Читать книгу Muse - Rebecca Lim - Страница 8

I’m unable to sleep, even though I want to so badly. In all these years, sleep has been my only source of solace. In dreams, I feel most like myself, capable of anything, not limited by the human face and form I happen to be wearing.

And in dreams, I have access to that most longed-for of things — time with Luc. Though even that, the Eight would deny us, if They could.

When Luc first picked me out of that throng of elohim — each more beautiful than the last — to be his love, he said, to be his queen, some small part of me had refused to believe that it would last. Because when I looked at him, and then looked at me, I couldn’t understand what he saw in me, what set me apart from all the rest. But in a funny kind of way, we have lasted. Though it’s been years since we last touched, or even met face to face.

Gabriel told me himself that while I sleep — when the linkages between soul and body are at their weakest — Luc somehow still has access to my thoughts, access to me. It’s a connection that has persisted despite everything the Eight have done to keep us apart.

And though in my dreams, Luc sometimes seems more angry, more goading, more desperate, cruel and spiteful than I have ever remembered him to be, just the sight of him — golden-skinned, golden-haired, broad-shouldered, snake-hipped, long and lean, with eyes as pale as living ice, like broken water — is like a shot of pure adrenaline to the heart. He’s the most beautiful thing in creation, more beautiful than the sun. Call me shallow — and I’m sure plenty have; it’s just a feeling I get — I’ve always loved beautiful things.

I could use Luc’s devious counsel now. There was no one better at getting what he wanted. No one. But for the past few hours, I’ve lain here, tossing and turning, unable to reach out to him, unable to conjure up the necessary pre-conditions for him to reach out to me. I’ve just been stuck in a kind of waking trance, replaying Lela’s last moments — our last moments together — over and over. Feeling that fatal gunshot, wondering if there was anything I could’ve done differently.

There’s a sudden, sharp rap on the door and Gia Basso enters the room again, dressed in street clothes this time. She marches across to the curtains and yanks them open with a skittering sound. It’s still dark outside but lightening just a little, at the horizon. My internal clock says it’s still very early: six; maybe six fifteen, at most.

Gia’s wearing a tough-looking, black leather jacket with rows of brass studs on the lapels over a bunch of layered, artfully ripped tee-shirts and tank tops and a vintage-looking, beat-up waistcoat; skin-tight jeans and towering black leather ankle boots criss-crossed by a welter of leather straps. There’s jangling silver jewellery at her ears and on her wrists, a couple of long and floaty patterned scarves slung around her neck, and she’s wearing a striking dark purple lipstick and strong, smoky eye make-up combination that somehow work together, even though they shouldn’t. With her glossy, China-girl hair, she’s the most stylish creature I’ve ever beheld, and I say so, admiringly.

She frowns, giving me a sharp look as if she thinks that I’m — what’s that phrase I puzzled over so much when I was Lela? Ah, yes, taking the piss. Making fun of her. I’m not, but she ignores my comment and barks, ‘As soon as people get a lock on your location, a huge contingent will materialise out of nowhere. It’ll be like a flash mob, I guarantee it. You’re “so hot right now” and not for the right reasons. Get ready to run the gauntlet. Breakfast is on its way up. We can plan our route with Felipe while you eat.’

She ruthlessly hauls the coverlet off my body, her eyebrows flying up in surprise when I rise immediately and head into the OTT marble ensuite to splash water onto Irina’s perfectly symmetrical, heart-shaped little face, jumpy with nerves at the thought that Operation Get Me Outta Here is about to find itself back on track.

Gia watches me narrowly, exclaiming in a passable Russian accent, ‘You’re not going to call me a heartless beeetch today?’

I shake my head and look around. Scattered across the enormous stone vanity unit are at least a dozen hairbrushes in as many styles: barrel-shaped, paddle-shaped, oval, square, mini-sized, maxi-sized, natural or synthetic. I can’t move without tripping over a plush white bath towel on the floor, and I pick up each one I come across, folding it quickly and neatly into a precise square, until there is a stack of them on top of the gilded footstool near the basins. Gia folds her arms and leans in the doorway. I feel her eyes follow me around the room.

Next, I pick out a large, flat brush that looks like an instrument of torture and yank it through Irina’s long, caramel-coloured mane, her hair crackling beneath my brushstrokes.

The room is filled with towering floral arrangements, all in white; groupings of half-burnt scented candles with base notes of cinnamon, myrrh and orange blossom; and the heavy artillery of glamour — hair straighteners, large and small, curling tongs, hot curlers, eyelash shapers, hair dryers, tweezers, combs, hairpins, hair spray, lacquer, fudge, gel, mousse, styling wax, treatments for dry hair, damaged hair and coloured hair, bottles of perfume of every size and description, enough make-up to fill a store, not to mention all the gear required to take it off again. Clearly, it takes a lot to be Irina Zhivanevskaya. I frown. She looks okay to me the way she is. How much of this stuff am I expected to use? And how do I use most of it?

As I hesitate, I see that Gia wants to say something, then literally has to bite her tongue to stop herself.

I look back towards the massive stone vanity above which our three faces — mine, Irina’s, Gia’s — are reflected. I meet Gia’s eyes in the mirror. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

Gia’s eyebrows disappear into her slanting, razor-cut fringe. ‘What do you mean you don’t know what to do?’ she exclaims. ‘Do what you usually do. Do you know how insane you sound?’

She’s right. Even a junkie supermodel is going to remember how to get herself dolled up for work. It’s clear that I’m going to have to recycle the cover story I’d used when I was Lela. The last thing I need right now is for Irina to be sent back to rehab because she’s making no sense.

‘I’m clean, Gia, I promise you,’ I say. ‘It’s just that I’ve never told anyone this before …’ I lower my voice so that she has to lean forward to hear ‘… but I can’t … remember things. It’s a disease, you know? It’s been happening for a while now, and lately it’s been getting worse. But I’m too scared to have it properly checked out …’

I’m no actress, but I make Irina’s expression as scared and as mournful as I can. Gia looks genuinely shocked and I can tell she believes me.

‘You mean all those times I thought you were strung out, you might actually have been …’

I nod quickly. ‘I haven’t been very good at hiding my … affliction. I have mood swings, you know? I find myself doing things I know I’ll regret later. I’m so afraid I’m going to die that I deliberately do things I know might kill me anyway …’

I have to bite back laughter. Once I get going, I’m pretty unstoppable. Luc used to say that I was almost as good as he was at making things up, that I was a natural. I frown at the sudden recollection.

Gia takes me by the sleeve, bringing my attention back. ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ she says softly. ‘You let me believe all those awful things about you. If the press knew about this … brain thing of yours, then maybe they wouldn’t make up so much shit about you all the time. You should let me feed the story to a couple of the more sympathetic editors. Make sure it gets around …’

I shrug and look sadly at the floor. But the lie’s worked. A little of Gia’s ingrained wariness around me, her brooding irritation, seems to have dissipated.

‘Come on,’ Gia sighs, leading me back through the palatial sitting area into the room littered with luggage and clothing.

‘Now, you’ve got just over half an hour to pull a look together,’ she says crisply. ‘Clothes first, war paint after. We cannot be late. It’s Giovanni’s fiftieth anniversary in the biz and he’s rumoured to be retiring after the runway show is over, and announcing the new designer who’s taking over from him. Which, if true, is huge news. And he’s picked just you — not the usual battalion of hollow-cheeked fembots — to open and close. So act appropriately. No falling off the catwalk; no lewd or criminal behaviour at the afterparty — not unless you never want to work again.’ She’s already backing towards the door as she adds, ‘And the faster we leave, the more chance we have of avoiding the press.’

She’s on the verge of shutting the door when I call out, ‘Wait!’

Gia gives me a wary look through the gap. ‘What? What now?’

I scan this stranger’s sea of belongings ruefully. ‘Why don’t you … help me?’ I say.

Gia goes incredibly still. ‘Help you?’ she says finally, wrinkling her nose and stepping slowly back through the door. ‘Like, what, physically dress you? I’m not supposed to touch “the presence”, remember? And the last time I suggested you weren’t rocking the outfit you had on, you threw a McQueen armadillo at me.’

I shake my head, bewildered by almost every word that’s just emerged from her mouth, doubly bewildered by the sheer volume of clothing in the room. Working out whether I’m ‘rocking’ my outfit has always been the least of my troubles when I wake up in someone else’s body with no memory of how I got there.

I look around the room, with literally no idea where to start. Most days, I have enough difficulty trying to blend into my immediate surroundings convincingly, without adding ambush photography to the mix.

‘I’m not having a good day,’ I plead, tapping the side of my head. ‘Help me to look —’

‘What?’ Gia shoots back, hands on hips. ‘Like a cashed-up, colour-blind rock chick meets vintage-boho, Euro-princess slut?’

‘Say that again?’ I’m taken aback at the venom in her words.

She shrugs. ‘Well, you asked. And it makes a change from having my opinion completely ignored. The way you dress may have made you famous, but it’s a little too schizophrenic and look-at-me for my tastes. You may have the “best body in the business” to go along with that “face of the century” of yours, but you kind of put too much information out there, if you know what I’m saying.’ Gia’s expression is a weird mix of envious and dubious.

She sighs. ‘You’re right though — you actually do need help. You’ve started appearing at the top of “What’s Not Hot” lists in fashion magazines lately. People are saying you’ve lost your fashion mojo. Bad news in your line of work, darling.’

She moves through the sea of cases and bags with a critical eye and picks out a narrow pair of soft, leather trousers, low-rise, long and lean, in a warm chocolate colour. Then she rifles through some kind of jumbo-sized duffle bag on wheels and pulls out a crew-neck, long-sleeved, body-skimming, dusky-olive cashmere tunic that falls to mid hip. ‘These will have to do.’

She comes to a standstill and scans the room for several minutes until she finds what she wants — a hard travelling case that comes up to just above her waist, filled to the brim with shoes stored in neat pairs. ‘Just what I was looking for,’ she says as she draws out a gleaming pair of black patent heels — so shiny, I can see my face in them — with criminally high heels, six inches at least, and bright red soles.

‘I can’t move in those,’ I protest. They look like the claws of some alien creature.

‘You’ll have to,’ Gia replies, distractedly. ‘You know as well as I do that flat shoes won’t lift the ensemble the way these will. Plus, you’re Irina, and Irina never wears flats. Wedges maybe, clogs at a stretch.’ Gia wrinkles her nose at the idea.

‘Always something with a heel,’ she insists, ‘to make you seem even less like the rest of us mere mortals when you stalk by with your head in the clouds.’

‘Where is it?’ Gia mutters, as she grabs a matched set of silky, floral-print lingerie and throws it at me, too. ‘Did we pack them in the medium trolley case? Or cram them all in the hatbox?’ She laughs triumphantly as she unclasps the fastening on a hatbox as big as a bass drum and draws out a midnight-black felt cloche hat with intricate pleating extending over one ear so the leading edge extends upwards slightly, like a bird’s wing.

‘Perfect. It’ll look fantastic against the warm, neutral tones and all that long hair of yours. And let’s finish it off with that long, black, military-style shearling overcoat Andreas sent you from his studio in Madrid last winter. It’s the only one he ever made in that particular design. You’ve never worn it and I know that hurt his feelings enormously. When I ran into him backstage at the London shows this year, his lips were practically trembling as he asked after you.’

Gia locates the overcoat in a huge case that opens outwards like a mini wardrobe complete with hangers. She drapes it over her arm with the other pieces she’s selected for me, the little hat perched over one small fist. ‘Hop to it,’ she says, wending her way back through the cases and holding her selections out to me.

‘What?’ I say, startled. ‘Right now? Here?’

It’s Gia’s turn to look shocked. ‘You’re, like, a model?’ she exclaims mockingly. ‘You stand around in your underwear all day — if you’re lucky — while fifteen people work on your hair and make-up and shove fabulously expensive clothes over your head. I’m the one who’s always telling you to put some goddamn clothes on, remember? So, needless to say, I’ve seen it all before. But I’ll look away from “the presence”,’ she snorts loudly, ‘if that’ll help.’

I have no choice but to scramble out of the cashmere sleep suit I’m wearing and into the things Gia’s chosen for me, in record time. She looks at me clinically when I’m done, turning me in the direction of a full-length mirror set up in the corner of the room. The colours she’s selected highlight Irina’s cream and roses complexion, her toffee-coloured hair and huge, wide-set, dark eyes fringed by extravagant dark lashes.

Gia tugs the black cloche hat onto my head, twisting and pulling at it until she’s satisfied with the angle of the delicate bird wing arcing above one brow. She pulls a set of bobby pins from a large, monogrammed vanity case and secures the hat firmly.

‘Fabulous,’ she murmurs as she jams the last pin in place. ‘And put these on when we get outside or you’ll be sorry.’ She hands me a soft, sleek pair of short, hand-stitched, shearling-lined, black leather gloves.

I shove them into a pocket of my ankle-length coat and climb reluctantly into the shoes, feeling as if I’m going to tip forward onto my face at any moment.

‘I can’t do this!’ I exclaim, screwing up Irina’s small and exquisite nose.

Gia frowns as she takes in my awkward, slump-shouldered, turtle-necked posture. ‘What you mean is, you can’t do this unmedicated. Well, tough, because it’s not my job to facilitate your self-harming tendencies. Stand up straighter, and it won’t seem like you’re falling downhill. You need to redistribute your weight. I can’t believe I’m telling you this — your memory really must be shot to hell.’

I make subtle adjustments to Irina’s posture until Gia stops frowning.

‘That’s better,’ she says. ‘It’s perfect. A little bit rock and roll, a little bit minimalist-with-an-edge, and the hat is just quirky enough to signal that you’re a fashion insider, you speak the language. You couldn’t take a bad photo in that outfit. From any angle.’

‘It feels like torture,’ I respond dryly, feeling my feet going numb.

Gia laughs. ‘Beauty hurts.’

She’s about to say something else when a doorbell peals so loudly, I almost jump. I’m reminded of the small matter of locating Ryan Daley, which completely slipped my mind during the insane amount of time it took us to find me something to wear. Irina’s heart gives a sudden lurch.

‘You promised you’d help me find him, find Ryan,’ I remind Gia.

She shakes her head warningly, already heading towards the door. ‘Not now,’ she says over her shoulder. ‘That will be Felipe, and Felipe is not accustomed to being ignored.’ Her tone is derisive.

I trail awkwardly after her in the crippling, shiny heels she picked out for me to wear. When she flings open the door to my suite, I see a handsome, sun-bronzed, strong-featured young man standing there. Mid to late twenties, with black, slicked-back hair. He’s shorter than I am in my absurd footwear, and broad-shouldered, muscular, powerful-looking. He’s wearing a single-breasted charcoal grey suit over a black turtleneck, a camel-coloured overcoat and expensive-looking, spit-and-polish black lace-up brogues. He’s carrying a pair of cream and tan, perforated leather driving gloves in one hand. As he follows Gia into the stately sitting room of the suite, I see open admiration in his dark eyes. For me.

Even though I consider myself impervious to all forms of flattery, I find myself blushing suddenly under his appreciative and unblinking scrutiny. Even Ryan never looked at me the way this guy’s doing now. Like I’m good enough to … devour. I don’t know whether to feel pleased, or revolted.

‘¡Querida!’ the young man murmurs in a low, musical voice like an auditory caress. ‘Cómo ardo al pensar en su belleza, a pesar de su maldad infernal.’

Gia shoots Felipe a scandalised look.

I feel Irina’s face suddenly flush with a strange, hectic blood, her heartbeat kick into higher gear. It’s Spanish. I actually recognise it.

But I don’t recall any past facility with Spanish at all. So where is this coming from?

Literally, the guy had said —

Darling! How your beauty sets me on fire, despite your infernal evil.

I don’t know how it’s possible, but when I reach out for the words I need, the words I want to use, they’re somehow there.

‘Qué simpatico … como siempre, querido Felipe,’ I reply tersely. ‘But let’s speak English, for Gia’s sake, ¿le parece bien?’

There are accents on all the wrong places, accents where there shouldn’t be any, but from the looks on both their faces, I’ve just made perfect sense in a language I shouldn’t even know.

‘You’re speaking English for my sake?’ Gia says disbelievingly.

The confident smile on Felipe’s handsome face falters for a moment, before it’s smoothly re-established. ‘Your Spanish, Senorita Zhivanevskaya,’ he says, his perfect white teeth showing, ‘he has improved very much.’

‘Yes, “he” has,’ Gia mutters. ‘Out of sight. So tell me again, Irina, why you insisted on hiring that creepy translator for the Costa Rican swimsuit shoot last month?’

From the look on Gia’s face, it’s clear that the only languages Irina’s supposed to have are Russian and bitchy conversational English.

‘Sit,’ I tell Felipe, still pretending I didn’t hear Gia’s question. I gesture at the two pairs of elegant winged armchairs facing each other either side of a monumental glass and steel coffee table bearing porcelain cups and saucers and a sleek, silver, lidded jug.

Gia and I take our places across from Felipe and, for a moment, I do not hear the icily correct small talk that the two of them are exchanging. Lela Neill hadn’t spoken Spanish. Neither had Lucy, or Susannah. Or Ezra before them. But with a name like Zappacosta, I’m guessing that Carmen might be able to. And now I can, too? Even though I passed through Carmen’s body … two lives ago? Or does this ability come from somewhere else, some when else? Some ‘life’ even further back than the time I was Carmen?

The cool-hued room seems to tilt. There’s a sudden sensation that I’m freefalling, though my physical body sits here, unmoved. What’s inside always so very different from what’s outside.

As if from very far away, I hear Gia enquire frostily of our guest, ‘Tea?’, before picking up the silver thermos and pouring a shot of hot, dark amber liquid into one of the crested white teacups on the table before her. It’s a trait so peculiar to the English, and as I direct my unfocused gaze at the steam coming off the surface of the drink, I can almost make out every particle rising.

Felipe shakes his head dismissively, unfolding a road map from a pocket of his overcoat. He spreads it out on the table between us with his tanned, long-fingered hands, before uncapping a gold and onyx fountain pen.

Something tugs away at my subconscious, begging to be made plain. That small voice inside me, that’s always one step ahead of my waking self, murmurs: Gabriel, Uriel, Michael, Jegudiel, Selaphiel, Jeremiel, Barachiel, Raphael.

Eight names more familiar to me than my own. Eight names that could be a poem. Or … a prayer.

Inexplicably, that YouTube clip of Uriel walking on water, the one Ryan had told me to look at, replays itself in my head. He was gliding across the surface of an icy Scottish loch, searching for something or … someone?

And on the heels of that thought — the recollection that when I touch someone — someone unguarded, someone human — their thoughts and emotions, even their memories, become like an open book to me.

How are these things even remotely connected to the fact that when I’m pushed to the brink I can hurt people with my bare hands?

Twice now, I’ve almost torn myself free of the body I’ve been placed in. It happened once when I was Carmen, when I was wild with fear and anger. It happened again when I was Lela. I’d placed a hand upon Lela’s mother as she lay dying and had somehow seen inside her cancer-ridden body. I’d even tried to heal her from the inside out — before I’d been forced to return into Lela.

I hadn’t been able to save Karen Neill, because Azraeil had already marked her for his own.

Azraeil. I frown.

Like the Eight, he’s one of the elohim. But one thing sets him apart from the others. His touch can bring … death. Or restore life in equal measure.

Traits. They’re all traits, I realise suddenly. These things I can do that I can’t explain. Even that strange ability Azraeil has, which no one else possesses — mastery over death itself. All these are traits. Peculiar to our kind. In us, when we were first … created.

I squeeze my eyes shut, chasing down thoughts that refuse to come clear.

Gia turns to me and queries, ‘Irina? What do you think of braving Via Broletto today? Too risky?’

I shake my head blindly, waving at her, at Felipe, to decide.

When I was Lela, I met a rogue malakh — a kind of supernatural messenger — who’d chosen exile on earth rather than fulfil the task for which it was created. Somehow it had glimpsed me inside Lela’s skin; had claimed that it could detect the protective mark of the elohim upon me. It had begged me to intercede with the elohim on its behalf because it needed a human body in which to live out its days. For in turning away from its original purpose, it had doomed itself to an eternal and painful half-life as a wandering, formless spirit.

It had envied me — me! — and the fact that I was constantly being reborn in a succession of mortal bodies.

Elohim. When I was Lela, even probing the meaning of that word had caused me unimaginable pain.

But now, that small voice inside me, which is always, always, one beat ahead of my waking self, whispers: Most holy, most high. Together with a thousand others that no mortal alive has ever seen, or could ever give name to. Whatever you may be now, however estranged you have become from each other, you were all once created … equal.

And to you all: the ability to speak in tongues, both new and ancient.

And to you all: the power to bend matter and spirit, the laws of nature, to your will; to suspend time, move matter, occupy objects both animate and inanimate; mimic both the living and the dead; transport yourselves from place to place in the space between two heartbeats.

The very embodiment of paradox.

My eyes fly wide as I finally see — what I should have seen all along.

Grief enfolds me suddenly in its wings, grasps my borrowed heart in its black talons. When I lost Luc, when I lost any notion of context, of history, of ‘home’ — that casual ability to bend the laws of nature to my will — I lost my way. In one moment, I lost everything.

All of us were created with extraordinary abilities no human being could ever comprehend. And most extraordinary of all these? The ability to atomise and re-form at will. Like water, like an unstable element that can shift between phases, I should be able to change states in a heartbeat. To become permeating yet impermeable, boundless yet infinitesimal.

It’s much, much more than just the ability to possess another living creature or to shape-shift. It’s — how do I put it? — the ability to turn the burning matter of which I am made into a weapon, a living sword, pure and directed energy. Will it and it is done.

It’s something unique to all of us. We who are unkillable and immortal, unless one of our own kind seeks to destroy us.

Ah, yes. The rules — and there are rules, one must know them in order to contravene them — come back to me, unexpectedly, from some long buried oubliette in my mind.

The Eight. Even Azraeil. What they are, I am. What they are, Luc is, too.

We elohim.

We High Ones.

We … archangeli.

Archangels. It’s the name for what I am.

At the realisation, I seem to catch fire within, and I wonder how it is that Gia and Felipe cannot see me burning.

What happened to me?