Angelopolis(18)

produced a chemical reaction, pure and simple. He’d repressed an instinctual desire to destroy her.

“To discover what Eno wants with Evangeline might take some digging,” Bruno said, finally

answering Verlaine’s question. “Eno’s motives are never clear. She confounds the best of us.”

“I’m more interested in finding Evangeline than in theorizing about her abductor,” Verlaine said.

Suddenly Bruno wondered if his obsession with Eno tinted everything he did and said. “She works

exclusively for the Grigoris. If she wants Evangeline, there’s something important going on.”

“This might have something to do with it,” Verlaine said, reaching into his backpack.

Bruno watched him unwrap a gaudy, gem-encrusted egg. It was clearly valuable but, in Bruno’s

mind, a piece of kitsch that he wouldn’t have looked at twice under normal circumstances. “How’d

you make it through security with that thing?”

Verlaine held the egg before Bruno’s eyes and said, “Watch this.” He pressed a tiny button and the

egg split in two, springing open on an invisible hinge and revealing, tucked inside its center, another

egg. This egg, in turn, split apart, revealing two small miniatures: an intricately constructed gold

chariot and a cherub, its body enameled and jeweled and gleaming, as if rendered in oil paint and

varnish. What was once compact as a stone had expanded, as if by some magic mechanism, into an

intriguing diorama.

“Evangeline slipped it to me,” Verlaine said. “I was hoping you might know why.”

Bruno looked it over, unsure of what to make of it, and closed the contraption, feeling the cold

metal click into place as each mechanism retracted. “I can’t tell you. But if there’s a connection,

we’re going to the right place to find out.”

Bruno felt his stomach lift as the plane descended. Pushing up the window shade, he looked out

through the warped lens of thick acrylic plastic. In the distance, beyond a haze of darkness, the lights

of St. Petersburg sparkled. He strained to see the twist of the Neva and the dome of St. Isaac’s

Cathedral, but could make out only a faint gradation of gray hovering at the edges of the lights, like

smudges on an abstract painting. As the wheels hit the tarmac, and the plane bounced with the weight

of the impact, Bruno could almost feel the density of the angelic population, as if their presence

created another layer in the atmosphere. Eno was there, among these creatures. Turning to Verlaine he

saw that his best hunter understood what they were up against. He would risk his life—he would risk

everything—to find Evangeline.

Grigori mansion, Millionnaya Street, St. Petersburg

Against his better judgment, Armigus left the human creature to scream. He knew it would be much

less trouble to end its life quickly and be done with it. He had a dagger—a piece of sharpened bone

that had been passed down for generations by the Grigori men—ready, he had the human’s hands tied

and the plastic sheets ready to catch the blood, but the doorbell was ringing on the first floor, the

sound echoing through the vast plaster and marble interior. As Armigus left the room the human

looked at him, pleading, desperate. He wanted to die quickly, Armigus could see it, but there was no

choice but to put a pause to this little amusement. It could be his brother back from Paris, after all.

And if Axicore had to wait, he would be furious.

Armigus walked the long stretch of hallway from one side of the house to the other, passing an

array of modern glass-and-steel furniture, a shelf filled with Tibetan copper bowls, and a collection

of Shivas cast in bronze. The apartment had been occupied by a lesser branch of the imperial family

before the revolution, a period the twins disliked, and so, in defiance of the stuffy nineteenth-century

moldings and the elaborate marble floors, Axicore and Armigus filled the space with modern

furniture, tatami mats, Japanese manga, folding silk screens—anything to dispel the musty air of the

past.

They had the same tastes in everything. In conversation one twin would finish the other’s sentences.

As children they would switch identities, so as to confuse their teachers and friends. When they were

older they would take each other’s women to bed, sharing lovers without disclosing the truth to their

partners. Indeed, Axicore and Armigus Grigori were identical in every way except one: Axicore’s

right eye was green and his left eye blue, while Armigus’s left eye was green and his right eye was

blue. When the twins faced each other, they appeared to be mirror images. When they were standing

side by side, the colors of the eyes made it possible to distinguish them. Armigus had often wondered