She blinked. “Ice cream.”
“Your favorite smell?”
“Hot apple cider.”
“What’s your favorite color?”
“G-golden brown. Like a toasted marshmallow.” The glow that she’d had before started to return. “Or caramel. You know, like that caramel syrup they put on ice cream sundaes sometimes? Or toffee.”
“That’s my girl,” I murmured, as she started to breathe easily. “You here with me?” She nodded, ducking her head. “Andwhereis here exactly?”
Her nose crinkled. “In a purifying room?”
“No, I mean seriously… Where is this whole place?” I chucked the loofah into a gleaming golden laundry hamper and reached for the jar of gel, but it was empty now, like the rest. Holy putrefaction, I’d gone through themall.
Sunny tilted her head, making her curls bounce. “Wow, that smut really did affect you. You should know this. We’re in Sanctuary! The realm between Earth and the Celestial Realm.”
I farking knew it.I let out a shaky breath. “We’re really not on Earth?”
“Of course not. Don’t you remember being here in between your missions?”
“I hate to tell you this, but this is the first time I’ve been to this… realm.”
Sunny gasped. “You mean you gotthatsmut-covered in one mission? How old were you when you died? You can’t be more than…”
I wasn’t certain this was the time for the truth about my age; the last time I’d told someone how old I was, I’d been committed to an asylum, and that was back when they still did electroshock therapy and lobotomies. I shuddered. You never forgot your first lobotomy, no matter what they tell you.
“I was eighteen. Well, more or less.”Four hundred years more or less, to be precise.
Sunny’s jaw dropped. “Wow. What did you do to…? You know, never mind. We’ll get you fed and purified, and you can work through your, um, life choices with your cohort.”
“Cohort?”
She laughed. “Yeah. The group you were assigned to.”
“Assigned?” My head hurt. Actually, everything hurt. “Like, friends? Or coworkers?”
“Yourcohort, Feather.” Sunny looked even more distressed. “Your Novice companions.”
“Um, little winged angels like you, or wingless ones like me?”
She bristled slightly at that, though I had no idea what I’d said to offend her. “I’m not exactly a Novice. I’m a Protector. My wings will grow as I complete more missions. You’ll get yours as soon as you’re purified, just like everyone else after their first mission. Feather, you have to know all this.”
“Sorry, babe. I’mtabula rasa.”
Sunny ran a hand through her curls in frustration and began putting her toga back on. “You mean, none of your memories returned? You don’t remember being formed with your cohort, being given your mission, nothing?”
“Nope. And this place isn’t Heaven, or Earth. So what exactly is it?”Please don’t let it be Hell.After all I’d done for the last four hundred years or so, I had kind of expected to land there sooner or later.
She handed me my dirty toga. “Like I said, this realm is called Sanctuary. You’re a Novice Protector. And starting tomorrow, you’ll be sharing the details of your life, and your life choices—"
“My life choices?”
“Yes, of course. What you did on your mission. The choices that gained you your, um, smut.”
“Who will I share them with?”Please say a therapist.I could handle telling maybe one angel person about the things I’d done in my lives on Earth. Although I might present a highlight reel instead of going through every single bad day.
There had been a lot of very, very bad days.
