In the last week I’d been tempted to search through the boxes remaining in my spare room for my old confirmation certificate. But I couldn’t bear the idea of discovering something of Aubrey’s, of even seeing her writing on the side of the box from the first time it had been used when we moved in together. Ultimately, I decided a weathered certificate would shed light on nothing. Nothing could have prepared me for this. I couldn’t remember Pastor Feagan ever teaching about demons, or even the devil, except in the vaguest terms.
Not that God had been a specific notion to me, either. God was as real as the gravity on Jupiter or the expansion of the universe. Conceptually significant, yes—especially if one studied astronomy or lived on Jupiter—but nothing I expected to know much about, firsthand, in this world. I had always subscribed to the more modern belief that religion was fraught with contradictions, the product of an overgrown oral tradition that only the fanatical tried to package neatly as one tries to tame kudzu.
And, as Lucian had aptly observed, I’d never needed religion to be a good person. My father brought that out in me on his own. Never a perfect man, his temper would lie dormant for weeks at a time, waiting to erupt at the first sign of any misdeed or bad grade. Silence was a good sign, no news always the good kind. With an upbringing like that, there had been no need for God
A stretch of afternoon light angled across several pews as the church door opened. A moment later a black man in a denim jacket entered my pew from the other side and sat down next to me. He smelled like sandalwood and soap. My gaze slid to my watch.
4:15 p.m.
“I wondered if you’d be able to walk through the door.” I kept my eyes fixed on the altar, on the cross atop it.
“Lucifer himself has access to the throne room of God. Do you think a church is any problem for me?” His voice was a warm baritone that did not need whispers to be kept between us.
“How can that be?”
“Why would it not be? Neither of us is evil by design.”
“Because you were angels, you mean.”
“I was. Lucifer is a cherub.”
With some confusion I conjured chubby-winged children in diapers and practically heard his answering scowl. “It isn’t what you’re thinking,” he said, more loudly than before. “The cherubim are the highest of our order, the most powerful of us all. Know that on Lucifer’s creation, El called him perfect.”
I turned toward him, openly studying him now. He had a broad forehead and long, high cheekbones. The angular lines of a short moustache exactly delineated the curve of his upper lip, which was perfectly matched to the lower one. A hint of stubble smattered his chin and neck, like lichen growing on a great, smooth stone.
“He called him perfect with good reason. Lucifer was his masterwork. He was powerful, anointed by God, and so very beautiful.”
I thought I heard him sigh.
“Then what about seraphim?” I asked, not because of any spectacular knowledge of my own, but according to literary lore, CHERUBIM and SERAPHIM had once been the license plates on Anne Rice’s two limousines.
“The seraphim are fearsome fighters, but the cherubim outrank them. And then there are the archangels. You’ve heard of Gabriel and Michael—”
There was a slight, just-perceptible intonation to his words when he spoke these names, as well as the name of Lucifer, and even his own name. Not quite an accent, it was more an elongation on the tongue, as though the pure names in another language might be unpronounceable in ours. Hearing it now, I remembered it in the speech of the woman in the bookstore and of the man in the café.
“I won’t go into detail about all the various kinds of cherubim and seraphim. It may be best that I not describe them, lest, with all those faces and wings, you think us a spiritual freak show.”
Beyond his profile, a stained-glass saint stared out upon us both with hollow, fractured eyes. “And you? What about you?”
“Ah, me.” He spread his hands on his lap. They were lighter colored on the inside, the creases in them dark. The calluses on his palms struck me as aberrant. A stainless-steel watch peered beneath the edge of his cuff. “I was a member of the Host. A shining light, mere and marvelous.”
“How did it happen then—your change, I mean?” The question tasted surreal on my lips.
Lucian reached up to rub the back of his neck. I had seen Sheila do the same at the onset of her migraines. “I should tell that story from the beginning. But this place isn’t conducive to talking.”
“Because of the crosses?”
“No, because the praying of those people is giving me a headache.”
“The crosses don’t bother you?”
“They should bother you a great deal more. They were used to kill humans.”
I had not thought of that.
