Angelology(18)

that had overtaken him. The harness helped him to keep his spine erect, an increasingly difficult task

as his muscles grew weak. In the months since it had become necessary to wear the harness, the pain

had only grown more acute. He never quite got used to the bite of leather on his skin, the buckles as

sharp as pins against his body, the burning sensation of ripped flesh. Many of their kind chose to live

away from the world when they became ill. This was a fate Percival could not begin to accept.

Percival took Verlaine’s envelope in his hands. Feeling its heft with pleasure, he disemboweled

the dossier with the delicacy of a cat feasting upon a trapped bird, tearing open the paper with slow

deliberation and placing the pages upon the marble surface of the bathroom sink. He read the report,

hoping to find something that might be of use to him. Verlaine’s summary was a detailed and thorough

document—forty pages of single-spaced lines forming a black, muscular column of type from

beginning to end—but from what he could see there was nothing new.

Putting Verlaine’s documents back in the envelope, Percival took a deep breath and slipped the

harness over his body. The tight leather caused much less trouble now that his color had returned and

his fingers had grown steady. Once dressed, he saw that he’d ruined all hope of being presentable.

His clothes were wrinkled and sweat-stained, his hair fell into his face in a messy blond sweep, his

eyes were bloodshot. His mother would be mortified to see him so careworn.

Smoothing his hair, Percival left the bathroom and set out to find her. The sounds of crystal glasses

clinking, the hum of a string quartet, and the shrill laughter of her friends became louder as he

ascended the grand staircase. Percival paused at the edge of the room to catch his breath—the

slightest effort drained his strength.

His mother’s rooms were always filled with flowers and servants and gossip, as if she were a

countess holding a nightly salon, but Percival found the gathering under way to be even more

elaborate than he had expected, with fifty or more guests. A cantilevered ceiling rose above the party,

the skylights’ usual brightness dimmed by a cap of snow. The walls of the upper floor were lined

with paintings his family had acquired over the course of five hundred years, most of which the

Grigoris had chosen from museums and collectors for their private enjoyment. The majority of the

paintings were masterworks, and all were original—they had provided expert copies of the paintings

to be circulated through the world at large, taking the originals for themselves. Their art required

meticulous care, everything from climate control to a team of professional cleaners, but the collection

was well worth the trouble. There were a number of Dutch masters, a few from the Renaissance, and

a smattering of nineteenth-century engravings. An entire wall at the center of the sitting room held the

famous Hieronymus Bosch triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, a wonderfully gruesome

depiction of paradise and hell. Percival had grown up studying its grotesqueries, the large central

panel depicting life on earth providing him with early instruction on the ways of humanity. He found it

particularly fascinating that Bosch’s depiction of hell contained gruesome musical instruments, lutes

and drums in various stages of dissection. A perfect copy of the painting hung at the Museo del Prado

in Madrid, a reproduction Percival’s father had personally commissioned.

Gripping the ivory head of his cane, Percival made his way through the crowd. He usually put up

with such debauchery but felt now—in his current condition—that it would be difficult to make it

across the room. He nodded to the father of a former schoolmate—a member of his family’s circle for

many centuries—standing at a remove from the crowd, his immaculate white wings on display.

Percival smiled slightly at a model he had once taken to dinner, a lovely creature with pellucid blue

eyes who came from an established Swiss family. She was far too young for her wings to have

emerged, and so there was no way to glean the full extent of her breeding, but Percival knew her

family to be old and influential. Before his illness had struck, his mother had tried to convince him to

marry the girl. One day she would be a powerful member of their community.

Percival could tolerate their friends from old families—it was to his benefit to do so—but he found

their new acquaintances, a collection of nouveau riche money managers, media moguls, and other

hangers-on who had insinuated themselves into his mother’s good graces, to be loathsome. They were

not like the Grigoris, of course, but most were close enough to be sympathetic to the delicate balance