But there’s something of my own strong build and features in this new persona I’ve created: an in-joke for an audience of one. Irina looked breakable, which is something I will never, ever be, or permit myself to seem.
I could pass as a citizen of almost anywhere; I’m both anonymous and unique, interesting to gaze on, but just shy of true beauty. I’m a deliberate collection of quirks.
‘Who the hell are you supposed to be?’ Ryan says, staring into my face.
‘Close your mouth,’ I tell him, laughing softly. ‘What do you think?’
I do a little twirl on the spot, resting my hand high upon the curve of my left hip, the way Irina would.
I’m wearing ordinary-looking clothes: a black, hooded goose-down jacket over a heavy, black, rollneck sweater, skinny, dark grey jeans and soft, sand-coloured, flat-soled boots that end just below the knee. They’re all fake, of course, all props, shifted out of the very energy of which I’m made. Here because I need them.
Ryan blinks several times as he studies me. ‘This isn’t funny — I don’t know you like this,’ he says finally.
I frown as I drift slowly up the stairs towards him. ‘Look closer. You recognised me inside Carmen, inside Lela, in Irina, when you shouldn’t have been able to. I’m the same person I always was. It’s just a shell. I’m still here,’ I insist. ‘You know me.’
I sit down beside him, but he shifts away, as if horrified by what I’ve done.
‘What else are you people capable of?’ he breathes. ‘Every time I think I’ve come to terms with what you are, what you can do, you freak me out all over again. I just got you back, damn it! I just got you back and you go and do this.’
‘They won’t be looking for someone wearing this face or form,’ I say sharply. ‘It’ll keep us alive.’
Ryan’s eyes flash. ‘That may be. But you’re still glowing. They’re gonna see that, right? If you could, uh, dial down the whole shining thing, well then, maybe it would work.’ He flicks the fingers of one hand at the gleaming surface of my skin.
I freeze, astonished that I could have forgotten such a fundamental detail.
‘What would I do without you?’ I murmur, staring down at my luminous hands.
When I was Carmen, I’d only ever glowed very faintly in the dark, when there were no other sources of light around. In the daylight, I’d looked like everyone else. But I can’t afford to do even that now — glow in the dark — not when the stakes are so high and any tiny slip up could get us killed. Ryan’s right: I need to ‘dial down the whole shining thing’ altogether. But can I do it?
I bend my will inwards, the way I’ve relearnt to do, imagine locking the light away inside me, the way my soul was anchored deep inside the human vessels the Eight procured for me over centuries. Ryan gasps as the glow that surrounds me begins to dull and fade until I’m indistinguishable from the darkness inside the tower. I hold the light cupped inside, buried so far down that only I could know it’s there.
‘What do you think?’ I ask again softly, my voice seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. ‘Dialled down enough for you?’
Ryan is silent for a long time. His eyes appear blind as they struggle to pinpoint me. I realise suddenly that he can’t see me at all.
I can feel his apprehension. He thinks I’ll leave him behind, because he’s useless. But he’s so wrong. He’s my reality check, my secret weapon, the only real reason I’m still holding myself together. Everything I value in life is right here beside me, close enough to touch.
‘I’m lucky to have you,’ I say fervently, and I mean it.
Ryan replies flatly out of the darkness, ‘I don’t see how. I can’t do what you do. I lost everything at the Galleria — I left my duffle bag with the coat-check girl, dropped my pack, which had a tonne of things in it, useful things. All I have is my phone, my wallet, passport, a folded-up picture of you that looks nothing like you, not any more. I’m bringing exactly zip to this little “mission” of ours. I can’t do any … magic,’ he ends falteringly, ‘not your kind, anyway. I’ll just hold you up. Get you killed.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Ryan,’ I whisper, reaching out and taking his hand unerringly in the darkness. ‘Right now, I couldn’t do this “magic” without you, and that’s the truth.’
He gives my hand an answering squeeze, and I feel his relief.
‘So you’ve still got my back?’ I remind him sternly of his words.
‘Always,’ he replies without hesitation. ‘Even when I can’t see a damned thing.’
I laugh and pull him to his feet, and he’s suddenly take charge, like the Ryan I remember from Paradise.
‘We need to get our bearings,’ he says, gripping me tightly, not letting me withdraw. ‘Work out how we’re supposed to get out of here without attracting any attention. But this place won’t open for hours. So, first, I want to see how far we’ve come, where we crash-landed.’
‘You crash-landed,’ I say sheepishly, turning him in the direction of the roof.
Ryan’s usually possessed of a natural, athlete’s grace; strength in every sense of the word. But the darkness has robbed him of any certainty and he stumbles as we begin to climb up the winding, uneven staircase in the dark. Even our linked fingers, my own unfaltering eyesight, can’t make him see where the handholds, steps and landings begin and end. In the light, the staircase defies logic. In the dark, to human eyes, it’s an impossibility.
‘We need to get back to the lakeside town I saw in my dream,’ I say over the laboured sound of Ryan’s breathing, the scuff of his boot heels on the stone. ‘I think I know where she is; there was a villa there, a large estate, with a smaller outbuilding of some kind, and a pier, on the water. I can still see it all in my head. We’ll work our way from there, okay?’
The plan sounds better than it is. Ryan can’t know that, at this point, there are way more holes than plan. What town? What villa? Where do I even begin to locate them when all I have are visual cues I picked up in a dream in the dead of night?
I’m pounded by another sudden wave of dizziness, and am so shaken, overwhelmed and nauseated that I think I will pass out. I don’t think I’ve ever been more afraid of the task ahead, and it makes me miss a step.
Even sightless as he is, Ryan catches me before I fall, his strong hands grasping me around the waist unerringly.
He turns me to him clumsily. ‘Forget what I said before,’ he breathes, feeling for the contours of my face. ‘Glow or no glow, whatever you look like, you’re still beautiful, and I’d know you anywhere.’
In the dark, Ryan can’t see me searching his face. He can’t see in my eyes all the fear I feel for him. Before I can change my mind, I reach up and pull his head down to me, kiss him lightly, lingeringly, upon the lips, before drawing back.
I ignore the lick of fire that thrills through me like live current that seems to whisper: Forbidden.
It’s just a kiss, I tell myself fiercely. I must have done so much worse, in my time.
Beneath my hands, Ryan is shocked into stillness.
What I feel for him is so different from what I felt for Luc. Loss, sorrow, regret: these things are already built into every word we utter, every glance we share, accompanying us moment by moment, like spectres at a feast. They only serve to heighten the complex, hard-won love that has somehow flowered between us. People say that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. But I do know. What we have is precious and rare, and so utterly terrifying.
I can tell that Ryan hadn’t really expected me to kiss him again. Not after what happened the last time. He’d actually meant what he’d said about crumbs being enough. He’d been teasing me when he talked of tolerance levels and comfort zones.
His love is so humbling that I’m suddenly glad he can’t see me.
‘Maybe that’s the secret to working “us” out,’ I laugh awkwardly to cover my terror, ‘taking it one tiny step at a time.’
‘Here’s to more steps like that one,?
?? Ryan answers shakily.
‘You deserve so much more than this,’ I murmur. ‘Than me.’
I can’t bring myself to tell him I love him, for fear it’ll all go to hell the way Luc and I did. I’m cursed, and maybe I always will be.
‘I couldn’t even dream up someone like you,’ Ryan mutters, his hands tightening on me, drawing me closer, wanting more, in the human way of things.
But then I hear the sound of something mechanical, far, far below us. A noise so faint it could be the sound a pebble makes hitting the bottom of a dry well.
‘What is it?’ Ryan says, confused, as something primal flares in me, some instinct for danger.
Fear propels me instantly into motion. I start moving upwards again, hauling him along by the front of his leather jacket.
‘C’è qualcuno?’ a man says below, faintly but clearly in Italian. Is anyone there?
‘Cosa c’è?’ another voice replies sharply, also in Italian, also male. What is it?
‘Noises — listen,’ the first man replies.
Ryan’s footfalls, his laboured breathing, sound so terribly loud.
‘I hear nothing; you’re jumping at shadows,’ the second voice says dismissively after a pause.
‘I tell you, I heard something,’ the first man insists.
‘Pietro’s voice is loud enough to wake the dead,’ comes the reply. ‘He’s probably on his way to meet us with the others.’
There’s the faint sound of tapping. The noises move steadily closer, and I’m starting to pick up the interior buzz the two men give out, as if each carries a hive inside him: of thought, feeling, imagery, energy.
‘Ryan,’ I say, my voice low and desperate. ‘You have to hurry. We can’t be seen here. We can’t be questioned.’
‘By who?’ Ryan says, exasperated, unable to hear the echo of footsteps from below. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I tell you, there’s someone up there!’ The first voice is insistent. ‘Pietro?’ he calls.
‘We can’t be found here, Ryan!’ I hiss, exploding back into motion. ‘I won’t allow myself to be trapped again.’
We stumble towards the doorway that leads out onto the lower level of the roof. As we exit beneath the stone lintel onto the north-facing walkway, I’m immediately hit with a sensation of vertigo so powerful, I have to lean against the inner wall, let Ryan take in the jaw-dropping view on his own until the world ceases to buckle around me.
When my sight grows clearer, I see a faint pink line streaking the far horizon, growing steadily all the time, eating away the edges of night, the roofline of the Galleria smouldering to our left. Though there are miles of open sky all around me, I feel like a rat in a cage.
‘We have to hide!’ I tell Ryan pleadingly.
Ryan doesn’t turn, still awed by the whole of Milan spread out before him. ‘Not before we get our bearings, Merce, there’s still time. There’s no one up here and a million places to hide.’
He tries to draw me towards a double row of intricate stone lacework, the stones set one behind the other like shark’s teeth, that forms a kind of natural barrier to the dizzying drop below.
‘Come see,’ he says, leaning out, looking down. ‘It’s so beautiful. You’re never going to fall. Not when you’re with me.’
I shake my head, look back fearfully at the doorway we just came through. But Ryan takes me by the hands and draws me in front of him, crossing his arms around my waist, pulling me against him so firmly that I cannot move, cannot fall.
His cheek is against mine as he says, ‘Look. Just look. It won’t erase what he did to you — nothing could ever do that — but every time you face down your fear is an act of defiance.’
Just for a moment, against my better judgment, I let myself lean into Ryan. And though I must close my eyes briefly to overcome a chill horror at the distance we are from the ground, little by little I find myself gazing further outward, taking in the march of rainwashed streets and buildings that appear to crowd right up to the horizon in every direction. Milan seems to radiate outwards from the Duomo as if the cathedral is the city’s literal heart.
I turn in his arms and point shakily to the north, at the line of hills I see there, purple in the wintry light, the jagged line of mountains rising behind them. ‘That’s where we need to be.’
I peer down at the northern edge of the Piazza del Duomo so far below. Immediately to the Galleria’s right, opposite us, stands an undamaged stone building roughly the same height, with a series of imposing arches marking the ground-level entryway. Solid and austere, it has a modern rooftop terrace with a curve-fronted glass and steel structure rising behind it. Both are deserted at this hour. A barrier of live greenery about chest height runs along all three sides of the terrace, and there’s a head-high barrier of glass and steel that stands between the hedge and a collection of outdoor umbrellas and groups of matching tables and chairs, set out in neat rows.
‘Seems close enough to touch, doesn’t it?’ Ryan says, echoing my own thoughts. ‘It’s like we could just step down and take a seat. If you ignore the, uh, massive drop.’
Then time seems to slow, and speed up, at the same time.
For I see three men appear on the stairs at the far end of the walkway, all dressed in plain, black, heavy robes and shapeless black overcoats, a small stain of white at the base of each man’s throat. They are framed in a succession of flying buttresses with identical rectangular doorways set beneath them, each doorway cut to the exact same dimensions as the next; the whole vista so detailed, so dreamlike, it could have been lifted from a work by Escher. The old men stop dead at the sight of us, just standing there. The one in the lead gives a shout.
I feel Ryan’s arms go rigid around me as he sees them for the first time.
‘State lì! Stop! We would talk with you!’ the priest says, flinging one hand out towards us.
My head fills with the sound of their distinct energies, their peculiar human signatures, drawing closer and getting noisier as they move towards us along the walkway. I take in the terrifying drop before me — almost one hundred and fifty feet down — and feel the chill wind of vertigo sweep through me, that sensation of falling as if I will never, ever stop.
The elderly priest, arm still outstretched, shouts from the other end of the narrow corridor of stone, ‘Che vuole con noi?’ What do you want with us?
‘Pietro? Is that you?’ I hear from inside the stairwell.
I feel that sense of convergence strengthening, the cacophony of five separate living beings moving towards me, all set at different frequencies, concerned with vastly different issues, their thoughts a mixture of the alarmed and the mundane.
‘Mercy!’ Ryan gasps, turning his face in the direction of the new voice, then back towards me. ‘What do we do?’
I turn to face him, grip him fiercely by the arms. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ I say feverishly. ‘You and me?’
‘You know it is,’ he gasps, ‘but why do you ask?’
His last word turns into a yelp as I grasp him tightly beneath the arms and vault onto a carved stone finial that forms part of the first of the stone barriers. We teeter for an instant as I take in the way the tiled roof drops away from me into the second barrier and then into empty … space.
‘Mercy!’ Ryan yells, unable to process what he’s seeing: the ground so far below. I’m doing the impossible, balancing here, taking the whole of his weight easily when there’s no solid ground beneath his feet, or mine.
But Ryan’s with me, and if he’s with me, I won’t ever fall. That’s what he told me and it’s what I tell myself now.
I turn my head for an instant, the chill breeze lifting the curling ends of my dark hair, my eyes narrowing first on the astonished trio of men clustered at one end of the roof, then on the young man with dark eyes and close-cropped dark hair just emerging from the stairwell to my right.
Then I snap my eyes forward. Look at the place I need to get to, where I need to be. It?
??s funny how desperation feels a little like love. Makes you do things your conscious mind would never countenance.
But I am what I am, and that means I will always have a choice.
And then I throw myself into thin air, Ryan held fast in my arms.
‘Mercy!’ he yells again, feeling the magnetic pull of the world beneath us.
Though I am beset by fears that none of my kind has ever faced before, I soar — against gravity, against all reason.
Freedom is all that matters. Freedom, and Ryan.
As I cross the abyss that lies between one solid surface and another, I know that I am power, and that I’m back.
I land badly as usual, on the rooftop terrace beyond the double barrier of greenery, glass and steel I’d glimpsed from the roof of the Duomo, almost taking out a row of chairs and tables. One seat teeters for a moment, then makes an iron clanging sound as it falls over. It sounds like an explosion.
We were there, and now we’re here, and it’s only taken seconds. I’m exultant, half-disbelieving, yet also strangely clear-headed. Ryan was right. Every time I face down my fear is an act of defiance that can only make me stronger.
I release my death grip on Ryan, who sways a little on the spot, wordless at feeling a new surface beneath his feet. I look back at the Duomo and see five figures in black gathered beyond the barriers of stone that resemble shark’s teeth. They’re waving their hands, discussing us heatedly. I see the younger one, the one from the stairs, run back up the walkway and disappear. The old priest stares down at us across the chasm, awe and astonishment on his lined face.