Seeing Percival, Otterley sauntered to his side, slid a long bare arm through his arm, and led him into the crowd as if he were an invalid. Every man and woman in the room watched Otterley. If they had not done business with his sister, they knew her from her work on various family boards or by the incessant social calendar she maintained. Their friends and acquaintances were wary of his sister. No one could afford to displease Otterley Grigori.
“And where have you been hiding?” Otterley asked Percival, narrowing her eyes in a reptilian stare. She had been raised in London, where their father still resided, and her crisp British accent had a particularly sharp sting when she became irritated.
“I doubt very much that you’re feeling lonely,” Percival said, glancing at the crowd.
“One is never alone with Mother,” Otterley replied, tart. “She makes these things more elaborate each week.”
“She’s here somewhere, I assume?”
Otterley’s expression hardened in irritation. “Last I checked, she was receiving admirers at her throne.”
They walked to the far end of the room, past a wall of French windows that seemed to invite one to step through their thick, transparent depths and float out above the foggy, snow-laden city. Anakim, the class of servants the Grigoris and all well-bred families kept, stepped in their path and cut away. More champagne, sir? Madam? Dressed entirely in black, the Anakim were shorter and smaller-boned than the class of beings they served. In addition to their black uniforms, his mother insisted that they wear their wings exposed, to distinguish them from her guests. The difference in shape and span was marked. Whereas the pure class of guests had muscular, feathered wings, the servants’ wings were light as film, webs of gossamer tissue that appeared washed in sheets of gray opalescence. Because of the wings’ structure-they resembled nothing so much as the wings of an insect-the servants flew with precise, quick movements that allowed great accuracy. They had huge yellow eyes, high cheekbones, and pale skin. Percival had witnessed a flight of Anakim during the Second World War, when a swarm of servants had descended upon a caravan of humans fleeing the bombing of London. The servants ripped the wretched people apart with ease. After this episode Percival understood why the Anakim were believed to be capricious and unpredictable beings fit only to serve their superiors.
Every few steps Percival recognized family friends and acquaintances, their crystal champagne flutes catching the light. Conversations melted into the air, leaving the impression of one continual velvety drone of gossip. He overheard talk of holidays and yachts and business ventures, conversation that characterized his mother’s friends as much as the flash of diamonds and the sparkling cruelty of their laughter. The guests looked upon him from every corner, taking in his shoes, his watch, pausing to examine the cane and finally-seeing Otterley-realizing that the sick, disheveled gentleman was Percival Grigori III, heir to the Grigori name and fortune.
Finally they reached their mother, Sneja Grigori, stretched out upon her favorite divan, a beautiful and imposing piece of Gothic furniture with serpents carved into the wood frame. Sneja had gained weight in the decades since her move to New York and wore only loose, flowing tunics that draped against her body in silken sheets. She’d splayed her lush, brilliant-colored wings behind her, folded and arranged to great effect, as if displaying the family’s jewels. As Percival approached, he was nearly blinded by their luminosity, each delicate feather shimmering like a sheet of tinted foil. Sneja’s wings were the pride of the family, the height of their beauty proof of the purity of their heritage. It was a mark of distinction that Percival’s maternal grandmother had been endowed with multicolored wings that stretched over thirty-six feet, a span that had not been seen in a thousand years. It was rumored that such wings had served as models for the angels of Fra Angelico, Lorenzo Monaco, and Botticini. Wings, Sneja had once told Percival, were a symbol of their blood, their breeding, the predominance of their position in the community. Displaying them properly brought power and prestige, and it was no small disappointment that neither Otterley nor Percival had given Sneja an heir to carry on the family endowment.
Which was precisely the reason it annoyed Percival that Otterley hid her wings. Instead of displaying them, as one would expect, she insisted upon keeping them folded tight against her body, as if she were some common hybrid and not a member of one of the most prestigious angelic families in the United States. Percival understood that the ability to retract one’s wings was a great tool, especially when in mixed society. Indeed, it gave one the ability to move in human society without being detected. But in private company it was an offense to keep one’s wings hidden.
Sneja Grigori greeted Otterley and Percival, lifting a hand so that it might be kissed by her children. “My cherubs,” she said, her voice deep, her accent vaguely Germanic, a remnant of her Austrian childhood in the House of Hapsburg. Pausing, she narrowed her eyes and examined Otterley’s necklace-a globular pink diamond solitaire sunk in an antique setting. “What a superior piece of jewelry,” she said, as if surprised to find such a treasure about her daughter’s neck.
“Don’t you recognize it?” Otterley said, lightly. “It is one of Grandmother’s pieces.”
“Is it?” Sneja lifted the diamond between her thumb and forefinger so that light played off the faceted surface. “I would think I should recognize it, but it seems quite foreign to me. It is from my room?”
“No,” Otterley replied, her manner guarded.
“Isn’t it from the vault, Otterley?” Percival asked.
Otterley pursed her lips, giving him a look that told him at once that he had given his sister away.
“Ah, well, that would explain its mystery,” Sneja said. “I haven’t been to the vault in so long I’ve completely forgotten its contents. Are all of my mother’s pieces as brilliant as this?”
“They are lovely, Mother,” Otterley said, her composure shaken. Otterley had been taking pieces from the vault for years without their mother noticing.
“I simply adore this piece in particular,” Sneja said. “Perhaps I will have to make a midnight trip to the vault? It may be time to do an inventory.”
Without hesitation Otterley unfastened the necklace and placed it in her mother’s hand. “It will look stunning on you, Mother,” she said. Then, without waiting for her mother’s reaction, or perhaps to mask the anguish of giving up such a jewel, Otterley turned on her stiletto heels and slinked back into the crowd, her dress clinging to her as if wet.
Sneja held the necklace to the light-it burst into a ball of liquid fire-before dropping it into her beaded evening clutch. Then she turned to Percival, as if suddenly recalling that her only son had witnessed her victory. “It is rather funny,” Sneja said. “Otterley thinks I am unaware that she’s been stealing my jewelry these twenty-five years.”
Percival laughed. “You haven’t let on that you’ve known. If you had, Otterley would have stopped ages ago.”
His mother waved the observation away as if it were a fly. “I know everything that goes on in this family,” she said, adjusting herself on the divan so that the arch of a wing caught the light. “Including the fact that you have not been taking proper care of yourself. You must rest more, eat more, sleep more. Things cannot simply go on as usual. It is time to make preparations for the future.”