Lauren Kate: Rapture

“Are you taking cell biology this quarter?” he asked.

“No way. I barely got out of there alive in high school.” She looked at him, at his eyes, which were most definitely a shade of violet. They glowed when she said,

“Why do you ask?”

Daniel shook his head, as if he’d been thinking something that he didn’t want to say aloud. “You just—you look so familiar. I could have sworn we’d met somewhere before.”

“I love this part!” Arriane squealed.

Three angels and two Nephilim were sitting on the forward edge of a low gray cloud above a U-shaped dormitory in central Connecticut.

Roland grinned at her. “Don’t tell me you’ve seen this one before?”

His marbled gold wings were extended and folded flat so that Miles and Shelby could sit on them and stay aloft, like a picnic blanket at a drive-through in the sky.

The Nephilim had not seen the angels in more than a dozen years. Though Roland, Arriane, and Annabelle bore no physical signs of this passage of time, the Nephilim had aged. They wore matching wedding bands, and the sides of their eyes were creased with the laugh lines made by years of happy marriage. Under his very faded blue baseball cap, Miles’s hair was slightly gray around the temples. His hand rested on Shelby’s belly, which protruded with a baby due the following month.

She rubbed her head like she’d narrowly escaped a concussion. “But Luce doesn’t eat pepperoni. She’s a vege-tarian!”

“That’s what you took away from this scene?” Annabelle rolled her eyes. “Luce is different now. She’s the same girl with different details. She doesn’t see Announcers, and she hasn’t been to every shrink on the eastern seaboard. She’s much more ‘normal,’ which bores her to tears, but”—Annabelle grinned—“I think, in the long run, she’s going to be really happy.”

“Does this popcorn taste burnt to you?” Miles asked, chewing loudly.

“Don’t eat that,” Roland said, plucking the popcorn from Miles’s palm. “Arriane got it out of the trash after Luce set the dorm room kitchen on fire.” Miles began spitting frantically, leaning over the edge of Roland’s wings.

“It was my way of connecting with Luce.” Arriane shrugged. “But here, if you must, have some Milk Duds.”

“Is it weird that we’re watching the two of them like a movie?” Shelby asked. “We should imagine them like a novel, or a poem, or a song. Sometimes I feel oppressed by how reductive the filmic medium is.”

“Hey. Roland didn’t have to fly you out here, Nephilim. So don’t act smart, just watch. Look.” Arriane clapped. “He’s totally staring at her hair. I bet he goes home and sketches it tonight. How cuuute!”

“Arriane, you got way too good at being a teenager,” Roland said. “How long are we going to watch for? I mean, don’t you think they’ve earned a little privacy?”

“He’s right,” Arriane said. “We have other things on our celestial plates. Like . . .” Her smirk faded when she couldn’t seem to think of anything.

“So do you guys see each other anymore?” Miles asked Arriane, Annabelle, and Roland. “Since Roland’s, you know . . .”

“Of course we see him.” Annabelle smiled at Roland.

“Because we’re still working on him. Even after all these years. The Throne invented forgiveness, you know.” Roland shook his head. “I don’t think Heavenly redemption is in the cards for me anytime soon. Everything’s so white up there.”

“You never know,” Arriane chimed in. “We get to being mighty open-minded sometimes. Swing by and say hello. Remember: It’s because of the Throne that Daniel and Luce are getting together right now.” Roland grew serious, looking past the scene below, into the dark and distant clouds. “The balance between Heaven and Hell was perfect last time I checked. You don’t need me tipping the scales.”

“There’s always at least the hope of us all coming together once again,” Annabelle said. “Luce and Daniel are an example of that—no punishment is eternal. Maybe not even Lucifer’s.”

“Anyone heard from Cam?” Shelby asked. For a few moments, the clouds were quiet. Then Shelby cleared her throat and turned to Miles. “Well, speaking of things that aren’t eternal—our babysitter’s shift is almost up.

She charged us overtime last week, when the Dodgers game went into extra innings.”

“Do you want a heads-up when Luce and Daniel have their first date?” Annabelle asked.

Miles pointed down to Earth. “Aren’t we supposed to leave them alone?”

“We’ll be there,” Shelby said. “Don’t listen to him.” To Miles, she said, “Don’t talk.”

Roland wrapped the Nephilim under each arm and prepared to take flight.

Then the angels, the demon, and the Nephilim flew off to distant corners of the sky, leaving a moment’s brilliant flash of light behind them, as below, Luce and Daniel fell in love for the first—and the last—time.