by Michele Lang
As if Raziel had read my fears, he stroked my belly again, and the baby leaped, enough for both of us to see. “David, melech Israel…,” he sang under his breath.
David, the King of Israel. I felt the prickle of the Hebrew words all along my forearms. “Okay, while we wait, let’s review today’s lesson,” Raziel said.
I squinted up into the sky. “Oh dear. Aleph, Bet, Gimel, Daled, Hai, er Hai, Hai…”
“Vav,” Raziel said. “Vav.”
I said it again. “Aleph, Bet…”
And this time, if I squinted just right, I could see the Hebrew letters shoot into the sky, orange sparks, and disappear into the heavens.
“I’m going to teach you Hebrew if it’s the last thing I do,” Raziel said. “And you are going to learn it. Your magic is based in words, in the Hebrew language. I will bet you a thousand American dollars that your magic comes back to you, inside the words.”
It was more than I could hope for. But I had learned to welcome the impossible. “We’ll see,” I said.
“You bet!” Raziel said in English, and both of us laughed.
He checked his new wristwatch, a farewell gift from the great Churchill, and grumbled under his breath. “She’s late, that girl is late. You’ll get sunburn sitting out here.”
“My love, I am not a hothouse flower—” But before I could say anything more, I saw them, along the other end of the boardwalk near the roller coaster, and my heart leaped in recognition.
She wore red. Of course, she wore red. And he wore a crumpled white shirt, and tan pants two sizes too big, and he smoked a cigarette.
She saw us and broke into a run. I managed to haul myself off the bench and waddle down the boardwalk toward her, and we met each other halfway, hugging each other and crying like silly schoolgirls do on the first day of a new year.
“Eva, you look more beautiful than ever,” I managed to force out, and I held her at arm’s length to take a better look at her.
She dazzled like a diamond. And the terrible tension that had knotted her neck, and haunted her eyes when she thought nobody was looking—all of that burden had lifted from her. “In all my travels,” she said, “I never imagined we’d meet again, in a place like this. And you with a belly like that! I am going to see first about a proper job for your handsome young man, so you can have your baby in peace.”
Eva was always the practical one, bless her.
“And speaking of handsome young men, look at you,” I said, turning to look at her skinny yet dapper companion. “Most famous war photographer in the world.”
It was Robert Capa, hero of the Spanish Civil War, the man who still grieved over his lost fiancée, Gerda Taro, murdered in Spain, but who had managed to move on, to live, not just to mourn. Eva had met him in Paris, after Hitler was dead and the Reich self-destructed. Robert and Eva were made for each other—maybe not for forever, but for today.
And today is plenty.
* * *
So now my belly grows, and the world gropes its way to an uneasy peace. The jewel of Raziel a pawn in government negotiations, among parties that do not realize that it no longer has the power to destroy the world. Only heal it, perhaps, if the world will ever listen to its divine call.
The Nazi regime still retains the subverted Book of Raziel, but no one of sufficient magic and will remains to wield it in service of evil. It, too, is an object of negotiations, the secret magical talks conducted in concert with the open, conventional diplomacy over the pending Treaty of Baku.
Germany itself is in the process of repudiating and destroying the subverted, twisted Teutonic magic of the Nazi regime. The wolves, freed from their vow of service to a hideous tyrant, must now discover what they will live for, now that their reason to die in battle is gone.
Despite all the evil that is done in this world, I still believe that love is stronger. And if not, an army of angels, on earth and in Heaven, stands at the ready to do battle against the evil that forever lurks in the hearts of men.
Despite the fighting and dying over the Book and the gem, no mortal has ever succeeded in translating the angelic script within into a human language. After all that has happened, I suspect an angelic scribe, writing the Book over into Hungarian, would write the words that I have set down in service to the dead, intended to console the living.
The secrets of the Book of the angel Raziel are hidden in plain sight, within my desperate tale. Love is the only power that transcends the entire world.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, words seem inadequate to the task of expressing gratitude for all of the help, seen and unseen, that has made my writing possible. I can never thank all the people who made this book a reality. There are simply too many of you!
I’ll thank some of you here, anyway, with apologies for my inevitable lapses. Let me start by thanking Beth Negri, for reading the early drafts of this book, sharing her knowledge of witchcraft and mysticism, and being my beta reader extraordinaire.
Again, my thanks to the fine writers of the LIRW, who so generously share their talent, enthusiasm, and friendship. Bianca D’Arc, thank you for your encouragement, vision, and heart. Thanks also to Alexandra Honigsberg, for being such an inspiration. A special thanks to author D. B. Jackson, for your eagle eye and historian’s skill.
Thank you, once again, to everyone at Tor—for all that you do, and for the graceful way you do it. Thanks as always to my editor, Jim Frenkel, for his editing skill, his enthusiasm, and his kindness.
Thank you to all of my friends from and in Azerbaijan, for your generosity, warmth, and for introducing me and my family to a magical world.
To my family, thank you all so much for your example, for putting up with me when I go insane over my writing, and for loving me as I am, with all my passions and flaws. None of my books could have been written without you.
TOR BOOKS BY MICHELE LANG
Lady Lazarus
Dark Victory
Rebel Angels
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michele Lang is the author of two previous historical urban fantasy novels, Lady Lazarus and Dark Victory. Rebel Angels is the final book in the trilogy. Like her protagonist Magda, Lang is of Hungarian-Jewish ancestry. She and her family live on the North Shore of Long Island, New York.
Learn more at www.michelelang.com.