Turns out that where they're going is, wait for it, all the way on the other side of the place from where they just were. People say living in New York means a lot of walking, but this is kind of insane.
Actually though, Ayana's starting to get the hang of this. Go one place, sort of get what you came for but not really, and then head to the next bizarre place to do the same thing over again.
It's frustrating and exhausting, but there's not really another option.
The hallways wind confusingly from room to room; in some places, the halls are narrow and dark like snakes, and in others they're large and well lit. Ayana could never have remembered the way back to the reception area on her own, but she does recognize the part of the ceiling where the wallpaper is peeling off, so that's something.
When they walk in, Darius is right where they left him, humming and typing. He looks up in the middle of adjusting his bowtie.
"Hey, guys!" he says cheerfully. The glow around his head gets brighter. Ayana sees Trinity, whose eyes haven't been glowing since the jungle, wince. "I was wondering where you'd gone off to."
"I took her to Gina." Trinity says darkly.
"Oh," Darius says. "Sounds like it didn't go great."
"No."
"Hm. Well, you always have a plan, right?" He looks over at Ayana and leans toward her conspiratorially. "Trinity always has a plan."
"Is it a plan she always has, or more like a scrappy half-baked scheme?" Ayana asks thoughtfully.
"What I have," Trinity says, ignoring Ayana's comment and dropping the folder in front of Darius, "is a name."
"Ovalles?" Darius reads.
"At his Judgment, he was sent to Hell. But I remember hearing the name, and they were talking about an error in the office. They were saying the guy was trying to get his sentence changed."
Darius goes over Jeremy's file.
"Right… Uh, not that I don't wanna help you guys out, but why'd you bring this to me?" he asks.
"You're the receptionist," Trinity says in a duh voice, "You have your own records of everyone that goes in and out of the Hall."
"I mean, who goes in, yes. Nobody ever really goes out this way," Darius points out. "That's kind of just a thing you did a few hours ago."
"Look, do you have anything or not?"
Darius shrugs, and his fingers fly across his keyboard. After a few minutes of hmming and searching, his face lights up. "I found it!"
He prints the pages out and slides them over the desk toward them. Ayana reads over Trinity's shoulder. This report has photos. The guy is middle aged but looks carefree and young, like one of those people who smirk for their mugshot, think they're hilarious, and in general are extremely assured of their own cleverness. His jaw is tilted up and his eyes are sparkling, which is pretty impressive for a grainy photo that's splattered with what looks distressingly like blood.
"Oh, that must have been during one of our pizza parties," Darius says wistfully. He reaches over and flips the page. This one has no sauce, or anything resembling blood.
"See, this is what I don't get," Trinity says. "It says he's still in Hell. But I know something happened with this guy. I was just barely born, though. Darius, do you remember anything?"
Darius shrugs helplessly. "Really, all I remember from that day was fighting over who decided to get mushrooms on half, and from there it got pretty ugly-- OH!"
"What?" Ayana asks, still squinting at the pictures. From a certain angle, he almost looks familiar...
"Hold on a minute. Let me just see the date, and I can check something--" He pulls a clipboard from his seemingly endless supply of clipboards. This one has a pile of papers even bigger than the ones Ayana had filled out earlier.
"Here it is!" Darius takes out a sheet of paper, raises his eyebrows, and shoves it over the desk. Ayana crowds even closer. It's a sign-in sheet. Except, in big loopy script, Jeremy's name appears on the sheet twice. Once in the sign-in column, and once…
In the sign-out column.
A column that, other than that single name, is completely empty.
"Hold on," Trinity says accusingly, "I thought I was the one who 'just started this a few hours ago.'"
"You were," Darius insists. "This sign-out part is never used. I don't even know why it's there. I always assumed it was because Judith on the night shift used to be the guardian of a middle school hallway monitor."
"So Jeremy signed out," Ayana says. "I wasn't the only one to ever leave that place like this."
"Yeah," Darius agrees, "Except that Jeremy here at least followed the rules and signed out. This isn't like you, Trinity, it's really not." He shakes his head in mock shame.
If it's meant to get under Trinity's skin, it works. She sends him a look that would probably kill if whatever it is Darius and Trinity are could be killed, and then she takes the wrinkled, yellowed sign-in sheet from a million years ago. "So I was right. He went in and out. He had a trial, I know it. This is what we need."
"Need for?" Ayana asks.
"To go to legal. And then be done with this, so I can get back to work and you can go far, far away and live in the clouds or whatever." Trinity says. She holds up the sign-in sheet in her hand and looks at Darius. "Can I get a copy of this?"
"Keep it," Darius waves her off. "What am I gonna do with it?"
"By the way," he asks Ayana as Trinity produces an empty folder from nowhere, "What's with that thing?" He waves his hands generally in Ayana's direction, looking a little scared.
"I know," Ayana says, adjusting the blazer's collar, "It's bad."
"I mean, I wasn't gonna say anything--"
"It's just a piece of clothing," Trinity interrupts irritably before he can finish, turning to leave. "Thanks for everything."
"Anytime. Oh, and hey." Darius calls after them, grinning, "You're totally getting an invite to the next pizza party!"
Trinity looks a little sick.
Ayana tries not to laugh as they leave reception, passing a serene looking old woman and a handsome winged guy whose eyes get wider and wider the longer he looks at her. Usually, she'd just assume he thought she was cute, and then make sure to let him know he had good taste, but the wings and the glowing remind her that she's not with regular people anymore. She's with a bunch of weirdos, except here, she's the weirdo. She hates when people stare at her.
---
The place in front of them feels like the lobby when they first walked in. Showy. The doors are sparkling glass. In large gold letters, the words HIGHER POWERS LEGAL SERVICES hang over them.
Inside is clean and air-conditioned and modern. It reminds Ayana of the office Kim used to temp in, where Ayana would go as a kid and crawl under the desk and make paperclip necklaces, linking them into long chains, wrapping them around her little wrists until paperclip bracelets covered her arms, drawing neon pink and yellow on her skin with highlighters as Kim worked above her.
At the front desk, staring at a computer screen, sits a woman with thick framed black glasses and a tight bun pulled to the back of her head, and of course, large feathery wings. Ayana just can't really get used to that. She wonders if everyone in this place has to cut holes into the back of their clothes themselves where their wings sprout out of their back, or if the clothes come made that way.
She asks Trinity this.
"They come like that. Where do you think angels shop?" Trinity says, raising an eyebrow like it should be obvious.
Ayana shrugs. "Victoria's Secret?"
She gets a predictable eye roll in response.
"Hello, can I help you two with something?" asks the lady at the desk when she looks up from her typing. She looks a little startled by Ayana, but she recovers quickly. Law people, Ayana thinks, would be good at poker. Too bad about gambling being illegal and everything.
"Yes," Trinity says politely, "I need to talk to someone in criminal defense. Someone who was practicing in the 18th century would be good."
The woman at the desk nods, looking bored.
"It'll be a few minutes. Here, have some water while you wait."
Ayana takes the glass that the woman hands her, and one of the slices of lemon from the small plate on the desk. She heads over to the benches along the sides of the walls where Trinity's gone to sit.
"What are we gonna ask them?" Ayana says, squeezing the lemon and then arranging it on the side of the glass, because she's fancy like that. She also kind of feels like she should have a straw with the wrapping only on the end, or a salad with forks of various sizes.
"We're gonna show them the sign-in sheet, and we're gonna ask if they have any record of Ovalles's trial."
"What if they don't have any idea what we're talking about?"
Trinity glances at her. "Then I have no idea. We're back where we started. You're probably going to Hell and Gina's gonna kill me a lot sooner that I thought."
Ayana crunches ice in her teeth unhappily. That's the answer she was afraid of. A pit forms in her stomach, the one that's been there all along but she's been able to ignore until now. Now it's growing quickly, dread clawing its way up her chest in a way that air conditioning and lemon water can't fix.
It's so weird that the feelings she had on Earth are the same ones she has now that she's apparently dead. Shouldn't she feel different? Lighter or something?
"Excuse me," a clear voice says above them. Ayana looks up.
In front of them is a woman with a small, serious face and thick straight black hair falling neatly just past her shoulders. The feathers on her wings are pristine, perfectly groomed. She's wearing a sharp black suit and stiletto heels that terrify even Ayana a little. Everything about her is sharp, actually. Still, she looks young. If she were human, Ayana would think she looked about twenty, around her own age.
"My name is Jennifer. I'm a defense attorney here. Is there something I can help you with?"
Trinity stands up. "I wanted to ask about a trial that happened a while back. The defendant was a human. His name was Jeremy Ovalles."
Ayana almost sees something flash in Jennifer's eyes when Trinity says the name, but it's gone as soon as it appeared. It might've been her imagination.
"Humans don't go on trial in our courts," Jennifer says evenly.
"I know," Trinity says, "But I think this one did. And I have this." Trinity pulls out the folder with Darius's sign-in sheet and hands it to Jennifer, who looks at it for a minute.
When she looks up, she stares at Ayana, then Trinity. Ayana feels like a bug under her gaze.
"I don't know what this is," Jennifer finally says, "Or why a human would've left the Hall of Judgment to come back up here. But it's not my department, and it has nothing to do with me."
The room is silent for a moment, with nothing but the sound of the ice popping in Ayana's glass behind them.
"Do you know anyone who it would have something to do with?" says Ayana.
Jennifer gives her a vague Who the hell even are you look. "No, I don't."
"Is there anything--"
"Look, I'm really busy. If you need legal services, then I can help you. Otherwise... I don't know what's going on here, but you're going to get help someone else."
From the corner of her eye, Ayana sees Trinity shift.
"Fine." Trinity says carefully. "We will. We'll just keep bothering people in the department about it, and if that doesn't work we'll ask everyone else we can find. Or start putting up flyers. I know you don't know anything about this--" Trinity pauses and looks over to the desk where the woman with the glasses is sitting.
"--But wouldn't you rather just handle this yourself? Before it gets out of control?"
Jennifer looks at them, eyes dark and calculating. She takes a minute before she speaks. It feels like ten.
"Why don't you two come into my office."
---
Jennifer's office, like the whole place, is a lot nicer than everywhere else Ayana's been dragged around to so far. Everything is perfectly organized and in its place, the surfaces are gleaming and everything is a different shade of grey. The floor looks like you could eat off of it, which is a disgusting saying, but it just comes to mind in this place.
The most interesting thing is the wall across from Jennifer's desk, which looks like a large window out of the corner of your eye, but is actually a mirror covering the entire length of the wall. Maybe angels have vanity problems?
Jennifer sits at her desk and gestures in front of her. "Have a seat."
The chairs in front of the desk are the kind that are so modern they're more like art than furniture. They're a shiny metallic black, and they curve in a weird zig zag way that looks interesting but is impossible to actually sit on.
Ayana slips a couple times trying.
"What exactly do you want to know." Jennifer says. She has a way of saying questions with no question mark at the end.
"Anything about this man, this trial, or any other trial like it. Anything you know." Trinity sounds urgent, like they're finally getting somewhere.
"Why? Because of this girl?" Jennifer nods her head toward Ayana.
"Yes. We want to see if there were any mistakes made, if we can make an appeal to someone."
Jennifer stares at the space in front of her for a long time, her face unreadable.
"I hadn't been practicing that long when he came to me," she says, her voice startling in the silence of the room. "But already, I was known for being good. I hadn't lost a case yet. It wasn't even anything that glamorous; Public intoxication, disorderly conduct, indecent exposure--"
"Aren't you guys supposed to be angels?" Ayana says, alarmed.
"We're repressed," Jennifer says mildly. "You'd be surprised. Anyway, one day, a human man came into my office, dripping wet and in shock, saying he needed a lawyer. I had never even spoken to a human before.
"He refused to tell me his name until I agreed to help him. He told me how it happened; About how he died, about his sentence, how afterward he ran as fast as he could out the way he came. And how he was innocent.
"Of course, he made it sound like he was, well, angelic on Earth. It must've been what he thought was required. He would've done anything to avoid Hell. Most people would. He was just the only one to actually do it. Well," Jennifer looks consideringly at Ayana, "Until now."
"When I got ahold of his file," she continues, "I saw about the estranged kid, the lying and petty crimes, the drinking. It wasn't what he'd told me, but it still wasn't enough to give him over to the Devil. I was inexperienced, but I knew that. I thought, maybe Purgatory would make sense. But not this."
Jennifer pauses, staring into some corner of her mind where the past is.
"So what did you do?" Ayana says.
"I shouldn't have done it," Jennifer says quietly. "I was overconfident, and ambitious. And foolish." The words sound mechanical, practiced. Ayana's not sure Jennifer believes them herself.
"I had something to prove, and I thought I could do anything. So I took on the first ever case with a human defendant in an angelic trial. I didn't eat or sleep for months. I was always working, always looking for new angles. I just barely got them to even let it go to trial.
"But it did. And we lost. They said, His word is final and there is no changing it. It was insane. All the work I did, all the evidence I presented-- It was for nothing. Jeremy went to Hell, and I was laughed at for years until I built myself back up.
"So that's how it ended. I lost. And so will you. The Judgment of souls isn't something that can be questioned. It's not changed. It's not law that we have access to."
Ayana feels sick.
In her mind, she had imagined a montage of glasses and courtrooms and legal pads and other legal things, something solid, a path leading to her triumphantly convincing a winged jury of her innocence.
And she was wrong.
But she's always been like that. Hoping for things, and making plans, until it turns out that it was all in her head, and the possibility she'd been leaning on had never been real. In her life on Earth, it had worn her down like sandpaper, made her give up her childlikeness when she was still a child.
But now, the stakes are higher. This wasn't a plan to get back in touch with her friend, or to go back to school, or anything else that she could keep telling herself she was gonna do soon. This was her last hope. There's no delusionally reassuring herself after this, no way to keep chugging along.
Her grandma used to tell her about Heaven, and the priest at St. Anne's around the corner from her block as a kid had told her about Hell. She'd been told that Heaven was a place where the saints and angels live, and that it was a better place than Earth. All the suffering and pain she saw around her, her grandma had told her while Ayana sat on the floor by her feet, didn't exist in Heaven. It was warm and peaceful, where you see your loved ones who've died, and know soon you'll be reconnected with the ones still on Earth.
And Hell, she'd learned while sitting in dark wooden benches surrounded by the smell of incense, was where people went when they were not faithful to God. When they hurt other people, when they sinned and didn't repent. She'd been eight years old, afraid of her first confession because it meant she'd have to admit that she pushed her sister sometimes for no reason, that she didn't know the words to the hymns they sang, and she said "Oh my God" all the time even though she wasn't supposed to.
Hell had terrified her then. In her mind she saw a pit of fire filled with all the monsters she told herself weren't real. She made lists of all the bad things she'd done in her head, to make sure there were none that she'd forgotten about that would make her go to Hell. She prayed every night in bed, afraid if she didn't something bad would happen to her or her family, and she would have made it happen by not praying.
But that was superstition, like kids have. She'd grown out of it, gotten busy with real life and never thought about any other kind of life again.
Maybe that was what did this to her. Maybe she should have kept praying.
That thought is heavy, dark and sticky like anxiety-inducing molasses. It shakes Ayana out of her path of thought and makes her mad. She's not a kid anymore, and praying had never done anything for her.
She looks up and sees Trinity and Jennifer staring each other down. Sitting across from each other, Ayana sees for the first time how alike they look. Not in their features or anything, but in their body language, in the way they square their shoulders, fold their arms, and look straight forward unblinkingly. Is it an angel thing, or is it just them?
"Wait," Ayana says, a little loudly. Trinity and Jennifer break out of their staring contest, both heads turning toward her in surprise, the mirror broken. Ayana's been pretty quiet up until now, letting Trinity drag her around, taking in all the surprisingly crappy offices of an angel world.
"I need your help. There's no other way I can do this. I guess nobody else has challenged one of these sentences, other than you. I can't go to Hell. I can't burn forever. Please."
Jennifer shakes her head. "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do."
"Think about if it worked," Ayana pushes. "You'd have won an impossible case. I watch How To Get Away With Murder. I know how much lawyers love that kind of thing! We just need to try."
"It won't work." Jennifer says. "That's the point. It's the impossible kind of impossible."
"What if it's different?" Ayana begs. "This time could be different. And you'd never know. And someone you could have freed won't be, without having even been tried."
Jennifer, for a second, almost looks like she's hesitating. It leaves quickly, and her face is stone again, her voice unmovable. "Again, I'm very sorry. But I can't help you."
Ayana feels her heart sink. She tried, failed, and tried again. And failed again. And that's it. There's nothing else she can do.
Maybe Hell won't be so bad. Maybe they have hot cheetos or something.
Trinity stands up smoothly, looking moody but apparently used to chairs that aren't real chairs. Ayana stands less gracefully, but with much more rage. She glares at Jennifer, falling out of her seat angrily.
"Thank you for your help," Trinity says briskly, and turns to leave.
"Yeah," Ayana says forcefully as she storms out, "Thanks, Jennifer."
Jennifer says nothing.
-----
Ayana feels like getting very, very drunk. That's what she would usually do in situations like this. The last time she got blackout fucked up was a few weeks ago, when her ex texted her on the same day that her mom visited and her manager screamed at her for ten minutes for losing her 7-eleven visor. This seems proportional to that.
Taking a complete turn, and shocking Ayana almost as much as the icy river did, it's only seconds after Ayana thinks this that her and Trinity appear in front of what seems to be a bar.
Ayana looks questioningly at Trinity, who just shrugs. "Last meal? I don't know, whatever. I need a drink."
They trudge in, probably looking defeated and miserable.
It's a dive bar, complete with an ironic brick wall and a flickering neon sign that says "UNHAPPY HOUR." Under that is a piece of paper with "5 - 7 PM" scrawled across it, but the 7 is scribbled out with Sharpie and a 10 is put in its place. Oh, yeah. This is her kind of place.
Sitting down at the bar, Trinity puts her head in her arms. At the other end of the bar the bartender gives them a knowing look and heads over.
"How long before I have to go… there?" Ayana says uneasily.
"Gin. And a peach mojito." Trinity tells the bartender. "I don't know," Trinity adds in response to Ayana's question, her voice lower. "Soon."
"How'd you know about the mojito?"
"Same way I know about the hamster you accidentally killed with nail polish remover when you were eight. We have files on everyone. Severely detailed files."
"You know about Scratches?"
"Terrible name for a hamster."
"I don't want to go to Hell."
"You guys never do," Trinity mutters, "I tried. I really did. But there's nothing else."
"I know," Ayana says, her stomach threatening to come up. "Thanks for trying."
They sit in a moment of silence, Ayana mourning for her life and Trinity probably for the sheer number of facial expressions she was forced to make in the last few hours.
"What's Hell like?"
"Hot." Trinity says. "And it hurts. That's all I know, I've never been there. From what I've been told, it's unbearable, but you just keep bearing it. Every second feels worse than the last."
"Thanks for sugar-coating it," Ayana says dryly. The bartender, a guy in a button down shirt open over a T-shirt like it's the nineties, comes with their drinks and Ayana orders three shots of tequila. Trinity drinks half of her glass and tells him to make it six.
Ready to spend her last meal wallowing in the dread of unbearable torture hanging over her head, Ayana drinks her mojito. It's so good. The peach flavor and the sugar on the glass taste like sweetness and rum on her tongue. It's the best thing she's ever tasted, but to be fair, it's probably made a lot better by the fact she knows there are almost certainly no cocktails in Hell. Except maybe Bloody Marys. Ha.
"I don't know if this is your thing," Trinity offers, "But I have heard they have Jazz and Blues Day every other Friday."
"It's not," Ayana says glumly.
"Probably just a rumor anyway."
Music plays faintly in the background. The playlist here is weird; One minute some sad indie hipster music is playing, and the next a Cardi B song comes on.
Their alcohol comes. Ayana takes her shots inadvisably quickly.
"And we're completely sure I can't just hide out here forever?" Ayana says, wiping her mouth.
"Um. No."
"I could be really helpful! I could be like an assistant or a barhand or something."
"Or something."
"Do you have my resume in all those creepy files of yours? I have great references, if you don't mind some poor customer service reviews."
Trinity looks greatly unimpressed.
"Fine, several poor reviews."
Trinity takes a drink and says nothing.
"Alright, I got fired from C-Town for telling a customer she got her money out slower than my dead grandmother."
"We don't have human assistants." Trinity says.
"I almost went to bartending school." Ayana's starting to feel a little lightheaded. Is that weird? It's not like she's eaten anything since dying. Can souls get drunk?
The way the room spins when she sits up straight implies that yes.
"Careful," Trinity warns as she holds her third glass up to her lips, not looking exactly like the poster angel for responsibility herself.
"How hot, exactly?" Ayana wonders out loud. "Frying pan hot or 'at least now I can wear my short shorts without getting bitchy looks' hot?"
"Charred flesh hot," comes a voice from behind her.
Ayana and Trinity both swivel around on their stools. Standing in front of them, five feet of brisk impatience and seven inches of stiletto, is Jennifer. Her eyes are dark and serious as ever, wings pulled back and hair clipped away from her face.
"Alright." Jennifer says. "I'll help you."