eternity—to Rafe?”
Yael stares at her, says nothing.
