Impossible, that is, unless you happened to have access to magic.
“I’ve heard so much about you, too,” said Zuzana, and Karou saw the glint in her eye that was either a matador sizing up a bull or a bull sizing up a matador. She wasn’t sure which, but Esther had it, too. The look that passed between the two women was mutual regard for a worthy adversary, and Karou was glad they weren’tadversaries, and that they were both on her side.
There was a brief spell of chitchat. The size of the dogs. Room service. The state of Rome. Angels.
It was when Esther said, “I’m just glad Karou had the good sense to come to me,” that a slight nostril flare turned Zuzana’s expression more bull than matador.
“She came to you once before,” Zuzana said, casual with an undercurrent of blame. Karou knew what she was getting at, and tried to intercede.
“Zuze—” she began, but her friend talked over her.
“And I’ve been curious ever since. When Karou came to you for wishes…” She tilted her head and gave the older woman a let’s be honestlook. “You held out on her, didn’t you?”
Esther’s smile winked out, her face going smooth and masklike and wary. Not so grandmotherly now.
“No, Zuze,” Karou said, putting a hand on her friend’s back. They’d argued about this before. “She didn’t. She wouldn’t.” When the portals had burned, last winter, and she’d been desperate to find her chimaera family—desperate for gavriels that could carry her and the thing Razgut up to the sky portal and into Eretz—Karou had gone to Esther first. Esther had said that she had no wish stronger than a lucknow, and Karou had believed her, because why would she lie?
“I did,” said Esther, solemn and… contrite? Karou stared at her.
Did she mean that she hadheld out on her? “What?” she asked, confused.
“Well, I’m sorry to say it, dear, of course, but I didn’t really believe that you would find him. I’m a greedy old woman. If they were the last wishes I was ever going to get, I had to guard them, didn’t I? I can’t tell you how happy I am that I was wrong.”
Karou’s stomach turned over. “You weren’t,” she said.
Esther cocked her head, puzzled. “I wasn’t what?”
“You weren’t wrong. I didn’t find Brimstone. He’s dead.” She laid it out flat, no emotion in her voice, and watched Esther’s face drain of color.
“No, oh no. No,” she murmured, her hand going to her mouth. “Oh, Karou. I didn’t want to believe it.” Her eyes filled up with tears.
“You didn’t tell her yet?” Zuzana asked.
Karou shook her head. So much for breaking it to her gently. Esther had lied to her. When the portals had just burned and she didn’t know anything, when she was battered and bruised from near-death encounters with both Akiva and Thiago, and no gentle treatment from Brimstone himself, she had gone to her for help. She’d been at the lowest point in her life so far, never mind that she was to sink steadily lower and oh so very muchlower over the next months, she hadn’t known that then. She’d trusted Esther, only to find out now that Esther had lied to her face.
She looked genuinely affected, though, and Karou felt some small remorse for telling her so harshly. “Issa’s well,” she said, to soften the blow, adding a silent prayer that it was so.
“I’m glad to hear it.” Esther’s voice was tremulous. “And Yasri? Twiga?”
There was no softening that. Twiga was dead. Yasri was, too, though Yasri’s soul, like Issa’s, had been preserved and left for Karou to find—another hope in a bottle, to relay Brimstone’s very important message. Karou hadn’t been able to go and retrieve her thurible yet, though she knew where it was: in the ruins of the temple of Ellai where she and Akiva had spent their month of sweet nights, a lifetime past.
To Esther, she just gave a small head shake. Resurrection was more than she was willing to go into. Esther no more knew what Brimstone had used the teeth for—and the gems that had been her own trade with him—than Karou had known before she broke the wishbone, and she wasn’t feeling inclined to be forthcoming just now.
“Very many are dead,” she said, trying and failing to keep the emotion out of her voice. “And very many more will die unless we stop these angels and close the portal.”
“And you think you can do that?” asked Esther.
I hope, thought Karou, but she said, simply, “Yes.”
Zuzana spoke up again, and whether she was matador or bull, she was clear-eyed, fixed, and focused. “Some of those wishes wouldn’t be unwelcome now.”
“Oh, well,” said Esther, flustered. “Now I truly don’thave any more. I’m so sorry. If I had only known, I might have conserved them better. Oh, my poor dear,” she said to Karou, clasping her hand.
Zuzana’s mouth was a straight line. “Uh-huh,” was all she said.
Perhaps feeling that some social grace was called for to spackle over Zuzana’s… lack thereof, Mik said, awkwardly, “Well, thanks for the, um, jet. And the hotel and everything.”
“You’re welcome,” said Esther, and Karou felt that the time for introductions and pleasantries—and unpleasantries—had come to an end. There was work to be done.
She turned to her friends. “The bathroom’s down the hall. It’s not too shabby. Clothes are in the big bedroom. Play dress-up.”
Zuzana’s brow creased. “And the others?” She hesitated. “Eliza? Is she… any better?”
A new tension clenched in Karou. What could she say about Eliza? Eliza Jones. What a strange business it was. They only knew her name because she had ID on her, not because she was capable of telling them. From there, a quick Google search had yielded startling results. Elazael, descended of an angel.As crazy as it all sounded—just the kind of thing Zuzana would, once upon a time, have made a T-shirt in mockery of—the fact that she was speaking fluent Seraphic did lend it an undeniable credibility.
As for the things she had saidin Seraphic, they were surpassingly creepy, and flowed out of her in some kind of fugue. And to Zuzana’s question: Wasshe any better? Karou didn’t know how to answer. She had tried, back in Morocco, to use her own gift of healing to mend her, but how could she, when she couldn’t begin to sense what was broken?
Akiva was trying now, in some way of his own, and Karou had hope, leading her friends to the sitting room door, that she might open it and find the two of them just sitting there, deep in conversation.
“In here,” she said, reaching for the doorknob. With a glance back at Esther, she made an effort to smile. She hated tension, and wished, not for the first time, that the older woman was a warmer fish. But she knew, as she had always known, that every time Esther had acted on her behalf—including the year she’d brought her home to Antwerp with her for Christmas, conjuring a magazine-worthy living room full of gifts, including a fantastical hand-carved rocking horse that Karou had had to leave there and had never seen again—she’d been compensated for her trouble.