more. Things cannot simply go on as usual. It is time to make preparations for the future.”
“That is precisely what I have been doing,” Percival said, annoyed that his mother insisted upon
directing him about as if he were in his first century of life.
“I see,” Sneja said, evaluating her son’s irritation. “You have had your meeting.”
“As planned,” Percival said.
“And that is why you have come upstairs with such a sour look—you wish to tell me about the
progress you’ve made. The meeting did not go as planned?”
“Do they ever?” Percival said, though his disappointment was plain. “I admit: I had higher hopes
for this one.”
“Yes,” Sneja said, looking past Percival. “We all did.”
“Come.” Percival took his mother’s hand and helped her from the divan. “Let me speak to you
alone for a moment.”
“You cannot talk to me here?”
“Please,” Percival said, glancing at the party with repulsion. “It is completely impossible.”
With her audience of admirers captivated, Sneja made a great show of leaving the divan. Unfurling
her wings, she stretched them away from her shoulders so that they draped about her like a cloak.
Percival watched her, a tremor of jealousy stopping him cold. His mother’s wings were gorgeous,
shimmering, healthy, full-plumed. A gradation of soft color radiated from the tips, where the feathers
were tiny and roseate, and moved to the center of her back, where the feathers grew large and
glittering. Percival’s wings, when he’d had them, had been even larger than his mother’s, sharp and
dramatic, the feathers precisely shaped daggers of brilliant, powdery gold. He could not look at his
mother without longing to be healthy again.
Sneja Grigori paused, allowing her guests to admire the beauty of her celestial attribute, and then,
with a grace Percival found marvelous, his mother drew the wings to her body, folding them to her
back with the ease of a geisha snapping closed a rice-paper fan.
Percival led his mother down the grand staircase by the arm. The dining-room table had been stacked
with flowers and china, awaiting his mother’s guests. A small roasted pig, a pear in its mouth, lay
amid the bouquets, its side carved into moist shelves of pink. Through the windows Percival could
see people hurrying below, small and black as rodents pushing through the freezing wind. Inside, it
was warm and comfortable. A fire burned in the fireplace, and the faint sound of muted conversation
and soft music descended upon them from upstairs.
Sneja arranged herself in a chair. “Now, tell me: What is it you want?” she asked, looking more
than a little annoyed at being escorted away from the party. She took a cigarette from a platinum
cigarette case and lit it. “If it is money again, Percival, you know you’ll have to speak with your
father. I haven’t the slightest idea how you go through so much so quickly.” His mother smiled,
suddenly indulgent. “Well, actually, my dearest, I do have some idea. But your father is the one you
must speak to about it.”
Percival took a cigarette from his mother’s case and allowed her to light it for him. He knew the
moment he inhaled that he had made a mistake: His lungs burned. He coughed, trying to breathe. Sneja
pushed a jade ashtray to Percival so that he could extinguish the cigarette.
After recovering his breath, he said, “My source has proved useless.”
“As expected,” Sneja said, inhaling the smoke from her cigarette.
“The discovery he claims to have made is of no value to us,” Percival said.
“Discovery?” Sneja said, her eyes widening. “Exactly what kind of new discovery?”
As Percival elaborated upon the meeting, outlining Verlaine’s ridiculous obsession with
architectural drawings of a convent in Milton, New York, and an equally infuriating preoccupation
with the vagaries of ancient coins, his mother ran her long, chalk-white fingers over the polished
lacquer table, then stopped abruptly, astonished.
“It is amazing,” she said at last. “Do you really believe he found nothing of use?”
“What do you mean?”
“Somehow, in your zeal to trace Abigail Rockefeller’s contacts, you’ve missed the larger point
entirely.” Sneja crushed out her cigarette and lit another. “These architectural drawings may be
exactly what we’re looking for. Give them to me. I would like to see them myself.”
“I told Verlaine to keep them,” Percival said, realizing even as he spoke them that those words
would enrage her. “Besides, we ruled St. Rose Convent out after the 1944 attack. There was nothing