He sat, bathed in fire. His legs outstretched. His shirt and jeans unbuttoned. Boots thrown under the coffee table.

Just when I was going to give in, to throw in the towel and seek out the porcelain pot, Reyes spoke. “Send me.”

“Okay, but I don’t know how that’s going to help. It’s my bladder that needs emptying.”

He didn’t look at me when he said it. He was busy studying the fire while I was busy studying him. “Send me inside. I was born and raised in a hell dimension. I can go in and bring them back.”

The god glass? Was he honestly suggesting I send him into the very dimension for which the god glass had been created?

“No.” I rose and stumbled to the bathroom. Not because I was drunk but because I had a cramp in my left butt cheek. I always forgot to stay hydrated when fighting evil gods and arguing with arrogant angels.

Then again, all angels were arrogant. I was 99 percent certain.

I peed, did a drive-by in the kitchen on the way back to my corner, and sank down to curl up with a fresh bottle of my new BFF.

“Is it me, or is it harder to get drunk all of a sudden?” Normally I’d be puking my guts up after even half a bottle of Jose. But I was pretty good. Aside from that whole world-tilting-to-the-left thing, I felt great.

Reyes pushed off the captain and walked up to me. No, he swaggered up to me, a severe expression on his beautiful face, his shirt open, showing the expanse of his chest. He stopped and towered over me. “Send me.”

Now I was just getting annoyed. “No. Kuur is in there. You remember Kuur? The supernatural assassin who has killed beings from dozens of dimensions just because he can? Yeah, him. And let’s not forget the god that killed your sister.”

“You don’t think I can take them?”

“I’m not willing to risk it either way.”

“It was meant for me, anyway. I’d like to see what my Brother had in store for His sibling. What kind of god He is.”

What kind of god indeed. I wondered that, too, but I wondered it even more so about myself. Clearly, I was not the girl I thought I was. I only pretended to want peace? I was in the Peace Corps, for heaven’s sake.

He sat beside me, drink in hand. “It can be an experiment.”

“Reyes, I cannot tell you how hard of a no this is. It is not going to happen, so give it up.”

“Send me in, wait sixty, then call me back. I’ll scope out the place.”

“I may not be Miss Know-It-All when it comes to all this god stuff, but I do know that time works differently in every dimension. Sixty seconds here could be six hundred years there.”

He sank down beside me, our shoulders touching. “The time slip isn’t that much. If anything, it could be maybe a year. Or it could be the opposite and I’d come back so fast I didn’t get to see anything. At which point we can reevaluate and decide what to do next.”

“No, I think Kuur said a few seconds was years there.”

“We’ll never know until you send me in.”

I sat Jose aside. “Reyes, why? Is this some kind of quest for revenge against Mae’eldeesahn?”

His smile held about as much humor as a pit viper’s. “No.”

“And what if something goes wrong and, I don’t know, I can’t get you back?”

“The priest did it. You told me.”

“Yes, but, there are no guarantees. This information came from an evil demon assassin.”

“What part of life is guaranteed? It’s all a guessing game, including this glass. This dimension.”

“Do you resent Jehovah for it?”

“Yes. I’d like to know what I did that was so bad He had to create an entire dimension just for me.”

“I’d like to know that, too. Only I want to know why I agreed to have my memories erased. What did I do that was so bad I wanted to forget?”

He took my hand and brushed the backs of my fingers over his mouth. His eyes shimmered, and for a moment I forgot what I was going to say. I wished Shawn’d had the opportunity to get to know him better. His almost brother.

“Shawn was kind of fascinated with you. He wanted to get to know you.”

He nodded and looked down in thought. “Thirty seconds.”

I laughed. It was so like him to skip over the emotional parts of any conversation. Or any part that cast him in a positive light. “We’re negotiating now?”

“That’s all I need. Thirty seconds.”

“Reyes, no.” I turned to face him. “I’m not risking your life on a fool’s errand.”

“Fool’s? You said there were innocent people in there. That the priest would send people of his village there whom he couldn’t control or whom he got angry with.”

“Or obsessed with. Remember, he sent Joan of Arc. She was never the same coming out as going in.”

“But she was in there for how long?”

“I don’t know. Kuur made it sound like weeks. Possibly months. And she was only twelve.”

He took the god glass out of my hand. Unlike every other celestial being that gazed upon the pendant, Reyes seemed only mildly interested. Most, including yours truly, became instantly mesmerized. I’d always assumed Jehovah had done that on purpose in order to lure Reyes closer so he could be trapped. Perhaps I was wrong. Reyes seemed the opposite of mesmerized. Though he was curious. Who wouldn’t be?

“I want to see it. The dimension.”

“According to Kuur, you already have.”

He straightened.

“He said they trapped you, Mae’eldeesahn and Eidolon, to transport you to Lucifer. When you came out, you were disoriented.”