by Michele Lang
His face flushed, as if I had slapped him. “Is that the only reason you want me to leave?”
“Last night was a miracle. But I don’t want you falling out of heaven over me. Please, go in peace, be my star in the night sky.”
Raziel uncrossed his arms, held them open . . . as if to show me he carried no weapons. “No.”
“No?” I had to laugh at that, a low laugh that hurt the base of my throat. “You sound like me, with your big ‘no.’ I’m a bad influence on you, angel. Now, please, go. My train leaves in less than an hour and I’m certain there are officials to be bribed, conductors I need to flirt with.”
“I am staying. I cannot hold back anymore. For all the reasons you say.”
The thought of Raziel sharing my fate, Gisele’s, out of some noble martyrdom made me dizzy. “Are you kidding? I’m on a fool’s errand—you are the one who’s made that fact perfectly clear. The only way I’ll ever make it is to pretend I am invincible. Untouchable.” I took a deep, shuddering breath. “And you remind me I am not.”
Full day had come, and Paris looked like a perfect rosebud in the pink morning light. If my angel had been a city, he would have been Paris: breaktakingly beautiful, golden. Not for me to keep.
“I’m not leaving you,” Raziel insisted. He closed the distance between us, and I averted my eyes from his unbearable virtue. “I will go with you into the lions’ den, and I will close their mouths.”
I could feel his breath on my cheek. When I opened my eyes he hovered so close that I tingled with anticipation of his kiss.
I couldn’t let him kiss me, or we were both doomed. “The Almighty didn’t tell you to stay, did He? And if you defy Him to stay, what kind of celestial message is that?”
He drew away, and rubbed a square hand over the sharp edge of his jaw. “I’m coming with you, and I am protecting you. Stop asking so many questions.”
My traitorous heart leaped at the news, even as I worried for him. “But why? You told me before that you are not allowed to make your own decisions.”
“I don’t care if I’m allowed or not. I’m coming with you anyway.”
The implications of Raziel’s decision haunted me all the way to Amsterdam. I had wanted our night in Paris to be a sweet farewell, a memento mori of a mortal girl to a celestial creature who belonged in Heaven. But not everything was up to me and my frantic machinations.
In any event, I hardly needed protecting on this leg of the trip. The borders between France and the Netherlands seemed porous compared to those of my native land; in Paris, before finding Capa, I had procured an official-looking forgery, a letter from the Hungarian consulate assuring the reader that my passport had been oh so innocuously lost in Paris, the follies of youth, etc., la la la. A few official-looking, sufficiently blurry stamps, and the border guards hardly gave me and my defunct, lying papers a second glance.
As for Raziel, his papers were flawless, and his gleaming, prosperous self gave me a reflected aura of respectability that helped to ease the way.
This new train trundled along the tracks from the Gare du Nord in Paris to Amsterdam Centraal, bathed in summer sunlight. But the way seemed dark to me. What battles awaited me in Amsterdam, what transgressions would I have to commit to prevail against an enemy such as the Staff? And how could I live with myself if Raziel damned himself to destruction because of me?
We pulled into Amsterdam Centraal, we alighted from the train and together we rushed through the station, the huge curved ceiling stretching like the heavens over our heads. After washing up in the ladies’ powder room at the station, I looked remarkably put together for a woman on the verge of madness.
Before leaving the station, I changed some money, then we took a taxi to Het Spui. The skinny houses congregated tightly along the narrow streets, right up to the edges of the byzantine tangle of canals, like sober burghers marching backward into time. I would have chewed off every last fingernail had I not worn my prettiest yellow gloves this morning.
The slap of rubber tires against cobblestones almost drowned out Raziel’s low murmur. “What next, Magda? Do you plan to take rooms?” Bless him. Raziel meant to protect me, not tell me what to do.
The thought of what next made my stomach churn. I took a deep breath. “No rooms, no need of them. At least not yet. We go straight to the bookseller, right now. If I fail to get the Book . . . well . . . I mustn’t fail. If I am delayed, I will look to Capa’s friend Lucretia for help.”
I wouldn’t let him interrupt the flow of my words, for if he did I would have to think about the implications of what I said. I continued, in a low, fast murmur. “Once we get the Book, we need to get out of Amsterdam as fast as we possibly can—I expect we will be pursued. With any luck, we’ll be back in Paris tomorrow morning.”
He took my hand in both of his, squeezed tightly, and said nothing. My heart pounded so hard it hurt. The fundamental questions—What would I do with the Book once I had it? And what would become of Raziel and me?—hung in the air between us, unspoken.
18
The angel and I stood together on the pavement as the humpbacked taxi scuttled away along Spuistraat. We stood alongside the Singel, and inky canal water slapped up against the quay near where we walked. Together, we slipped around the corner and hesitated before the door of the bookstore, the already-hot pavement strangely deserted.
Raziel stepped forward and touched the closed door, drew his hand away. “Here is the place of danger,” Raziel said.
I looked at him; he looked at me. I tried to smile. “Danger? With you here? I am in no danger, thanks to you.”
His smile was sad. He took the hat off his head, examined the brim a little too intently. “My power stems from the Almighty,” Raziel began, his voice quiet. “As you know, I serve only as a messenger.”
He looked up and the breath caught in my throat. He was about to fall; I couldn’t bear it. But I needed his help, needed it desperately. “Raziel, you don’t have to . . .” I did not voice my hopes and fears aloud. I had hoped he had come with me to Amsterdam to join me on my quest to recover the Book, and feared that to do so would forfeit Raziel’s place in Heaven.
He stepped close to me, kissing close. “You do not understand, Magda. Here, the Book is trapped in evil. I cannot reach it, not as a servant of the Almighty.”
Raziel hesitated, and I studied his tense, drawn face. He meant to leave Heaven for good; I was too desperate to stop him. “Let me try, Raziel. I’ve been surrounded by evil for half my life.”
He interrupted me with a wave of his hand. “You are trying to protect me again, Magdalena Lazarus. But I do not need your protection.” The sleepy-looking bookstore loomed over his shoulder; in the far distance I heard a faint cacophony of bicycle bells like birdsong.
Determination sharpened his features. “I told you I would no longer stand apart. But that does not mean I will throw myself into the fire to be consumed.”
He looked back down at me. “Magda. The Book cannot save you from your fate. It will draw you ever deeper into a dance with evil, that evil that desires power and seeks the destruction of all that is good. I must try one last time to dissuade you. Your best bet is still to run.”
“You’re right. But I’ve come too far, dear angel. I’ve failed you; I should never have called on you in Paris. But I can’t stand apart, either. I just can’t.”
Raziel replaced the hat on his head and sighed. “If I go in there now, Magda, the wizard will be able to capture me.”
“Capture you?” I took a step backward, thunderstruck. The thought of Raziel trapped in the Staff’s clutches sickened me. “But the Staff is a mere mortal, a wizard living beyond his natural years through sorcery. How could he . . .”
“Capture me? Use me? Through his very sorcery, a perversion of the pathways of power. If I go into that bookstore and fight the wizard for the Book, I no longer go on the Almighty’s errand, and must fend for myself. And I will lose.”
I wondered whether Heaven
would judge me more or less harshly than the Staff, when my days were done. Either way, there was no way Raziel could go through that door. I could not bear the thought of Raziel bound. “You have no sorcery, no magic of your own.”
“No, I don’t.”
“For goodness’ sake, you can’t come with me, then.” I sighed, near tears, thoroughly disgusted with myself. “I never learned the Witches’ Creed, not before it was too late, and now I understand it too well. I did wrong calling on you in Vienna. I did worse, calling you down to Paris and tempting you to stay.”
“No, Paris wasn’t wrong. Vienna wasn’t either.” Raziel smiled again, with more assurance this time, and began restlessly pacing the cobblestone pavement. “But I’m in. We need to figure out a plan.”
He stopped pacing, and the intensity of his gaze almost melted me into a puddle. I nodded wordlessly for him to go on, a lump caught in my throat.
His smile widened. “How about this? You go in that door, unleash your magic at full force and retrieve the Book, whatever remnant of it that you can find. I’ll . . .” His smile faltered, and he seemed to choke on the words. “I’ll stay back. I won’t descend and renounce my role as messenger, not yet. I will bide my time, and will wait until you have the Book to fight at your side. But, Magda . . .”
I felt like I was going to faint. “Yes?”
“If you call on me, I will come for you. And I will fight until my dying breath.”
“Your—what?” My heart constricted painfully over the thought of Raziel choosing death to save me.
“I will fight for what is right, Magda.” He swept close to me, took me into his arms. “And I am willing to pay any price. I never understood, until now, why angels fall. Always thought my brothers descended purely as slaves to evil impulse.”
His arms wrapped me in warm safety, though no wings unfurled to protect us from the world. At the moment, Raziel did not seem like an angel, not at all. “Don’t come to harm because of me, Raziel.”
“You mustn’t come to harm either. Too much depends on you, once you go through that door. Love is never wasted . . . do not forget that, no matter what happens now.”
Love. Raziel hugged me close, and the cinnamon scent of his skin surged my body into life.
“Farewell, Lazarus,” he said, his voice rough. He lifted my hands to his lips and kissed my fingertips. “Work your wonders. When you have the Book, only whisper my name and I will come.”
It was a plan. Ours. I waved and smiled a watery little smile; I didn’t trust my voice to even say the single word good-bye. He drew away from me, smiled encouragingly—
And faded away.
Raziel still watched over me from above; he called upon the power of the Almighty Himself to strengthen me in my path. But nevertheless, my body shook as I crossed, alone, over the threshold of Ulysses Knox’s bookshop. A little bell attached to the door sounded, I clutched my satchel, which contained Bathory’s letter of introduction, and I silently rehearsed my little speech in my head.
The place was as quiet as a chapel, the books like meditating congregants. As I walked past them, I could feel the words in the books calling to me; some of the volumes trembled as I trailed my fingers along their spines.
Was it my death that had strengthened my affinity for the written word? Or was it the intensity with which I pursued my mission? It did not matter—I saw now that the demonesses had spoken literally when they said my blood would speak to The Book of Raziel.
I wandered among the towering stacks of books planted between the shelves, heard the murmur of voices echoing far away. I found a splintery, narrow door closed tight at the back of the store. Slowly I reached for the doorknob, and my battered heart began to pound anew. My fortune, for good or ill, hid behind this door with Knox in the back room, “for employees only” as the sign on the door announced in both French and Dutch. The door was not locked.
I could tell Knox was not alone—the murmur of voices behind the door put the lie to that vain hope. I gathered my courage and swung the door open without knocking. But nothing could have prepared me for the sight of his company.
They sat all together, as if for a workers’ party meeting. Three demonesses crouched upon battered wooden chairs, disguised as prim ladies in long dresses, surrounding a solitary gentleman like vipers hidden in teacakes.
With my ordinary sight, the three ladies looked like genteel tea drinkers who swooned over a first edition of Tennyson’s poems in translation. But when I blinked and Saw them, their true aspect became revealed to me, and I recognized them immediately: we had last met in a blood-stained copse of fir trees next to the train tracks outside Linz.
The gentleman with them stroked his mustache and seemed at ease with his visitors, but my nerves crackled with the danger that engulfed the mortals in the room.
But the demonesses were not the worst shock. Across from them all, her merry blue eyes twinkling, sat, seemingly unafraid, none other than my beloved Eva Farkas.
I saw stars and hiccupped in my surprise, and Eva and I exchanged a single wild glance. The sparkle in her eyes sputtered out, doused with recognition of me, and the inability to disguise her fear.
My darling friend was afraid, afraid for me. Why?
The man, whom I assumed to be Knox, shifted in his chair, saw me swaying. Built solid, with a walrus mustache and an enormous American expanse, he looked nothing like the slender, clever man I had built up in my mind on my long journey westward.
My fancy memorized words of introduction fizzled away into nothingness. But I held steady, my resolve lending me courage. “Good afternoon, kind sir,” I said in French, to match Bathory’s letter.
Knox stroked his impressive mustache with his fingertips, inclined his head in a slow, wordless greeting. Eva blinked hard and cleared her throat; never, in all my years of knowing her, had I ever before caught her blushing. “Monsieur,” she said, in her flawless, sparkling French, “this is the friend I had mentioned to you. Count Bathory’s assistant.”
Knox looked up at me sharply, and his open American face flushed as red as ground paprika.
What had Eva told him about me? How did she get here in one piece? And did Eva know she sat, defenseless, amongst a cluster of Nazi demonesses that had murdered me once and intended to destroy all of us?
I composed my features into a soft, hopefully charming and inoffensive smile, and I retrieved Bathory’s letter of introduction from my unfashionably battered satchel. I ventured into the soft light shed by the Tiffany lamp standing on the corner of Knox’s heavy wooden desk. Knox accepted the letter from my fingers, and if he noticed the bloodstains and the damp, curling edges, he gave no sign of it. As he read, I cast a furtive glance in the direction of my triple nightmare, the demonesses.
So lovely were they in their human casings, so vile and hateful underneath. They smiled at me, flashing their demon fangs through their disguises while Knox’s attention remained on Bathory’s missive.
Undoubtedly they were here to get my book from Knox first, by any possible means. I shifted my gaze to Eva, whose attention remained fixed on Knox and the letter. After a moment she glanced at me, and a tentative smile fluttered over her lips and away.
She ignored the frantic question my stare contained: What in goodness’ name was she doing here in Amsterdam? And who was looking after Gisele?
Knox folded the letter reverentially between his fat fingers, interrupting my runaway train of worries. “Ah, Bathory, old friend,” he rumbled, in a French deeply inflected with an American accent. “It would be my pleasure to assist you for his sake, Miss Lazarus. For his sake and for your own.”
The moment for which I had returned from death had finally come. I took a deep breath and swallowed hard. “I am glad, for I need your help, Monsieur Knox. I am here to save my sister’s life, for a start.”
I faced Knox head on, and though Raziel restrained no lions for my sake, the knowledge that he watched me from above and trusted me to do right gave me more str
ength than I would have previously believed. “But I cannot address these matters with you, not in our current company.” And I shot a significant glance at the troika of nastiness sitting across from him.
Bathory trusted this man, so I expected he understood far more than it seemed. But his next words shocked me out of what remained of my composure. “Miss Lazarus. These three ladies are here by my express personal invitation.”
By invitation! If Knox, knowing what I knew, could sit and confer with demonesses in the employ of Hitler himself, then my mission would not find success here. He was either in league with them or so hopelessly ignorant and naïve that I could not rely on his judgment.
I backed against the door, ready to run for the street if it came down to a physical fight here, in the depths of the book hunter’s stronghold. Bathory was near-immortal, my beloved benefactor, and a vampire of the world. But he could be betrayed, in the end, as easily as anybody else.
My fury leaped up like a gasoline-fed fire. “My book has gone missing since 1701, kind sir; I do not think it will resurface so easily. Not without my help. You see, that book belongs to me and my family. It is mine by right, and I have come here to claim it.”
The eldest demoness leaned forward, and her deep-set eyes glittered in her imperfect human disguise. “By right, little one? An amusing arrogance you have. It belongs to whoever can find it, and to the one who can muster the power to keep it and command it. That is the only right that matters now.” She smiled wide, licked her lips as if she found me tasty, a little snack, an amuse-bouche butterfly for her lizard jaws to snap in two.
I refused to be drawn. Instead, I shifted my attention, tilted my head to hear the whisper of intuition that spoke to me. “When last we met, you did not properly introduce yourself. But, Obizuth, I know you now. You are a daughter of Lilith, and it is time for you to hold your peace. I too have been granted power.”