My Soul to Take (42 page)

“Then he would lose her power for the Cleansing,” Dawit said. “He wants hers too.”

“He doesn’t want to hurt me,” Fana said. “But he would kill me if he had to. It would be … crippling, I think. But better than dying. So I can’t hurt Michel without hurting myself. Weakening myself. I might lose gifts.”

“It might be worth it, Fana,” Jessica said. “Why take a chance on changing his mind?”

“We’re stronger as two,” Fana said.

“You’re strong enough as one,” Jessica said.

“Be decisive,” Dawit said. “If he’s torn, you have the advantage.”

“Don’t try to shun the Shadows entirely, Fana,” Teka said. “Use them for strength. Learn them. But always distinguish between them and you.”

Jessica gave her a small mirror. “Have a way to know who you are,” Jessica said. The car key still dangled from her hand. Jessica had never let go of it.

“Be vigilant, Fana,” Dawit said. “He’s declared his plans to overtake you.”

The room was like a library, or a museum. The first thing Phoenix had noticed was the original da Vinci painting of a mother and child hanging over the fireplace in a protective glass case. Phoenix had never learned to be moved by the painting’s cross or the child’s destiny, but the artwork made her miss her son so much that she nearly swooned. What other hardships had Mary borne for her child? What were her stories?

Phoenix was surrounded by others, but she still felt alone, except for the painting.

Phoenix couldn’t stop thinking about Michel’s eyes from the courtyard, their first meeting. Even while Michel had been introducing her to his followers, his dead eyes had told Phoenix that he
would gladly arrange her abduction again, without a rescue this time.

Michel was loathsome, and he stank. Phoenix had brushed up against something hot and tarry when she walked within ten feet of him—the Shadows? She wanted to go somewhere and wash the smell of him off her, but she couldn’t leave Fana alone.

Fana might go to him at any time.

Fana might already be gone.

Phoenix heard a beautiful solo, a soprano’s song, and realized it was the music from her own arm capering across the violin’s strings. Middle Eastern, East African, and something she didn’t know. Fana was conducting the fast-paced melody from inside her, the way Scott Joplin’s ghost had.

PLEASE PLAY FOR ME
, Fana whispered.
Play
and
pray
were so much alike, Phoenix did both. Rami followed Phoenix’s lead. Since Rami was a telepath, playing with him was like hearing her own thoughts in harmony. The sensation lifted her higher, floating above the room. She would need to float. Fana expected Phoenix to follow her across the planes between life and death, calling to her with music.

Phoenix’s arm improvised on its own from what Fana had taught her, and Rami both led and followed. The music trilled, raced, and played. She and Rami mined the notes between the notes. They veered into rhythms and basslines, plucking motion into the air. They were playing “Party Patrol,” a song she had once believed was silly. Beneath her.

“Yes!” Fana cried, elated. She jumped to her feet. “I love this song! I want to dance!”

To remember her body, Fana danced.

F
ana’s skin was still sweating as she made her way down the hall, this time without the mortal girl Inez to lead her, or her sweet Fasilidas trailing behind. Shallow panting followed her, bouncing from Michel’s stone walls; she had to remind herself that the panting was hers. Her heart was still dancing.

Michel wasn’t in his studio. His stoic void met her at the oak door. The door was locked; she rattled the lock open with her thoughts, as effortlessly as a cat burglar, but the canvases stood alone in the darkened room. No one pitched across the painted rain forest and thick wooden beams on the high ceiling. Michel’s absence seared her.

Fana pulsed for him, searching for his thoughtstreams, but he didn’t answer. He had told her he didn’t want to lead her. He was giving her a way to change her mind.

Fana was as desperate to find Michel as she had once been to flee him. Now that she was ready, she didn’t want to wait. She would never be stronger, fresh from a circle with her family and the music of their voices. Fresh from dancing! She could have danced until dawn, but Fana had reached the limits of her body. The Blood link to him blotted everything.

“Michel?” she called, knowing how much he liked to hear his name.

But he resisted. He was going to make her come to him.

A small shadow moving in short lurches near the floor stopped Fana’s steps. Her eyes focused in the dark: Adam was wandering the halls. He jumped to her, climbing to her shoulder. Adam immediately began grooming her, picking at her hair.

Fana swatted at his careless tugging. “Adam, where’s Michel?”

“The Most High is nowhere and everywhere,” the chatter monkey said, sounding more lucid than usual, more human. Already thoroughly indoctrinated.

“Have you seen
Michel
?” Fana said.

Adam shrieked laughter, leaping from her shoulder to a shelf. “There’s nobody named Michel!” he said. “Michel doesn’t live here!” Adam rounded the corner, amused by his lie.

Chatter monkeys weren’t guides, Fana remembered.

Fana followed a hidden memory, tracing the winding, private stairway one flight up at the far west of the building, past the collection of silent paintings on the wall, impassive eyes watching her climb. Michel’s bedchamber might be the only room on the floor, nestled in a corner away from the soaring cathedral; far from the sealed chamber that echoed its sorrows even now, the one that housed his Cleansing Pool.

The walls seemed to tremble. He was close. The smell of the Shadows wafted gently from the floor, and Fana inhaled. Her mind sharpened.

Michel was in his room, waiting for her, she realized. He had known that she would come.

The wing was dark, and his door was nearly closed, open a crack to let out a sliver of light. Music floated from the room. Had he plucked the music from her recollections? It was Cuban music the way her father had taught her to love it, at its roots. La Reina, Celia Cruz, singing an old love song in her earthly, impassioned warble.
Tuya y Más Que Tuya
, she sang. Yours and More than Yours. She sang of dreams of her beloved lulling her to sleep.

Michel had given her music on her first visit, she remembered, a song called “Black Tears,” as sad as their meeting; as inevitable as their parting. The sound of grief, about a connection so deep that it could cause you to die.

Michel knew the right language for her.

Michel’s room was large, of polished medieval brick, barely furnished except for a bed elevated ten feet from the ground, jutting from the wall, and a sofa and bookshelves on the floor for reading. Except for rugs, his room looked more like a tomb.

Michel’s three Sanctus Cruor robes hung in a glass case across the room, suspended in a shrine to his duty. The case had rows of light bulbs, but the lights had been turned off. Fana hoped the Most High was gone for the night.

Michel was near his tall picture window, staring outside at the waking sky as he hovered a foot above the ground. He bobbed slightly, floating in a gentle sea. Michel’s crimson silk pajamas shone in the moonlight. Without trying to, Fana noticed his open pajama shirt.

As soon as she stepped across his threshold, one headache died, replaced by another. Her mind was falling into sections that didn’t remember how to knit together, clamoring for him.

Michel didn’t look at her. “I hope I didn’t scare your mother,” he said.

“Of course you scared her. But I’m glad she saw.” Fana hadn’t come to chide him. She was glad her mother had stayed, that she could hear the muffled burr of her mother’s thoughts.

“Are you here to wake me, Fana?” Michel said. “Or to put me to sleep?”

He had been listening to them, of course. He always listened.

“I don’t know,” Fana said. “Is this all another lie, Michel? Your way of bringing me here? If you’re forcing me here, I can never trust you. I will kill you. Don’t doubt it.”

“You’ll try,” he corrected her. “Just as others will try.”

He knew why she was in his room, so he could afford to be blunt.

“I’m not others,” Fana said.

“Your mother’s voice …” Michel murmured.

“This is
my
voice.”

Michel floated, skating across the opposite wall as quickly as a shadow. “The truth, Fana?” he said. Her heart jumped at the endless possibilities for his lies.

“Always.”

“My pain is real. But did I share it with you to bring you here tonight?
Non lo so
. I can’t say. My abilities hide from me, yours hide from you. Teka, our teacher, recognizes our union, the call of our Blood. So does the Prophecy. I’ve taken every precaution,
far too many, so I know I haven’t tried to pull you. But
si
, I have wondered too.”

Michel’s intentions mattered. That was what she had told her father.

“Teka is
our
teacher?” she said, surprised.

Finally, Michel smiled at her, a hint of warmth beyond their transaction. “Of course. I will teach you the Shadows, and he will teach me the Rising. Did you think I don’t want to learn your ways? Why should you know things I don’t?” His grin was a promise.

Michel’s smile, such a rare sight, trapped her again, his essence shining in his eyes. They were poised at the edge of themselves. The air swelled with his presence near her, along the side wall. The ache in Fana’s head made her grind her teeth together, hard.

“Promise you won’t try to take me tonight,” she said.

“Promise you won’t try to kill me tonight.”

Neither of them promised, but neither of them mentioned the Cleansing.

Could this be the only place and time for them?

An image in the corner of Fana’s vision took her eyes to the massive mural on the wall. She had to turn to see it behind her: a perfect rendering of her engagement dinner to Michel a year ago. Hers was the only face visible. Fana had forgotten how Caitlin had dressed her dreadlocks with countless white bows, and the white dress she had worn for Michel, which made her look festive somehow. Or the bright red lipstick her mother had painted on her lips, remembering her lesson from Gramma Bea. Her grandmother was in the portrait, too.

Now Michel was behind her. She hadn’t heard him fly to her, or his feet lighting on the floor, but her shoulder brushed against his chest. He stood only close enough to let her know he was there, so she would feel how much he wanted her. Fire roared over her as her body and mind conspired, feeding each other.

“This is beautiful, Michel,” she said.

“Only the woman is beautiful,” he said. “You are beautiful, Fana.”

He slid his arm gently around her waist, but he didn’t whisper thoughts to her. Even as he touched her, his hot skin pressing to her, he kept his distance. He gave her one last chance.

Then …

Michel swayed with her to the music, gently changing it for her ears, his mental touch nearly soft enough not to notice. Suddenly, Celia was singing in a chorus with Benny Moré and Vicente Fernandez, while Mario Bauzá’s orchestra built a wall of sound to embrace them, an army of brass. She heard Michel’s tender words buried in the music:
COME TO ME, FANA
.

A pathway opened, a sun’s worth of light. He ruptured himself for her, showing more than he’d planned, surrendering to his need to fuse with her.

Be decisive
, her father had said.

Fana decided.

Fana’s jump felt more like flying. First she rose only a few feet, cool air caressing her face.
Yes, I’ve always wanted to fly
. Far away, maybe a solar system away, his lips kissed the side of her neck, kneading her flesh into a ball of sensation. Fana smelled the paint from his mural, saw colors blending. Then Fana raced beyond sights, smells, and skin, tumbling and twirling, tossed in the midst of their storm.

Then …

She chose you tonight, but she will not choose your way.

If you cannot prevent her suffering, honor her by enjoying it.

Feed from her. Let it begin.

His father’s voice chased Michel because his father’s voice, by now, was his own.

Forgive me, Fana
.

Michel held Fana as if she were a moth, by a delicate wing. Fana was tumbling, senseless, trying to gather pieces of herself inside him. She liked the feeling of flying, so he disguised the chaos as flight to help her join with him.

Fana was magnificent; a warm, vibrating bath. She was so clear, so crisp! Her beauty made him ache to fill himself with her, to follow her currents. Just to peek …

But no time.
Now
.

Fana had offered her gift to his door, her brave sacrifice, and so he would be kind. She would wake without remembering fear or struggle. He would preserve everything about her except her Blood mission. She was gaining strength from him, less confused with every heartbeat, so he couldn’t wait. It would never be easier.

But …

Fana called to Michel from the places he had not seen, so many dots of unexplored light, an undulating massage. How could he preserve what he had never known? He heard her childhood laughter, her untold mysteries.

LET GO OF ME, MICHEL
, she said. Her own voice, still preserved.

Fana would fight, but he could hold her.

For a rare instant, Michel didn’t know what he would do.

Then he let her go. The moth flew free.

He followed her wondrous blaze.

Michel rocked through Fana, his own hurricane. Seeing the shape of him taught her to see new shapes in herself, pulling and expanding her awareness. How had he learned so much without a good teacher, only riding the Shadows? Michel was a miracle. His father had fed him the only way he had known how, but Michel might be as strong as Khaldun. Was she?

Fana sailed through Michel’s strength, wrapping herself in it, wondering how much of it she had given him and how much he had given her, already confused about where she ended and he began. Each new space in him brought a new delight, so much to learn. He reminded her of everything she’d forgotten about how to make rain.