interpretation actually led to anything. It doesn’t seem to have any obvious significance to me.”
Valko said, “Angela acted on a hunch that the drawing was more than just an effort from the grand
duchesses’ painting classes. She enlisted my help, and, after poking around, I found that Angela was
right: The drawing had a much more pointed meaning than anyone could have guessed.”
“But what?” Sveti said.
“I think I understand it,” Vera said, taking the Book of Flowers from Sveti and turning the pages
back to the beginning, where OTMA’s dedication of the book to Our Friend was inscribed on the
copper plate. “When Nadia gave me this book yesterday she explained that the first Our Friend, a
Monsieur Philippe, had prophesied an heir for the tsar in 1902, after which the tsarina experienced
her infamous phantom pregnancy.”
“I looked into this pregnancy during my search for an explanation for Lucien’s birth,” Valko said.
“I couldn’t find a thing about the birth except, of course, that it had been an enormous embarrassment
for the tsar and tsarina. They fired their entire staff of doctors, nurses, and midwives afterward.
Monsieur Philippe was sent back to France. Depressing, to say the least.”
“But what if Alexandra’s pregnancy wasn’t phantom at all?” Vera asked.
“You mean, what if Alexandra brought a baby to term?” Azov asked.
“No,” Vera said, twisting her hair and tying it up in a quick messy ponytail. “What if Alexandra
actually gave birth, but there was no child to show for it. What if she delivered the longed-for
Romanov egg and then, to keep the truth hidden, dispensed with all possible witnesses?”
Valko considered this a moment and began to smile. “It’s entirely possible, I suppose,” he said.
“But it doesn’t explain how or why the egg birth came to happen. Why, after hundreds of years of
waiting, did it happen then?”
Vera paused, considering how to best present the theory she had wagered her career on. “I am
proposing,” she said, with as much authority as she could muster, “that Monsieur Philippe prophesied
that Alexandra would become pregnant with a son because he, like John Dee before him, and
Rasputin after him, had learned how to communicate with angels.”
The others stared at her, unsure of what to make of such a theory.
“That would explain,” Sveti said tentatively, “the Enochian language written on every page of the
journal. But what does that have to do with Alexandra’s phantom pregnancy—egg or no egg, I don’t
see how there’s a connection.”
“If Monsieur Philippe was able to summon the Archangel Gabriel, it has everything to do with it,”
Vera said. “Consider this: The Watchers were not the only angels who consorted with human women.
I believe that the Annunciation of Gabriel should more accurately be called the Consummation of
Gabriel, that Mary’s famous union with Gabriel was neither the first not the last instance of human
intercourse with a member of the Heavenly Host.”
“You can’t be serious,” Sveti said.
“She’s serious,” Azov whispered. “Hear her out.”
“For the past years, I have been documenting historical representations of angelology and the virgin
birth—and Luke’s narration of the annunciation in particular—to discover if there is any truth to
theories that Jesus could have been the result of a sexual encounter between the virgin and the
Archangel Gabriel. Mind you, this isn’t an entirely new idea. The controversy surrounding the
annunciation was once a debate that occupied theoretical angelologists for centuries. One camp
believed the birth of Jesus to be accurately depicted by Luke: Jesus was the product of the Holy Spirit
descending upon Mary, God’s son, a scenario that placed Gabriel in the position of messenger, the
traditional role of the angels in Scripture. The other camp believed that Mary had been seduced by
Gabriel, who had also seduced her cousin Elizabeth before her, and that the children both women
conceived—John the Baptist and Jesus—were the first in a lineage of what would have become a
race of superior creatures: moral, divine angels whose presence would have been a tonic to the evil
of the Nephilim. Of course, neither John the Baptist nor Jesus had children. Their lines died with
them.”
“So you’re suggesting that John the Baptist and Jesus Christ and Lucien Romanov share the same
father?” Azov asked.
“I’m suggesting that exactly,” Vera said.
“There are people in these parts who would burn us at the stake for making such claims,” Sveti