Archon (5 page)

“Come on, Angela. What’s in it for me? For anyone who’s actually sane? Really?”

“Money. That’s all I’ve got.”

Nina traced a line of thread on the bedspread, as if pondering all the possibilities that could be had in murdering a blood head. Then she sighed, her shoulders rising and falling. “This is messed up. As much as the thought of being rich might tempt me, it’s not enough to murder someone. Anyone. Not even you—no offense.” She took the broken knife blade and tossed it into the trash bin next to Angela’s desk. Between the blood and the humidity, it wouldn’t take long to rust. “Looks like you’re going to have to stick it out for a while longer. I’m not too keen on my conscience torturing me, or the police locking me up for sixty years. Though it is brave of you,” she said, sliding to the edge of the bed, “to ask me in the first place. Sorry. I don’t have the stomach to kill other people or myself. I’m not that—crazy.”

Angela slumped, her head cradled by a hand. “Great. Well, thanks anyway.” She peered between her fingers. “Let me guess? We’re not friends anymore? You’re scared to death of me?”

Nina reached for the jester doll and displaced it from the shelf again. She took off its hat, jingling the bells. “I didn’t say that.”

“Were we even friends to begin with?”

“Either way, it’s too late now.” Nina picked at the doll’s hair, another cautious glaze coming over her eyes. Rain began pattering gently against the window. “So you said that angels are real.”

That’s why you came in the first place. Stephanie isn’t a complete liar after all.

Angela touched the painting again. The angel had an expression of wounded pride, his heavy-lidded eyes gazing back at her almost in contempt. Even the lines of his lips were so engrained in her by now, she barely had a thought process as she drew them. The art had become automatic. Full of life, yet ultimately lifeless. It was time for more. “Why else would I have those dreams? Sometimes I feel like they’re memories. Not necessarily mine. They have that kind of nonsensical quality to them. Always images that mean nothing in particular, like seeing the angels drink or sleep. Scenes from a movie reel I never watched.”

“Oh.”

“You’re disappointed?” Angela allowed an edge of annoyance in her voice.

“Um—” Nina paused. “No. Not like you think. I don’t see angels, and I’m not a blood head, so there’s no controlling them or summoning them myself. But—”

She paused again, clutching the jester doll.

Angela waited for her to rediscover her nerves, but soon she couldn’t help it anymore. “Not every blood head can do stuff like that. I think the prophecy is mostly crap.”

“Do you?” Nina’s voice shook a little. She was looking down at her feet, searching for something again. Maybe the sanity they’d lost tonight. Most people didn’t ask a new friend to kill them or reveal that their dreams were a step from reality. “I’ve heard voices—and seen people—for a year now. Women. Men. Children. Everyone you can imagine. Most of the time, their voices all blend together, like they’re shouting at me. And they usually talk about terrible things I don’t understand, keeping me from sleeping most of the night.” She ran a hand through her hair, tearing out some strands from her bun, as if stressing the real cause of her bloodshot eyes and frazzled appearance. “But lately, I’ve been able to hear them more clearly, and I’ve figured out that they’re waiting for someone. To let them out of wherever they’ve been locked up for so long.”

This time, Angela felt an odd shiver of fear. Death didn’t scare her, yet the dead did.

How strange.

“That’s—”

“Crazy?” Nina said. She plucked at the doll’s clothes.

“That’s why you came here to visit. Isn’t it?” Angela folded her arms, pacing toward the window. “To find out if I could hear or see the same things?”

Nina went silent for a while, and the rain continued, gentle, droning.

Angela stared at her own reflection in the glare on the glass, startled to find that her eyes looked larger, warped by the optical illusion. And in that illusion, she was standing in front of the ominous, black clouds, and their lightning and rain was part of her fine hair, now tangled by a sharp and relentless wind. Her forehead held a crown of fallen stars—candles, flickering in some nearby windows.

“They’ve been saying that She’s coming,” Nina said at last.

The words sounded too soft. Whispers that were more like shadows.

“You’re talking about the blood head in the prophecy,” Angela said. “So it’s a woman? I guess you should tell the priests. They’d be grateful.”

“No. They’d cut out my voice box.”

“So they know already?”

“Some of them.” Nina left the bed and pressed a hand against the glass next to Angela. Maybe she could also feel the sudden cold out there, leeching through the pane. “There have been rumors that this bad weather, the killer in the city, the unstable sea—that it’s all an omen that She’s finally coming and the darkness in the world is welcoming the Ruin. That it’s on the move. Which means people like you and me will continue to suffer, seeing and hearing all sorts of nightmares. We’re just symptoms of the world’s sickness. Get it?”

“So . . . the priests know this. Is that why the Academy humors witches and blood heads?” Angela couldn’t bear the idea that her suspicions were correct. If Nina wasn’t lying, and if the dead were complaining, and if she was dreaming of angels and unable to die, then maybe the Ruin really was coming into Her dark heritage. Maybe the Vatican was simply waiting for Her to make the move that would define Her once and for all—hopefully at the Academy—and then stamp Her flat before everything got out of hand.

But would it really be so easy? Someone like Stephanie, a person used to privilege, wouldn’t go down without a fight.

Then again, neither would I.

“Is that,” Angela said, “why Kim is dating Stephanie? Sleeping with the enemy. That kind of thing?”

“You don’t think she’s the One?” Nina said, horrified yet again.

It was doubtful, but— “Maybe I should ask him.”

Nina rounded on her fast. “You’d have to be a fricking moron, Angela. He’s not like the other novices. If we’re right, he’d probably cut out your tongue just to shut you up.”

“So? What do I care about that?”

They stared at each other.

Nina was the first to speak again. “Talking about this stuff is one thing. Acting on it’s another. I told you. Don’t go near him. Stephanie will have your head.”

“Then she already wants it. That Lyrica Pengold saw us talking.”

“Oh, God. Don’t. Don’t do it. He might even use you just to piss Stephanie off. Their relationship isn’t exactly ideal—”

The thump on the door startled them both.

“Hold on a second,” Angela said, walking over to the door and grasping the knob. It rattled as she turned it, echoing the irritable twist of her wrist. “Who is it—”

A dead rat lay at the threshold of the door, its throat torn open. Blood, maybe even redder than the blood on her blouse, drooled from the hole near its head, seeping between the floor boards. Angela realized she was still staring at it as the student with the silver slippers stepped out of the shadows and in front of the doorway. She was holding a box, stuffed with fabrics and sewing materials. Either she hadn’t seen the rat—

Or she killed it.

“My belongings,” she said to Angela, setting the box down on the floor. She glanced at the rat, impassive. “How messy.”

A soft scuttling sound echoed from the rafters in the hallway.

Angela poked her head out of the door, peering up into the musty gloom. The student looked up with her, but there was no one above them. No one that could be seen, anyway. Only shadows, and an old drapery swaying beneath a draft. What sounded like breathing could just as easily have been wind, entering through spaces in the roof. Angela ushered her inside, shutting the door behind them, sick of feeling watched and hunted by everyone. Even invisible fears and creepy statues.

“I’m afraid,” the student was saying, “I interrupted someone’s dinner.”

“It was an animal that did that?”

“Did what?” Nina turned from the window, looking sick to her stomach. As if she already knew.

The student rearranged the curls of her hair, silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was softer. “They were rather quick. It’s easy to mistake what you see on evenings like these. Though I would suggest”—she picked up her belongings again—“that you both stay indoors a little longer.”

She moved to leave, but Angela grabbed her by the wrist.

Before the young woman could argue with her, more noise whispered through the hallway. It was faint, but it reminded Angela of a predator’s hiss, cool with frustration. Vaguely familiar.

“What is it?” Angela said. “A cat in the building?”

The student let go of the knob, seeming to resign herself to staying for a while.

Angela left her and picked up the broken knife handle left on the bed, pitching it into the trash bin to rest in peace with its other half. “My mother had a cat. Pearl. She caught mice in the basement and left them at my parents’ bedroom door. Like a gift, to show what a great hunter she was.”

“Yes,” the student said, gently turning the door lock with a free hand.

But she didn’t look very convinced.

“I suppose that is a way of showing affection.”

Three

A
ngela was wrapped deep within the embrace of her newest dream.

Sleep had come, the world vanishing with it, taking her to a better tableau of illusions.

There he was, the beautiful angel with the bronze wings, almost as distinct as in her portraits. She could have been wrong, of course. “He” could just as easily have been a “she,” and that probably made more sense considering his delicate features and poised mannerisms, the gentle way he could blink those large eyes. But there was an authority in his steps that always made her think otherwise, and his face commanded her to simply watch. Not listen or understand.

As usual, he had nothing to say to her.

His was one in a pair of eternally voiceless recordings, whisking in and out of her mind, intruding when she expected them least. Tonight the angel with the bronze wings leaned over a round desk made of glass, writing with a pen in some kind of blocky script—all circles, interconnected lines, and angles. He wore a form-fitting ivory coat, its fabric pristine even compared to the gleam of his feathers. Rubies dangled from chains woven through his hair.

Angela opened her invisible mouth to speak. To call to him.

He looked up from the desk, setting down the pen. He was turning his head, his winged ears fluttering gently.

He saw her.

No.

He was looking past her at someone else. Someone who literally walked through her invisible body to stand in front of him, her unearthly silver dress reflecting all the light. A young woman with flowing curls of hair, tall, mild-mannered, her hands clasped modestly above the knee, had arrived to confront him. But the angel straightened immediately, and he was not only taller than this new person but distinctly unhappy. Those pink lips pursed into a tightly controlled frown.

The woman pointed behind him—to a gray figure in the distance—but he shouted at her and dismissed her with a wave of the hand, surprisingly angry.

Then she was stepping aside, facing Angela with the distinct sense that they saw each other. They were suddenly in front of a gigantic staircase of light, each step clearer than diamond.

But most astonishingly of all, Angela knew who she was looking at.

Four

Grant, we beseech Thee, that the One who is destined to bring Iniquity will perish in the eternal flames. Oh, God, help us in our hour of greatest need. When the Ruin approaches, be not far from your children. Amen.

—
C
LOSING
H
YMN,
F
RESHMAN
I
NTRODUCTORY
C
EREMONY

T
he student with the chestnut hair was named Sophia.

She had no living relatives, Angela learned. No personal belongings that amounted to anything valuable. The more they had talked, the more she became a mystery, and the night ended with her dancing in and out of Angela’s dreams as elegantly as the bronze-winged angel, her outfit suddenly an exotic dress of silver taffeta. But Sophia was a real, live, flesh-and-blood human being who could speak when she was spoken to, responding to a person’s feelings with practiced delicacy. The angels, of course, were always moving out of Angela’s reach, never truly glancing at her when she questioned them. Impolite and impressively untouchable.

Meanwhile, in the background, Sophia listened, smiled, and genuinely cared.

It had only been a day, and Angela feared she was developing a terrible infatuation with her, not understanding why until she awakened and noticed one of the dolls on her dresser. It was a Victorian-era miniature with a china complexion and vacant gray eyes. Her curls dropped to her waist in a waterfall of chestnut, their shorter strands snagged behind a black velvet headband. Nearby, like a blur in the corner of Angela’s vision, Sophia sat on the opposite bed, her own gray eyes lingering on the even grayer rain, its drops slanting onto the rooftops and framing the city with morning fog. Curls dribbled down her back, shiny and tempting, their ends gathered with a thin black ribbon. She’d folded her hands, settling them on top of her lap, looking like she was waiting for someone to pick her up and dress her. She’d never gone back to her own room after all, probably too frightened to leave after finding the rat at the door.

It was hard to blame her.

She turned to Angela again, smiling in that gentle way.

No. Sophia was prettier than the doll. Just as quiet, but definitely prettier.

“Will you be trying to kill yourself today?” she said, her tone matter-of-fact.

The words were like a sharp knife, cutting through Angela’s leftover dreams. All too quickly the dazzling stairway, the light, even her beautiful angel, seemed like ridiculous details. So wrong in such a dreary world.

Angela sank back into the sheets, her skin sticky from the humidity. Winter couldn’t come fast enough. “I don’t think so,” she said after a minute had passed. “There are a few things I have to do around here first.”

“Oh? I was hoping you would say that.” Sophia left the bed and glided over to Angela’s desk, picking up a folder stuffed with papers, one of them Stephanie’s sorority invitation. But instead she pulled out a letter printed with font in an expensive signature-style script. The school seal had been embossed in gold leaf at the top, its large Tree glittering beneath the wall sconce that guttered above Angela’s desk. Most of the dorm’s chandelier candles had already melted to stumps, their wicks burned into little ash piles. “Today is the official introductory ceremony for incoming students. I was afraid I’d be attending it alone, but perhaps we can go together?”

She looked back to Angela, hopeful.

“Do the novices attend?”

“They preside.”

Angela kept silent for a little while, listening to the creaks and groans of the attic floorboards. Now that Sophia had moved upstairs, the lower levels of the mansion were cavernously empty. Any leftover noise probably came from the wood, expanding or contracting in the wet weather.

Probably.

“I guess I’ll go,” she said at last. “My classes don’t start until tomorrow anyway. It would be better than wandering around the city with nothing to do.”

“Wandering in Luz alone”—Sophia was staring out the window again—“is not recommended, you know.”

“Because of the serial killer?”

Sophia put the folder back on the desk. “There are less sensational ways to die on this island. More people fall through the ocean grates on the city’s lowest tiers, or ignore the signs near the bridges and topple into chasms when the lamps are close to burning out. Of course, that’s in the areas without electricity. Most of the Academy streets have lamps with bulbs.”

“They should set up fences around the chasms. Barbed wire would keep people out.”

“Not everyone is afraid of barbed wire.” Sophia shook her head, curls bouncing. “Some even think of it as an invitation.”

“True. I know I certainly would.”

It was just her luck that drowning never worked out. She’d likely take all that trouble to jump, then merely float in the chill sea until somebody fished her out, her brain slipping in and out of unconsciousness. The air would be salty and thick with brine, but not suffocating or foul enough to murder her. She might as well stay in the bedroom, pretending that she’d already gone through the process.

Angela sniffed, wrinkling her nose.

A sour odor seeped throughout the dorm.

It had to be the blood. Blood on the broken knife in the trash bin. Blood staining the blouse she’d thrown on top of it. But mostly the smell of blood from that damned rat lying outside the door. Nina had left, and Angela still hadn’t bothered to dispose of the corpse, hoping that the cat would do it for her and lick up any remnants. She slid out of bed, looking for the towel she’d dropped next to the dresser the other night. Her floor-length pajamas thankfully hid the scars on her arms and legs, but the lace scratched at her feet when she walked, irritating new, tender skin. “Let me get rid of this rat outside, and I’ll get dressed. If we’re going to go to the ceremony, we should get there early. I’d like to find a seat where I can see but not be seen.”

“Oh, the rat?” Sophia said over her shoulder. She busied herself making the bed, straightening its silver-and-red comforter. “It’s gone. Since very early this morning.”

“Really?” Angela dropped the towel, immediately aiming for her dresser where she kept her tights and arm gloves. Those would—absolutely had to—go on first. “Thanks. I don’t like dead animals, especially throwing them out. I’m always afraid of contracting mites.”

Not a virus, though. Or bacteria. Angela, very disappointingly, couldn’t get sick.

Even when she deliberately tried.

“Oh, no, I didn’t touch it.”

Angela tugged open her bureau doors, grasping another blouse with the opulent Tree symbol. Her black-and-red skirt hung next to it, the gold buttons near the pocket snatching at the light. “So the cat came back sometime before this morning?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Sophia was waiting again, her hands folded atop her lap, her skirt neatly spread on either side of her legs. She had such a delicate, porcelain appearance, Angela didn’t want to believe she was anything else than a doll, a gift from the heavens to crown the collection ringing the room. Nina was an interesting person, and she had a few things in common with Angela, but she still had a very solid presence that grated after a few hours. Sophia blended much better with Angela’s paintings and artificial friends, like a precious coincidence that never stopped presenting itself. She imposed on Angela’s desire to be alone, but with the tact of a butterfly on a rose. It was like they’d been friends for years.

“This might sound odd,” Angela said as she stopped to peer into a mirror, disgusted by the knots in her hair, “but I was surprised to learn you didn’t have a roommate. I saw you talking to another student yesterday; some woman with blond braids. I thought maybe you lived in the same house.”

“She’s a member of the Pentacle Sorority,” Sophia said softly.

No way. That means—

“Are you?”

A brief pause. Then, “Yes.”

Goddamn it.

“So Stephanie sent you to spy on me?” Angela snapped, sounding more angry than she felt. It wasn’t easy to get mad at Sophia. Her disposition softened you somehow. Which must have been why Stephanie chose her. To entice Angela into dropping her guard even further.

And there I was giving her the benefit of a doubt.

“She didn’t send me,” Sophia said, lifting her hand. A golden ring, its red stone engraved with a gold pentagram, sparkled on a finger. “Don’t pay attention to this, all right? It’s a coincidence that we’re in the same house. Stephanie has nothing to do with rooming students together.”

“Yeah, well according to Nina, she only pulls every other string on this campus.”

“It’s true.” Her voice shook, genuinely upset.

“Why don’t you stay in their house anyway? Why are you on your own?”

“A punishment. I’m being punished.”

“For what?”

Sophia averted her eyes, her pretty mouth sealing shut. Angela was almost finished pulling up her tights by the time that whispery voice made itself heard again. “I can’t tell you why. It’s forbidden.”

“Then tell me this. Are you friends with her or not? You’re not a blood head. Neither is that blonde. You both had to ingratiate yourself with her somehow.”

“Like I said, I’m suffering through a punishment. The one you call ‘the blonde’ is in charge of that. It’s a fallacy that you have to be a blood head to join the sorority. That’s only the inner circle—the tier with privileges. A lot of students aren’t aware of that. Even those who’ve been here for years.”

Strangely enough, what Sophia said made sense. And instantly, so did the strange tension between Nina and Stephanie. In essence, Nina was bitter. Really, it wasn’t difficult to assume she’d also attempted to join the sorority, only to be cast aside like yesterday’s news. And if she’d told Angela the truth yesterday about hearing dead people moan and groan, then she’d also be a perfect candidate to join the lower tier. Instead, she’d been passed over, as if her abilities were defective at best.

“I’m not friends with Stephanie Walsh,” Sophia continued, “or with the blond woman you saw talking to me in the street. They can punish me. But my will is my own.”

She said the last words so strongly, a shiver crawled up Angela’s arms.

“What do you know about Lyrica Pengold? Or Brendan Mathers? Anything?”

Sophia frowned slightly, the expression full of polite contempt. “I’m kept from knowing too much about Stephanie’s personal affairs. Those names mean as much to me as they do to you and Nina Willis. Maybe less.”

“So you can’t tell me what’s going on in the Pentacle Sorority’s house?”

“I can tell you that Lyrica is the real underling to watch out for. Usually. Don’t be alarmed to find her spying on you or trailing you between classes.”

“I was more annoyed than shocked yesterday.”

“Good.”

Angela grabbed her clothes, hiding behind the dressing screen and its painting of extinct peacocks. What a sight they must have been, with their tails more gaudy than an opulent Vatican mansion, decked in iridescent purples and greens. She was slowly growing used to the gold scattered throughout the building, usually found in the form of tarnished brass. Her family had been rich but always preferred silver. “Never mind. I guess we should go to this ceremony together anyway. It’s not your fault if Stephanie’s punishing you—likely for something stupid. But if you cause me trouble of any kind”—Angela stuck her head out from behind the screen for a second—“you’ll pay dearly. I can tell you that much.”

Even if I am weakened by your smiles. Why do you have to be so damned nice?

“What if you pay dearly for
befriending
me
?” Sophia was sitting in the same position when Angela stepped out again. She barely acknowledged the sight of her tights and gloves, not even questioning them with her eyes, as if she understood why they existed in the first place. “There are stipulations in the sorority that apply to other students. I don’t have to reveal them to you.”

“I’m not really afraid of Stephanie. Not the version I saw of her anyway.” Angela slipped on a boot, lacing the leather until it cinched tight below her knees. “What I am afraid of is that she and everyone else will end up making my search ten times harder than it has to be. That I’ll be slowed down.”

“What are you searching for?”

Angela stopped tying her boots. There were a lot of answers she could give. Brendan. Kim. Her angels. Death. But each one also required a longer explanation than she felt like giving. Especially when it might find its way back to Stephanie’s curious ears. “For my sanity,” she ended up saying.

But that was probably too late by now.

“When you turned that lock last night,” she continued, “it was like being in the institution all over again. They always made sure we couldn’t get out of our rooms at night. And that no one else could get in. I’m not too keen on stray cats inside the building, but I wouldn’t have cared if it was hunting a mouse in the bedroom either.”