“Something like that,” Osh said.
Cookie sat on the sofa next to Osh. “We’re worried about you, hon.”
“Et tu, Walter?”
“Don’t blame her,” Garrett said.
I tried to stand, but Osh kept his legs locked in place.
“Charley, you know I have your six,” Cookie said, before examining our positions in reference to one another. “Or, like, your 9:45. Either way, we’re all here for you.”
“So what’s this about?” I asked my interrogator.
Garrett pressed his lips together in thought before answering. “We have less than a day to figure this out, to bring Reyes back, or have him either cast from this plane or cut down, and we’re here doing art projects and eating pizza.”
I cringed and lowered my head. “I know. I’m just … I’m fresh out of ideas. I have no clue what to do.”
“Bet you a nickel you do,” Osh said, offering me a reassuring squeeze.
I wrapped an arm around his leg. “You don’t understand. I don’t know who he is.”
“He’s Rey’azikeen,” Osh said.
“Exactly. We tried the whole luring-him-into-a-trap thing. That didn’t work.”
“Or did it?” he asked. “What did we learn from that?”
“That I’m completely incapable of resisting that man in any form.”
“No,” Garrett countered. “We learned that he is completely incapable of resisting you.”
I lifted a shoulder into a half-hearted shrug. How would that knowledge help us?
“And,” Osh added, “we learned that you are unwilling to do what is necessary.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re a god, Charles,” Garrett said. He put a hand on my knee to calm me. “You’re the First Star, like in the book.”
I deadpanned him. “That’s a children’s book.”
“And it’s one I’m convinced is telling your story.”
Osh leaned forward and wrapped his arms around my neck, offering me a reassuring hug. “I agree.”
“What book?” Cookie asked.
“I’ll show you later, but I don’t get what any of this has to do with anything.”
“You can defeat him,” Osh said. “If you’re willing to.”
I broke free and stood. Nicolette’s dark eyes had rounded, and Pari had put her masterpiece on hold to listen.
“I get it. I’ve eaten other gods. I’ve even done it in this form. On this plane. I devoured the god Eidolon, but he was evil. Reyes is not.”
“We aren’t talking about Reyes,” Osh said. “We’re talking about Rey’azikeen.”
“Okay, fine, what do you know about him? I mean, surely you’d heard of him even in hell.”
“Of course I had. We even knew that Lucifer’s son, Rey’aziel, was created using the god Rey’azikeen’s energy. I just didn’t know that the godly part of him was still … in there.”
“Then, okay, what do you know about him?”
He leaned back on the sofa and stared at me from underneath his dark lashes. After a long moment, he said, “I’ve only heard rumors. Slave, remember? I didn’t exactly have access to classified information, even in hell.”
“And? What did the rumors say?”
“There were rumors that he was the creator of what we called dark matter, not to be confused with the theoretical gravitational force that binds the universe together. This dark matter was, well, dark.”
I pulled Pari’s desk chair around and sat. “Explain.”
He shook his head. “I just know the rumblings that permeated the underbelly of hell saying that he creates dark matter, and that dark matter is the darkness that swallows the light. It’s the evil that swallows the benevolent. It’s why he’s so good at what he does.”
“Why? What does he do?”
“You misunderstand. That’s not the worst part.”
I shifted in the chair and raised my chin, preparing for anything. “I’ll bite. What’s the worst part?”
“There were other rumors. Rumors that were spoken in hushed tones like some urban legend that kids are afraid to talk about.”
“What did they say?”
“They said that Rey’azikeen didn’t create the dark matter. They said that he was the dark matter. It was a part of him and that the dark matter came from his soul.”
Was all this true? Was the god Rey’azikeen truly so dark, so scary, that even the demons in hell only dared to whisper about him? “Why would such a thing be so hushed in a place like hell?”
“Because he’s the sibling of the God Elohim. It’s like a television evangelist with a brother in prison. It’s … dirty.”
My hackles rose to razor-sharp spikes. “Reyes is not dirty.”
“Hey,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “You wanted the rumors, you got the rumors. That’s all I know.”
I wasn’t entirely certain I believed him, but I was worried Nicolette would never be the same after this, so I dropped it. For now.
I stood and started pacing again. “This is my fault. If he does something awful or gets kicked off this plane or killed or all of the above, it’s my fault.”
Osh stood and blocked my path to get my attention. He put his hands on my shoulders, and said, “No, sweetheart, it’s not. You just need to make a decision. If he does stir up shit, are you willing to do what it takes to stop him?”
* * *
Cookie and I stayed with Pari after everyone left to make sure she was okay. An hour later, she kicked us out, saying even she needed sleep. She did look exhausted. Stress had a way of aging a person.
So, Cookie and I drove home and sat in my apartment, the cavernous room seeming to swallow us. Or maybe I just wanted it to.
Reyes was still there, inside Rey’azikeen. He had to be. Either that, or the god Rey’azikeen desired me just as much as my ethereal husband did.
But why would he? In his eyes, I was human. Nothing more and nothing less. Sure, a god lay underneath the flesh and blood of my human side, but it was apparently a god he had never liked. According to tidbits I’d heard here and there, in our previous existence, we had been enemies. So I was human. Strike one. And an enemy. Strike two.
Then why seduce me? Why bring me to my knees?
Perhaps that was the point. To bring me to my knees. To show me what he was capable of in any form. To show me what I was incapable of in any form—namely, resisting him.
I hadn’t even considered going to bed when I got home. I knew what would happen the moment my mind drifted. He would invade. And, as bad as I hated to admit it, his invasions were like water on a parched desert. I craved them. Thirsted for them.
Bottom line, I missed my husband.
But he was toying with me. The god Rey’azikeen. Keeping me awake. To disorient me? To distract me? To impair my judgment or slow my reflexes?
It would help if I could figure out what he was searching for so blindly. It would give me the upper hand, especially if I knew where to find it. But I’d searched the apartment for signs of the god glass. It had shattered when he’d come back through it. I found nary a sliver of glass, much less its ashes.
Then the ashes of what? The embers of what?
My mind was too worn to think about it anymore.
Cookie had no inclinations toward sleep either once she found out there was a set of children’s books that supposedly mapped out my entire history in a few thousand words. No way was she going to drop this. So, she raided her closet for soft clothes, as did I, except I couldn’t wear her clothes, so she sent me home to raid my own closet, and we sat in my apartment, drinking the elixir of life out of coffee mugs that advised any passersby A FUN THING TO DO IN THE MORNING IS NOT TALK TO ME.
My soft clothes felt heavenly. Probably because the bottoms had little angels on them perched on clouds. An inside joke from Mr. Farrow himself. My T-shirt, which read MAJESTIC AS FUCK, wasn’t quite so angelic.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about these,” Cookie said, reprimanding me.
“I only learned about them this morning.”
“Which gave you an entire day.”
She had me there. We both read in silence, Cookie on book one, The First Star, and me on book two, The Dark Star.
The book began with the First Star—me, if Garrett were to be believed—hunting and fighting malevolent gods that were tormenting kingdoms throughout the galaxies, both known and unknown to seers like the one who wrote the book I was holding.
In the seers’ eyes, she was a hero, fighting injustices from one kingdom to another, using her wits to outsmart her enemies and her strength to battle them, for the more she fought, the greater their numbers. Fortunately, the more battles she won, the stronger she grew. With every victory, the star consumed her enemy. She gained its power until she became a star a hundredfold strong.
She became known throughout all dimensions as the Benevolent One, the Sentinel, the Star Eater.