“You keep mentioning the Book of Raziel,” she said, reluctant to leave the heat of his body. Not until her guilt about leaving Sophia and Nina—and her angel—became too much to bear. “But you haven’t said anything about where it is.”
“That’s because I don’t know.”
“Does anyone know?”
He laughed. “Naamah. But she won’t tell you anytime in the near future.” Kim massaged her neck possessively. “But it’s nearby. That’s a given. She won’t risk letting the Book wander too far if the opportunity arises to open it.”
Wander?
“Are you always so distracted?” he said, holding her crushingly tight.
His teeth had just found the rim of her ear when someone knocked on the door.
“Angela? Angela, are you all right?”
Sophia.
Angela sat still.
Kim’s teeth held her, seeming reluctant to let go. Uncomfortably, she thought of the illustration of the Jinn hovering over the human woman, ready to snatch her off to the Underworld with his fangs.
She pushed off him with all the strength she had, hastily tugging up her tights and throwing on her uniform. Kim watched her with a cool smile on his face.
“Yeah, I’m all right,” she shouted. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
It took another for Sophia’s footsteps to trail slowly down the hallway, with all the speed of molasses. Either she knew what had just taken place, or she was worried that it might. Her distrust of Kim was getting stronger by the hour. Maybe she hated him because he was Stephanie’s lover. Or maybe there was a lot more going on than Angela had seen on the surface. All of a sudden, it troubled her: the calm way Sophia had been dealing with Troy, the strange coincidence that she and Angela were living together, and Naamah’s crisp exchange with Sophia after she’d scared her into a rage.
Remember why you’re here, Sophia . . .
. . . she’s not the One . . .
Sophia had actually been frightening that night. In a less definable way than Troy, but frightening nevertheless.
. . . she will never be the One . . .
Angela laced her boots, watching Kim work the buttons of his coat and reconnect his white collar, the sharp cuffs of his sleeves. He was glancing at her from the corner of his eye, still smiling, his thin lips soft and hungry all over again.
Sophia knows Naamah. She knows what’s going on here. And I have to face her now and lie about—this.
The situation wasn’t black and white anymore.
Instead, it was turning a terrible shade of gray.
Angela stood back and caught sight of herself in the mirror, her face carrying angles almost sharper than Kim’s and her blue eyes wide and overly large. Her hair was too straight, too long, and red as blood. For the briefest moment she saw a woman who could crush the world if she had to.
Yet that moment always passed as soon as it arrived.
Eighteen
The sacred number of Three, the pedestal on which so much rests.
—UNKNOWN AUTHOR
“Tell her the truth.” Sophia’s tone was polite, but Kim also heard the million unspoken threats hidden behind it. She sat next to Nina, her uniform skirt spread across the sheets, her bloody slippers neatly set near the footboard. “Tell Angela the truth, or I will say it for you.”
Angela halted at the doorway, pale. She looked even sicker than in the bathroom.
Rain slung itself against the windows, glazing over the impressive view. Wrapped inside one of Sophia’s bedsheets, her red eyes blinking slowly, Nina lay like a woman who’d just spoken to death and returned to tell about it, gazing out into Luz with an expressionless haze over her features. A candle flickered on a table near the bed, bringing out the tired, ghastly thinness of her face, and perhaps even more disturbingly, the gleam of perfectly mended limbs. Her broken bones had already healed.
Had the “something” inside of Nina who’d fused her bone marrow together also told Sophia his secret? Sophia had been suspicious from the start—and now, Kim felt himself getting angry. He should have begged Troy to kill her and be done with it.
One less person to worry about. She was Stephanie’s slave after all.
“The truth?” he said, entering the room despite her threats. His voice came out sharp as a knife. “Which truth, and relating to what?”
“Oh, you know precisely what I’m referring to, Kim. Or should I say, Sariel of the Sixth Clan?”
She knew his Jinn name.
Angela turned on him, instantly accusing. “You’re still hiding things from me.” She was angry now too, a picture of indignation that mirrored the gray angel of her paintings, and she walked closer to him, bold because of their intimacy and how much power she thought it had gained her. Her beautiful face was all angles and frightening eyes. “You said that Troy is your cousin. What does that mean? Who is your mother? Your father? What are you?”