“Of course. You’re a threat. Until now, she’s been grooming herself for the position.”
Stephanie was a real fool then. Just like Angela and Nina, she could just be suffering from the birth pangs of the true Archon making herself known in the world.
“But why? Why would anyone
want
to be such a horrible person? Doesn’t she realize the Vatican will exterminate her the second they determine she’s the one they’re looking for?”
Kim smiled at her, amused at her cleverness. “The answer is power. Don’t make the mistake of so many others and let her soft appearance fool you. Stephanie is ambitious, relentless, unsympathetic, and power hungry. What I’m telling you is arcane knowledge, but—the angel left behind an artifact when he died, one that—once opened—has the power to fulfill the prophecy of Ruin. But only the Archon can actually open it without suffering terribly.” Kim’s grimmer expression returned. “Stephanie’s playing a dangerous game. Actually, more than one. If she’s wrong, and she tries to open this artifact without truly being the Archon, she’ll go absolutely insane.”
The roof creaked again, and footsteps pattered across the shingles.
Angela glanced at the chandelier, quaking a little. There was still some light. Enough to last them another hour or so. The previous evening with Sophia and Nina was coming back to her in all its disturbing detail. “This artifact is—”
“No one knows its true form—they say that those who’ve seen it by accident have gone mad. But it does have a name.” Kim spoke the words half under his breath. “The Book of Raziel.”
The first angel name that could hold any meaning for her.
But not for the reasons she’d been hoping.
Kim registered the blank look on her face and grasped her by the hand, pulling her to her feet.
“What is it?” she said.
He opened the door to the hallway. “Come with me.”
A
ngela had been in the library once since moving into the dormitory mansion.
She hadn’t found a reason to return yet.
Every other room in the building had a distinct sense of old elegance to it. Lamps were tarnished, wood needed polishing, and upholstered furniture sat overloaded with dust, but otherwise her new living quarters had retained at least a speck of understated dignity. The library, though, was almost as dreary as that private apartment Sophia had been calling home, only much more forbidding. The ceiling, high as it was, escaped into the darkness like there was no ceiling to be found. Paintings of landscapes from the days when the Academy was in its planning stages graced the walls, though years of dirt had grimed their sunny imagery into shadows. But besides a heavy table with six even heavier chairs surrounding it, the room was wall-to-wall books. Angela had stopped at one shelf, rifled through volumes of theological discourse texts, and finally left when it became clear she wouldn’t find anything of interest.
She let out a sigh of relief when Kim walked by that particular shelf and stopped at the next, his candelabra raised high.
Gold-embossed text glimmered on the spine of a particularly giant book.
The Lies of Babylon.
He heaved it off the shelf and dropped it onto the table, gesturing for her to take a seat.
“I told you I’m not that interested in books,” she said, sliding out a chair. “How often do you come here, by the way?”
“What do you mean?” Kim set the candelabra on the table and swiftly opened to a set of pages heavily illustrated in deep shades of red and gray. The first symbol Angela noticed was the pentagram, its design almost identical to the Pentacle Sorority’s.
“You seemed to know exactly where to find this book. That implies some kind of familiarity, right?”
“There’s a copy in every mansion belonging to the Vatican.”
Angela stared at him, watching the candlelight play off the strange hue of his eyes. “Why? It doesn’t look very holy.”
Kim didn’t answer, but he let her flip through the pages as he observed, and the more she flipped, the more uneasy she felt. Whatever chapter she was in, there were no angels to be found, just a lot of strange quotations, formulas that resembled spells, and most disturbingly of all, prayers written in red ink that could just as easily have been blood. When his hand touched hers, suggesting that she stop, the heat from it seemed to jolt her back into reality. “Do you understand anything that you see?” he said, hardly bothering to hide the interest on his face anymore.
He was gazing back at her carefully, and she knew something mysterious depended on her answer.
“Not really,” she said, watching his reaction.
But that was before she turned to the last set of pages, a mess of symbols that she certainly recognized from somewhere. The sharp lines, the forked scripting, tugged at her memories, and then she read the translation on the opposite page.
I was stamped with the seal of perfection, complete wisdom and perfect beauty. In Eden the Garden of God, I was, and every precious stone was my covering . . .
“Hold on,” Angela whispered, almost more to herself than to Kim. “I do know this.”
She continued reading but the light dimmed and the walls could have been closing in on her. Before another minute had passed, she slammed the book shut. The moment the cover glimmered back at her, the candles seemed to gutter back to their former brightness.
“It’s talking about the Devil.”
Kim nodded. “And how do you feel about what you read?”
“Feel? I don’t see how any of this can help me—”
“We’re starting at the beginning, Angela. You know nothing about angels so I’m testing your knowledge with one of the most . . . infamous.” For the first time she noticed he was tugging at an iron cross necklace that hung against his chest. A gem had been set in the cross’s center, its surface smooth and red. “Remember, the Devil was once an angel, and even if no one else remembers that—she does.”
“The Devil is a woman?”
“And perhaps a misunderstood one.”
“You can’t be serious.” Angela left her seat, but only to lean against the table, trying to think.
“I can’t be serious about what?” he said, standing with her. “The idea of her being a woman or—”
“Both.”
“Angela,” he said, gently turning her head by the chin, “look at me.”
The moment she did, it felt like a mistake. He was obviously attracted to her, she was attracted to him, even if for the most selfish and superficial reasons, and now that they were acknowledging that without a sound, she also knew there was no use ignoring it. Usually, this kind of desire came and left her just as fast, dissipating whenever she stole a glance at one of her paintings. But with Kim, there was both excitement and a sense of safety. They barely knew each other, but Angela felt they had more in common than she realized, and she was curious to find out what those mysterious things were.
That, though, implied more time. And they had very little to spare.
He brushed strands of hair from her shoulders, fondling the tendrils left to him. “Have you ever thought about history, about how stories can be skewed one way or the other depending on who wins the war?”
“Maybe,” she said, allowing him to play with her tresses, remembering their moment together in that grimy alleyway. Would it be wrong to wish for more, even if it was just to spite Stephanie?
It’s not like she doesn’t deserve this.
“Then you can imagine how a story like this one has transformed over time. There are many versions of it, and I’ve read them all. But then I found out the truth that every version was based on, and the ideas I once had about angels, demons, and everything in between changed forever. Until that moment, I’d been lost, searching for a reason to go on with life. I was a lot like you, Angela. Reckless. Because there was no reason to be anything else.”
“It sounds like you have me figured out,” she said, only slightly peevish.
“I’m just calling it as I see it.” Kim took a deep breath, looking more melancholy than before. A strange dullness had washed out the light in his eyes again, much as it had while he sang hymns at the introductory ceremony. “So do you want to know why she fell from grace? Why she instigated her rebellion to begin with?”
This was easy. There was no way this element of the Devil’s story could have changed.
“Pride,” Angela said, also proud of herself for knowing the answer.
He turned to her and there was a soft smile spreading across his face. “Disillusionment.”
Angela had nothing to say. That one word implied so many things, the least of them being that Heaven hadn’t been what she’d hoped. Otherwise, what could make an angel disillusioned at all?
It almost changed everything, exactly as he’d said.
“So you have sympathy for the Devil.” Though she didn’t feel half as afraid of him for it as she should have, probably because she understood exactly how he felt. Angela’s life had been one grand series of tragedies from the very beginning. That would be enough for anyone to question the meaning behind life in the first place, or even the point of forging ahead. But that was where she also differed from everyone else, apparently, the Devil included. She attempted suicide because she
had
a hope.
But what did that mean for Kim? He’d said that had changed the course of his life. The next question was, of course, How?
“Sympathy isn’t something they understand very well,” he was saying. “That also includes the ability to cry.”
He was touching the cross necklace, absentminded.
“It’s pretty,” Angela said, pointing at it. “I hope it wasn’t a gift from Stephanie.”
Kim stared at her, his smile erasing the strange haunted look on his face. “It was from my father, actually.”
“That’s nice. You must have a good relationship with him.”
“And you?” His voice softened. “Stephanie told me about your past.”
She let the silence grow between them, unaware of how much it would hurt to speak again until she decided to make herself heard. And that wasn’t until they were far from the library, returned to the relative coziness of her bedroom and the dolls, paintings, clothes, and bedsheets that defined her. At least, she thought they did.
“Do you think I’m the Archon?” she whispered, almost afraid of what the answer might be.
“I think that there are better reasons Stephanie should be nervous right now.”
Kim took her by the hand.
Then, with a cautious slowness, he covered her mouth with his own, gently relinquishing his kiss only so that the next one met her even more softly.
Angela’s breath sucked away, her head swam. Soon she’d allowed him to hold her by the chin and take her lips with tender persistence, melting beneath the thin, pleasing lines of his mouth, the sculpted strength of his face. When she broke away from him, hoping to stop the problem they were creating, her body instantly grew hot along with the warmth in his hands, and she found herself sinking beneath Kim’s skillful touches, unable to quell the eagerness to keep enjoying him. His skin tasted like salt and sour wine, and it wasn’t until he pressed her hand against his face that she felt it, disrupting the smoothness of his cheek. There was a cut on his cheekbone, below his eye. In the poor light, she must not have noticed. Kim pulled away, and she blinked back at the room, strangely bewildered by what had passed between them.
“Did you cut yourself?” she finally said.
Kim made a wry face, annoyed, but apparently not by her.
Creak. Snap.
The roof groaned again, and—silence. Angela glanced out the window, shivering. The blackness was dimly lit by two spots of yellow, and then they blinked back at her, shutting off into pure darkness. Kim watched with her, cursing under his breath. She barely restrained him as he slipped off the bed, hastily rebuttoning his collar.
He leaned in for the good-bye kiss, and she jumped a little, startled, smelling his sweat and her own peculiar scent in his hair. Whatever they’d both seen, he’d taken it as a bad sign. “If you go to the gathering tomorrow night, I’ll be there,” he said.
“Wait—your book—”
“I don’t mind lending it out for a day or so.”
He escaped the room, shutting the door with a soft
click,
and his footsteps clattered down the hallway, the stairs.
Angela glanced around, unsettled for the first time by the idea of being alone.
At least Sophia would be home soon.
It was probably a good thing she wouldn’t see Angela like this, staring wide-eyed around the room, acting like a scared mouse. Worse yet, Sophia’s parting words for the night almost wouldn’t allow it.
You’re brave,
she’d said
. Brave enough to stand up to Stephanie Walsh. But if you knew what she knows, you’d think twice about trying to protect me.
Angela had asked why, too defiant to be frightened at the time.
Now, she stared at the book, her breath catching. It had flopped open to a page Kim must have deliberately skipped over, the illustration depicting some kind of angel with sharp black wings and long ears. It was familiar somehow, and the strange writing on the page had a harsh, upsetting look to it. Angela looked out the window again, feeling so small, dwarfed once more by everything that surrounded her. The dolls. The walls. The world.