Kelsey and Asher
Kelsey stood beside the open grave, and snow began to fall. Jesus, honey, she could hear Jake’s voice saying inside her head. Don’t you think that’s a little bit much?
Jake’s best friend, Jason, was standing beside her, holding her hand. “Come on, sweetie,” he said. “Let’s go now. It’s over.”
She shook her head. When she walked away, the gravediggers would take off the fake grass carpet and take down the burnished brass rails. They would seal up the vault and fire up the earth mover. They were eager to do this.It was snowing on a Saturday; they were ready to be done so they could go home to their families. But they had to understand, her family was down in the hole.
“We’ll give you another minute,” Jason said. His husband, Aaron, put a hand on Kelsey’s shoulder and squeezed before they walked away.
Her mother-in-law, Helen, was still standing on her other side. “How could you?” she said. “How could you not have even told us he was sick? He suffered in this city full of strangers with nobody but you for months. Did you not even care? We could have taken care of him. We could have taken him home.”
Kelsey had no more kindness left. She looked the woman in the face. “That’s why.”
Fury sparked in Helen’s eyes, and for a moment, Kelsey thought she meant to hit her. She wanted her to. She wanted to have a face-scratching, hair-pulling brawl right here; she felt like that might help. Maybe they would roll into the grave and rip one another to pieces, and the gravediggers could bury them with Jake.
But her sweet sister-in-law intervened. “Mama, stop it,” Taylor said. “Come on.” She put her arm around her mother, and Helen sobbed against her shoulder. “Kelsey, honey, we’ll see you at the gallery. Don’t stay out here too long.”
Kelsey nodded, barely hearing her. Jason had agreed to host a wake at his gallery. The apartment was tiny and still full of stuff from hospice. Nobody wanted to see all that, all their friends and fellow artists, young people who didn’t believe in cancer, not for themselves, anyway.
The snow was falling harder, mixed with freezing rain. In a moment, the undertaker would speak a gentle word to Jason, and he and Aaron would come back up the slope and drag her oh-so-sympathetically away. “I’ll be back, my darling,” she said. “I’ll be back every day.”
Asher walked fast through the falling snow, his coat flapping in the wind. He could already smell brimstone as he passed out of the mortal cemetery into the crossroads between worlds. He was late.
Peter’s clerk was opening her big book on a sepulcher. The book was mostly a prop for the benefit of the contested soul; after centuries, they all expected it. “Shaving it a bit close, aren’t you, angel?” Peter said as he took his place.
“Time is relative, saint,” he answered, throwing off his coat. He spread his golden wings to their fullest span, showing off just a little. The wings were a prop, too, sort of—mortals expected them, too. But like the book, they had a more meaningful symbolic purpose. Only a seraph still untouched by mortal sin had golden wings, and only a seraph with golden wings could stand at the crossroads and guard the gates of Heaven. Peter just smiled and shook his head.
The ground rumbled beneath them, and a crack appeared. The accuser was making his entrance. The imp who would act as Lucifer’s clerk crawled out of the hole like an insect, dragging his chains and iron chests behind him. But the accuser rose in one smooth motion, his dark red torso bare to the waist, his black wings folded tight against his back. These wings could only be unfurled within his own domain; even at the crossroads, his powers were forbidden. He nodded his horned head to Peter, and Peter nodded back. For Asher, he had a fanged smile. Asher rustled his own wings once more, smiling back before he folded them. They had been brothers once, born the same morning when the universe was new. But Lucifer had fallen. Now he ruled in Hell, and the Light made him fight for every soul he claimed. The accuser would argue for damnation. Peter would argue for mercy. Asher would guard the gate.
None of them saw the approach of the Judge. One moment the angels and demons and Peter were alone under the mossy oaks; the next the Judge was among them. He smiled and embraced Peter before He took his place behind the sepulcher, and the accuser and his clerk both looked away, unable to look upon His smile. Peter’s clerk’s head was bent respectfully, but her smile was bright. Asher bowed as well, his own heart feeling lighter. The Judge was an inexplicable presence to him, beyond his immortal ken. Dressed like a human, just like Asher with a human’s tender flesh, He was still the most beautiful object in all of Creation, the purest perfection of spirit.
The contested soul came wandering toward them through the mist, still dressed in the pajamas his body had died in moments before a thousand miles away. “Where am I?” he was saying to no one in particular. He hadn’t seen them yet. “Am I dreaming?” The accuser made a small movement as if to move into the dead mortal’s line of vision first, and Asher frowned, leaning forward, his wings flexing in threat. Then the soul saw the face of the Judge. “My Lord!” He fell to his knees in the grass, and Asher stifled a yawn. Just as he had suspected when he was summoned. The trial was another waste of time.
“Come,” Peter said as he raised the soul to his feet. “Come and stand by me.”
The trial was so familiar, Asher barely listened. This man had never been so bad even before his conversion. A miser for most of his life, he had found the Light through a mortal faith days before his death when most of his great wealth had been lost. He had given what was left to a cause he had ignored for years in spite of the gnawing belief he was needed. It was this long-ignored guilt that the accuser, predictably, chose as his best weapon. This soul had barely pondered his conversion, Lucifer insisted. He had acted on instinct in a time of need. So much the better, Peter argued, that his instinct should be for the Light. Yeah, perhaps, the accuser countered, but would not his gift have been more precious if he had given it when he still had so much to l
ose? He had given all he had, Peter pointed out, and the Judge smiled. The amount meant nothing, nor indeed even the gift itself, no more than the words and rituals he had used to pledge his heart. The belief in his salvation was what must save him. This was the promise of the Word.
“And so he is saved,” the Judge agreed. He stepped down from his high place and opened His arms, and the soul embraced Him just as Peter had. “Come,” the Judge said. “I have a place for you.”
A wave of hatred like the breath of a furnace swept across the clearing from Lucifer, melting the snow and turning the dry grass to ash. The soul felt nothing as he walked away beside the Judge, but Asher stepped forward anyway, spreading his wings. The accuser took a step backward, but he smiled. “Always good to see you, brother.” He sank back into Hell the way he had come, and his imp-clerk scrambled after him, rattling his chains.
The Watcher at the Gate
Asher crossed back into the mortal plane and walked through the cemetery, headed home. He turned up the collar on his overcoat by habit, a detail learned over the millennia to blend in among mortals, pretending to feel the cold.
The rusted iron gates were in sight when he saw a figure moving toward him, swathed in black. For a moment, he tensed, the figure’s size and swaddling making him think Lucifer had sent an imp to torment him. But she didn’t scuttle; she walked with purpose, fighting the icy wind. He faded back into the shadows to watch her pass, catching a glimpse of white skin and green eyes under the brim of the black hat and over the black folds of her scarf. She didn’t see him.
He had already turned to walk away when he changed his mind.