In most cases, it made more sense for her to climb up someplace and take off from there, but at least she no longer faced being trapped on the ground if she couldn't find a handy launching spot. And once in the air, she had far greater endurance than when she'd first woken up with wings. Though that wasn't saying much, since she'd been about as graceful as a baby chicken on awakening.
"Has there been any word from Lijuan's court at all?"
The Historian--and Elena's friend--nodded at Raphael's question, her features lit by the delicate golden light thrown by the old-fashioned blown glass lamp on her desk, the Refuge yet swathed in the deep blackness of very early morning. "Xi confirmed receipt of the Luminata's request."
Had it been any other man or woman, Elena had the feeling the rest of the Cadre would've already acted. However, the general was so utterly devoted to his "goddess" that no one had any fear he'd forget who and what he was and give in to delusions of power he simply did not possess. Xi wanted only to hold the territory for Lijuan.
The thought of the archangel who considered herself evolved beyond even the Ancients triggered another thought. Glancing at Raphael, she said, "Did the Luminata invite Alexander and Caliane as well?"
Alexander had quickly become an active member of the Cadre, while Caliane preferred to keep to her small territory, but both were Ancients who should've never been awake, should've never been in the Cadre during this time.
The Cascade, however, had other ideas.
"Yes," Raphael answered.
"And," Jessamy added, "since saying no to the Luminata is unacceptable, both will be attending the meeting." The beautiful burnt sienna of her eyes lit with quiet humor. "I think Caliane might have a few words to say to the Luminata."
Elena caught the emphasis. "Head guy?"
A nod from the other woman. "The members of the sect do have names, but the leader is referred to as the Luminata as a gesture of respect. In direct speech, archangels use the Luminata's name--and so should you as consort."
"Because an archangel will only bend so far," Elena said dryly.
Similar to a guild hunter I know.
Grinning at the mental comment, one made in a very "Archangel of New York" tone, Elena leaned against Raphael's side. "So, it looks like it's going to be an unhappy reunion of the Cadre." She whistled at the implications of that. "Holy hell. Is Michaela coming, too?"
Jessamy's nod was quick, her eyes bright.
"That should be interesting." Unlike Lijuan, the most beautiful archangel in the world hadn't done a disappearing act, but she'd become far less visible for the span of an entire year before returning once more to the limelight--though still nowhere near at the level she'd been at before her strangely reclusive year.
Because Michaela loved attention and the media loved her.
To say that Michaela was beautiful was an understatement. With skin the shade of finest milk chocolate and wings of delicate bronze, her hair a waist-length tumble of brown and gold, and her eyes a hypnotic green, she was the definition of breathtaking. Throw in a body that turned mortals and immortals alike into slaves and it hadn't surprised Elena to learn that Michaela had been the muse of artists and emperors through the ages.
The artists were mostly alive, since Michaela liked those who paid homage to her beauty--no, that was bitchy. The truth was that Michaela did have a reputation as a generous patroness of the arts. But the emperors and other powerful men who'd been her lovers, well, they were pretty much all dead as doornails. The second-to-last one had died at Raphael's hands in an exchange of angelfire above New York that had left Elena broken and on the cusp of her own death.
It kind of pissed Elena off that Michaela had been partially responsible for her meeting Raphael right back at the start. Without the other archangel's poisonous encouragement, her lover would've never turned into an insane serial-killing nightmare. One who'd ended up ripping out Michaela's heart and replacing it with a glowing red fireball that may well have fouled her bloodstream with a noxious poison.
"Our pregnancy theory," Elena said to Jessamy, concerned what the poison, if it did lurk within Michaela, would've done to a child in the archangel's womb. "You heard anything to confirm that?"
"Nothing," Jessamy replied, then bit her lower lip. "I shouldn't gossip, but I so want to know." Switching her attention to Raphael, the other woman asked if Jason had discovered anything.
"There is not even a faint whisper of an angelic babe in Michaela's territory. Though that doesn't mean anything--Michaela has properties hidden in multiple difficult-to-reach locations."
"If there is a child, I hope he or she is safe and healthy." With those gentle words, Jessamy went to sign off. "I just heard Galen land. He's been out for hours with the current batch of trainees--I want to make sure he gets something hot into him."
Saying good-bye to the kindest angel she knew, Elena waited until the screen turned black before heading out of the library and toward her greenhouse, Raphael by her side. Licked by the rich sunlight of late afternoon, the glass shimmered in welcome.
"Dahariel must know if Michaela gave birth." Astaad's second was no longer Michaela's lover, but he had been at the critical time.
"Not necessarily." Raphael's answer had her frowning. "It's the archangel who makes all the decisions when the other parent is not their official consort."
"Not exactly fair."
"No, but archangels have enemies." Raphael's voice turned to midnight, his eyes dark. "Given the current state of the world, I wouldn't blame Michaela if she didn't trust anyone with the safety of her child, even the father of that child."
"He is a cruel bastard," Elena admitted grimly, well aware of Dahariel's penchant for torture. "I wouldn't trust him with my baby, either--if I had a baby. Which won't be for many, many, many, many moons."
The white gold of his wings shimmering in the sunshine, Raphael opened the greenhouse door for her. "Your body is not yet strong enough to bear an immortal child. In our terms, you are a baby and I am robbing the cradle."
Elena stepped into the humid warmth of one of her favorite places on the earth. "Rob away, Archangel." She was painfully glad she couldn't physically have a child for decades at least--according to Keir, it was more apt to be a hundred years. Terror gripped her when she thought of trying to keep a child safe, of protecting that vulnerable life from harm.
If she ever had to watch her child be hurt, ever had to bury a tiny innocent who'd looked to her for love and protection . . .
She swallowed.
At times like this, she understood why her father was the way he was; not only had he lost his hunter mother to violence, but he'd then had to bury two beloved daughters and an equally cherished wife. It had killed something vital in him. What had been left hadn't been enough to love a daughter who walked into possible death every time she went to do her job. He'd been fine with her younger sister, Beth--maybe not the father he'd once been, but not awful, either.
It was only with Elena that he'd become so . . . hard. The daughter who lived with danger on a daily basis instead of staying safe, staying protected.
Yes, sometimes she understood Jeffrey.
"The memories haunt you today."
Elena began to snip off the spent blooms on a cheerful pot of daisies that had been a gift from Illium. "I guess it's probably because I'm thinking about Morocco." Putting the neatly snipped off blooms in the hand her archangel held out, she showed him where to drop them so they'd return to the earth.
Only the dry, brown flowers uncurled the instant they touched his palm, gaining color and softness until he held a palmful of bright yellow daisies.
3
"Well," he said, "this is interesting."
Elena's lips twitched, the ache of memory retreating under the brilliant life of today. "Give those to me and touch the dried flowers I haven't yet cut off."
Nothing happened.
And the next time she put dried up blooms in his hand, they stayed dry. It wasn't a surprise--fro
m what they'd been able to gather, all the Cascade-born abilities seemed to come and go without warning, like a signal that only transmitted in intermittent bursts. Even Elijah couldn't always call animals, though the ones with whom he'd already bonded tended to hang around even when he couldn't "speak" to them.
"Ah well," she said with a sigh. "You'll be useful again one day."
Flexing his hand after dropping the dry blooms in a garden she'd created in one corner of the greenhouse, Raphael made a blue flame dance on his palm. "As always, I am glad to be of some use to my consort."
Elena grinned. "Maybe while you're meeting with the Cadre," she said, "I can do some research on my roots." She shrugged. "I don't have much to go on, but there can't be too many local families with this"--she gestured to herself--"combination of hair and skin, right?"
Her mother's coloring had been very similar; she'd told Elena once that the near-white of her hair as well as the dark gold of Elena's skin came from her grandmother. The memory unfurled like a film reel inside her mind . . .
*
"I had a photograph of my maman." Marguerite cut up fabric for a sparkly black skirt Belle wanted. "The nun who helped me in the first days after my mother died had saved it, kept it in a secret place, only giving it to me when I was eighteen and no longer a foster child."
A sadness to her face that made Elena reach out to her. Her mother was a butterfly, colorful and bright and happy. She smelled like flowers. She didn't get sad, didn't cry.
Smiling, her mother leaned in to kiss Elena's cheek, the familiar scent of gardenias swirling around her. "Ah, cherie, you and your sisters make my life a joy."
The tight thing inside Elena's chest melted away. "Why did the nun keep your photo?"
"She knew that such treasures get lost when a child is passed from hand to hand." Marguerite paused. "Sister Constance, she had kind eyes--I think she would've raised me as her own if only she was able. But she watched over me from a distance, and found me the day I moved into my own tiny apartment, gave me that photo and another one that she'd taken the day I saw my mother for the last time."
A smile. "I was wearing such a pretty dress and coat, and clean, shining shoes. Sister Constance told me I had a bag of snacks and toys with me." Laughing, she added, "I was maybe a little spoiled, I think, but sweet girls should be spoiled, non?"
"That was the day your mama died?" Elena didn't like thinking about that, didn't like to imagine that maybe, one day, her mother would die, too.
"Oui," Marguerite said, her attention on the pattern for Belle's skirt. "She asked Sister Constance to watch me while she went out of town for a work interview, but her bus, it crashed off a jagged ravine. Sister Constance did not know anything about us except that we lived in Paris, were alone in the world but for one another, and came often to her church."
Elena's mother looked up when Elena didn't respond.
Touching her hand to Elena's hair, she shook her head. "My strong baby, with such a heart. Do not be sad--it was so long ago, in another life." Marguerite gave Elena a piece of the sparkly fabric to touch. "My mother's eyes were the same color as Ariel's and her skin was darker than yours--like she had soaked in more of the sun, but other than that, you are a pretty little copy of her."
"That's why my name is Elena." It wasn't her real name, but it was the name she liked best other than Ellie. Elieanora was so long and complicated.
"Yes, just like my maman. Elena was her home name, too." Lines forming between her eyebrows, Marguerite said, "I know it was not her true name, but I cannot remember people calling her anything but Elena." A smile, a shake of her shoulders. "No bebe knows her mama's true name."
"Beth is too small but I know. It's Marguerite Deveraux," Elena said proudly from where she sat atop the bench attached to the old-fashioned sewing machine her mother preferred over the new one Elena's father wanted to buy her; she kicked her legs as she watched her mother while Beth played with her toys on the blanket Marguerite had spread out on the floor.
Belle and Ariel were at school but Elena had been allowed to stay home because she had a cough. Actually, she could've gone to school, but Marguerite had smiled and cuddled her and said, "So, my cherie wants her maman today. We will be naughty and let you play hooky, oui?"
Elena loved her mother's accent, loved the lyrical beauty of it, loved how gentle Marguerite always sounded. She tried to speak that way sometimes, but her accent was plain old American, her voice that of a child, not Marguerite's husky gentleness. Now her mother laughed. "You are smart, my baby."
Smiles filled her insides. "Can I see the photo?" Elena asked, excited to know something about her grandmother.
Marguerite's smile was soft, a little sad again. "It was lost in a fire that burned my apartment building not long before I met your papa." She moved the scissors with a graceful hand, the fabric falling cleanly away on either side.
Belle was going to wear the skirt with a white shirt she'd got for Christmas. Elena had helped pick the shirt and her papa had bought it. It made her happy her big sister liked it so much.
"Oh," she said, really sad for her mama that she didn't have a picture of her own mama. "Do you remember the photo?"
"Oui, of course." Sparkly eyes met Elena's, so much delight in them that she felt as if the bubbles of happiness would lift her right up.
Her mother was full of sparkles, full of happiness. When Elena was around her, she just wanted to dance, wanted to laugh. Clapping her hands today, she held out her arms. Marguerite laughed and came over to lift her up and smack a kiss on her mouth. "You are a petite monkey, Elena," she said when Elena wrapped her arms and legs around her and refused to let go.
Then Beth got up on her plump little legs, held up her own arms.
"I think this little bebe wants a kiss, too." Going down to the blanket after Elena released her, Marguerite picked up Beth and sat with her in her lap.
Elena took a cross-legged position across from her and made funny faces at Beth.
Her baby sister giggled, tiny hands pressed to her mouth.
"When I see you, Elena, I see my mother," Marguerite said. "The same hair"--she ran the strands through the fingers of one hand--"the same kind of bones in the face, the same smile." A deep smile of her own, though the sparkles were gone. "You carry my Jeffrey in you, too. His expression, so serious at times."
Laughter again, bubbling out of Marguerite as if it simply could not be contained. "I had to teach your papa to laugh, cherie. He was such a solemn man when I met him--but I could see the goodness in his heart, and I knew he was mine, this quiet American who sat in one corner of the cafe where I waitressed."
A secret light in her face that made Elena want to smile, too, this story one of her favorites to hear her mother tell. "He never ordered anything until I came to take his order, your papa. It used to annoy the other waitstaff until they decided to find it romantic, and then of course, it was all right. A man can be foolish in Paris if he is being romantic also."
Elena didn't quite understand all of what her mother was telling her, but she could feel the joy radiating through her mother's words and that was enough. "What did Papa order?"
"Always the same." Marguerite shook her head, putting Beth back down on the blanket when she started to wriggle. "A black coffee and toast." She threw up her hands. "I started ignoring him and bringing him whatever I felt like. Croissants fresh from the oven, eggs so exquisitely flavored, bacon smoked with apples, special cereals that we created fresh every morning. And he ate each thing."
Marguerite laughed. "Until one day, he ordered for two--black coffee and a frothy chocolat with hazelnut. My favorite, you see."
Her mother cupped Elena's face in her hands, her expression oddly solemn all at once. "I remember--in the photograph, my mother is holding me and I'm a bebe wrapped up in a soft blanket." A sudden frown between her eyebrows. "There was a mark on one edge, azeeztee. A monogram it is called in English, I think: M.E." A sudden smile. "So perhaps my last name was an E
word."
*
They'd had so much fun coming up with possible last names that started with E. At the time, Elena had thought it the best day ever, but there had been other days as wonderful.
Marguerite had been a dazzling butterfly who loved pretty clothes, coffee dates with friends, and going out to dance with her husband, but she'd also been an affectionate, loving mother. For all her interests and wide circle of friends, her husband and children had been the center of her existence.
"M.E.," she murmured to Raphael, her heart trying to hold on to the echo of those bubbles of joy. "I have initials to explore as well as just the unique nature of my grandmother's looks."
"You may be in luck," her archangel said. "The Luminata, when they aren't engaged in the quest for luminescence, seek to gather wisdom, so you may discover something in their archives. And your bloodline does have a vampire in it somewhere. Perhaps it was in the time of your grandmother."
It still sent a shiver up Elena's spine to know she had a vampire relative; Raphael had scented power in the blood that had soaked into the quilt Marguerite had lovingly sewn for her daughter, the kind of power that wasn't a mortal thing. That blood had been mere drops from where her mother had pricked herself while sewing, but it had carried enough strength to hum to Raphael's senses.
"Weird to think that one of my ancestors might still be out there, living their life."
Raphael shook his head. "A vampire strong enough to have sired a bloodline that carried a certain level of power through time wouldn't normally drop all contact with those he sired. But of course, there are always exceptions."
And vampires, Elena knew too well, weren't true immortals. They could die. "I know my vamp great-grandma or -grandpops is probably long dead, but still, it'd satisfy my curiosity to unearth the truth."
A sudden chill shook her, her skin pebbling.
"Elena?"
Shaking her head, she joined Raphael at the door, the two of them due at the Tower for a meeting with Dmitri. "Nothing. Just someone walking over my grave."
*
She and Raphael flew to the Tower without playing in the sky today. When they landed on a high balcony, the wind lifted up Raphael's hair like a lover that couldn't stay away. She didn't blame it. Some nights, she just lay there and played with the midnight silk of it, her wing draped over him with unhidden possessiveness.