Fury

Wordlessly, we haul him together up a grand circular driveway lined with luxury sedans and limos, and through a revolving front door of high-shine glass and bronze. It spits us out into a palatial hotel foyer crowded with antiques and chandeliers, and I’m immediately assailed by muzak and human noise, the smells of disinfectant, air freshener and the kinds of expensive, towering floral arrangements that I’ve come to detest.

The male concierge in maroon and gold livery standing behind the immense, marble-topped reception desk almost steps back from us in disgust. Ryan’s hair is a little matted now and he could use a shave. He looks wasted beyond redemption. But the concierge recognises Gia Basso immediately and says, icily, ‘Signorina,’ his pale grey gaze flicking from Ryan to me, before he favours her with a small smile, an almost imperceptible nod.

When the lift doors open, Gia fumbles a security card out of the back pocket of her skin-tight, black, waxed jeans, shoves it into a slot on the control panel and punches a floor number.

The brass and mirrored lift reflects us back to ourselves from all angles; we three appear infinite. Ryan’s head keeps lolling into the crook of my shoulder and there’s a rip in his jacket, running up under the right arm, that I think I might have caused. It’s clear from the way Gia’s wrinkling her nose that Ryan could use a shower.

‘Jesus,’ she mumbles, looking over his bowed head at me, unable to tear her unusual eyes — one blue, one brown — away from my face. ‘You’re both still alive. When the shining giants with the swords and, uh, wings appeared,’ she shoots me a sharp glance that seems to come back at me from everywhere at once, ‘some clumsy idiot smacked me in the face and then the whole place just exploded in flames. I’m ashamed to say that I lost sight of everything except getting to the nearest exit. I’m glad you made it. You look …’ she hesitates, ‘… good. Uh, different. But good.’

From the strange expression on her face, I can tell that she somehow recognises me, though my features, my voice, my body, aren’t even remotely familiar. There’s no doubt in her mind about who I am.

‘So do you,’ I reply, almost suffocated by sudden gratitude, a fierce affection for this prickly, practical woman. ‘Nice,’ I say, indicating her body-hugging, shiny jacket bristling with shoulder spikes, buckles and intricate quilting because that kind of stuff seems to matter so much to her. ‘It’s so very … you.’

She bares her teeth in a sudden, shark-like grin and lifts up a cone-heeled, patent-leather, black ankle boot for my inspection, which also bristles with matching short, sharp metal spikes all over the toecaps and heels. ‘The jacket I had on yesterday was trashed beyond salvation. It smells like a barbeque. I felt like I needed armour today — I’ve been kicking heads since the phone rang this morning at three seventeen. I figured, if people didn’t pay attention, I could just impale them with my footwear.’

We grin at each other for a moment, and Ryan shifts restlessly against me, his head against my cheek. And it hits me how little time we have left together, and how it’s things like this I’ll miss most: friendship, the warmth of human contact, love. Just the small things.

‘Too sophisticated,’ Ryan mumbles suddenly, struggling to focus on Gia beside him, and she looks obscurely pleased by the comment.

‘He looks the way I feel,’ she notes almost kindly. ‘Seedy.’

‘Considering I almost killed him twice today already,’ I say quietly, ‘he’s doing all right.’

Gia’s face is suddenly serious. ‘You didn’t decide to drop by just to approve my wardrobe choices, did you?’ she says in her cut-glass British accent.

I shake my head, and indicate Ryan between us. ‘He needs food, sleep, the usual things.’

‘Human things,’ Gia says sharply. ‘And what do you need?’

‘Help,’ I say immediately, and her strong, dark eyebrows fly up into her glossy, slanting fringe in open disbelief.

The lift doors slide open, and we’re walking under the same Murano glass chandeliers, across the same elaborately patterned royal blue and gold carpet I strode down yesterday on my way to the catwalk parade, as Irina. And it’s completely disorienting to be returning like this when everything I am has changed beyond measure.

I get an echo of my own thinking from Gia, but her thoughts are indistinct and hard to read, as if she’s somehow trained herself to hold her cards close, even from creatures like me. She’s like a steel trap, this one. Good at keeping secrets.

She clears her throat delicately. ‘Irina still hasn’t come around since you … left. She’s like Sleeping bloody Beauty. There isn’t a mark on her, not a scratch. All the vital signs are good, she’s breathing unassisted. But she might as well be dead. It’s like she’s just a shell; zero response to external stimuli. We’re debating whether to move her or wait it out. But the medicos say that if her vegetative state persists the body’s going to …’

‘Die,’ I finish.

‘It sounds as if you know what’s wrong with her,’ Gia replies. ‘I was hoping you might.’

‘I have a few theories,’ I say grimly. ‘I want to leave,’ Gia says suddenly. ‘Leave this city, leave Irina, leave this bloody business for good. But I’m not going to do it while she’s frozen inside her own body like Snow White after eating the apple. She’s a “beeeetch”, the queen of bitches, actually, but she’s got no one right now. Burnt too many bridges. And don’t look at me like that.’

‘What?’ I say, straight-faced. ‘Like I was about to accuse you of having a heart? Never.’

Gia hoists Ryan’s heavy arm up awkwardly while she punches her security key through a brass slot by the door to Irina’s suite. ‘I’ll do what I can to help you,’ she says in a low voice. ‘You know I’d do it anyway. You were a good boss, better than what I’m used to.’ She favours me with a crooked smile. ‘In return, all I ask is that you do what you can for me?’

I nod without hesitation and Gia throws wide the door. ‘Welcome to the madhouse,’ she mutters, then calls out loudly, ‘Carlo! Your assistance, please, dead man walking,’ as we wrestle Ryan into the formal sitting room.

5

The sitting room is full of people. There are a couple of youngish suits I don’t recognise, both speaking in English, both on their mobile phones and perched uncomfortably at different ends of a long, low, French Empire- era settee that doesn’t seem sturdy enough to hold them. A thin young woman with shoulder-length, curly auburn hair in a navy pantsuit and sensible shoes moves past with some fluids and medical instruments on a tray. Juliana Agnelli-Re is there, and her impeccably dressed family physician, the man who treated me after I leapt off the roof of a moving limousine, cutting up Irina’s feet badly.

Carlo and Jurgen, from Irina’s personal goon squad, surge to their feet at the sight of us and move forward to brace Ryan while Gia opens the door to her own set of rooms, then pulls down the covers on her own king-sized bed.

‘Boots off, lay him down,’ she orders. ‘Gently does it. He’s been through the wars.’

Carlo and Jurgen meekly do as they’re told, and Gia pulls the covers back up to the level of Ryan’s waist. ‘Dottore Pellini?’ she calls out through the doorway of her bedroom. ‘If you’d be so kind?’

The doctor moves towards her.

I’m still standing by the front entrance, taking everything in. The suits haven’t given me the time of day, and Juliana … I survey her forlorn figure sharply. She’s staring into space, still dressed in the burnt-orange pantsuit, filmy chartreuse blouse and vintage-looking lime and dark green Mary-Janes she was wearing at the haute couture show. Her crazy two-tone hair — dark roots, bright yellow ends — is looking pretty rough. Like Gia, she’s carrying a few bruises, cuts and weals around her head and neck, but she’s surprisingly whole for someone who made it out of the Archangel Michael’s presence alive.

‘She’s taken over global design duties at Atelier Re,’ Gia murmurs beside me. ‘Private Label, Black Label, resort, diffusion, menswear, accessories. Everything rests on her shoulders now. Effective today. Board rushed it through, unsurprisingly. She was the Chosen One, in any case. Only now it’s official.’

I’m so surprised at the news I can’t stop myself blurting out loudly, ‘But what about Giovanni?’

At the mention of her uncle’s name, Juliana looks across the room at me with tear-reddened eyes. Gia