“And that is why you came to me,” Vera said.
“You’re our best chance at understanding this,” Verlaine said, struggling to control the sense of
urgency he felt. “This can’t all be a coincidence. The Nephilim went after Evangeline for a reason.
Angela, the egg, the film, this fairy tale of an Angelopolis—this has to be more than a wild-goose
chase.”
“Sure,” Bruno said. “But the function of the Angelopolis, the purpose for building it, its exact
location—Percival Grigori didn’t give anything away.”
“True,” Vera said. “We need to find out what was said after the recording stopped.”
“They’re all dead,” Verlaine mumbled. “Vladimir, Angela, Luca—even Percival Grigori.”
“Actually, not all of the participants of that interview are gone,” Bruno said, walking off ahead,
scanning the streets for a taxi.
A frigid wind blew off the canal, and Verlaine pulled his jacket close to his body. A cluster of
Mara angels stood under the stone archway, the granite façade reflecting the illumination of their
sallow skin. They rarely came out in daylight; their sunken eyes spoke of hundreds of years of living
in the shadows. Their wings were mottled green and orange with streaks of blue, as iridescent as
peacock feathers in the blue light of dawn. There was something disconcerting about seeing the
creatures standing before the lovely archway of the bridge, a kind of dislocation that took a moment to
adjust to. If it had been a normal morning, and they had been in Paris, Bruno would have insisted that
they take the whole lot of them in.
After what seemed like an eternity, a beat-up station wagon rattled to the curb and stopped
abruptly. Bruno gave the driver an address and they climbed in. As they pulled away, Verlaine
noticed a sleek black car emerge behind them. It followed them, keeping an even pace with the taxi.
“You see that?” Vera asked.
Bruno nodded. “I’m keeping my eye on it.”
Verlaine leaned against the door and watched the car, waiting for Vera to meet his eye. She smiled
slightly and brushed her hand over his. Her gesture was ambiguous, and he was certain she meant it to
be that way.
• • •
The taxi sped past the Theatre Arts Academy on Mokhovaya Street and, after crossing Pestel, let them
off on a narrow avenue lined with trees. The windows of bars and cafés were lit up, while stores
were still shuttered and locked, the glass protected by metal cages.
“Drop us here,” Bruno said, directing the driver to leave them near a crowded bar. They got out
and walked some blocks, Bruno looking over his shoulder the whole time before stopping at a shop
with weathered stucco chipping from the façade. A sign above the door read LA VIEILLE RUSSIE.
Bruno lifted an iron knocker and let it fall against a metal plate. Verlaine heard the sound of
footsteps from somewhere in the house. Suddenly a peephole opened at the center of the door and a
large eye peered outside. The door swung back, and the woman from the film, Vladimir’s wife, who
had assisted Angela Valko, appeared before them. Nadia—smaller, grayer, and slightly bent—was
dressed in a black velvet dress, a ruby brooch pinned at her cleavage. Verlaine looked at his watch—
it was nearly seven in the morning.
“Isn’t it a bit early to be going to the opera?” Bruno said, bowing slightly.
“Bruno,” she said, pushing a swirling mass of gray hair over her shoulder.
Bruno bent to kiss her, his lips brushing each cheek. “You knew we were coming.”
“Parisian angelologists aren’t as conspicuous as they used to be,” she said, waving them into a
darkened corridor. “Nevertheless, I have friends in the Russian branch of the society who identified
your presence at the research center and telephoned me. Come in, come in. You should be careful. I
may not be the only one who knows you’ve arrived in St. Petersburg.”
The interior of the house was distinctly French. They walked through a corridor and into a drawing
room paneled in dark wood and red velvet, with Second Empire wallpaper, its panels clotted with
flowers climbing the walls. A great chandelier hung from the ceiling, the crystals muted in the half
light. Nadia led them through into a smaller chamber, the walls dripping with Russian Orthodox
icons. The paintings were of every size and shape and hung so close together—the edge of one frame
cutting into the next—that it appeared the walls were covered in a brilliant, gilded armor.
When Nadia noticed Verlaine examining the paintings she said, “My father loved Orthodox icons
and opened up the back room of his antique shop in Paris to Russian painters when they needed