‘Well, can I have it back?’
‘No.’
‘But it belongs to me!’ she raged. ‘That man in the marketplace gave it to me! How dare you steal it from me like that? How dare you? It was a present! You know how much I love it! I feel like I don’t know you at all. You got your memories back, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you’re leaving Hungary?’
‘Yes.’
‘When are you coming back?’
‘I’m not.’
‘But you promised me, Gabriel. You promised! You said that no matter what you remembered, you and me would stay together. You said, if you had to leave then you’d take me with you, and if I couldn’t go then you wouldn’t either! You said it was as simple as that and I believed you!’
She started to cry then. I hated to see her so upset, but what could I do?
‘I don’t want to go,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Casey. I don’t want to go. I love you. I always will. But I can’t be around you.’
‘ Why not? ’ she sobbed.
‘I can’t tell you,’ I said, feeling helpless. ‘Look, Casey, do you trust me? I mean, do you really trust me?’
She nodded, tears running down her cheeks.
‘Then you’ve got to believe me when I say that you’ll be better off without me in your life rather than in it.’
‘That’s bullshit!’ She tried to shout at me through her tears.
‘What could possibly be worse than being on my own? How am I supposed to do this by myself, Gabriel?’
‘I’m afraid you’ll just have to find a way, Casey.’
And then she slammed the door in my face and I sighed and turned back to my apartment to pack for the flight. My plane leaves for Washington tonight. Arrangements will be made for my possessions at a later date. I don’t know how long I will stay in the United States. I simply purchased the first plane ticket I could. I have had some money changed into US dollars, and packed a small bag of essentials. The important thing is simply to be away from Hungary, the focal point of the mounting tension of this religious War. I know that God won’t let anything happen to Casey. Mephistopheles said himself that neither angels nor demons will be able to directly affect her or her child, and I believe him. If there were no need for a human agent, then why go to such lengths to pose as a friend and try to obtain my trust and loyalty in the first place?
I’m afraid that, as the only person of the In Between nearby, if I stay I might be compelled to act for the demons somehow. I fear that Stephomi… that Mephisto will find some way to trick me into doing something that could hurt Casey. And I will never hurt her. I’ve hurt so many other people, but I won’t ever be responsible for hurting Casey. I love her too much for that. So I’m removing myself. With no human agent available, Casey’s baby will simply be born tonight, grow up and turn into whatever it is destined to be. Nothing good will come of my interference — that I know for an absolute certainty.
I leave for the airport in two hours. Meanwhile, I must make some record of all that has occurred since Michael’s exposing of Mephistopheles. I must make some record of who I am. I want to ground myself. I don’t want to feel myself slipping away. There must be a record. This is essential, essential. I won’t go insane over this. People like me don’t deserve the luxury of madness, although, God, I wish I were mad.
It was the messages. The fiery six letters and two numbers: CIRCLEIX. For five days I continued to ignore them, even as they increased in frequency and location — appearing in mirrors, on tables, burning into the spines of my books and the linings of my curtains. By the sixth day — yesterday — the message was all over every spare bit of space in my apartment: the furniture, the walls, the floor, the ceiling — everything, until all my rooms blazed with it. And then one of them burst, quite literally, into flames. It was one of the messages on the window in the living room. The fiery letters and numbers exploded into molten shards, shattering the window instantly with the heat and sending a shower of sparks over the room, where they started to smoulder on the rugs and on the furniture. Hastily, I managed to put them out with the fire extinguisher. When the last of the glowing embers had been stamped out, I threw the extinguisher into the corner of the room in frustration and tore my hands through my hair.
‘What is it?’ I shouted angrily. ‘Circle 9! The Ninth Circle! I don’t know what it is, you fucking idiots! If you don’t realise that by now, then you really are the most fucking useless angels-’ I broke off suddenly, my hands clamped over my mouth in horror. Christ, what was I doing? What was I thinking, swearing at angels? What a vile, disgusting, unforgivable thing to do!
‘I’m… I’m sorry… I’m sorry. Forgive me, God,’ I stammered, head bowed, half fearing that I might be struck down by lightning where I stood.
And then I froze, finally realising in a flash of enlightenment what the angels were trying to tell me. Cold fear prickled on my skin. The computer disc that I had given to Toby, with
instructions for it to be handed back at a certain time… The disc that I had been unable to access because I did not have the eight-digit password… CIRCLEIX.
As soon as I came to this conclusion, the burning messages all disappeared from the walls and the furniture and the floor with a suddenness that made the ensuing quiet darkness seem strange and unnatural. I retrieved the disc from its hiding place in the cupboard, sat down at my computer and loaded up the programme.
And then I hesitated when the password box came up on the screen once again, tempted just to turn the computer off now and destroy the disc once and for all so that I might never know what was on it. But even as these thoughts filled my mind, the burning message appeared once again, with alarming ferocity, in the wood of the desk; and quite suddenly I found I was afraid of the angels and what they might do to me if I didn’t do what they wanted. I already knew that they were not above violence, and that they were not above killing people when they had to.
‘All right,’ I said aloud and at once the message disappeared, leaving identical burn marks in its place.
I typed in the password.
The box disappeared and a message came up to replace it: ‘Password Confirmed.’ Then the screen loaded up, and I forced myself to look as a list of filenames appeared on the screen. They were people’s names. Some of them were English, some French, some Chinese and Spanish, Korean and Australian… And then my eye fell on one name that I knew. Anna Sovanak. Automatically, I double clicked to open the file. It was a video file, no more than thirty minutes long. But it was enough. Enough to show me what had really happened to that woman, and what my connection to her had been. And I knew that the video spoke the truth. That it was not fabricated or doctored in any way. I knew because suddenly I could remember it all.
I remembered my real name: Gilligan Connor. I remembered renting that isolated villa on the Italian coast purposefully because it was quite near to the spot that Anna Sovanak and her family were vacationing. I remembered striking up a friendship with Anna on the beach — a meeting that had nothing whatsoever to do with chance, despite outward appearances. I remember sympathising with her as she confided in me about her problems with her husband. His rudeness, the way he took her for granted, the way he never did anything to help round the house, the way he didn’t romance her as he’d once done. And I listened patiently to her complaints about the problems she had with her children and her job and her friends.
I don’t think Anna was a woman naturally given to whining and complaining, but people like to talk about themselves and probably find something freeing in talking with a sympathetic stranger they are unlikely to see again after their holiday.
We met a couple of times down on the beach when she had stormed out after arguing with her husband. It did make it very easy for me, but I would have found another way if I’d had to. I always did.