calls. ‘My cane?’
‘Right away, Mastro Re,’ calls out a beautiful ice-blonde in a high-collared red blouse, an artfully tailored navy peplum jacket and matching wasp-waisted pencil skirt.
Mastro. It’s a very old word, archaic now, rarely used. And it means artisan.
The woman detaches herself from the two men she’s talking with and heads our way, holding an elegant wooden cane with a bright gold handle in the shape of a resting lion. She’s of medium height, with sapphire- coloured eyes and blood-red lips, her hair pulled into a sleek and immaculate French roll. Somehow, she manages to look enviably businesslike and blonde-bombshell at the same time.
As she reaches us, she says in a neutral, Swiss-finishing-school, pan-European accent, ‘Irina, you’re looking well. All things considered.’
Her voice and eyes are friendly, but I draw back a little from her, as Giovanni Re takes the cane the young woman’s proffering and leans on it heavily. It’s not my imagination. She’s gleaming, the way K’el was, and Nuriel, even after they’d modified themselves in order to pass as ordinary humans.
Light seems to be seeping out of Gudrun’s flawless, porcelain skin. And I know it’s not illuminising powder that’s causing it.
‘Do I know you?’ I whisper.
Her face isn’t familiar, but she’s an archangel, too, I’m sure of it. The woman I’m looking at right now is probably only a pale approximation of what Gudrun really looks like. She must be glorious in her angelic form.
‘No,’ she smiles, ‘you don’t know me. Though, of course, everyone knows who you are. I’m new here, though I do believe we have a few … friends in common. Mastro Re’s last executive assistant very sadly … died. Heart failure, I understand. She was only thirty-three.’
Giovanni Re takes one of Gudrun’s shapely hands in his. I see that her nails are long and painted the same glossy blood red as her lips.
‘Gudrun’s been invaluable,’ he says gruffly. ‘When Ainsley left us so suddenly’ — there’s a sudden sheen in his eyes, an echo of shock and grief — ‘I was going to cancel the show, the documentary, the retrospective, everything. Ainsley had all the details of the set, the layout, the play list, the results of the castings, in her head. Luckily for me, Gudrun came along to sort out the mess. She convinced me it was possible to go on.’
Gudrun meets the old man’s eyes and smiles sunnily. ‘It’s been marvellous working for you.’ She’s suddenly so radiant to my eyes that I wonder how it is that no one else in the room can see how much she seems to shine. ‘It’s been like a holiday,’ she adds. ‘I am going to miss you when all this craziness is over.’ She gives the old man’s hand a squeeze then turns to walk away.
‘A holiday!’ he exclaims. ‘She’s priceless,’ he says to me. ‘Priceless.’
Gudrun’s eyes flick back to mine wryly. ‘That’s what they all say,’ she replies, ‘when they want something. Now, I’m here to keep an eye on you, Irina, so anything you need, just give a shout. Someone will know where I am in this warren.’
I watch her walk away. She must be one of Michael’s reinforcements, like K’el, like Nuriel. Maybe they’re all here because they’re afraid of Luc in some way. Or they wish to stop him, and force is needed.
With a chill, I recall Gabriel’s words to me as Lela lay dying in his arms. He’d said that I was fully justified in bringing Luc to the Eight to have him dealt with. That I was well within my rights to slay him myself. I feel the blood drain out of my face at the memory.
Even now, I can’t understand what Luc could have done to justify punishment, even death, at my hands. I feel a dull ache begin behind my eyes. There’s something I’m missing here. What are they all keeping from me?
But now I know why a power of archangels is headed this way. They’re going to use me as bait. And if they don’t manage to catch Luc — or kill him? — they’ll shift me anyway, to preserve the status quo, to keep Hell and the daemonium at bay.
The old man’s voice breaks into my troubled thoughts. ‘Gudrun was right,’ he says. ‘You are looking well, all things considered. Sometimes the stories about you are so terrible, I don’t know what to believe. But when I saw you at the rehearsal yesterday, you looked even better than I dared to imagine. You will make my final show so much more memorable. I was right to insist. There’s something different about you today, I think? You seem calmer, more beautiful even than I remember. There’s a glow about you, eh? Am I right? Is it love?’
‘I wouldn’t know about any of that, Mastro Re,’ I reply carefully.
And it’s true. I don’t know how to catch hold of love, or to keep it. Luc used to love me more than life itself. But something’s changed. I close my eyes briefly in anguish.
‘Call me Giovanni, please,’ the old man says softly. ‘We’ve known each other too long to stand on such formality.’
His gaze and voice become suddenly distant. ‘Seeing you now reminds me of a dream I had, though I cannot think why.’ He leans heavily on his cane. ‘The most beautiful youth came to me, Irina. He took my hand and said he would lead me to Marco, that Marco was waiting and we would be together again, very soon. It’s been twenty-one years, did you know? Since Marco … Well, longer than you have been alive, my dear. The youth was tall, very tall. Dressed all in black, with eyes that were so blue they were like the sea. But though his face was the face of a young man, his hair — it was pure silver. Like moonlight.’
I go cold at his words. Giovanni has just described Azraeil, whom I last saw at the bedside of Karen Neill. Azraeil. The archangel of death.
‘You’re certain he took your hand?’ I mutter.
Giovanni nods, his gaze still clouded by thoughts of his dream.
There’s only one way to know for sure, and I steel myself resignedly before reaching out and taking Giovanni lightly by the wrist, searching for some specific information.
It is getting easier; I’m not imagining that either. Though Giovanni and I are both standing here, in this busy space full of busy people, he’s not really here and neither am I. As we flame into contact, I feel myself loosen, feel myself dissolve into him somehow. There’s pain, of course. But there’s always pain.
I surf through it, through the pressure in my head, and reach down into his mind, into his flesh, to interpret what has been left there for my kind to read.
A moment later, I release my grip on his wrist.
‘You’re dying, Giovanni,’ I murmur in Irina’s husky voice. ‘The show, the retrospective, all of it — you don’t need to do them. There’s nothing you need to prove to anyone any more.’
Giovanni struggles to hide his shock. ‘Is it so obvious? Very few realise that I am … “retiring” for reasons beyond my control. You must tell me who let the cat from the bag?’
‘I’ve always had a … sense about these things,’ I reply quietly, which isn’t strictly a lie.
‘This illness — it is not something I could hide forever.’ Giovanni’s eyes are both amused and sad. ‘But what a way to go, eh?’ He chuckles. ‘And they all warned me about you! You are like the lamb today, the dove. There were the strongest objections. Anna Maria — you remember Anna Maria?’
In my head, I see that stern older woman with the colourless face and hair who’d told Giovanni to send Irina away.
I nod. ‘Of course. She never liked me.’
Giovanni chuckles again, placing his free hand beneath my left elbow as we begin to walk slowly out of the atrium.
‘Anna Maria said that if I used you to open and close my final haute couture show, no one would insure me, I would be the laughing stock. But when she sees you in the dresses I have made with only you in mind, I think she will understand that I was right to insist. All my favourite girls will be here, all my muses across the years. I saw your potential when no one else could see it. And that makes you the most singular, the most beautiful, of them all.’
He stumbles a little and digs his cane into the ground to keep from falling, and I pretend not to notice any of it.
We enter a wide central corridor that runs the length of the building. The brilliant mosaic tiling peters out, like the foam that a receding wave might leave upon the shore, and I find myself walking upon burnished concrete. There are many brightly lit workrooms leading off it, filled with seamstresses and mannequins, house models and stylists, clients and buyers, and racks and racks of beautiful, iridescent evening gowns and sharply tailored work wear, all colour-coded. Interspersed with these spaces are offices full of handsomely attired administrative staff.
