Muse (12 page)

Maybe there’s never been the possibility of another outcome, only the illusion.

It may be the last time I ever see Ryan. Grief once more enfolds me in its wings, grasps my borrowed heart in its black talons so hard that I fear it will burst inside Irina’s narrow chest.

I run my fingertip gently down Ryan’s face on the screen. See him frown at the gesture.

How weak must I seem to him?

I remind myself forcefully that feelings are for humans, even though my eyes are stinging and the screen is blurring and Ryan’s leaning forward and saying, ‘Mercy? Mercy? It won’t be long — just tell me where, and I’ll find you. I’m already on the way.’

‘There’s no
where
, Ryan, no
when
,’ I reply harshly as my eyes fill, and spill over, and a tear hits his face
on the screen. ‘Not for us. That’s past. We’ve had our time.’

‘What do you mean?’ he says fiercely. ‘Are you
crying
? Why are you crying?’

There’s no answer to a question like that. So I tell him the first thing that comes into my head, because some part of me is still trying to shield him from the truth of Luc’s existence. Ryan doesn’t need to be hurt any more, and especially not by me.

‘Those … people I told you about once?’ I sob, and I hate how I sound. ‘The people that did this to me? They’re coming here. And they’re bringing reinforcements. You know what they can do — you’ve seen it for yourself.’

I see confusion on his face and I shout, ‘Remember Scotland? That “man” who walked on water?’

Ryan’s eyes widen in understanding and I say more quietly, ‘He’ll be here soon — and others just as powerful as he is. They’re coming for me, to move me …’

‘We’ll run,’ he replies breathlessly. ‘I’ll hide you. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you from them, to keep us together. We’ll use the darkness — hang out at gaming parlours and cafés, hotels and nightclubs, all-night service stations, diners — crowded places,
dark places, places where no one wants to know your name, your business or your history. We’ll keep on the move, keep to ourselves. We’ll change the way you look … if that’s even possible for … people like you. Power and invisibility are mutually exclusive, right?’

‘Not in my experience,’ I sob.

‘You can’t let them just take you!’ Ryan yells, fear in his eyes and his voice. ‘The Mercy
I
know would never allow that. Don’t give up on us.’

‘It would never be over!’ I cry. ‘And that’s no kind of life for someone like you. You don’t deserve any more disruption, any more grief or fear. Not after what you went through with Lauren. Can’t you see that’s the thing I’d never allow? I’m not worth it, Ryan.’

‘To me you are,’ he says violently. ‘
Please.
We have to try. Once I met you, my old life was over anyway. Without you, everything’s just grey. It’s pointless. I’ve only known you for a few weeks, but you’re in here,’ he taps at his chest, ‘and here.’ He places one hand against his head. ‘You didn’t just free Lauren. You freed
me
. It’s like you’re part of me now.’

His sweet words just make my tears flow faster. ‘I’m
immortal
, Ryan,’ I say brokenly. I see the look
of stark rejection on his face, feel my heart splinter a little further.

As he shakes his head in denial, I weep. ‘What else did you expect me to say? Met any other girls lately who can take over the bodies of total strangers?
I cannot be killed by bullets, I cannot be killed by weaponry. Our kind may only kill and be killed by each other.
Being with me would be like a death sentence for you; you would have no choice but to run, or to die. It would
never
be over. I would never want that for you.’

Ryan’s eyes are so dark in his pale, strained face.

‘What would it mean, “being” with me, anyway?’ I plead. ‘You’re a son of man. I’m one of the
elohim
, the high ones. Go look that up on your search engines, your internet. We were here before your kind was even a passing whim in the mind of our creator. Even if I were free of this body, I don’t know if you could kiss me, or hold me, or take me to the movies, like you would a “regular” girl. I’m strong enough to kill you. I’m both matter and anti-matter. I was created to govern and to wreak destruction in equal measure. You and me together equals
pain
.’

I can barely see the screen for my tears. But through them, I see Ryan hang his head for a moment,
looking away from me, and that’s how I finally work up the courage to snarl, ‘You can’t come here. I forbid it. Don’t go looking for me in my next life, because I
won’t
be looking for you.’

‘No!’ Ryan yells, raising his head. His dark eyes seem to blaze out at me from the screen, because he can read me like I can read him and he knows that I’m lying. In my heart, I will always be looking for him. And a little piece of me will always be wishing and dreaming and wondering.

I hang up on him then, and the screen goes black.

So this is what it feels like to have your heart removed from you while it’s still beating. Now, now I understand.

I wrap my arms tightly around myself to hold in the hurt, but it is impossible. I cry and cry, only dimly sensing the others hurrying towards me, Gia lifting the phone out of my nerveless hands and placing an arm around my shaking shoulders.

I tell myself fiercely there’s no point, none whatsoever, to my tears. I’m crying for something that could never have been. But I can’t stop the tears falling.

My cowardice disgusts me. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Ryan how I feel about him, or the truth about
Luc. About what Luc would do to him if he caught him here, with that look in his eyes — of love, for me. Luc would
destroy
him. In a heartbeat.

In the end, maybe it’s not really a question of what I want, or what Ryan wants. It’s a straightforward question of Ryan’s survival. I would never forgive myself if something happened to him. I have enough blood on my hands.

So it’s better this way.

Better to have a world with Ryan in it, than no Ryan at all.

Gia slips her phone back into a pocket of her leather jacket and gives me a gentle squeeze.

With Valentina following us discreetly, she leads me towards the locked double doors at the end of the corridor, which Tommy now opens with a key he produces from a pocket of his distressed, skinny jeans.

Studio 4 is in total darkness. But before anyone flicks on the lights, I can already make out the layout of the room and what’s waiting for me at the far end of it. Surprise stems the flow of my tears.

There are three clothed human forms standing there in the darkness, all unnaturally still.

The bank of fluorescent lighting above our heads flares into life, giving shape to the large, neutral space that’s dominated by two long wooden work tables
holding sewing machines and open wooden boxes filled with notions, ribbon, lace and fabric. Shelving runs along one long wall, containing drawer after drawer, each one bearing a neat typed label in Italian. There’s a spacious area on the far side of the room with a raised square podium, or pedestal, in the middle of it. Grouped around the pedestal, two to the left and one to the right, are three life-sized mannequins with blank and featureless faces, hair moulded into a stylised beehive. Each form is clothed in a spectacular gown, and each gown is strikingly different from the next.

The first is devastatingly simple in silhouette: long and lean, with a plunging V-neckline, narrow through the bodice, waist, hips and thighs, but flaring gently from just above the knee so that by the time the gown reaches the ankles it pools in gentle folds upon the floor. The sleeves are long and cuffed tightly at the wrists, and mirror the line of the dress. They begin narrow and fitted at the upper arms, then bell out gently, before the fabric pools a little around each cuff. What makes the gown extraordinary is that it’s covered entirely in square, gold-coloured, metal paillettes, every single one painstakingly hand-stitched on, I’m guessing. From a distance, it’s almost as if the
dress is made of molten gold. But up close, the surface of the gown resembles chain mail, or armour.

Gia walks up to it, awe-struck, followed by Tommy. Valentina hangs back, smiling a little with pride.

Numbly, I position myself next to Tommy as he muses aloud, ‘Hair down for this one, maybe with a messy wave through the ends? And a wreath in the hair, or a crown of thorns. Bare feet. A bit Joan of Arc meets Jesus meets lunatic asylum, I’m thinking?’

Gia gives him a sharp, quelling look and Tommy clears his throat and mutters, ‘Let’s move right along to look number two.’

‘Look number two’ is a strapless dress with a tight-fitting black bodice featuring a plunging, heart-shaped neckline that’s highlighted by a central, heart-shaped panel across the front entirely covered in tiny black crystals that catch the light. The skirt is an explosion of swagged black silk. There’s some sort of crinoline underneath it that gives the dress a life of its own. Valentina steps forward and lifts one edge of the voluminous skirt proudly and we see that it’s faced with hot-pink silk. It’s a show stopper, although I don’t see how the heavily beaded, shockingly indiscreet bodice would stay up if I actually went anywhere in it.

‘We’ll go with a black tricorn hat with a face veil,’ Tommy murmurs. ‘A bit American Revolution meets Bette Davis. Maybe some shoe-boots that are part dressage, part bondage. I’ll get Juliana’s team to put something together.’

We come to a stop before the last gown. The fantasy bridal gown Gia spoke of earlier. It has the same killer-chic aesthetic that informs the other two dresses, but it’s a romantic confection this time: tight-fitting lace and intricately beaded chiffon, tight, long sleeves, a high and modest neckline. The upper half of the dress seems both concealing and revealing at the same time; but the skirt is something else altogether. It’s tulip-shaped; layers and layers of hand-draped and swagged chiffon and silk gazar that end at a point just below the knee. It’s a completely unexpected combination of shapes, but it somehow works. I don’t understand fashion in the slightest, but I can see that the wedding dress before us is something quite unique.

‘A simple topknot,’ Tommy breathes. ‘With a miniature tiara sitting just above the hairline.’

As the four of us stand silently in front of the remarkable dress, Gia’s phone rings. She draws it out of her jacket pocket and glances at the screen.

‘I have to take this,’ she says apologetically.

She turns to leave the room and I say, sounding strangely tentative even to my ears, ‘You’ll come back? You’ll stay with me today? However long it takes?’

I don’t think I could bear to be alone right now, in the company of strangers. However kindly they might be.

Gia’s eyes seem to soften as she replies, ‘Your humanity is showing again, Irina. Of course I’ll come back. It’s just management as usual, checking up on you — checking up on me. Be right back.’

As Gia closes the door behind her, Tommy turns to me and places a hand beneath my chin, studying my face for a moment. ‘Who’s this impostor we’ve got here?’ he says gently. ‘Where’s my bulletproof ultra-bitch gone?’

There’s laughter in his light voice; it’s impossible to be offended.

‘
Tommy
,’ clucks Valentina disapprovingly as she begins carefully removing the first of the couture gowns off the mannequin, the one that resembles golden armour.

When I find myself smiling back mistily at the slight young man before me, he whispers, ‘Now, that’s more like it. Time to play dress-ups, my darling.’

The golden dress has to weigh at least seventy pounds on its own. It’s lucky that I’m strong, and that I no longer really care what I’m doing here. I just listlessly do as I’m told. If the real Irina were here, I’m sure she would’ve thrown at least one bitch-slapping tantrum already
and
orchestrated a walkout. Despite the so-called stratospheric glamour-quotient of Irina’s life, hers has to be the most unbelievably tedious job I can ever remember experiencing. Even worse than cleaning the toilets or taking out the rubbish at the Green Lantern café, because at least then I’d had autonomy. All I seem to be here is a collection of flawed body parts, and it’s just a never-ending round of requests to
stand still
.

I’ve been poised on the raised podium for almost two hours as Valentina and two assistants have poked and prodded me from every angle, worrying at the hem of the dress, tugging at the cuffs, reworking the gown’s back fastenings because I’ve inexplicably put on a half-inch around the waist since yesterday morning and a seam somewhere is puckering.

I address Gia over the heads of the reproachful
seamstresses. ‘That would be because I actually ate a decent breakfast!’

‘Just ignore them,’ she says, looking up at me from the stool she’s found from somewhere. All morning I’ve watched her playing with her little black phone, heading out into the corridor occasionally to take a call. ‘You’re doing surprisingly … great,’ she says encouragingly. ‘This has to be your best effort
ever
. You haven’t thrown a single thing. No one can quite believe it — I know, because I’ve been eavesdropping.’

The left-hand door opens and Tommy comes sailing in with a plump, smiling woman at his side, in her late twenties or early thirties. Unlike all the other glamazons in the building who are wearing top-to-toe Giovanni Re suits, she’s fearlessly dressed in a heavy, aubergine-coloured wool dress of a striking design with a forties-meets-seventies vibe, heavy wool ribbed tights in burnt orange, and vintage-looking dark and lime green Mary-Janes. Her straggly, shoulder-length hair has dark roots and bright yellow ends. I like how comfortable she seems in her own skin, and I like her face. It’s plain, but strong. There’s a fierce intelligence in her bright blue gaze that seems to take in everything around her.

‘This is Juliana,’ Tommy says. ‘Resident “special effects” guru. She’s Giovanni’s secret weapon — every show she’s put together for him since she left design school has been a sensation. We’ve been talking, and my Jesus-meets-Druid headwear idea for this gown was so, so off the mark. I’d completely forgotten that Giovanni’s had Juliana and her crew whip up something a little extra special for the show.’

He crosses back to the doorway and undoes the floor and ceiling bolts holding the right-hand door closed. ‘Ta dah!’ he sings, and opens the door with a flourish.

On my raised pedestal, above all their heads, I freeze in horror as I see what’s being wheeled up the hallway towards us, suspended by hooks on a steel clothing rack: three pairs of wings hanging like meat for sale at a butcher’s shop. One gold, one black, one white, their end feathers trailing upon the concrete floor.

They’re so lifelike, it’s as if they’ve been cut from some mythical creature. I almost expect to see blood dripping from them onto the concrete floor.

For a moment, that hateful sensation returns — of being balanced on razor wire over the shrieking abyss.

I feel so dizzy, so sick with dread, that the world seems to telescope, or the world is in me, and I lose any sense of up, of down, and fall off the pedestal onto the hard concrete floor, as if I have fainted. I stare, shaken, at the fluorescent lights above that give out such a cold, cold light, as if channelled from a distant galaxy.

‘Irina!’ Gia yells, dropping her phone and scrambling off her stool towards me as the black-clad seamstresses, as Tommy and Juliana flock around, lifting me into a sitting position.

‘I’m all right,’ I say gruffly, holding my pounding head. ‘It’s just vertigo.’

‘Vertigo?’ Gia says incredulously. ‘The podium’s about a foot off the ground! What are you talking about?’

But it
is
vertigo, which is as crazy as it sounds. It overcame me when I saw those things being wheeled towards us. I can’t take my eyes off them, though they both repel and fascinate.

Juliana follows the line of my sight and says haltingly, in heavily accented English, ‘You don’t …
like
them?’

I swallow hard, feeling nausea as the wings reach the doorway of the studio. I hear Juliana’s two
assistants — one male, one female — squabbling a little in Italian as they try to manoeuvre the rack through the door without upsetting its cargo.

‘They’re so beautiful,’ I whisper, ‘that they look
real
.’

‘As if I have reached up and plucked them myself from the backs of angels?’ Juliana says happily. ‘That is what I hoped to achieve! Giovanni said I was mad to make them all — and all different. But when I see his designs, I could think of nothing else but the wings.’

‘You should see Juliana’s workroom,’ interjects Tommy with a grin. ‘It’s like a flock of angels moulted in there.’

‘A power,’ I say absently. ‘A power of angels.’

I want to look away from them, but I can’t. When I look at those wings, in my mind’s eye I see
elohim
with flaming swords upraised, engaged in combat, slaying their enemies with holy fire. And I don’t know if these are real memories —
my
memories — or whether they are things I have witnessed through touching another’s skin. All I know is that when we are angered, when we are called to do battle, when we are of a mind to
kill
, then and only then do we show our wings.

Like furies. Like harpies. Like birds of prey.

No, that’s not quite right.

We don’t need wings to propel ourselves from the ground, because we can materialise anywhere we wish — any height, any depth — so long as we know where, so long as we can see it in our mind’s eye. Will it, and it is done.

No, we use our wings to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies. Like a cobra’s hood, a scorpion’s tail, they are a symbol of power, a portent. They serve as a warning of the terror to come.

We angels are misconceived in the human world. People perceive us as kindly and bountiful, when, in truth, we are about as fluffy, as gentle, as yielding, as rattlesnakes.

As I stare at Juliana’s wings, I realise where the sensation of vertigo came from. It’s something I keep buried, something I try not to think about too much, because I can’t reconcile this phobia of mine with what I used to be. I have a terrible fear of heights.

Fear
doesn’t even begin to describe how terrified I become when I even visualise myself being any great distance off the ground. When I think about the actual mechanics, even the bare concept, of flying, I break out in a cold sweat and my left hand burns with pain.

I look at the circle of concerned faces and, refusing all offers of assistance, climb unsteadily to my feet. Juliana takes down the first set of wings — every feather on the balsawood frame handcrafted from a light, brittle kind of metal and painted gold — and guides my arms through the leather straps of the harness. The wings are a perfect fit; they’re lighter even than the dress. They could
be
my wings; although, in truth, the wings of the
elohim
, our weaponry, our glowing raiment, all these are fashioned out of our own energy. We don’t carry them around with us. They’re part of us. When we need them, they’re simply there.

Tommy arranges my unbound hair upon my shoulders then says triumphantly, ‘
Voilà!
’

Everyone in the room takes a small step away from me, their hands clasped together, their eyes welded upon me. And, to a man, to a woman, they all sigh.

The wings are taller than I am. They’re like the wings from a painted religious icon made real. And every second they are on my back, I shudder.

Tommy tilts his head and cups the side of his face in his hand as he studies me. ‘You were right, Juliana. Nothing else is needed. Just the wings. They’re enough.’

He walks around me a couple more times with Juliana and Valentina following anxiously in his wake. I wonder if they can see me shaking.

‘Perfection,’ Tommy finally pronounces, and I almost collapse again — with relief, this time — as Juliana finally removes the wings from my shoulders.

It’s after 5 pm when I’m allowed at last to leave Studio 4, bound for another part of the building where the moneyed haute couture clients have their private showings. Gia and Juliana chat in rapidfire Italian like old friends as they lead me back through Atelier Re. I see that the building is steadily emptying of its fashionable occupants. In small groups, they leave their seamless workstations, their pattern-cutting tables, bead boxes, rolls of fabric and hat blocks, meeting rooms and endlessly curated collections of elegant clothing, grouped by season, for the front exit, where Giovanni’s security team looks into each person’s face and bids them farewell by name.