Angelology(22)

left after the fire. Surely you don’t imagine we missed something.”

“I would like to be able to see for myself,” Sneja said, without bothering to mask her frustration. “I

suggest we go to this convent at once.”

Percival jumped at an opportunity to redeem himself. “I have taken care of it,” he said. “My source

is en route to St. Rose this very instant to verify what he’s found.”

“Your source—he is one of us?”

Percival stared at his mother a moment, unsure how to proceed. Sneja would be furious to learn he

had placed so much faith in Verlaine, who was outside their network of spies. “I know how you feel

about using outsiders, but there is no cause to worry. I’ve had him thoroughly checked.”

“Of course you have,” Sneja said, exhaling cigarette smoke. “Just as you’ve had the others checked

in the past.”

“This is a new era,” Percival said. He measured his words carefully, determined to remain calm in

the face of his mother’s criticism. “We are not so easily betrayed.”

“Yes, you are correct, we live in a new era,” Sneja retorted. “We live in an era of freedom and

comfort, an era free of detection, an era of unprecedented wealth. We are free to do as we wish, to

travel where we wish, to live as we wish. But this is also an era in which the best of our kind have

become complacent and weak. It is an era of sickness and degeneration. Not you, nor I, nor any one of

the ridiculous creatures hanging about in my sitting room are above detection.”

“You think I have been complacent?” Percival said, his voice rising despite his efforts. He took his

cane in hand and prepared to leave.

“I don’t believe you can possibly be anything else in your condition,” Sneja said. “It is essential

that Otterley will assist you.”

“It is only natural,” Percival said. “Otterley has been working on this as long as I have.”

“And your father and I have been working on it long before that,” Sneja said. “And my parents

were working on it before I was born, and their parents before them. You are just one of many.”

Percival tapped the tip of his cane on the wooden floor. “I should think my condition brings a new

urgency.”

Sneja glanced at the cane. “It is true—your illness brings new meaning to the hunt. But your

obsession to cure yourself has blinded you. Otterley would never have given up those drawings,

Percival. Indeed, Otterley would be at this convent now, verifying them. Look at all the time you have

wasted! What if your foolishness has cost us the treasure?”

“Then I will die,” he said.

Sneja Grigori placed her smooth white hand upon Percival’s cheek. The frivolous woman he had

escorted from the divan hardened into a statuesque creature filled with ambition and pride—the very

things he both admired and envied in her. “It will not come to that. I will not allow it to come to that.

Now go and rest. I will take care of Mr. Verlaine.”

Percival stood and, leaning heavily upon his cane, hobbled from the room.

St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

Verlaine parked his car—a 1989 Renault he’d bought secondhand during college—before St. Rose. A

wrought-iron gate cut across the passageway to the convent, leaving him no choice but to climb over a

thick limestone wall that surrounded the grounds. Up close, St. Rose proved to be much as he had

imagined it: isolated and serene, like a castle enchanted in a spell of sleep. Neo-Gothic arches and

turrets lifted into the gray sky; birch and evergreen trees rose on all sides in tight protective clusters.

Moss and ivy clung upon the brickwork, as if nature had embarked upon a slow, insatiable campaign

to claim the structure as its own. At the far end of the grounds, the Hudson edged alongside a

riverbank crusted with snow and ice.

As he walked up a snow-dusted cobblestone path, Verlaine shivered. He felt unnaturally cold. The

sensation had come over him the moment he left Central Park, and it had remained heavy and stifling

throughout the drive to Milton. He had blasted the heat in his car in an attempt to shake off the chill,

and still his hands and feet remained numb. He could not account for the effect the meeting had had

upon him or why it unsettled him to discover how truly ill Percival Grigori really was. There was

something eerie and disturbing about Grigori, something that Verlaine couldn’t put his finger upon.

Verlaine had a strong sense of intuition about people—he could discern much about a person within

minutes of an introduction, and he rarely wavered from his initial impressions. From their first