And I see him.
I give a start, feel a cold flash race across my skin.
He is standing with his back to me before one of the long, curtained windows, his palely glowing hand holding aside the heavy fabric as he looks out onto the moon-stained garden, now overgrown with nightshade and bridal creeper. He has gleaming silver hair, worn a little too long for fashion. Every strand straight, even and perfectly the same. And when he turns to look at me — his eyes as blue as the daytime sky but which can darken to near night when he is angered, his face youthful and incorruptible — I know him for who he is, and I bow my head to that vision both terrible and wonderful.
‘Lord Azraeil,’ I say aloud, his name recalled at once in the beholding.
Mercy, he says inside my mind, for he has no need for speech. They tell me that it is what you have taken to calling yourself these days.
His tone is amused. He approaches me slowly, seeming to glide, his feet never quite meeting the surface of the stretched and faded carpet laid down in this room decades ago. Azraeil does not favour the snowy-white raiment that I have come to expect of my erstwhile brethren, my tormentors. He wears what he likes, I remember, so long as it’s black.
He stops mere inches from me. He does not seek to touch me, nor I him, because few ever recover from Azraeil’s touch. Even among the elohim — for that is what he is, one of the High Ones, almost the highest — he is a power unto himself, a force that straddles worlds and states, life and death. He has no need for stratagems, for politics, the taking of sides. He is power incarnate; the possessor of a singular ability bestowed on none other but himself.
And my dreaming self reminds me that he is here for reasons known only to himself. I know, without knowing how, that he is not one of the Eight come to gloat over me. Though even in my dream, the irony strikes me as cruel. No doubt when I was first reborn in a mortal body — outcast, bereft, confused, utterly alone — I must have cried out for the services of this man, this being more than man.
Why are you here? I say into his mind. Why now? You are several millennia too late, my friend. I no longer need your ‘help’. I might have once, but no longer.
There is laughter in his reply. The years have dulled your wits, my friend. I’m not here for you, clearly. He raises a shimmering hand and points a finger at the figure in the bed. But I may not take her yet.
I frown. I have seen the ruination of her body, Azraeil. Only fear and love are keeping her here. She is ready. End her suffering. Take her.
Perhaps there is something self-serving in my words. For even in my dream, I know that if Karen Neill is gone I will be free to fly the nest with Ryan as soon as he arrives, leaving Lela’s old life behind without guilt, without ackward glance.
Azraeil’s eyes are piercing and I see that he sees what is in my heart.
By and by, he replies. But she is supposed to go with one other. At the very hour, the very minute, the very instant, the two must go together. And so I must wait to reap them both. But not for much longer.
In the jump-cut way of dreams, I suddenly find myself looking up at him from out of Lela’s eyes again. Like a djinn called back into the bottle, I am shackled once more inside her body. Azraeil seems so very tall now, standing between Lela and her mother’s sleeping form. As beautiful, bright and alien as the stars.
He moves so quickly that I am taken by surprise. He bends low, reaching out with his glowing hands, his breath sweet and warm on Lela’s features, mine. The instant he cups the contours of Lela’s face, I wake, shaken by the gesture, knowing that if it had not been a dream, Lela would already be dead, and I, fled, gone, departed.
In the early morning, when golden light begins to seep in through the heavy drapes, Mrs Neill wakes with difficulty and murmurs, ‘I had the strangest dream, Lel. I thought I woke and saw you sleeping there, in your usual place, but your skin . . . it was glowing. It wasn’t moonlight. It was like there was a light on inside you. It was so . . . beautiful.’
‘It was a dream, Mum,’ I reply gently, holding up my free hand to be examined. ‘It’s just ordinary skin, highly susceptible to sunburn, as you know.’
And the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, I add silently.
I stand up and stretch. ‘I’ll be home early today. I’ll ask Mr Dymovsky if I can cut short my shift so that we can spend more time together.’
‘Why, love?’ she whispers. ‘It’s good for you to get out of the house. I don’t feel any worse than usual. Nothing’s going to carry me off today.’
Her quiet laugh turns into a fit of coughing that goes on and on.
I bend and give her some water, a kiss, tell her I’ll see her soon. Not bothering to advise her that Azraeil is waiting. Waiting around for that specific purpose.
Chapter 13
‘What do you mean you need to leave early today?’ Mr Dymovsky cries when I tell him what I’ve decided. ‘Reggie, she is the no-show. No phone call. Nothing.’
We’ve just survived the madness of the breakfast run, surfing another giant wave of takeout coffees and toasted bacon and egg sandwich specials. The cafe is deserted now, save for me, Cecilia, Sulaiman, the boss.
‘Delayed onset of shock?’ I suggest half-heartedly.
Mr Dymovsky rolls his express'>Weyes at me. ‘You are unshockable,’ he says, wagging his head of flyaway grey hair. ‘That’s precisely why you were hired.’
‘My mother’s dying,’ I remind him softly. ‘It won’t be long. I can feel it.’ He searches Lela’s face and, satisfied by what he sees there, replies gravely, ‘Now that is a reason I understand. Of course, you may leave early. But only after the lunch rush is over. Sulaiman does not have your way with people.’
Sulaiman looks up unsmilingly at the mention of his name, returns his gaze to the passable-looking moussaka he is assembling at the kitchen window just behind my shoulder.
‘And Cecilia,’ Mr Dymovsky adds, ‘she is an artist who must be allowed to work her magic undisturbed.’
Cecilia beams at us as she wipes down the coffee machine, taking a small sip of her own restorative brew. ‘You want one?’ she asks us in her lilting voice.
Mr Dymovsky tells her to make him one strong enough to add extra hair to his chest. I decline politely because with milk, without, with sugar, without, it still tastes like poison to me.
There is a flurry of plastic ribbons then the front door pushes open. Warm air from the street mingles with the Siberian conditions in here.
‘Ranald!’ Mr Dymovsky cries heartily. ‘Welcome, welcome! Your usual, my friend?’
Ranald nods happily, gives us all a little wave. He sets his laptop bag down on his usual table, rips open pocket after pocket and takes out a raft of electronic devices I am incapable of naming.
‘He likes that,’ Mr Dymovsky says to me under his breath, ‘that we know him, know his habits. He’s very complicated, very peculiar. Smart, you know?’ He taps one temple with the middle finger of his left hand. ‘But almost like a child in many ways. If you get it wrong . . .’ He lifts his eyes to the ceiling, lifts his shoulders and hands in a Heaven help you gesture. ‘Still, the customer is always right, eh?’
He steps forward, picks up a steel ladle and fluffs up the fried rice warming in a rectangular receptacle beneath the lights of the hot-food counter; moves on to rearranging the fried snacks in neat, family groupings with a pair of tongs, while Cecilia starts grinding a new batch of coffee beans for Ranald’s coffee.
Ranald sees me at a loose end and beckons me over, smiling with such genuine warmth and pleasure when I approach that his usually reserved, slightly cold demeanour is transformed.
‘Thanks for setting up my profile,’ I say. ‘You really helped me out. I wouldn’t have known where to begin.’
Which is the honest truth. Sulaiman might believe that computers are somehow within God’s contemplation, but I’m not so sure.
‘I wish everything was that easy,’ Ranald says with a grin, picking at the ragged thumbnail on one hand. ‘But
