City of Heavenly Fire

Maia sat on the beach at Rockaway, looking out at the water, and shivered.

Rockaway was crowded in summer, but empty and windswept now, in December. The water of the Atlantic stretched away, a heavy gray, the color of iron, under a similarly iron-colored sky.

The bodies of the werewolves Sebastian had killed, Jordan’s among them, had been burned among the ruins of the Praetor Lupus. One of the wolves of the pack approached the tide line and cast the contents of a box of ashes onto the water.

Maia watched as the surface of the sea turned black with the remains of the dead.

“I’m sorry.” It was Bat, sitting down beside her on the sand. They watched as Rufus stepped up to the shoreline and opened another wooden box of ashes. “About Jordan.”

Maia pushed her hair back. Gray clouds were gathering on the horizon. She wondered when it would start to rain. “I was going to break up with him,” she said.

“What?” Bat looked shocked.

“I was going to break up with him,” Maia said. “The day Sebastian killed him.”

“I thought everything was going great with you guys. I thought you were happy.”

“Did you?” Maia dug her fingers into the damp sand. “You didn’t like him.”

“He hurt you. It was a long time ago, and I know he tried to make up for it, but—” Bat shrugged. “Maybe I’m not so forgiving.”

Maia exhaled. “Maybe I’m not either,” she said. “The town I grew up in, all these spoiled thin rich white girls, they made me feel like crap because I didn’t look like them. When I was six, my mom tried to throw me a Barbie-themed birthday party. They make a black Barbie, you know, but they don’t make any of the stuff that goes with her—party supplies and cake toppers and all that. So we had a party for me with a blonde doll as the theme, and all these blonde girls came, and they all giggled at me behind their hands.” The beach air was cold in her lungs. “So when I met Jordan and he told me I was beautiful, well, it didn’t take that much. I was totally in love with him in about five minutes.”

“You are beautiful,” Bat said. A hermit crab inched its way along the sand, and he poked it with his fingers.

“We were happy,” Maia said. “But then everything happened, and he Turned me, and I hated him. I came to New York and I hated him, and then he showed up again and all he wanted was for me to forgive him. He wanted it so badly and he was so sorry. And I knew, people do crazy things when they get bitten. I’ve heard of people who’ve killed their families—”

“That’s why we have the Praetor,” said Bat. “Well. Had them.”

“And I thought, how much can you hold someone accountable for what they did when they couldn’t control themselves? I thought I should forgive him, he just wanted it so damn much. He’d done everything to make up for it. I thought we could go back to normal, go back to the way we used to be.”

“Sometimes you can’t go back,” Bat said. He touched the scar on his cheek thoughtfully; Maia had never asked him how he had gotten it. “Sometimes too much has changed.”

“We couldn’t go back,” Maia said. “At least, I couldn’t. He wanted me to forgive him so much that I think sometimes he just looked at me and he saw forgiveness. Redemption. He didn’t see me.” She shook her head. “I’m not someone’s absolution. I’m just Maia.”

“But you cared about him,” Bat said softly.

“Enough that I kept putting off breaking up with him. I thought maybe I’d feel differently. And then everything started happening: Simon got kidnapped, and we went after him, and I was still going to tell Jordan. I was going to tell him as soon as we got to the Praetor, and then we arrived and it was”—she swallowed—“a slaughterhouse.”

“They said when they found you, you were holding him. He was dead and his blood was washing out with the tide, but you were holding on to his body.”

“Everyone should die with someone holding on to them,” Maia said, taking a handful of sand. “I just—I feel so guilty. He died thinking I was still in love with him, that we were going to stay together and everything was fine. He died with me lying to him.” She let the grains trickle out through her fingers. “I should have told him the truth.”

“Stop punishing yourself.” Bat stood up. He was tall and muscular in his half-zipped anorak, the wind barely moving his short hair. The gathering gray clouds outlined him. Maia could see the rest of the pack, gathered around Rufus, who was gesturing while he talked. “If he hadn’t been dying, then yes, you should have told him the truth. But he died thinking he was loved and forgiven. There are much worse gifts you could give someone than that. What he did to you was terrible, and he knew it. But few people are all good or all bad. Think of it as a gift you gave to the good in him. Wherever Jordan’s going—and I do believe we all go somewhere—think of it as the light that will bring him home.”