Gabriella Léví, Franche Valko’s brownstone, Upper West Side, Manhattan
Although Verlaine wanted to be of assistance to the angelologists, it was clear that he hadn’t the training or the experience necessary to be of much help and so he stood at a remove, observing the frantic efforts to locate Gabriella and Evangeline. The details of the abduction replayed in his mind—the Gibborim swarming the rink, Gabriella and Alistair descending to the ice, Grigori’s escape. But as he withdrew into himself, his thoughts grew strangely still. Recent events had left him numb. Perhaps he was in shock. He couldn’t reconcile the world he had lived in the day before with the one he had now entered. Sinking onto a couch, he stared through the window at the darkness beyond. Only hours before Evangeline had sat at his side on that very couch, so close he could feel her every movement. The strength of his feelings for her baffled him. Was it possible that he had met her only yesterday? Now, after so little time, she filled his thoughts. He was desperate to find her. To locate Evangeline, however, the angelologists would have to pin down the Nephilim. It seemed as impossible as grasping a shadow. The creatures had virtually disappeared at the skating rink, dispersing into the crowd the instant Grigori had left. This, Verlaine understood, was their greatest strength: They appeared from nowhere and evaporated into the night, invisible and deadly and untouchable.
After Grigori had left Rockefeller Center, Verlaine joined Bruno and Saitou-san on the main concourse and the three of them fled. Bruno flagged a taxi and soon they were speeding uptown to Gabriella’s brownstone, where they were met by a van of field agents. Bruno took over, opening the rooms at the top of the house to the angelologists. Verlaine watched his gaze stray intermittently to the windows, as if he expected Gabriella to return any moment.
Soon after midnight they learned of Vladimir’s death. Verlaine heard the news—delivered by an angelologist dispatched from Riverside Church—with an eerie feeling of equilibrium, as if he’d lost the ability to be shocked by the Nephilim’s violence. The dual murders of Vladimir and Mr. Gray had been discovered not long after Saitou-san had escaped with the sound chest. The bizarre state of Vladimir’s body, left charred beyond recognition, not unlike Alistair Carroll’s, in what Verlaine was beginning to see as the Nephilim’s signature, would surely be reported everywhere the next morning. With one angelologist dead and two missing, it was clear that their mission had ended in disaster.
Bruno’s determination only increased after learning of Vladimir’s death. He began barking orders at the others while Saitou-san stationed herself at the gilded escritoire and made phone calls, requesting assistance and information from their agents on the street. Bruno hung a map at the center of the room, divided the city into quadrants, and dispatched agents throughout the city, taking every possible approach to finding a clue about Grigori’s whereabouts. Even Verlaine knew that there were hundreds if not thousands of Nephilim in Manhattan. Grigori could be hiding anywhere. Although his Fifth Avenue apartment was already under surveillance, Bruno sent additional agents across the park. When it became clear that he wasn’t there, Bruno went back to the maps and more fruitless searching.
Bruno and Saitou-san each voiced theories, one more unlikely than the next. Though they didn’t let up for a moment, Verlaine sensed that they were getting nowhere. All at once, the angelologists’ efforts to locate Grigori seemed pointless. He knew that the stakes were high and the consequences of not finding the lyre incalculable. The angelologists cared about the lyre; Evangeline hardly registered in their efforts. Only now, sitting on this couch they had shared the previous afternoon, was he struck by the truth of the matter. If he wanted to find Evangeline alive, he would have to do something himself.
Without a word to the others, Verlaine slipped into his overcoat, took the stairs two at a time, and ducked out the front door. He inhaled the freezing night air and checked his watch: It was after two o’clock on Christmas morning. The street was empty; the entire city was asleep. Gloveless, Verlaine shoved his hands in his pockets and began trekking south along Central Park West, too lost in thought to notice the biting cold. Somewhere in this bleak, labyrinthine city, Evangeline waited.
By the time he’d made his way downtown and had begun moving toward the East River, Verlaine had grown increasingly angry. He walked faster, passing blocks of darkened storefronts, turning possible plans over in his mind. Try as he might, he could not reconcile himself to the reality that Evangeline was lost to him. He cycled through every strategy to find them he could imagine but—like Bruno and Saitou-san—he came up with nothing at all. Of course, it was insane to think he might succeed where they had not. In this haze of frustration, the scars woven over Gabriella’s skin rose in his mind and he shuddered in the miserable cold. He could not allow himself to entertain the possibility that Evangeline was in pain.
In the distance, he saw the Brooklyn Bridge illuminated from below by floodlights. He recalled Evangeline’s nostalgic attachment to the bridge. In his mind’s eye, he saw her profile as she drove them from the convent toward the city and shared the memory of childhood walks with her father. The purity of her feelings, and the sadness in her voice, had made his heart ache. He had seen the bridge hundreds of times before, of course, but suddenly it had an undeniable personal resonance.
Verlaine checked his watch. It was now nearly five in the morning and the faintest hint of light colored the sky beyond the bridge. The city seemed eerie and still. Headlights from the occasional taxi flickered over the bridge’s ramparts, breaking the gauzy darkness. Runnels of warm steam coiled in the brittle air. The bridge rose stark and powerful against the buildings beyond. For a moment he simply looked at it, this steel and concrete and granite edifice.
As if he’d reached an unintended but final destination, Verlaine was about to turn away and head back to the brownstone when a movement high above caught his eye. He looked up. Perched on the west tower, its wings extended, stood one of the creatures. Raised in the half-light of dawn, he could just make out the tapering elegance of the wings. The creature was standing upon the edge of a tower as if examining the city. As he strained to examine its otherworldy magnificence more closely, he detected something unusual in its appearance. Whereas the other creatures had been enormous—much taller and stronger than human beings—this one was tiny. Indeed, the creature seemed almost fragile under its great wings. He watched in awe as it extended them, as if in preparation for flight. As it stepped to the edge of the tower, he caught his breath. The monstrous angel was his Evangeline.
Verlaine’s first impulse was to call out to her, but he could not find his voice. He was overwhelmed by horror and a poisonous sense of betrayal. Evangeline had deceived him and worse, she had lied to all of them. Repulsed, he turned and ran, blood thrumming in his ears, his heart pounding with the effort. The freezing air filled his lungs, singeing them as he breathed. He could not tell if the pain in his chest was from the chill or from losing Evangeline.
Whatever his feelings, he knew he must warn the angelologists. Gabriella had told him once—was it only the previous morning?—that if he became one of them, he could never go back. He understood now that she had been right.
West tower, Brooklyn Bridge, between Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York City
Evangeline woke before the sun rose, her head nestled upon the soft cushion of her wings. The disorientation of sleep clouded her thoughts, and she half expected to see the familiar objects of her room at St. Rose—her starched white sheets, the small wooden dresser, and, from the corner of her window, the Hudson River flowing by beyond the glass. But as she stood and gazed over the darkened city, her wings unfolding around her like a great purple cloak, the reality of everything that had happened hit her. She understood what she was and that she could never go back. All that she had been, and all that she had thought she would become, had disappeared forever.
Looking below, to be sure that there was no one to witness her descent, Evangeline climbed up on the granite edge of the tower. The wind lifted her wings, whistling through them, filling them with buoyancy. At such tremendous height, all the world at her feet, a moment of trepidation took hold of her. Flight was new to her, and the fall appeared endless. But as she took a deep breath and stepped off the tower, her heart rising to her throat at the depths before her, she knew that her wings could not fail her. In a sweep of weightlessness, she rose into the currents of icy air.