Gabriel watched Sara head down the hall, her tank top swinging back and forth in her hand, her light laughter carrying as she gave him one last glance over her bare shoulder. The look was saucy, pleased. She had gotten what she wanted and didn’t seemed offended that he wouldn’t take it to the next step.
He wasn’t feeling at all pleased. He was sick with self-disgust, at his complete lack of control. The taste of her was lingering on his mouth, and he could still feel the warmth of her thighs as he gripped her, keeping her legs spread, her panties pushed to the side, as he had moved his tongue in and out of her receptive body. She had been wet, eager, easy to orgasm, and he had known when he’d seen her sit up on the couch and reach for her skirt that she was going to peel off her clothes and pleasure herself some more, and that he was going to take her himself instead.
It had been stupid. She was drunk, dancing with the green fairy, and had let down all of her inhibitions. She was going to regret touching herself in front of him the next day. He should have left it alone, just concentrated on the notes and not even watched. He should have stepped out of the room to give her privacy. He should have resisted the urge to touch her.
But he felt a kinship to Sara, an intense longing and lust that superseded any and all common sense, and he suspected that he was succumbing to the very angelic emotion of love. He had thought that since his fall, since his plunge into selfishness, he was incapable of stepping outside of himself and caring about another person, but maybe he had been wrong, because his desire for Sara was complex. It wasn’t just lust, but a need to connect, to feel her, to touch, to please, to protect, to make her happy.
Gabriel pushed D above middle C with his thumb. The note rang out, then faded. It had felt good to play again. He had heard the music once he had touched the instrument. But it had made him lose control.
Or maybe he had never been in control.
He didn’t know what he was doing. Who he was. Why it mattered to solve Anne’s murder.
He didn’t know how to prevent Sara from falling victim to his sins.
And he didn’t know how to move beyond his purgatory into a better life, one where he could have a positive impact on the world, humanity. One where he didn’t stand around motionless in the muck of his sins, but took action.
Gabriel played Bach idly. He didn’t know any contemporary music, or anything twentieth-century, for that matter, since he hadn’t played in a hundred years. But he liked the traditional intricacy of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century composers.
He needed to stay away from Sara.
But he knew he wasn’t going to.
“Gabriel?” she called from down the hall. “I forgot a towel. Can you bring me one?”
Without hesitation, he got up and went down the hall.
He was fallen, after all.
No one expected him to have a halo anymore.
Chapter Thirteen
DONOVAN WITNESS DEAD!
January 11, 1850—In a shocking twist to the willful murder trial of Anne Donovan that has the city riveted, witness Molly Faye, former lover of elusive and charming defendant Jonathon Thiroux, is dead, by her own hand.
After engaging in a heated and illustrious argument with another witness, also a lewd and unfortunate woman, just two days past, in which Miss Faye learned she was not the only object of the defendant’s affection, Miss Faye took her life in the decisive manner of slicing open her own throat.
Found by the proprietress of the House of Rest for Weary Men, Madame Conti, in the victim’s own bed, the vision first conjured up images of the scene last October when poor Anne Donovan was found in a similar state just two rooms down the hall. But whereas Anne had been sliced repeatedly, with such brutality and force as to render her unrecognizable, Molly Faye suffered merely one wound, from the left side of her throat to the right, approximately six inches in length and of a shallow depth. Dr. Raphael, the coroner, has concluded her death a suicide, as the weapon was in her hand and the slice tentative, as is often the case when a person hesitates on the threshold of death. The deceased’s personal effects were tidy and in order, and though no note was left, that can be explained by the simple fact that Miss Faye was not literate. Next to her bed, on the nightstand, was a torn-out clipping of the newspaper article written by this reporter detailing the courtroom scuffle involving Miss Faye and Miss Swanson. There was no money in the room, no evidence of next of kin, and possessions only enough to fill a small satchel.
A sad ending indeed to a sad life.
One questions how many women like Miss Faye wander our city, at the mercy of fate and fortune, weary from the fight to subsist.
It would seem the murder of Anne Donovan provides no answers, only questions.
Gabriel was reaching in the hall closet for a towel when he heard a knock on the door. For a flash of a second, he thought it was another demon. A female. Then he dismissed the idea, not sure why he had even thought it was. He couldn’t feel any energy, only the warmth of a human being outside his door. Definitely a woman though.
Rapping on the bathroom door, Gabriel waited for Sara’s “come in” impatiently. He wanted to dispense with whoever was standing outside the door so he could go back to Sara. Finish what they had started. What Sara had started. What he wanted to finish, regardless of the consequences.
He quickly opened the door and tossed the towel on the floor, unable to prevent himself from glancing inside. She was still behind the shower curtain and he couldn’t see her at all, which was probably a good thing. “There’s someone at the front door. I’m going to answer it. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
She laughed. “Where would I go? I’m naked and wet.” Just what he didn’t need to hear. And he decided not to mention that he had brought her a towel. “Be right back.”
The minute he opened the door, he regretted it. It was the girl from the po’boy shop. The girl who Sara said had stopped by earlier. He’d already forgotten her name, yet she was standing on his doorstep, big, wet tears in her eyes and her arms crossed tightly on her chest. She had a giant army green purse over her shoulder, diagonally so that she didn’t have to hold it, yet she was still clutching it in front of her.
This was going to take tact. Something he wasn’t all that great at. “Hey, this is a, uh, surprise. How are you?” he asked, hoping to feel out exactly why she was there.
“How do you think I am?” she asked, her voice high and shrill. “I’m awful. I’m sucky. You’re just standing there looking at me all politely and you have a woman living with you. I’m in love with you and you have a woman living with you.”
Not knowing where to go with that, Gabriel shook his head, keeping his voice even and, he hoped, soothing. “I’m not sure why that would matter to you. You and I . . . we said hello a few times. We didn’t have a relationship beyond that.”
“Yes, we did.” Her voice was trembling now. “It was there, in the way you looked at me, in the way you touched me. And I felt it. When I met you, I knew that you were it for me. I met you and that was
it
, do you know what I mean?”
Gabriel felt absolutely awful. He couldn’t even remember her name, and she was declaring that her life had altered when meeting him. It was a burden he despised, one that he resented, loathed, felt the injustice of over and over. Why should someone else be punished for his sins?
There was no answer, only the echo of the question in his head, and the feeling that there was something he was missing, something he was supposed to know, to learn, to solve. An end.
“I do know what you mean, and that’s really flattering, but I’m not worth it, honestly. I don’t deserve these feelings you have for me.” Gabriel wanted to touch her, to reassure her, but that would be a mistake. That would only encourage her.
She was weeping now, her nose red and dripping, tears streaming down her face. Swiping at her cheeks with the canvas of her purse, she said, “Don’t do that. Please, God, don’t do that.”
“Do what?” he asked, wishing he knew how to free her, how to just make it all go away.
Of course, he knew how to create the illusion of making it go away. That was what absinthe and opium could achieve. The modern version of heroin would work just as well if not better. But that would only accomplish oblivion for him, not her. It wouldn’t fix anything. And he would hate himself even more than he did standing there watching her sob, pathetic and irrational.
“Look at me like that. With pity. I don’t want your pity. I want your love.”
He didn’t know how to erase the pity from his eyes, from his face, from his soul, when he did feel it. Pity for her that she had fallen victim, that she was suffering. “I don’t have any love to give.”
Maybe that was true. Maybe that was why he stayed this way, year after year. Maybe that was why he could never return. He hadn’t loved, enough or well. Hadn’t loved God, himself, Anne. Maybe he didn’t even know what love was.
But he did know he wanted to reach out to this girl, wrap her in his arms and tell her he was sorry for her pain, sorry he had stumbled across her path, ripped her out of normalcy and into agony.
“Gabriel, is everything okay?”
Damn. He turned and saw Sara standing in the living room in her tank top and skirt, no bra, toweling her wet hair dry.
Before he could respond, she glanced around him and saw the girl in the door.
“Rochelle? What are you doing here?”
Rochelle. That was her name. How ironic that Sara remembered when he didn’t. “Sara, just give Rochelle and me a minute.” He didn’t think it was a good idea for Sara to be involved, for Rochelle to be further humiliated.
But when he turned back to face the girl, he caught a glimpse of shock and horror on her face before she sobbed and ran, her pace so fast Gabriel was afraid she was going to trip and fall down the narrow stairs.
“Damn.” He said to Sara over his shoulder, “Stay here. I need to talk to her. I can’t let her leave like that.”
“Gabriel, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
But he was already heading down the stairs. This was his fault. He needed to fix it. He didn’t know how, but he had to try.
When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he saw that Rochelle had stopped in the passage to the street, bent over her purse.
“Rochelle, I’m really sorry if I’ve hurt you, but I had no idea you felt this way about—”
Gabriel forgot what he had been trying to say when Rochelle turned, her big dark eyes wide and glazed with shock, pain, misery. Something fell out of her hand, clattering on the bricks, and he realized it was metal, long and narrow, with a straight edge. A switchblade. Her wrists and palms were covered in blood as she held them out to him, eyes beseeching, purse falling slack against her thigh.
It was almost impossible to process, to believe what he was seeing. Her pale fingers raised up, the vivid red of the blood streaming across them, back down her wrists, the jagged wounds brutal and desperate, the crimson stain pouring over the swarm of butterfly tattoos on her young, delicate skin.
He had done this. His weakness, his addiction, his gluttonous lust for escape, the need to boost his faltering confidence, his inability to cope with his responsibilities and the job he had been entrusted with.
Watch. Guide. Protect.
“Sara!” he yelled as loud as he could. “Call 911.”
Yanking off his T-shirt, he reached out and pulled Rochelle’s hands and wrists together, swaddling the shirt around them tightly, so her fingers entwined. Pulling to create pressure, hoping to staunch the flow as much as possible, he looked into her eyes. She was losing focus, her legs starting to crumple, and he slid his free arm around her back, holding her up against his chest so she wouldn’t fall.
“Stay with me, Rochelle.”
“I . . .” Her eyes started to roll back into her head.
Gabriel shook her a little. “Look at me.”
She did, sad, confused, scared.
And Gabriel did what he never did. He locked gazes with her and let her see into his eyes, his soul, his true nature. He let her see the light and full force of his power, the hope and beauty and promise and future. Projecting into her mind, he showed her what she could have—a man who truly loved her, a house in the Quarter with a lush courtyard, her every heart’s desire. He found her love of art and passion for sculpture in her racing thoughts, and so he showed her a successful career, where her work showed in national galleries and the art community knew her name. It was wonderful and it could all be hers if she held on, clung to it, chose it.
Her eyes widened, in wonder, awe, joy.
And then she lost consciousness, slack in his arms.
Sara drove back from the hospital, eyes scratchy and throat dry. Gabriel had insisted on staying with Rochelle, who was thankfully okay, but had been admitted. Sara was exhausted, with a clinging headache and a ravenous cotton mouth, which had to be from the absinthe drinking. She hadn’t wanted to leave Gabriel, who was taking Rochelle’s suicide attempt hard, but she had realized her presence was only distressing Rochelle, and distracting Gabriel.
So she had decided to come back to the apartment and leave him to wait for Rochelle’s parents to arrive from Baton Rouge.
She had no idea how they had become embroiled in this girl’s problems, or why Gabriel seemed to think he had any reason to feel guilty about anything, but she completely understood wanting to stay with her, to try to help her.
It had been heartbreaking when Sara had seen the girl in a faint, blood all over her hands and arms. When Sara had first grabbed the phone, dialing 911, and run down the stairs, she had almost fainted herself. The sight was so shocking, so unexpected, the blood jarring and vivid and a horrible reminder of her mother’s death, that Sara had almost thrown up. She had still been drunk, which she hadn’t realized until that moment, when her mind had rolled slowly and laboriously to process what she was seeing, to take action, to separate fear from reality and understand that Rochelle had tried to kill herself.