Had my plan worked? Was my father fooled? I'd figured if he just wanted me dead, I'd die, and then he would leave, or Knox would get there and take care of him.
I frowned, this time because the world around me had dimmed. At least I could open my eyes now.
I blinked through my confusion and rapidly came to one important conclusion.
I wasn't in the hotel anymore.
I didn't know where I was, but it didn't feel scary. My arms and legs felt light, filled with an effervescence that had not been there moments before. The warm air loosened my bones, allowing my muscles to relax for the first time since I heard the glass break.
I sat in a grassy field sprinkled by a heavy dusting of wild flowers. The blossoms shone brightly, pinks, blues, and purples as vibrant as a neon light. There wasn't a place in Rockshell that I knew of that looked like this.
Water lapped the shore behind me, and I craned my head around, eventually turning entirely. It was a lake, not an ocean, but it stretched impossibly far. I could just make out the cliff face on the other side, where an enormous waterfall poured into the lake. Hanging in the soft blue sky above the cliffs were several rainbows, some of them touching or overlapping, while others glittered brightly on their own.
The place was beautiful. So beautiful I didn't notice the woman sitting in the lake, a little to the right, perched on top of a boulder five feet from shore. Her auburn hair was twisted tightly off her face, flowing loose in the back in cascading waves. She wore a pale lavender Grecian-style dress. The gauzy skirts rippled, despite there being no breeze. Our eyes met, and the woman beamed, looking happier to see me than even Knox.
"Hi," I said with a wave that hadn't felt dorky until after I did it.
"Hello," the woman replied. Her voice felt like a thousand warm summer nights, like endless Sunday mornings, like a bowl of ice cream that never ended.
Though I felt at peace where I was, I knew I wasn't in the hotel, and that thought was disturbing enough to brush away any warm fuzzies. "What is this place?"
The woman smiled, and my chest felt warm, my lips light. She was happy with me. That was what smiles meant, and that fact was extremely rewarding. "This is your heaven, Jazz."
I gulped. My heaven? "Um, no, this is a mistake. My plan was for my father to not shoot me in the head. I was counting on him being a bad shot." Had he let me down again? Terminally?
"You aren't dead. Maybe you should sit down and let me explain."
I thought I had been sitting, but I could see now, no, I was on my feet. Without a better idea, I sat.
The woman dipped her foot into the pristine lake, not seeming to care when her skirts fell in the water. "My name is Sorrows." She paused and looked up at me, smiling at my frown like she'd been expecting it. She looked both ways, cupping her mouth like she was preparing to relay a secret. "That is why I named you Jazz. My name doesn't bring me sadness, but I understand how it does to humans. Archangels get to choose their own names, as everyone knows."
As every— "Literally no one knows that. Okay. If I'm not dead, then how am I in my heaven?"
"We don't get to know when our why, only that I'll be able to speak to you whenever you most need it. It isn't my decision or within my ability…" She quirked her head back, as if indicating the person who made the decisions was located somewhere back there. "I don't plan on wasting any of this time wondering about the mechanics."
Every thought in my brain screeched to a stand still. "Parent? Angel parent? Archangel parent?"
I'd hit my head or was I hallucinating as I slowly died?
"You aren't hallucinating," the woman, angel, Sorrows—mother—said with a smile. "I've waited so long to speak to you, Jazz. I'm sorry I couldn't stay with you on earth."
Her face fell, and maybe it was the way she'd been smiling since I first set eyes on her, but the fact that she wasn't now felt wrong. As I did with Knox, I found myself searching for something to say to make her feel better. "It's okay. I'm sure you had your reasons…" For leaving me with a man who only cared about money and would rather I didn't exist. "Does that mean you had sex with my father?"
She snorted, the sound as adorable as it was absurd. "Even angels make mistakes, baby. But I can never regret the actions that led to you." Her sigh was like a soft breeze through a wind chime. "Your father was…very attractive in his time. It's a good thing forgiveness isn't my department because I'll never forgive him for letting you down and letting evil into his heart. When I met him, he was at a crossroads. His future split down two very different paths. I underestimated humans and their propensity to seek power."
I tried to believe this new version of my life. Not left behind. Not rejected. After twenty-three years of believing I'd been abandoned by one parent and despised by the other, chipping away at the hard layer of hate felt futile.
"You're a nephilim, Jazz. An offspring between a human and an angel. That's why you can do all that you can, why your pregnancy was so much different than the others."
The casual reference to Hollister and the Walkers threw me. She obviously knew the whole story, and it was nice to finally get some answers, but this was… a nephilim? I'd heard the word in TV shows and movies but had zero frame of reference for what a nephilim was or the stereotypes surrounding them. I knew I was no angel. I got jealous at the drop of a hat, was possessive, and enjoyed taunting mean people. Especially mean people who had been sent after me. "You've been watching me? For how long?" Had she seen me and Knox… My cheeks burned.
Sorrows nodded, her lips curled in the corners like a cat. "Don't worry. I give you your privacy." She didn't sound very happy about that. "But what does anyone expect from me?" She shook her head. Seeing her get flustered and then soothe herself made her seem more like a mother and less like an untouchable ethereal being. "I don't know what sort of metric they use to decide if you're in enough need because I've watched plenty of situations where you needed me." Her ruby red lip plumped out in a pout.
Her voice made me want to scoot closer to the water and gaze into her eyes, except something tugged at my brain. If I was here having an unscheduled conversation with my angelic mother, did that mean Knox was there thinking I was dead? My heart tore in two, and the blue sky darkened to a slate gray.
Sorrows clutched her chest and slid off the rock. The water went to her ankles, not nearly as deep as I'd thought. "Please don't feel that way, Jazz." She rubbed the spot she'd squeezed. Directly over her heart. In the same spot my own chest ached. "Nothing that happens here affects what happens on earth. Think of it like a pause. Though you did fool him. He believes your father shot you."
I winced, my chest aching like Knox's likely was. Though the sky had cleared, it began to rain. I hadn't known he'd see my plan firsthand and wasn't sure if I could forgive myself—if it actually turned out I wasn't dead for real.
"I don't have a lot of time, Jazz, even with the pause. You need to know a few things before you go. You aren't the only nephilim in trouble. Others have been attacked. The enemy is rising."
"Who? What enemy?"