Page 141 of White Lights
“Simon, why?” Dez says, taken back. “Esther’s great. The two of you are good together.”
He shrugs. “I feel nothing for her. It’s weird. She used to be cool.”
“I’m not sure she’s the one who’s changed,” Dez says, narrowing her eyes at Simon, who used to be cool. “Did Jet tell you to do this?”
“Please. Jet wishes I had someone else to booty call.” Simon sighs. “Unfortunately for his ass, no one holds a candle to it.”
“Look, I’m glad you’re having good sex—” Dez starts to say.
“Not good. Next-level phenomenal. The sex of gods.”
“I hear you,” Dez says, and for the first time, tonight, after her visit with Rafe to the Veil, she truly thinks she does. “But you and Esther have so much in common. Does Jet even like J-horror?”
“Who cares?”
“Do the two of you even talk?”
“We speak our own language,” Simon says.
Yael palms her face. “Dez, please change the subject. We’ve been here for two hours, and I can’t stomach another metaphor about the tightness of Jet’s—”
“I touched Rafe’s wings tonight,” Dez confesses.
“No shit,” Yael says, eyes wide. “That’s huge.”
“Huge,” Dez agrees. “I had no idea it would be so good.”
“I could have been having a mortal stroke my wings right now.” Yael thrums fingertips pensively against her chin. “Fucking Alice Quinn. I make bad choices. I choose bad women.”
“I know it sucks that Alice is gone,” Dez says. “But can’t you hook up with whoever you want, whenever you want? Esmeralda or Kitty or Felipe?”
“Fine in a pinch,” Yael says. “But nothing compared to what I would have had with Alice.”
“Mmm … chimerism,” Simon says, fishing for the cherry in his cocktail.
“What’s chimerism?” Dez asks.
Yael punches Simon. “Something this neophyte wasn’t supposed to drunkenly blurt out.”
Dez puts down her drink. “Tell me.”
Yael laces her fingers together, stretching them out to crack her knuckles. “I’ll try to keep this spoiler-free for Rafe’s sake. Not that I owe him anything.”
Pay attention to what Rafe doesn’t say, Dez hears the bartender’s words. She senses something glacial beneath Yael’s cool expression.
“Chimerism is when two bodies share genetic material. It happens to mortals most often during pregnancy—DNA flows easily back and forth between the baby and the mom. Sometimes it can happen to fraternal twins in the womb. Or after something like a bone-marrow transplant. But for angels, chimerism happens at ascension. It’s what makes that first time such an ecstatic experience, both for the mentor and the protégé. You actually flow into each other.”
Dez is on the edge of her seat, aroused all over again.
“And afterward …” Yael continues, pausing to look at Simon.
“You said something after Simon’s ascension,” Dez fills in, “about him being bound to Jet?”
Yael nods. “That chimerism. Think of it as … a line of credit that can be drawn from in either direction. But it isn’t DNA we’re pulling.”
“What’s the currency?” Dez asks.
“Power. Your mentor can lend divine power to you, just as you canlend divine power back to your mentor. For as long as you both shall be angels.”
