"I will go."
Lawrence had merely raised an eyebrow upon discovering Mimi standing in front of them. Charles hadn't looked too surprised either. Finding a way through locked doors had always been one of Mimi's talents, even as a young child.
"Azrael," Lawrence murmured. "Do you remember?"
"Not everything. Not yet. But I do remember you…Grandfather," Mimi said with a smirk.
"That's enough for me." Lawrence smiled in a way that was not too unlike Charles's own. "Charles, it's decided. Mimi shall have your seat on the Conclave. She will report to you, as your representative. Azrael, you are dismissed."
Mimi had been about to protest, until she realized she had been glommed into leaving the den without her noticing. The old coot was clever. But nothing was stopping her from pressing an ear against the doors.
"She is dangerous," Lawrence was saying softly. "I was surprised to find that you had called up the twins to this cycle. Was it really necessary?"
"Like you said, she is strong." Charles sighed. "If there is battle ahead, as you want us all to believe, Lawrence, you will need her on your side."
Lawrence snorted. "If she stays true."
"She always has," Charles said sharply. "And she was not the only one among us who once loved the Morningstar."
"A grave mistake we all made." Lawrence nodded.
Charles said softly, "No, not all of us."
Mimi floated away from the door. She had heard all she needed to hear.
Azrael. He'd called her by her real name. A name that was etched deep into her consciousness, deep into her bones, her very blood. What was she except her name? When you were alive for thousands of years, taking a new moniker after another, names became like gift wrapping. Something decorative that you answered to. Take her name in this cycle, for example: Mimi. It was the name of a socialite, a flighty woman who spent her days maxing out credit cards and who cared only for spa treatments and dinner parties.
It hid her true identity.
For she was Azrael. Angel of Death. She brought darkness to the light. It was her gift and her curse.
She was a Blue Blood. As Charles had said, one of the strongest. Charles and Lawrence had been talking about the end of days. The Fall. During the war with Lucifer, it had been Azrael and her twin, Abbadon, who had turned the tide, who had changed the course of the last battle. They had betrayed their prince and joined Michael, kneeling to the golden sword. They had stayed true to the light, even though they were made of the dark.
Theirs had been a crucial desertion. If it were not for her and Jack, who could say who would have won? Would Lucifer be the king of all kings on a heavenly throne if they had not abandoned him? And what did they win anyway, but this endless life on earth. This endless cycle of reparation and absolution. For whom and for what did they make amends? Did God even know they existed anymore? Would they ever regain the paradise they had lost?
Had it been worth it? Mimi wondered as she took her seat at the Conclave, only now noticing the grumblings among her peers.
She looked to where Dorothea Rockefeller was staring. The shock almost sent her reeling. Inside the most protected, most secure haven of the Blue Bloods, and seated next to Lawrence in a place of honor, was none other than the disgraced former Venator, the Silver Blood traitor, Kingsley Martin.
He caught her eye and pointed two fingers in the shape of a gun in her direction. And Kingsley being Kingsley, he smiled as he pretended to pull the trigger.
Unlike most designers' showrooms, which were decorated in minimal, almost clinical style with hardly a floral arrangement to break up the dazzlingly empty white rooms, the showcase interiors that housed the Rolf Morgan collection resembled the cozy quarters of an old-fashioned gentlemen's club: leather-bound books lined the shelves, while squat club chairs and comfortable shag rugs were arranged around a crackling fire. Rolf Morgan had come to fame by selling preppie, old-boy style to the masses, his most ubiquitous creation a plain-collared shirt discreetly embroidered with his logo: a pair of crisscrossed croquet wickets.
Bliss sat nervously on one of the leather armchairs, balancing her portfolio on her knees. She'd had to leave school a few minutes early in order to make her go-see appointment, yet had arrived to find the designer running half an hour late. Typical.
She looked around at the other models, all bearing the same classic American good looks commonly found in a "Croquet by Rolf Morgan" ad: sunburned cheeks, golden hair, upturned button noses. She had no idea why the designer would be interested in her. Bliss looked more like a girl from a pre-Raphaelite painting, with her waist-long russet hair, pale skin, and wide green eyes, than the kind of girl who looked like she'd just finished a rousing set of tennis. But then again, Schuyler had just booked the show the other day at the first casting, so perhaps they were looking for a different kind of girl this time.
"Can I get you girls anything? Water? Diet soda?" the smiling receptionist asked.
"Nothing for me, thanks," Bliss demurred, while the other girls shook their heads as well. It was nice to be asked, to be offered something. As a model, she was used to being ignored or condescended to by the staff. No one was ever very friendly. Bliss likened go-see appointments to the cattle inspections her grandfather used to perform on the ranch. He'd check the stock's teeth, hooves, and flanks. Models were treated just like cattle—pieces of meat whose assets were weighed and measured.
Bliss wished that the designer would hurry up and get it over with. She'd almost canceled the meeting, and only a deep sense of obligation to her agency (and a slight fear of her model booker—a bald, imperious gay man, who bossed her around like she was his slave (and not the other way around) kept her rooted to her seat.
She was still unnerved by what had happened at school earlier, when she'd tried to confide in Schuyler.
"There's something wrong with me," Bliss said, over lunch in the refectory.
"What do you mean? Are you sick?" Schuyler asked, ripping open a bag of jalapeno potato chips.
Am I sick? Bliss wondered. She certainly felt ill lately. But it was a different kind of sick—her soul felt sick. "It's hard to explain," she said, but she tried. "I'm, like, seeing things. Bad things." Terrible things. She told Schuyler about how it had started.
She'd been jogging down the Hudson the other day, and when she blinked, instead of the placid, brown waters of the river, she'd seen it filled with blood—red and viscous and churning.
Then there were the horsemen who had thundered into her bedroom one night—four of them, on tall black steeds, behind masks; they looked foul and smelled even worse. Like living death. They had been so real, the horses had left dirty hoofprints on the white carpet. But the vision from the other night had been worse: bayoneted babies, disemboweled victims, nuns hanging from crosses, beheaded … It went on.
But the most frightening thing in the world?
Right in the middle of a vision, a man had appeared. A man in a white suit. A handsome man, with a crown of shining golden hair and a beautiful smile that chilled her to the bone.
The man had walked across the room and sat next to her on the bed.
"Bliss," the man had said, laying a hand on her head like a benediction. "Daughter."
Schuyler looked up from her tuna sandwich. Bliss wondered how Schuyler still had an appetite for normal food— Bliss had long ago lost the taste for it. She could barely stand to eat her rare-cooked hamburger. Maybe it was because Schuyler was half human. Bliss reached for a potato chip out of curiosity. She took a bite. It was salty and not unpleasantly spicy. She took another.