And they, she was certain, would not let her down either. The Grigoris would take her home to
Russia, where she would blend into the masses of Emim angels. In Paris, she was too conspicuous.
Now that her work was done, she wanted to leave this dangerous and loathsome city.
• • •
She’d learned the dangers of Parisian angelologists the hard way. Many years ago, when she was
young and naïve to the ways of humans, she had nearly been killed by an angelologist. It had been the
summer of 1889, during the Paris World’s Fair, and people had flooded into the city to see the newly
erected Eiffel Tower. She strolled through the fair and then ventured into the throngs in the fields
nearby. Unlike many Emim, she adored walking among the lowly beings that populated Paris, loved
to have coffee in their cafés and walk in their gardens. She liked to be drawn into the rush of human
society, the exuberant energy of their futile existence.
In the course of her stroll, she noticed a handsome Englishman staring at her from across the Champ
de Mars. They’d spoken for some minutes about the fair, then he took her by the arm and led her past
the crowds of foot soldiers, the prostitutes and scavengers, past the carriages and horses. From his
soft voice and gentlemanly manner, she assumed him to be more elevated than most human beings. He
held her hand gently, as if she were too delicate to touch, all the while examining her with the care of
a jeweler appraising a diamond. Human desire was something she found fascinating—its intensity, the
way love controlled and shaped their lives. This man desired her. Eno found this amusing. She could
still recall his hair, his dark eyes, the dashing figure he cut in his suit and hat.
She tried to gauge whether the man recognized her for what she was. He led her away from the
crowds, and when they were alone behind a hedge, he looked into her eyes. A change came over him
—he’d been gentle and amorous, and now a wash of violence infused his manner. She marveled at his
transformation, the changeable nature of human desire, the way he could love and hate her at once.
Suddenly the man withdrew his dagger and lunged at her. “Beast,” he hissed, as he thrust the blade at
Eno, his voice filled with hatred. Eno reacted quickly, jumping aside, and the knife missed its mark:
Instead of her heart, the soldier sliced a gash across her shoulder, cutting through her dress and into
her body, leaving the flesh to fold away from her bone like a piece of lace. Eno had turned on him
with force, crushing the bones of his throat between her fingers until his eyes hardened to pale stones.
She pulled him behind the trees and destroyed all traces of what she had found beautiful in him: His
lovely eyes, his skin, the delicate fleshy curl of his ear, the fingers that had—only minutes before—
given her pleasure. She took the man’s peacoat and draped it over her shoulders to hide her injury.
What she couldn’t hide was her humiliation.
The cut had healed, but she was left with a scar the shape of a crescent moon. Every so often she
would stand before a mirror examining the faint line, to remind herself of the treachery that humans
were capable of performing. She realized, after reading an account in the newspaper, that the man
was an angelologist, one of the many English agents in France in the nineteenth century. She had been
led into a trap. Eno had been tricked.
This man was long dead, but she could still hear his voice in her ear, the heat of his breath as he
called her a beast. The word beast was embedded in her mind, a seed that grew in her, freeing her
from every restraint. From that moment on her work as a mercenary began to please her more and
more with each new victim. She studied the angelologists’ behavior, their habits, their techniques of
hunting and killing angelic beings until she knew her work in and out. She could smell a hunter, feel
him, sense his desire to capture and slaughter her. Sometimes she even let them bring her into custody.
Sometimes she even let them act out their fantasies with her. She let them take her to their beds, tie
her up, play with her, hurt her. When the fun was over, she killed them. It was a dangerous game, but
one she controlled.
• • •
Eno slid on a pair of oversize sunglasses, the lenses black and bulbous. She rarely went outside
without them. They disguised her large yellow eyes and her unnaturally high cheekbones—the most
distinct Emim traits—so that she looked like a human female. Leaning back in her chair, she stretched
her long legs and closed her eyes, remembering the terror in Evangeline’s face, the resistance of the
flesh as she slid her nails under the rib cage and ripped it open, the frisson of surprise Eno had felt