Angelology(208)

taut. While Evangeline had expected the procedure to be complicated, she was able to fit each new

piece to the previous one with ease. As she tightened the strings, she felt vibrations under her fingers.

She ran her hand over the lyre. The metal was cold and smooth. She slid a finger over the firm silk

of a string and adjusted the tuning peg, listening to the note change register. She withdrew the

plectrum, its surface glinting under the harsh lights of the subway car, and drew it over the strings. In

an instant the texture of the world changed. The noise of the subway, the menace of Percival Grigori,

the uncontrollable beating of her heart—everything stilled and a lilting, sweet vibration filled her

senses once again, many times more powerful than before. She felt both awake and asleep at once.

The crisp, vivid sensations of reality were everywhere around her—the rocking of the train, the ivory

handle of Percival’s cane—and yet she felt as if she’d fallen into a dream. The sound was so pure, so

powerful that it disarmed her entirely.

“Stop,” Gabriella said. Although her grandmother stood only inches away, her voice sounded to

Evangeline as if it had come from a distant room. “Evangeline, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

She looked at her grandmother as if through a prism. Gabriella stood close by her side, and yet

Evangeline could hardly see her.

Gabriella said, “Nothing is known about the correct method of playing the lyre. The horrors you

could bring upon the world are unimaginable. I beg you, stop.”

Percival stared at Evangeline with a look of gratitude and pleasure. The sound of the lyre had

begun to work its magic upon him. Stepping forward, his fingers trembling with lust, he touched it.

Suddenly his expression changed. He fixed her with a look of horror and awe, equal parts terror and

admiration.

Gabriella’s eyes became filled with fear. “My dear Evangeline, what has happened?”

Evangeline could not understand what Gabriella meant. She looked at herself and saw no change.

Then, turning, she saw her reflection in the wide, dark glass of the window and caught her breath.

Curling about her shoulders, glittering in a nimbus of golden light, hung a pair of luminous, airy wings

so mesmerizing in their beauty that she could do nothing but stare at herself. With the slightest

pressure of her muscles, the wings unfurled to their full expanse. They were so light, so weightless,

that she wondered for a moment if they might be an illusion of the light. She angled her shoulders so

that she might look upon them directly. The feathers were diaphanous purple veined with silver. She

breathed deeply, and the wings shifted. Soon they beat time with her breathing.

“Who am I?” Evangeline said, the reality of her metamorphosis suddenly dawning upon her. “What

have I become?”

Percival Grigori edged close to Evangeline. Whether from the workings of the lyre’s music or his

new interest in her, he had changed from a withered, bent figure to an imposing creature whose height

dwarfed Gabriella. His skin appeared to Evangeline to be lit by an internal fire, his blue eyes

glittered, his back straightened. Throwing his cane to the floor of the subway car, he said, “Your

wings are the likeness of your great-great-grandmother Grigori’s wings. I have only heard my father

speak of them, but they signify the very purest of our kind. You have become one of us. You are a

Grigori:”

He placed his hand upon Evangeline’s arm. His fingers were icy, sending shivers through her, but

the sensation filled her with pleasure and strength. It was as though she’d been living in a constrictive

shell all her life, one that had, in an instant, fallen away. All at once she felt strong and alive.

“Come with me,” Percival said, his voice silken. “Come to meet Sneja. Come home to your family.

We will give you all that you need, everything that you have longed for, anything you might wish to

have. You will never want again. You will live long after the world of here and now has

disappeared. I will show you how. I will teach you all that I know. Only we can give you your

future.”

As she looked into Percival’s eyes, Evangeline understood all that he could bring her. His family

and his powers could belong to her. She could have everything she had lost—a home, a family.

Gabriella could give her none of these things.

Turning to her grandmother, she was startled to see how Gabriella had changed. She appeared

suddenly to be little more than a weak and insignificant woman, a frail human being with tears in her

eyes. Evangeline said, “You knew I was like this.”

Gabriella said, “Your father and I had you examined as a little girl, and we saw that your lungs