Or Gabriel’s?
Who lies to me? Who lies?
The English girl moves into the space reflected in the mirror, bringing my unwilling focus back. I get to my feet, uncomfortable that there’s no longer any distance between us. She takes hold of Irina’s sleeves impatiently, tugging her hands down, away from her face. Now I see three people reflected in the looking glass, although there are only two people physically present in the room. And even though I should be used to it by now, I feel a chill fall over me.
In the mirror, Irina’s eyes are so dark, they seem almost black. They spark a fresh memory in me, a recent one.
Of a young man, with eyes so dark they had seemed almost black. He’d flown for hours to reach me, he’d been a whole day in the air. His face had been so pale with weariness, but he’d smiled the instant he saw me. That familiar fringe of dark hair had fallen into his eyes, and I’d reached out and brushed it back, as if my touch could banish his weariness. He’d embraced me and swung me about lightly in his arms, as if we were dancing. And I knew that he loved me, too, would have done anything for me. And in that moment, I’d felt an answering emotion.
Luc himself had pointed it out to me once, in a dream: that this mortal boy had somehow, beyond all understanding, fallen under my power, fallen for me, even though he has never seen me. When we first met, I had soul-jacked the body of a girl called Carmen Zappacosta. And when the Eight had so cruelly shifted me out of her life and into Lela Neill’s, that boy had come to me again as if nothing and no one on earth could keep us apart.
But then he’d watched me die, murdered in cold blood right before his eyes.
Or so it must have seemed to him, because I can still hear his screams.
I see him again, staring at me from behind police lines, through the front windows of a coffee shop. Me on the inside, staring back at him, all the longing in my gaze. And I relive the moment when a single bullet from a semi-automatic pistol entered Lela’s body. The memory, the ghostly impact, is so vivid that I stagger backwards where I stand. I imagine I feel Justine Hennessy’s hand in mine once again, hear myself whispering, through blood, through the great, pulsing wound in my chest, ‘Tell him … that Mercy shall come again …’
In the mirror, I see Irina’s expression of shock reflect my own. I watch all the colour leach out of her angular, unforgettable face as I suddenly remember his name. Catch hold of it, say it silently to myself, with reverence — Ryan Daley — as if the two words are a prayer.
And something seems to give way inside me, as if buried memories are struggling to the surface. The ground is shifting beneath my feet; time feels as if it is reeling away from me in all directions, and I must sift through the jumbled memories of five past lives to piece together what I want, what I need.
I remember Ryan. I remember everything about him. The way he looks when he’s feeling impatient, the way I feel when he holds me close: messed-up, buzzy, wired. Like he’s the greatest drug in the universe.
I need him for selfish reasons I can barely articulate. When I’m with him, I feel less like a freak. He makes me laugh. He makes me angry. He makes me feel alive, in the way I once was. But most of all, he gets me. And he makes me feel safe. He’s the only person who doesn’t treat me like a broken toy that must be fixed. And they’re pretty potent things after centuries spent wandering the wilderness that is this earth: alone, deranged, damaged.
Did Ryan get my message? Or does he truly believe me … dead?
Is he grieving? My God, did I cause him grief? Did I hurt him?
I love Luc. That’s a constant. He’s always been there, always. A face in my dreams, a voice in my head. We were meant to be together. We were made to be together. We have a connection that not even time, distance or remorseless exile can sunder. Some day, some day soon, we’ll be together again. I know it. It’s what’s sustained me all along: the thought that one day this might all be over and I might be allowed to go home, to find Luc waiting for me. That hope kept me together, gave me something to steer by, even before I could begin to grasp again who he was, and what he’d once meant to me.
But right here, right now? There’s Ryan. And I’m too afraid to name what I feel for him, because in no universe would someone like him and someone like me ever work out. What Ryan makes me feel is all an illusion, because feelings are for humans, and I’m not human. I know that much. My thing with Ryan can go exactly nowhere. But there’s no crime against wishing, no crime against dreaming, is there? So when I’m with him — when circumstances don’t transpire to tear us apart — I cheat and tell myself to take it one day at a time, to live in the moment.
But I also need Ryan to help Luc find me, if that makes any kind of sense. Because if Ryan and I are together, Luc will finally have some clue as to where upon the surface of this floating, teeming world I am. He had said so himself in my dream. Find the mortal boy, return with him to Paradise and then we’ll be together again.
But I can’t ever tell Ryan any of this. Because maybe then he wouldn’t want to help me any more, and I can’t risk it. If Ryan loves me, really loves me — and not just because I once helped save his twin sister’s life — then I don’t know what that would do to him, telling him he’s got competition from a guy who was created to be peerless and immortal. Who needs to hear that?
He’s been hurt enough for one lifetime.
I need to find him quickly. To apologise. To explain. To confess.
That he just may be my skeleton key, my wild card, my circuit breaker. My way out of this hot, damn mess.
2
The girl with the two-coloured eyes crosses her arms, trying to catch and hold my gaze in the looking glass. ‘You bloody well didn’t, did you?’ she snarls suddenly. ‘Did you?’
My eyes fly to hers in the mirror and I wonder why she’s so angry.
‘You’ve held it together for six months and now you go and start using again?’ she yells. ‘I’m not interested in all the stupid excuses you always have ready — it just happened to be there; and how could I say no?
‘I warned you! You’re not going to talk me out of it this time, because I can’t do this any more! All the sneaking around for you, all the lying, when it’s obvious to everyone what’s wrong with you. You’re even more out of it than usual. I quit. Hear me? I’m quitting.’
She turns and paces towards the rumpled bed, while I try to work out what I’m supposed to have done.
‘Look at you!’ She turns on me accusingly. ‘You say you’re “clean” but I’ve never seen you so spaced out and paranoid. I don’t know how you got your hands on some, but after today — after those tedious, bloody fittings — we’re done, we’re through. You’re a junkie, Irina. You need to get proper help, before you lose your mind. Or your life. I didn’t sign up for this. I’m not prepared to walk in one day to find you dead on the floor.
‘Are you getting any of this?’ she says, sitting down on the edge of the bed, sounding defeated. ‘And don’t pretend your grasp of English has failed again, because I know you understand me perfectly.’
‘You … can’t … quit,’ I reply with difficulty, the first words I’ve said since ‘waking’ here. Even to me, Irina’s heavily accented voice sounds awkward, almost rusty, although the accent itself seems familiar.
‘Because I’m …’ I struggle to remember the word the English girl had thrown at me, ‘clean.’
I frown, still trying to make sense of the word’s meaning in the context of her accusations. What is it exactly that I’m supposed to have … used?
Her answering laugh is shaky. ‘Good try, but I’ve seen it all before, remember? The zombie eyes, the inability to conduct a logical conversation, the paranoid belief that something’s trying to eat its way out through your skin. You probably woke everyone on this floor with your screaming. You must be coming down like a lead balloon. I still don’t know how you managed it — I never let you out of my sight yesterday.’
Russian, my inner voice pipes up suddenly. Irina’s accent is Russian.
‘Hello?’ she snaps. ‘You’re doing it again — spacing out!’ She waves one hand in front of my face. ‘You don’t even remember me, do you?’ she says softly. ‘Gia? Gia Basso? Hired to make you look good? Hired because I speak
