Gabriel’s arms.
Picture them, standing there, judgment in their eyes, every one. Each as beautiful as the next, but all so different. In form, in temperament, in abilities.
Gabriel, the herald of mysteries. Flame-haired, emerald-eyed. The self-same Gabriel who disguised himself, centuries later, as the mortal, Sulaiman, in order to watch over me.
Uriel: in face, in form, identical to me — the real me — save that he was created male. Which is a mystery in itself, one I have no answer for.
Fearsome Michael, the leader of them all, his flashing eyes as dark as his curling, black hair.
Selaphiel, sandy-haired and serious, absent, courteous, gentle, his quiet blue eyes fixed on things unseen.
Jegudiel with the waving, golden hair and dark, steely gaze, whose weapon of choice is a triple-thonged whip.
Silver-eyed, auburn-haired Jeremiel, who possesses a voice like exaltation.
Dark-eyed, dark-haired Barachiel, whose province is lightning, and whose emblem is a white rose.
And to close the circle of all those who passed sentence on me?
Raphael, the healer. Sable-eyed, dark-haired and olive-skinned. Whose mouth was made for laughter and compassion. The ‘architect’, so Gabriel had said, of my misery. The one whose plan it was, all those years ago, to hide me inside an unbroken succession of human lives. We’d been friends once. We might have been more, given time.
But Luc had changed all that.
I back towards an elegant armchair and perch unsteadily upon one arm as the memory of him takes me over.
Luc. My golden beloved. My day star, I called him, because he outshone all the stars, even the sun.
Luc — the one I have longed for. Whom I can never have, whom I can never find, because the Eight have pursued a policy, over these interminable centuries, of keeping us apart. I don’t pretend to understand their reasons, because my memory has fault lines to it that have never healed, and may never heal.
Luc loved me, more than life itself. This much I know.
And, despite what I have become, he loves me still. He tells me so in my sleep, in my dreams — the only way we can ever be together these days. And Luc warns me, again and again, that the Eight wish me harm, that they cannot be trusted, that I must run from them. Keep running, and never stop.
But the Eight insist upon keeping me from Luc for my own good, the good of all things.
And the way this has been achieved?
I stare at Irina’s remarkable face in the mirror. Touch her long-fingered hands to her extraordinary cheekbones.
There are two sides to every story.
But whose version of the truth should I believe?
Luc’s?
Or Gabriel’s?
Who lies to me? Who lies?
The English girl moves into the space reflected in the mirror, bringing my unwilling focus back. I get to my feet, uncomfortable that there’s no longer any distance between us. She takes hold of Irina’s sleeves impatiently, tugging her hands down, away from her face. Now I see three people reflected in the looking glass, although there are only two people physically present in the room. And even though I should be used to it by now, I feel a chill fall over me.
In the mirror, Irina’s eyes are so dark, they seem almost black. They spark a fresh memory in me, a recent one.
Of a young man, with eyes so dark they had seemed almost black. He’d flown for hours to reach me, he’d been a whole day in the air. His face had been so pale with weariness, but he’d smiled the instant he saw me. That familiar fringe of dark hair had fallen into his eyes, and I’d reached out and brushed it back, as if my touch could banish his weariness. He’d embraced me and swung me about lightly in his arms, as if we were dancing. And I knew that he loved me, too, would have done anything for me. And in that moment, I’d felt an answering emotion.
Luc himself had pointed it out to me once, in a dream: that this mortal boy had somehow, beyond all understanding, fallen under my power, fallen for me, even though he has never seen me. When we first met, I had soul-jacked the body of a girl called Carmen Zappacosta. And when the Eight had so cruelly shifted me out of her life and into Lela Neill’s, that boy had come to me again as if nothing and no one on earth could keep us apart.
But then he’d watched me die, murdered in cold blood right before his eyes.
Or so it must have seemed to him, because I can still hear his screams.
I see him again, staring at me from behind police lines, through the front windows of a coffee shop. Me on the inside, staring back at him, all the longing in my gaze. And I relive the moment when a single bullet from a semi-automatic pistol entered Lela’s body. The memory, the ghostly impact, is so vivid that I stagger backwards where I stand. I imagine I feel Justine Hennessy’s hand in mine once again, hear myself whispering, through blood, through the great, pulsing wound in my chest, ‘Tell him … that Mercy shall come again …’
In the mirror, I see Irina’s expression of shock reflect my own. I watch all the colour leach out of her angular, unforgettable face as I suddenly remember his name. Catch hold of it, say it silently to myself, with reverence — Ryan Daley — as if the two words are a prayer.
And something seems to give way inside me, as if buried memories are struggling to the surface. The ground is shifting beneath my feet; time feels as if it is reeling away from me in all directions, and I must sift through the jumbled memories of five past lives to piece together what I want, what I need.
I remember Ryan. I remember everything about him. The way he looks when he’s feeling impatient, the way I feel when he holds me close: messed-up, buzzy, wired. Like he’s the greatest drug in the universe.
I need him for selfish reasons I can barely articulate. When I’m with him, I feel less like a freak. He makes me laugh. He makes me angry. He makes me feel alive, in the way I once was. But most of all, he gets me. And he makes me feel safe. He’s the only person who doesn’t treat me like a broken toy that must be fixed. And they’re pretty potent things after centuries spent wandering the wilderness that is this earth: alone, deranged, damaged.
Did Ryan get my message? Or does he truly believe me … dead?
Is he grieving? My God, did I cause him grief? Did I hurt him?
I love Luc. That’s a constant. He’s always been there, always. A face in my dreams, a voice in my head. We were meant to be together. We were made to be together. We have a connection that not even time, distance or remorseless exile can sunder. Some day, some day soon, we’ll be together again. I know it. It’s what’s sustained me all along: the thought that one day this might all be over and I might be allowed to go home, to find Luc waiting for me. That hope kept me together, gave me something to steer by, even before I could begin to grasp again who he was, and what he’d once meant to me.
But right here, right now? There’s Ryan. And I’m too afraid to name what I feel for him, because in no universe would someone like him and someone like me ever work out. What Ryan makes me feel is
