“This is heaven,” I say breathlessly, looking around, noticing at once how the colors are brighter, the air warmer, the ground under me more solid, somehow, than it is on earth.

“It would appear so.” He helps me up, keeps my hand in his as he leads me along the shore. I stumble, the rocks on the bank too hard for my feet. Tucker has less trouble, but it’s difficult for him, too. Finally we make our way up to a sandier spot and sit, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the water, looking at each other. I’m drinking in the sight of him unbroken and healthy, perfect in his beauty, warm and smiling and alive, his blue eyes even bluer here, sparkling.

“I don’t think this dying thing is half so bad as it’s cracked up to be,” he says.

I try to smile, but my heart’s breaking all over again. Because I know that I can’t stay here.

“What do you think I’m supposed to do now?” he asks.

I peer over my shoulder at the mountains. On earth the sun would be on the other side of them as it rises, to the east, but here the light is behind them. Always growing. It’s always sunrise in heaven, the way that hell is in perpetual sunset, never breaking into the full light of day, but there’s the promise of it, soon, maybe.

“Go into the light,” I say, and scoff at how cliché it sounds.

He snorts. “Get out of town.”

“No, seriously. You’re supposed to go that way.”

“And you know this because …?”

“I’ve been here before,” I say.

“Oh.” He didn’t know that. “So you can come and go? You could come back?”

“No, Tucker. I don’t think so. Not where you’re going. I don’t belong here.”

“Hmm.” He stares off at the lake again. “Well, I’m glad you found a way this time.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

He reaches for my hand, takes it in both of his, strokes my palm. “I love you, you know.”

“I love you, too,” I say. I would cry, but I don’t think I have a tear left in me. “I’m so sorry this happened. You had this beautiful life in front of you, and now it’s gone.” It’s good to be here with him, to see him safe and sound, but my heart hurts when I think of Wendy and his parents, the way his death is going to open a big black gaping hole in their lives, a wound that won’t ever fully heal.

I hurt when I think of spending my whole long life on earth without seeing him again.

He tilts my chin up. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“If I’d just left you alone …”

“Don’t do that,” he says. “Don’t regret us. I don’t. I won’t, ever.”

We sit there together like that for I don’t know how long, our hands tangled, my head against his shoulder. He tells me about all the things I missed this year, how he took up bull riding at the rodeo, for the adrenaline of it, he says, because he wanted something to make him feel alive when he was otherwise feeling pretty low.

“You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck,” I say.

He grins. Shrugs.

“Okay, not so lucky.”

“I missed you every minute. I wanted to drive out to California and grab you by that pesky hair of yours and drag you back to Wyoming and make you see sense. Then I thought, well, if I can’t bring her to me, I’ll go to her.”

“So you applied to UC Santa Clara.”

“Wendy told you about that?” he asks, surprised. I nod. “What a tattletale.” He sighs, thinking of her. Sobers. “You sure we can’t stay here forever?” he asks wistfully.

“No. You’re supposed to move on.”

“You too, I guess. Can’t hang out with a dead guy all your life.”

“I wish I could.”

“Prescott’s a good egg,” he says, his voice strained. “He’ll take care of you.”

I don’t know what to say. He stands up, brushes the nonexistent heavenly dirt off his pants out of sheer force of habit. “Well, I should let you go, I think. I’ve got a hike ahead of me.”

He pulls me into his arms. We’ve had some good-byes, Tucker and me, off and on again, but nothing like this. I cling to him, breathing in his smell, his cologne and horse sweat and hay, a hint of Oreo cookies, feeling the solidness of his arms, knowing this is the last time I’ll feel that, and I look up at him all desperate and heartbroken, and then we’re kissing. I hang on to him for dear life, kissing him like the world’s about to end, and I guess in a way it is. I kiss him like I probably should be embarrassed to do in a place like heaven, which feels like church, a place where God is looking right at you, but I don’t stop. I give him my whole heart through my lips. I love him. I open up my mind and show him how much I love him. He gives a startled, agonized laugh, and breaks away, breathing hard.

“I can’t leave you,” he says hoarsely.

“I can’t leave you either,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t.”

“Then don’t,” he says, and grabs me behind the neck and kisses me again, and the world is tilting, tilting, and everything goes black.

22

THE PROPHET

I wake up in my room in Jackson. For a minute I consider whether or not it was all a bad dream. It feels like one. But then reality settles over me. I groan and turn onto my side, curling into the fetal position, pressing my hands to my forehead until it hurts, rocking, rocking, because I know that Tucker is gone.

“Ah, now,” says a voice. “Don’t cry.”

There’s an angel sitting on the edge of my bed. I can feel that he loves me. He’s thankful that I’m all right. Home. I can feel his relief that I’m safe.

I turn over to look at him. “Dad?”

It isn’t Dad. It’s a man with clean-cut auburn hair, eyes the color of the sky after the sun’s gone down, when the light has almost left it. He smiles.

“Michael couldn’t come this time, I’m afraid, but he sends his love,” he says. “I am Uriel.”

Uriel. I’ve seen him before. Somewhere in my brain I’m storing an image of him standing next to Dad, looking all fierce and regal, but I don’t know where that comes from. I sit up and am instantly flooded with weakness, a hollowness in my stomach, like I haven’t slept in days. Uriel nods sympathetically as I sink back onto the pillows.

“You’ve had quite the adventure, haven’t you?” he says. “You did well. You did what you were meant to do. And perhaps more than you were meant to do.”

But not well enough, I think, because Tucker’s dead. I’ll never see him again.

Uriel shakes his head. “The boy is fine. He’s more than fine, as a matter of fact. That’s why I’ve come to talk to you.”

It’s like my whole body goes limp with relief. “He’s alive?”

“He’s alive.”

“So I’m in trouble?” I ask. “Was I not supposed to save him?”

Uriel gives a little laugh. “You’re not in trouble. But what you did for him, the way you poured yourself into him, it saved him, yes, but it will also have changed him. You need to understand.”

“It changed him?” I repeat, dread uncurling in my gut. “How?”

He sighs. “In the old days we called a person with so much glory, so much of the power of the divine inside them, a prophet.”

“What does that mean, a prophet?”

“He will be slightly more than human. The prophets of the past have sometimes been able to heal the sick, or conjure fire or storms, or see visions of the future. It affects the little things: their sensitivity to the part of the world humans don’t usually see, their awareness of good and evil, their strength in both body and spirit. Sometimes it also affects their longevity.”

I take a minute to digest this information. And wonder what the word longevity actually means in this case.

Uriel’s expression is almost mischievous. “You should keep an eye on him. Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”

I stare at him. Try to swallow. “What about Asael? Is he going to come after us?”

“You’ve dealt with Asael quite efficiently,” he says, a touch of pride in his voice.

“Did I … kill him?”

“No,” he answers. “Asael’s returned to heaven. His wings are white once more.”