A Warm Heart in Winter(86)

“That’s how Luchas’s remains were still there the following night,” Qhuinn said quietly. “You stayed with him all day long and blocked the sun from him. Didn’t you. You protected him . . . so I could see him one last time. Didn’t you.”

Lassiter tipped the juicer over a rocks glass and then put the serving in front of Qhuinn.

“I repaid you by attacking you.” Qhuinn swallowed. “And insulting you. Oh, shit, Lass, I didn’t mean what I said. I didn’t mean it—”

“It’s okay.”

“No.” Qhuinn reached across the bar and touched the angel’s arm. “It’s not. Thank you for what you did for him and for me. And I’m truly sorry.”

Lassiter paused in the middle of working on his own serving of juice—and his eyes stayed ducked. “Just so you know, I can’t really talk about some things. It’s the rule.”

Qhuinn slowly straightened on the stool, a shimmy of awareness going down his spine and landing in his ass cheeks, causing them to pucker.

It was easy to forget who Lassiter was. What he was. The enormous power he held.

But at this moment, Qhuinn became fully in touch with the fact that he was sitting across . . . from a deity.

“I do what I can,” the angel murmured as he tossed the rind and picked up the last of the halves. “I do what I’m allowed to do. You know, to make things easier. My heart broke for you, and yet all I could do was stand on the sidelines and watch the crash. It’s fucking torture . . .” As his voice broke, he cleared his throat. “But I do what I can.”

Lassiter poured the juice into his own glass and then clinked the rim of Qhuinn’s. “Bottoms up.”

As the angel tossed his back, Qhuinn did the same—and had to click his tongue at the tartness. As the burn rushed down into his gut, his stomach rolled—but not from the grapefruit.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like for you,” Qhuinn said.

“Everyone wants to be in charge—until they are.” Lassiter put his glass down with such care, it made no sound on the bar. “Why do you think I watch the kind of TV I do? I’ve got to shut my mind off somehow. Otherwise, I’d go mad.”

“Shit.”

“All the strands of all the lives, woven in patterns of suffering and joy, the cloth infinite in every direction, the layers upon layers unending. And I see every fiber in every thread, at every moment. I feel the reverberations, too. I am but a tuning fork of flesh, struck by the hand of the Creator. I am but a servant of destiny, yet I am accountable.”

As Lassiter spoke the words, his voice grew deeper and deeper, and then behind him, revealed first as a figment of the eye, and then as a glorious, three-dimensional reality, the set of iridescent wings he usually hid appeared at his shoulders. And that was not all. From overhead, cascading down, not from the ceiling of the room, but from the great above, a shaft of light, brighter than the sun, yet not painful to the eye, bathed the angel in a halo that encompassed his entire body.

In his holy form, as a glimpse into eternity and the mystery of fate, Lassiter looked across the bar. And now his lips remained closed, even as his voice permeated the space around them.

Ask what you want to know.

Qhuinn began to tremble, a precipice he had not intended to confront appearing at his feet.

Ask. And I shall tell you.

Covering his face with both his hands, Qhuinn felt like a child, for the answer could well crush him in a way that couldn’t be contemplated when you were an adult, when you were big and strong and capable of protecting yourself. The knowledge he sought and feared was of the ruination kind, the sort against which he had no defenses.

“Is my brother in the Fade?” he choked out. “Is he safely in the Fade, even though he . . . ended himself. And therefore cannot be granted a peaceful afterlife?”

Motherfucker, why had he said any of that out loud? He already knew the answer—

Your brother was killed by the blizzard. Murdered by snow.

As Lassiter’s voice entered his mind, Qhuinn dropped his hands. Through tears, he whispered, “So is he in the Fade?”

Lassiter, in all his mystical splendor, nodded. He is safely in the Fade forevermore. He was murdered . . . by the snow.

All at once, the magic was gone as if it had never been, the wings disappearing, the pool of golden illumination dissipated, the halo around the body no longer visible.

Qhuinn blinked. “You are the one who makes that call. Aren’t you. You’re the one who decides where they go—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lassiter’s tone was brisk as he held up his empty glass. “More grapefruit? I think I’m going to have another—”

“Thank you,” Qhuinn croaked out.

When Qhuinn’s glass was taken back, he could only watch in silence as more grapefruit was cut and squeezed, the sweet and tangy scent rising up, another round of summer in the midst of December.

In his mind, Qhuinn heard the angel’s voice: I do what I can. What I’m allowed to do. You know, to make things easier.

“You are the best savior we could ever have,” he whispered reverently.

Lassiter didn’t respond. He just filled up the glasses again and returned Qhuinn’s. When Qhuinn went to take it, the angel didn’t let go.