“So if you should see him,” he began.

Remy looked up from an electric bill he’d retrieved from the pile, at first confused.

“Our mutual friend, the one we were just discussing?” Mulvehill clarified. “If you should see him, pass on that I wish him only the best.”

He adjusted the collar on the jacket and, satisfied that he was presentable, opened the door to leave.

“And that I really miss her too,” he added as he left, closing the door behind him.

Remy stood before his wife’s grave, as he’d done so many times since she’d left him.

He had managed to make it through all the mail and even returned a few phone calls before deciding not to push his luck. He’d stopped at home to pick up Marlowe, then headed for the cemetery.

A thin, snaking vine clung to the face of the marble grave marker, the delicate purple flowers that grew from the vine embellishing her name.

MADELINE CHANDLER: BELOVED.

It always stunned him how beautiful it was, no matter the season; there were always flowers of various colors and sizes growing on and around the grave, a gift of gratitude from Israfil, the Angel of Death, for Remy’s assistance in keeping the world from ending.

“Hey there, beautiful,” Remy said, kneeling upon the thick green grass. He reached out, letting his fingers brush the engraving of her name.

He knew that she wasn’t there with him, for when she had passed from life, her essence—her soul—had joined with countless others, as had been done since creation, to become part of the very fabric of the universe.

To become part of the Source.

He of all people knew how it worked, but he liked having a place that he could come to—to think, to chat with her as if she were still with him.

From out of the corner of his eye he saw Marlowe zip past, obviously on the hunt.

“Are you going to come over and say hi?” Remy called to the animal that was darting between the headstones, snout pressed to the ground.

“No,” the dog answered. “Finding rabbits.”

Remy turned his attention back to his wife’s grave.

“Things have been kind of crazy,” he said, picking away some of the dead, dry leaves that hung uselessly from the veinwork of vines that covered the front of the marker. “You know, lots of the weird stuff.”

Whenever he was involved in a case outside the walls of normalcy, Madeline had always referred to it as that weird stuff. When your husband was a disenfranchised angel from Heaven, working as a private investigator, the weird stuff just had a tendency to find you. She never liked it, saying that it gave her the creeps, but over time had learned to tolerate it.

“Yeah, yeah, I know; you hate that crap.” He laughed softly, hearing the sound of her complaining as if she were there with him. “But it keeps me busy… keeps me distracted.”

He read her name on the stone over and over again.

“I’m surprised that you didn’t run from me screaming that morning when I showed you,” he said.

When I showed you what I was.

Nahant, Massachusetts, 19??

“What are you doing?” Madeline Dexter asked him, a smile creeping around the corners of her seductive mouth. The warm wind whipped off the water as she picked some stray strands of her tousled hair from her mouth, her beautiful brown eyes riveted to him.

They had been out all night dancing at the Wonderland Ballroom, just one of the hundreds of joyous times they’d shared since she had first come to work as his office manager.

There was something about this woman, something that demanded that she know the truth.

“I have something to show you,” he said to her.

He let her hand go and stepped back. His eyes quickly scanned the beach around them, wanting to be certain that they were indeed alone. The sun had just come up, and there wasn’t another soul to be found. At that moment, as far as he was concerned, they were the only two people upon the planet, like Adam and Eve.

He hoped things worked out for him and Madeline better than they did for those two.

Madeline moved her shoes from one hand to the other. “What is this, Remy?” she asked, with a nervous giggle. “What’re you going to do, some sort of magic trick?”

Remy smiled at her warmly. After what he had left behind in Paradise, he had never believed he could trust something so completely. She made him want to belong. For the first time in more than a millennium, he truly felt a part of humanity, not just some imposter going through the motions.

She made him feel human, and he couldn’t bear to hide the truth about himself any longer.

“A magic trick,” he repeated, and laughed.

He tried to recall the last time he had shed his human guise. It was before he’d come to Massachusetts, and maybe even before Massachusetts had been established, for that matter. It had been a long time, and he did not relish the act.

But it had to be if their relationship was to continue down this path.

“You’ve often talked about how honest I am, how I can’t lie to save my life.”

She stared at him intensely. She was starting to look worried, maybe thinking that he was going to reveal that he already had a girlfriend, or perhaps even worse, that he was married.

If only it was that simple.

“But I have been lying, Maddie,” he told her, “lying about what I am.”

She stepped toward him, concern on her face. “You don’t have to do this,” Madeline said. “Whatever it is you’ve been hiding… it’s all right, Remy; we can work it out.”

Madeline was afraid, and if he were to be perfectly honest, so was he.

Remy didn’t want to lose her, and by revealing the truth, he knew that he very well might. But he couldn’t lie anymore, especially to her.

“Don’t ruin this,” she begged.

Gently he pushed her back, the fear intensifying in her eyes.

“I have to do it,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” Madeline commanded as she stamped her bare foot in the sand. “Don’t do this to me… Don’t take away what we have… Please.”

He couldn’t torture her anymore. Remy reached down within himself, deep into the bottomless darkness where he had hidden his true self, and called to the power of Heaven.

He wished he could say that it was happy to see him, that this was about to be a pleasurable experience, but then he really would have been lying. It hated his human guise and eagerly attacked it, burning away his clothes and the tender flesh to reveal the truth beneath.

Tears streamed down Madeline’s face as her pale, delicate flesh was illuminated in the glow of his divinity.

But she did not run; she did not scream in terror.

The essence of the Seraphim exerted its full power, exploding from his body in a flash of brilliance. Remy tossed his head back and yelled to the Heavens as two great feathered wings emerged from his back, their gentle beating tossing sparks of fire to smolder in the sand.

Exhausted, Remy—now in the guise of Remiel of the Heavenly host Seraphim—dropped to his knees on the beach.

“I couldn’t hide this from you any longer,” he said, his odd-sounding voice making her flinch. “I had to tell you—show you the truth.”

Slowly, Madeline dropped to her knees. “I always knew there was something different about you,” she whispered. There was no fear in her tone, no disbelief, just a breathless wonder. “Something special.”

She reached out, touching his bare, luminescent flesh. “You’re real,” she said with a laugh, the tips of her fingers causing his skin to tingle pleasurably.

“I am,” Remy answered, taking her hand in his. “More real now, since you’ve come into my life, than I’ve been in… in a very long time.”