his veins for almost twelve straight days. But Jeap was thinking of something else. “Come to think of it, now that I can actually think, I mean . . . I guess she wasn’t really my girl. I mean, how can you really love someone if you help them do this?”
“She buy you the drugs?”
Jeap ran a hand over his head, jerked it away in surprise, then moved across the room to study his reflection in the window. Groaning, he tried to smooth out his hair, but it fell back into the matted mess from the time of his death. “Man, she introduced me to it,” he finally replied, turning back to Grif. “Said I’d get the ride of my life. Guess she meant the last ride.”
“Would she get high with you?”
“Yes.” Then he thought about it. “No. Wait.”
Grif waited as the kid’s brow furrowed.
“I don’t know.” He stared at Grif. “Why can’t I remember?”
“Because your death was violent,” Grif said simply. “Even if it was self-inflicted.”
“Violent. Yeah.” The kid rubbed his hands up and down his arms, and shuddered. “I burned and felt dirty inside even as I was doing it. But I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t stop . . .”
Grif saw where this was headed, and placed a steadying hand on Jeap’s shoulder. The last thing he needed was for the kid to panic and run off-track. “The Everlast keeps you from recalling a violent death so you don’t have to relive it. You’re not meant to take it with you.”
Jeap laughed humorlessly. “Man, I’ve been living this death every day for the past two years.”
“Hey,” Grif said sharply, causing the kid to jump. Grif softened his tone. “Guilt is an empty emotion. There’s no place for it in the Everlast.”
Jeap licked his lips. “You . . . sure that’s where I’m going?”
“That’s where I went.” And Grif had enough guilt for the two of them.
“You’re an angel,” Jeap pointed out then. Shifting his gaze, Grif caught sight of his wings in the window across from him. Only the dead could see them. Tar-black and sharp as blades, they crested high over his shoulders, flashing ebony muscles when he flexed. They were magnificent.
“Not always,” he said, returning his gaze to Jeap’s. “I was murdered in 1960. So I know what you’re going through.”
Jeap narrowed his eyes. “That must be why you look different.”
“Than what?” Grif said.
“Than me.”
Glancing at the corpse, Grif huffed. He hoped so. “That’s because I’m both angelic and human.”
He explained to Jeap in a quick rap how he’d been forced to cram his soul back into flesh four months earlier. The dual natures had hurt at first. His blood had eventually warmed, and his coagulated veins had warmed, but he’d suffered throbbing headaches for weeks after, migraines like earthquakes. Breathing was as torturous as if he were a lunger. Memory was a plague.
But then a Pure angel transferred some of her celestial strength into him in hopes that her amplified angelic senses would drive him mad, and he’d flee back to the Everlast. The plan backfired. Earth, the mudflat, had instead become bearable again. His senses were additionally magnified, almost as strong as they’d ever been in the Everlast. He’d since gotten used to the twin feathers she’d tucked deep behind each shoulder blade, and almost never felt them.
“I’m both ageless and clothed in mortal flesh,” he concluded, as Jeap listened, rapt. “I have free will, like all humans, but am still bound to the Everlast. In short, Purity lives in me, even though it shouldn’t.”
“So how did you die?” Jeap asked.
Hands tucked in his pockets, Grif shrugged. “I was stabbed in the gut. A doc probably coulda patched me back up, but one never got the chance.”
“You weren’t found in time?”
“I was dry-gulched right after I was stuck.”
“You were what?”
“Whacked over the head with a ceramic vase.”
Jeap winced, then looked back at his remains. “So what will happen to me?”
“You’ll go through a process called incubation. It’s . . . healing. It’ll rehabilitate you so that you forget most of your earthly years. Then you can move on to Paradise.”
Jeap looked over at his body and shuddered. He still had the wide-eyed aspect of the Lost, but at least he didn’t look like he was going to run. “Think I’ll get to come back, too?”
Grif winced before he could help it. He wouldn’t wish a return to the Surface on anyone. Except himself, of course. “Aren’t you tired, son?” he asked quietly.
“Exhausted,”