Muse (4 page)

Gia tugs the black cloche hat onto my head, twisting and pulling at it until she’s satisfied with the angle of the delicate bird wing arcing above one brow. She pulls a set of bobby pins from a large, monogrammed vanity case and secures the hat firmly.

‘Fabulous,’ she murmurs as she jams the last pin in place. ‘And put these on when we get outside or you’ll be sorry.’ She hands me a soft, sleek pair of short, hand-stitched, shearling-lined, black leather gloves.

I shove them into a pocket of my ankle-length coat and climb reluctantly into the shoes, feeling as if I’m going to tip forward onto my face at any moment.

‘I can’t do this!’ I exclaim, screwing up Irina’s small and exquisite nose.

Gia frowns as she takes in my awkward, slump-shouldered, turtle-necked posture. ‘What you mean is, you can’t do this
unmedicated
. Well, tough, because it’s not my job to facilitate your self-harming tendencies. Stand up straighter, and it won’t seem like
you’re falling downhill. You need to redistribute your weight. I can’t believe I’m telling
you
this — your memory really must be shot to hell.’

I make subtle adjustments to Irina’s posture until Gia stops frowning.

‘That’s better,’ she says. ‘It’s perfect. A little bit rock and roll, a little bit minimalist-with-an-edge, and the hat is just quirky enough to signal that you’re a fashion insider, you speak the language. You couldn’t take a bad photo in that outfit. From any angle.’

‘It feels like torture,’ I respond dryly, feeling my feet going numb.

Gia laughs. ‘Beauty hurts.’

She’s about to say something else when a doorbell peals so loudly, I almost jump. I’m reminded of the small matter of locating Ryan Daley, which completely slipped my mind during the insane amount of time it took us to find me something to wear. Irina’s heart gives a sudden lurch.

‘You promised you’d help me find him, find Ryan,’ I remind Gia.

She shakes her head warningly, already heading towards the door. ‘Not now,’ she says over her shoulder. ‘That will be Felipe, and Felipe is not accustomed to being ignored.’ Her tone is derisive.

I trail awkwardly after her in the crippling, shiny heels she picked out for me to wear. When she flings open the door to my suite, I see a handsome, sun-bronzed, strong-featured young man standing there. Mid to late twenties, with black, slicked-back hair. He’s shorter than I am in my absurd footwear, and broad-shouldered, muscular, powerful-looking. He’s wearing a single-breasted charcoal grey suit over a black turtleneck, a camel-coloured overcoat and expensive-looking, spit-and-polish black lace-up brogues. He’s carrying a pair of cream and tan, perforated leather driving gloves in one hand. As he follows Gia into the stately sitting room of the suite, I see open admiration in his dark eyes. For
me
.

Even though I consider myself impervious to all forms of flattery, I find myself blushing suddenly under his appreciative and unblinking scrutiny. Even Ryan never looked at me the way this guy’s doing now. Like I’m good enough to … devour. I don’t know whether to feel pleased, or revolted.

‘
¡Querida!
’ the young man murmurs in a low, musical voice like an auditory caress. ‘
Cómo ardo al pensar en su belleza, a pesar de su maldad infernal.
’

Gia shoots Felipe a scandalised look.

I feel Irina’s face suddenly flush with a strange, hectic blood, her heartbeat kick into higher gear. It’s
Spanish
. I actually recognise it.

But I don’t recall any past facility with Spanish at all. So where is this coming from?

Literally, the guy had said —

Darling! How your beauty sets me on fire, despite your infernal evil.

I don’t know how it’s possible, but when I reach out for the words I need, the words I want to use, they’re somehow there.

‘
Qué simpatico … como siempre, querido Felipe
,’ I reply tersely. ‘But let’s speak English, for Gia’s sake,
¿le parece bien?
’

There are accents on all the wrong places, accents where there shouldn’t be any, but from the looks on both their faces, I’ve just made perfect sense in a language I shouldn’t even
know
.

‘You’re speaking English for
my
sake?’ Gia says disbelievingly.

The confident smile on Felipe’s handsome face falters for a moment, before it’s smoothly re-established. ‘Your Spanish, Senorita Zhivanevskaya,’ he says, his perfect white teeth showing, ‘he has improved very much.’

‘Yes, “he” has,’ Gia mutters. ‘Out of sight. So tell me again, Irina, why you insisted on hiring that creepy translator for the Costa Rican swimsuit shoot last month?’

From the look on Gia’s face, it’s clear that the only languages Irina’s supposed to have are Russian and bitchy conversational English.

‘Sit,’ I tell Felipe, still pretending I didn’t hear Gia’s question. I gesture at the two pairs of elegant winged armchairs facing each other either side of a monumental glass and steel coffee table bearing porcelain cups and saucers and a sleek, silver, lidded jug.

Gia and I take our places across from Felipe and, for a moment, I do not hear the icily correct small talk that the two of them are exchanging. Lela Neill hadn’t spoken Spanish. Neither had Lucy, or Susannah. Or Ezra before them. But with a name like Zappacosta, I’m guessing that Carmen might be able to.
And now I can, too? Even though I passed through Carmen’s body … two lives ago?
Or does this ability come from somewhere else, some
when
else? Some ‘life’ even further back than the time I was Carmen?

The cool-hued room seems to tilt. There’s a sudden sensation that I’m freefalling, though my physical
body sits here, unmoved. What’s inside always so very different from what’s outside.

As if from very far away, I hear Gia enquire frostily of our guest, ‘Tea?’, before picking up the silver thermos and pouring a shot of hot, dark amber liquid into one of the crested white teacups on the table before her. It’s a trait so peculiar to the English, and as I direct my unfocused gaze at the steam coming off the surface of the drink, I can almost make out every particle rising.

Felipe shakes his head dismissively, unfolding a road map from a pocket of his overcoat. He spreads it out on the table between us with his tanned, long-fingered hands, before uncapping a gold and onyx fountain pen.

Something tugs away at my subconscious, begging to be made plain. That small voice inside me, that’s always one step ahead of my waking self, murmurs:
Gabriel, Uriel, Michael, Jegudiel, Selaphiel, Jeremiel, Barachiel, Raphael
.

Eight names more familiar to me than my own. Eight names that could be a poem. Or … a prayer.

Inexplicably, that YouTube clip of Uriel walking on water, the one Ryan had told me to look at, replays itself in my head. He was gliding across the surface of
an icy Scottish loch, searching for something or … someone?

And on the heels of that thought — the recollection that when I touch someone — someone unguarded, someone human — their thoughts and emotions, even their memories, become like an open book to me.

How are these things even remotely connected to the fact that when I’m pushed to the brink I can hurt people with my bare hands?

Twice now, I’ve almost torn myself free of the body I’ve been placed in. It happened once when I was Carmen, when I was wild with fear and anger. It happened again when I was Lela. I’d placed a hand upon Lela’s mother as she lay dying and had somehow seen
inside
her cancer-ridden body. I’d even tried to heal her from the inside out — before I’d been forced to return into Lela.

I hadn’t been able to save Karen Neill, because Azraeil had already marked her for his own.

Azraeil
. I frown.

Like the Eight, he’s one of the
elohim
. But one thing sets him apart from the others. His touch can bring … death. Or restore life in equal measure.

Traits.
They’re all traits, I realise suddenly. These things I can do that I can’t explain. Even that strange
ability Azraeil has, which no one else possesses — mastery over death itself. All these are traits. Peculiar to our kind. In us, when we were first … created.

I squeeze my eyes shut, chasing down thoughts that refuse to come clear.

Gia turns to me and queries, ‘Irina? What do you think of braving Via Broletto today? Too risky?’

I shake my head blindly, waving at her, at Felipe, to decide.

When I was Lela, I met a rogue
malakh
— a kind of supernatural messenger — who’d chosen exile on earth rather than fulfil the task for which it was created. Somehow it had glimpsed me inside Lela’s skin; had claimed that it could detect the protective mark of the
elohim
upon me. It had begged me to intercede with the
elohim
on its behalf because it needed a human body in which to live out its days. For in turning away from its original purpose, it had doomed itself to an eternal and painful half-life as a wandering, formless spirit.

It had envied me —
me!
— and the fact that I was constantly being reborn in a succession of mortal bodies.

Elohim.
When I was Lela, even probing the meaning of that word had caused me unimaginable pain.

But now, that small voice inside me, which is always, always, one beat ahead of my waking self, whispers:
Most holy, most high. Together with a thousand others that no mortal alive has ever seen, or could ever give name to. Whatever you may be now, however estranged you have become from each other, you were all once created … equal.

And to you all: the ability to speak in tongues, both new and ancient.

And to you all: the power to bend matter and spirit, the laws of nature, to your will; to suspend time, move matter, occupy objects both animate and inanimate; mimic both the living and the dead; transport yourselves from place to place in the space between two heartbeats.

The very embodiment of paradox.

My eyes fly wide as I finally
see
— what I should have seen all along.

Grief enfolds me suddenly in its wings, grasps my borrowed heart in its black talons. When I lost Luc, when I lost any notion of context, of history, of ‘home’ — that casual ability to bend the laws of nature to my will — I lost my way. In one moment, I lost everything.

All of us were created with extraordinary abilities
no human being could ever comprehend. And most extraordinary of all these? The ability to atomise and re-form at will. Like water, like an unstable element that can shift between phases, I should be able to change states in a heartbeat. To become permeating yet impermeable, boundless yet infinitesimal.

It’s much, much more than just the ability to possess another living creature or to shape-shift. It’s — how do I put it? — the ability to turn the burning matter of which I am made into a weapon, a living sword, pure and directed energy. Will it and it is done.

It’s something unique to all of us. We who are unkillable and immortal, unless one of our own kind seeks to destroy us.

Ah, yes. The rules — and there
are
rules, one must know them in order to contravene them — come back to me, unexpectedly, from some long buried oubliette in my mind.

The Eight. Even Azraeil.
What they are, I am. What they are, Luc is, too.

We
elohim
.

We High Ones.

We …
archangeli
.

Archangels. It’s the name for
what I am
.

At the realisation, I seem to catch fire within, and I wonder how it is that Gia and Felipe cannot see me burning.

What
happened
to me?

Gia and Felipe continue to argue over potential routes and traffic conditions, road surfaces and the forecast for rain, while inside Irina’s slight and mortal frame my spirit burns and burns.

How had I not seen this before?

How am I able to see it now?

When I was Lela, it was as if certain things had been placed off limits by the Eight, were deliberately ringed around, in my mind, by fire. Just probing the meaning of the word
elohim
, even the name
Carmen Zappacosta
, had caused an electrical storm in my head, raw and immediate pain.

But not … today.

And soon, maybe, I’ll again be able to control that strange process of atomisation that happened to
me once when I was Carmen, and once when I was Lela. And when I’m able to do that? Nothing will ever stop me again.

I’ll be free.

I’m suddenly gripped by a ferocious urgency. Luc thinks that I need negative emotions like rage or fear to trigger the process of atomisation, of unbecoming. But what I’m feeling now? Is a terrible sense of hope, of … possibility. And maybe that’s enough.

While Gia and Felipe continue to argue, I turn inward, seeking to separate the burning strands of myself from the mortal vessel I’ve been forced into. I follow them down.

Down.

I am as a dark maze, a tangle of roots. Disorder masking some kind of pattern, deliberately broken, deliberately … twisted.

Behind Irina’s eyes, within her rigid body, I’m shivering into a billion pieces as I reach out for that strange, dissociative state in which I seem capable of
anything
.

Felipe’s and Gia’s voices, the contours, textures and colours of the real world, begin to bleach out as I dissolve inwards, fade down, even though concrete reality is in evidence everywhere around me — in the
seated figure to my right lifting the teacup to her purple-stained mouth, in the museum-quality furnishings, the lovely costly floral arrangements that already smell, to me, as if they are in a state of advanced decay. My perspective grows hazy and the room, the voices, seem to stretch and warp in different directions around me as if time, space, light, sound, all can yield, all can bend.

And I know that it’s happening again, that I’m actually pulling it off, and it’s no accident. I’m beginning to
atomise
. I’m following the linkages, the switchbacks, the false trails and complex whorls and spirals, the broken pattern that the Eight have somehow cast me into. As if I am a cave diver, a pearl fisher, seeking a source.

And I find it. All paths lead to a point that cannot be followed further, cannot be unravelled. Irina’s body slumps against the seat back as I reach towards that anchor point and try to pull myself free.

But, though I’m like mercury now, like vapour, some part of me remains knotted tightly in place, tethered to Irina’s body, by some diabolical means I cannot unravel. Though I gather myself over and over with increasing desperation, I cannot sunder the knot that keeps me chained to her. And I know that it is the vital part, the part that is keeping me earthbound.

A small choking sound escapes Irina’s lips.

So small that Gia’s cup pauses only momentarily on its way to her mouth, before she completes the action and leans forward to point at the map spread out before her.

As I rage through the nerve endings and sinews, the flesh, wet matter and bone that Irina is made of, seeking a way out, a flaw, a loophole, I feel Irina’s soul in here, too. Locked away tightly, like a kernel, a hard knot, her soul twisted and turned in on itself, like a möbius strip. To keep it out of harm’s way. To free up this vessel for my use.

And if I am released? I have to hope that her soul will be freed at the same instant. Or the body will die.

Abruptly, the weird sensation of unbecoming reverses, as if I am pulled back by a cord, by an elastic band, and I coalesce again inside Irina’s skin, behind her eyes, as if I am her, and she is me, and there is no gap, none at all, between us.

How long have I been gone? A heartbeat, maybe. Surely nothing more. But I’m breathing heavily and my sudden anguish burns so fiercely and so bright that I must jam my aching left hand inside my coat so the others in this room will not see it glow with that telltale flame that is as corrosive as it is lovely.

But Gia sees that something is amiss — from Irina’s posture? The muscles of her face? — because Gia has sharp eyes and is paid to see everything about her employer.

‘You look so pale!’ she exclaims. ‘What’s the matter, Irina? Are you unwell?’

Unwell?

I have to cover my mouth with my right hand so that the scream building inside me won’t escape and destroy the physical world.

I want to tell them that I was never supposed to be here, that it’s all some terrible mistake. That I’m still paying for something I did once, a long time ago, that I can’t even remember.

And the ones who are making me pay are the eight most powerful beings in the universe, the highest among us all that were first created, the ones to whom all but Azraeil must bow down, because death bows to no one, death is a force unto itself. Only these eight archangels might guess at what is in the heart and mind of our absent creator, for They were formed to be His regents, His princes, and to call us all to order. It is They who have done this to me.

I hear Gabriel’s voice again, as clearly as if he were here, now, in this room:
I would rather have
been put to the sword myself than endure what you have
.

What crime? What crime did I commit to deserve this?

I want to tell Gia all of this, but there’s no point, because she would never understand. Never believe how it could even be possible for a vessel as small, as narrow, as a human body to contain everything that I am, everything that I was before. I’m like a centaur, a gorgon, a harpy. Something ancient, mythical, made up. A cautionary tale, a fable. Unreal.

I’m bent over my burning left hand, struggling to contain the pain, and Gia reaches out to me, but I pull away sharply. When I’m feeling this way, I’m dangerous, and people invariably get hurt.

Once — two lifetimes ago — I made myself a promise that my time would soon come. That one day, not too far away, it would no longer be about just surfing the next wave, just holding on, just surviving; it would be about
me
. And that time is
now
. Because staying safe, doing nothing, keeping out of sight, has never been my way. I know it now for a truth. The Eight have forced me to be so many things that I’m not, for far too long.

‘I can’t do this any more,’ I tell Gia and Felipe
fiercely through my pain. ‘If I don’t get out soon, I’m going to go mad. You both work for me, right? I hold the purse strings, I call the shots?’

Gia nods, frightened by something in Irina’s expression. Felipe is very still, watching guardedly with his dark, arrogant eyes.

‘So you’re going to start doing things
my
way,’ I rasp. ‘I’m done with waiting. I don’t care how you do it, or what it costs to make it happen, but I want you to find someone for me and bring him here.
Now.
His name is Ryan Daley.’

Gia’s unusual eyes widen at the unexpected request, and her dark brows snap together as I rattle off Ryan’s mobile number — committed to memory two lives ago — and the URL for the social networking site Lela Neill befriended him on.

‘Bring him
here?
Now?’ Gia mutters. ‘With the schedule you have?’ She pulls a slim, black device out of a pocket of her leather jacket and inputs all of the information I’ve thrown at her, jabbing furiously at the device’s seamless face. ‘What if he won’t come?’

‘Make him,’ I snap. ‘Tell him:
Mercy is alive and badly needs your help
— use those exact words and I guarantee you’ll have his immediate and undivided
attention. Book him on the next plane out of wherever he is. I mean it. The next plane. Got that?’

Gia stops tapping for a moment, her eyes mystified. ‘He really is that “important” to you?’ She makes talking marks in the air with her free hand. ‘I didn’t think you were serious. Everything’s always a matter of life and death with you, even when it isn’t. You go through guys like they’re bottled water, like they’re completely disposable. It honestly can’t wait until after we leave Italy? It’d be a lot less complicated to set up.’

I shake my head. ‘Find him for me. It’s the most important thing I’m ever going to ask you to do. Ever. So don’t mess it up.’

Gia’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘But we’ve got three more full days of commitments here in Milan. Final fittings; dress rehearsal; runway show; dinner and afterparty. Even if we get the guy here, like,
today
, you can’t just walk away from this thing. You’ll never work again. You know that, don’t you?’

I give a short laugh, half-way between amusement and despair. ‘Just get him here, and Irina Zhivanevskaya shall meet her commitments.’

Gia gives me an odd look before nodding and jamming the hand-held device back into her jacket pocket. She turns to Felipe.

‘Irina’s right,’ she says briskly. ‘We need to
move
. I can go looking for this Ryan guy as soon as we’re on the road. The sooner we leave, the better. We’ll take the route I marked out originally, no arguments. You weren’t Irina’s driver the last time we were here. I know what I’m talking about, so you may as well put the map away.’

Felipe’s eyes clash with Gia’s as he angrily gathers up the road map and shoves it back inside his overcoat along with the status pen. He rises to his feet with barely concealed irritation.

Gia turns to me and says reassuringly, ‘Okay, the deal is: we get through today, then the next day, and one more day after that, and then we’ll go home. It’s nothing, right? We’ll pare back your schedule after this job, I promise. I’ll talk to your management — they’ll have to listen if they know what’s good for them. No sense killing the golden goose, right? And if they don’t? We’ll find someone else who will. You’re
Irina
. Everyone wants you, everyone loves you. This feeling you’re having … it will pass.’

She’s only being kind, but I can’t stop myself from snarling, ‘Do
your
job. Find him. What are you waiting for?’

‘Straight onto it,’ Gia says soothingly, ‘I promise. As soon as we get to the cars.’

I don’t need to touch her to know I’ve hurt her feelings, but I’m no good at modifying my behaviour when something I want is almost within reach.

‘Felipe,’ Gia snaps. ‘Your car has to be waiting by the emergency exit. I need Irina to be inside and on the move before anyone gets a good look at her. Giovanni’s security team can handle things from his end, but we can’t be seen to be arriving a second late or she loses the booking. It’s in the contract. Fast, fast,
fast
today. No dawdling, no unscheduled stops.’

‘It is understood.’ Felipe’s tone is now openly hostile. His dark eyes flick to her face for a second before he resumes studying the gilded frescos on the ceiling, his mouth a sulky line.

Gia continues to badger him. ‘And you’ve spoken to Bertrand? He’s clear that Natasha’s to leave Irina’s usual hotel an hour after we leave here, wearing the wig and dark glasses? And he’s to drive her all over Milan so she gets to Atelier Re well after we’ve gone inside?’

‘
Sí
,’ Felipe says, not bothering to hide his boredom. ‘The decoy, she is ready. We have been through it many times. You must think us stupid, Senorita Basso.’

Gia doesn’t bother to refute him. ‘And Irina’s security detail? Have you confirmed the personnel, the numbers?’

Felipe’s reply is sullen. ‘It, too, is in hand. Gianfranco recommends three cars today. One to go ahead, one to follow. You will travel in the last car, Senorita Basso, with Carlo and Jürgen. Myself and Senorita Zhivanevskaya in the second car, and Angelo and Vladimir in the first car. To give her enough time to get inside without unnecessary … complication.’

Gia’s expression is suddenly furious. ‘
Complication?
Is that what you think of me? And what? Separate us? Whose idea was that? Look at the condition she’s in today — I can’t leave her alone! Especially with the mob scene she’ll have to endure outside Atelier Re. She’s too fragile. We can’t risk a relapse.’

Felipe shrugs, his expression unreadable. ‘Do not ask me. It is Gianfranco’s orders. I am just the driver. Ring him if you like.’

‘Just the driver!’ Gia expostulates. ‘What are you plotting, Felipe?’

Felipe studies the fingernails of one tanned hand. ‘If that is all,
Miss
?’

The doorbell peals again, and Gia looks up sharply. ‘That’ll be breakfast. Finally. When I call
down, Felipe, have the engine idling. Hotel security has organised for us to exit through the basement levels. There’s to be no waiting time. None at all.’

Felipe gives a mocking half-bow in Gia’s direction. ‘You worry too much, Senorita Basso,’ he replies insolently. ‘She is in good hands. The best, no?’

He gives me a lazy, lascivious wink and walks quickly to the door of the suite with long strides.

‘You’ll find Ryan?’ I remind Gia again, feeling strangely uncertain. ‘Bring him to me?’

She nods and I can feel my heart rate begin to slow, my breathing even out, my left hand stop aching. I flex my fingers gingerly and take my hand out of my pocket, sit straighter in my armchair.

At the door, Felipe lets in a dark-eyed young woman with dark, curly, chin-length hair wearing a crisp white shirt and sober, maroon skirt suit with the hotel crest picked out in gold thread on the jacket’s front pocket. She’s pushing a linen-covered trolley bearing a raft of breakfast things, including two dome-covered plates. She’s so flustered at the sight of me that she runs over her own foot in her hurry to get the trolley to the graceful dining table near the street-facing windows of the sitting room.

The woman takes a pot off the trolley, lifting the
lid with unsteady hands to show us the hot coffee inside, before repeating the action with the second pot, containing boiled water. There’s a small dish with slices of lemon arranged on it in a pretty pattern, and another with butter and two small pots of different varieties of jam. She places these on the table, darting quick, self-conscious glances in my direction.