Muse (18 page)

Instead, I find myself in a blank, black void, deprived of every sense. It’s never happened before, and I can’t even call out Luc’s name because nothing’s working.

I can’t feel him out there.

It’s as if I’ve been shut down, or shut out.

It’s as if the connection between us — that’s always been there, always — has been severed.

When I wake suddenly and turn my head to look at the clock on the bedside table, it’s already 10.05 in the morning. My cheeks are wet with tears. Because that feeling of absolute disconnect can only mean that Luc’s badly injured, even … dead.

I sit bolt upright and have to stop myself from letting loose a scream to shake this building to its foundations. Gia doesn’t need to see Irina, me,
us
, caving in.

He’s been my only true friend, my constant companion. How do I make you understand what this sense of absence … feels like?

There’s a roaring in my ears, darkness in my eyes. It feels as if I’ve lost my hold on the physical world. My mind is suddenly crowded with memories: of the two of us in our sacred garden, our perfect place; of Luc laughing, his golden head of hair thrown back, revealing the sinuous line of his throat; of Luc dazzling me, almost scaring me, with his feats of grand magic; of Luc placing my happiness first in all things, disregarding everyone and everything else around us.

He’d said he existed to amuse me. He’d said he existed to prove what love
could
be.

And he’d said:

You are the best and most loved thing in my life — let nothing ever be possible, or complete, if you are not with me. And may the elements witness my vow in all their silent glory.

I can’t help it, I let out a wail that has sharp edges to it — a sound of such terrible grief and loss and mourning, that Gia bursts through the door of my bedroom at a run.

From inside the cavernous, black limo, I stare up, numbly, at the hundred foot image of Irina that stands guard at the entryway to the Galleria.

I don’t even know if Luc’s alive.

I feel emptied out, incapable of feeling anything right now.

Maybe I don’t know who he is any more, and maybe I won’t like what he’s become since we’ve been physically apart, but I can’t imagine a life, any sort of life, without Luc.

It’s something that will take major adjusting to, and right now I have no time. I can feel it getting
away from me again, reeling out of my hands like an angler’s line.

I just hope They do it properly this time when they shift me — so that I forget everything. It was almost simpler when I didn’t remember, because I had no concept of what it was possible to lose.

‘It’s just gone noon,’ Gia says gently, casting me her thousandth sideways glance of concern for the day, ‘and the parade’s set for four with cocktails at six, dinner for the chosen ones at eight then the afterparty from midnight onwards. As soon as the parade finishes, I’ll meet you backstage, but before then, you’re on your own. Juliana doesn’t want any extra bodies back there — it’s already a tight squeeze. She’s somehow managed to wangle a front-row seat for me beneath the dome. Just do what you did yesterday, okay? And you’ll be helping Giovanni, Irina and all those poor people …’

We look at each other sombrely, recalling how we’d watched the world burn from our six-star hotel room.

The limo’s door is opened from the outside and Vladimir hands me out onto the red carpet that’s already been laid from the Piazza straight into the Galleria’s arched entryway. There’s the usual wall of noise and faces and camera flashes, but it’s all being kept at one remove by the golden ropes cordoning off the red carpet. I look neither left nor right as I hurry towards the entrance, Vladimir’s unyielding hand at my back.

Gia gives my elbow a squeeze from behind as we walk under the giant arch. When I look back, she’s nowhere to be seen, but Giovanni’s pretty people are everywhere: counting chairs, consulting lists, consulting together, pointing, shifting name plates, placing a gift bound with signature red ribbon upon each seat. Black-clad technicians, wearing headphones and security cards strung on lanyards, are doing sound, mic and lighting checks all over the building.

The dome is already lit palely blue as Vladimir and I hurry beneath it towards the backstage area, and I shiver, recalling the sound that Luc’s sword made when it struck Nuriel’s, the way the blades crackled when they came together, the way Luc had casually turned the fire of his wrath upon the sleeping
innocent. Or maybe I’d done that. I shake my head, unable to get those images of a burning world out of my mind, unable to suppress the terrible feeling that it was somehow all my fault.

Vladimir melts away as soon as I’m seated for hair and make-up.

‘This is it then,’ an Englishwoman I don’t recognise says cheerfully as she grabs my long hair and twists it into a rough topknot. She rubs something abrasive into my face and I have to close my eyes.

‘If only it were,’ I murmur in Irina’s thick accent, wishing They would take me now.

‘Carefully!
Carefully
,’ Juliana gripes as two people wrestle the golden wings onto my shoulders and tighten the leather straps of the harness. I can’t help the chill that ripples across my skin when they all step back, satisfied.

‘No shoes,’ Tommy interrupts from the side. ‘Ditch the flats, they’re so wrong. I’ve changed my mind. She can carry it off in bare feet. Just like in the banner. Look at her. Perfection.’

I glance at the full-length mirror someone has positioned alongside me and think the heavy shadow ringing my eyes, my unbound, teased up, matted,
madwoman hair and glistening, blood-red mouth make me look sick. My eyes skitter away from the reflection of the golden wings that rise from Irina’s narrow shoulders. I can’t bear to look at them for too long; just seeing them makes me dizzy.

‘Half an hour!’ a woman in headphones yells as she moves through the chaos backstage. ‘Half an hour! Positions, people. Places.’

We line up in a snaking line: fourteen flat-chested, freakishly tall women of varying ages in garish make-up and fourteen very different looks, each accessorised with a pair of wings. Some, like mine, are so large that their end feathers trail upon the floor; some are so small and diaphanous they’re barely noticeable. When I look at any of them, I get a sick feeling in my stomach and have to swallow hard.

What are you waiting for?
I rail silently at the six who remain.
Shift me now, damn you. Why make me participate in this inglorious farce?

‘Break a leg, my beauties!’ Tommy calls out as he moves up the line towards me with Juliana and Giovanni in tow. He runs his eyes across each of us, adjusting a wing span here, a neckline there.

When the three of them reach me, Juliana and Tommy step back behind Giovanni respectfully as
he raises my hands, kissing them before releasing them.

‘My dear,’ he says, ‘you and I — we have come a long way, yes? When you look like this, it makes it possible to forget how much is wrong with this world. I thank you — for putting aside your pain, your demons; for putting me first.’

I see his eyes grow shiny with emotion and look down hurriedly, feeling my eyes sting in answer. My pain is always with me, it can never be put aside, it has made me who I am.

And my demons? My own personal demons? They have not yet arrived to drive my soul into another body. And so I wait, going through the motions of Irina’s bizarre, high-octane life while They tarry, doing who knows what?

I raise my head as the classical music they’ve had playing on a loop during the lightshow winds down to its last few bars.

Tommy says, ‘Shake the floor, Irina! Like the giant you are. Bring the house down.’

And I walk out of there, the way K’el told me to. Without looking back.

The pounding techno opening track bursts out of the loudspeakers and the awe-inspiring lightshow universe immediately winks out.

I emerge onto the catwalk as if by black magic, and the spotlights go up, white hot, so it’s impossible to make out the features of the audience members in the darkness beyond the front row.

The entire room seems to give a collective gasp as I stand there motionless for a full minute — the way I’ve been told to — the light striking off the surface of the golden paillettes that cover my gown, like armour deflecting arrow strike. All down the arcade, the giant video screens show images of me from every angle. There must be cameras positioned everywhere. I know I’m dazzling. I may not be able to make out most of the audience immediately, but I can feel every eye on me as I stand, holding my pose, arms loosely at my sides, golden feathers cascading down my back and trailing onto the floor behind my bare feet.

As the track segues into something even louder, faster, fiercer, I look down the bright white line of the catwalk.
All that exists
, I tell myself,
is this present. Don’t think about what could happen. You have no past, and no future. It’s all been erased. Or it’s about to be. And you’ll have to start again, like you always do.

That’s how it has to be from now on. Without the things that have always anchored me, without Luc, without Ryan, it will always and forever be about living in the moment. I feel a surge of pain that almost makes me crumple. Almost.

Just breathe
, says my inner demon again, through my anguish.
Just walk. Don’t screw it up.

Then I begin to stalk down the runway, my tousled, mussed-up, centre-parted hair flying back behind me and tangling with the beaten-metal feathers of my golden wings. As I walk, the video screen shows a magnified image of my form in side profile, the three of us moving fluidly down the runway at the same pace.

I’m walking so quickly, so surely, that I swiftly cover the distance to the circular platform beneath the overarching dome. I pause there and stare down at the expectant faces that are turned up towards me, my eyes searching for Gia in the front row as I place my hands on my hips and angle my body aggressively to the right and glare the way I remember Irina does, to remind people she’s the main event. My eyes move along the curve of the front-row patrons seated below and I catch sight of Gia’s familiar glossy, China-girl hair, her down bent head as she puts something in the handbag tucked beneath her feet.

Why isn’t she even looking at me?
I think, irritated, as she turns to say something to the young man seated beside her.

The world seems to telescope weirdly as I take in his dark eyes that look almost black in the harsh light, the dark shadows beneath them, his pale face, the hectic spots of colour high on his high cheekbones. Gia may be murmuring in his ear, but she can’t hold his attention. When he pushes a familiar lock of dark hair out of his eyes, I think my confident stance falters, and he immediately stretches out one hand to me, as if he’s afraid that I might fall.

I almost bend down and take his hand.

Ryan
, I think dazedly.
What are you doing here?

I hadn’t thought we’d ever meet again. In any life. I feel a surge of joy that’s immediately subsumed by an intense sorrow.

Not for you
, Gabriel had told me. Twice now, I’ve been forced to leave Ryan, against my will. If I’m forced to leave him again — and I know it’s coming; there’s nothing more certain — I don’t know what it would do to him. Or to me.

Gia catches my eye, and grins when she sees all the longing in my gaze, my eyes moving possessively over his face.
Surprise
, she mouths.

I forget where I am and actually smile at her, in thanks for this small thing of beauty she’s wrought for me.

And that smile lights up Irina’s bored-looking, haughty, high-fashion little face. I know, because I see it reflected back on all the video screens, the smile shining out of her dark eyes. People actually whistle and stamp their feet, shouting their approval.

Some of the cameras pick up Ryan’s face and project us both along the video wall. My face, then his, mine, then his, all down the length of the building on both sides.

Ryan looks down, embarrassed, and the cameras catch that, too. People laugh in sympathy, murmuring at his beauty.

Later
, Gia mouths, gesturing with her hands.
Keep moving.

I suddenly remember where I am and force myself to stand straighter, making subtle adjustments to my stance, the muscles of my face.
Glower, smoulder, pout. Check.

It’s almost physically painful to rip my eyes away from Ryan and cross the circular platform towards the front-row patrons seated on the other side, but I promised Gia and Giovanni, Juliana and Tommy,
that I could do this, that Irina would meet all her obligations. So that is what I do, even though every bone in my body is telling me to grab that boy and run. Flee. Before They find me and shift me again.

But it’s impossible, what I want. Somewhere in this building is my watcher, K’el. I’ll never be able to flee the gathered
elohim
. It’s just a silly pipe dream. So somehow I do it: I walk away from Ryan.

I’m right in the middle of Irina’s signature
pause, angle, pause, angle
manoeuvre when a golden-haired couple sitting just beneath me catch my eye. They’re so handsome together that they seem to cast the people on either side of them into a dull light. Even in the hyper-bright glare, the golden-haired couple seem to gleam faintly to my eyes.

And I recognise the woman as Giovanni’s executive assistant, Gudrun. The tall, handsome man seated beside her, with reflective, rock-star aviator sunglasses on, wind-ruffled hair and the barest hint of golden stubble along his jawline, takes me a second longer to place.

When I do, I feel my blood freeze.

I recognise his clothes before I recognise him, because I hadn’t been expecting to see him here, or maybe ever again. He’s in a sharp, narrow-cut,
single-breasted, three-piece navy suit with a thin navy pinstripe running through the weave, a Windsor-knotted tie in iridescent colours like the sheen on a dragonfly’s wings. The whole ensemble only emphasises his snake-hipped, broad-shouldered, long and lean form. He lifts one hand to remove his sunglasses and light glances off the giant faceted sapphire he’s using as a cufflink. As he tucks the glasses into the top pocket of his suit, his pale blue eyes — like broken water, like living ice — burn into mine. And he makes a gun of the fingers of his right hand, the muzzle pointed in my direction, before he laughs and runs the hand through his golden hair.

Luc!
I cry, for his ears alone.
You’re alive!

Did you expect anything else, my love?
he replies in my head, laughter in his warm, rich voice.
When you’ve always been the prize?

I don’t know what I’m feeling. Hope? Love? Anger? Confusion?

And I can’t help my gaze from flying from Luc back to Ryan, from Ryan to Luc. Many in the front-row seats on both sides of the catwalk catch my movements, and a small murmur starts up around me that seems to spread out into the crowd like wildfire. People point and stare.

The video cameras pick up both men’s faces for the benefit of those further back in the audience, projecting them onto the banks of video screens — and the room bursts into an open speculation that’s audible above the volume of the music. Though Luc and Ryan couldn’t be more differently dressed, and one is so fair, the other so dark, it’s clear that they could be twins, so physically similar are they.

Gia’s eyes widen in shock as she looks across the circular platform at Luc. The look is mirrored on Gudrun’s face as she studies Ryan’s features with her enormous, sapphire-blue eyes.

Seeing them together like this, in a way I never thought would happen, it’s a shock to me, too, that I so evidently have a ‘type’. That out of all the mortals in this teeming world I could have fallen for, I had to go and find someone who is the spitting image of Luc.

Only a few feet separate Ryan and Gia from Luc and Gudrun. And the antagonism Luc and Ryan are radiating at each other is so strong I can feel it from where I’m standing, caught in the middle. It’s like a poisonous cloud hanging over all of us, so strong I can almost see it.

The tension doesn’t go unnoticed, and camera flashes go off in the press gallery located at the end of
the catwalk as photographers strain forward for shots of both men. I can see the headlines now. Luc will show up as a smear of bright, white light, if they’re lucky. If he shows up at all.

‘Irina!’ Gia hisses as the jarring techno track makes way for a smoky jazz standard that has nothing to do with the dress I’m wearing and everything to do with look number two.

I look down at her dazedly.