A Temptation of Angels

by Michelle Zink

  “Raum… Baranova?” She stood, pacing the room and struggling to breathe.

  Griffin nodded. “Andrei Baranova’s only child. He was just sixteen at the time of his parents’ death. He hadn’t even reached Enlightenment.”

  “Enlightenment?” Helen rose. Her throat threatened to close around her words, her mind connecting the things Griffin and Darius were saying with the things that had happened so far, the oddly familiar key, the blue-eyed boy from her garden. “Andrei Baranova’s son was a Keeper.”

  Griffin nodded.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?” she asked. “Raum’s the one who’s been leaving the keys.”

  “It appears so.” Griffin’s voice was quiet.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about him?” she demanded. “You obviously knew it was a possibility.”

  Griffin shrugged. “We weren’t certain. Raum disappeared after his parents’ suicide. The Alliance tried to find him. It was unheard of for them to turn their backs on a Keeper, even one who hadn’t reached Enlightenment. But Raum just vanished. After a year passed, well… another Keeper had to be appointed in his place.”

  Helen fought against a newfound sympathy for the boy who had lost everything. She knew well that loss.

  “But why would he want us dead when he was once one of us?”

  “I think revenge is a safe bet,” Darius said.

  Helen couldn’t hide her surprise. “Why would he take revenge on us? On our families? No one forced his parents to sell keys to the Syndicate! No one forced them to commit suicide!”

  Darius spoke. “No one said it had to make sense, Helen.”

  She shook her head, pacing the floor. “There has to be some kind of explanation.”

  “Is there any explanation that could absolve him?” Griffin’s voice was steely. “He murdered our parents.”

  “I already told you he doesn’t do the killing.” She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, but her regret was no match for Griffin’s anger.

  “That hardly matters.” He looked down at her, his eyes bright with fury. “He ordered the executions. He left one of his keys in my dead mother’s hand. The fact that he didn’t take her life himself hardly makes him worthy of redemption.”

  She swallowed, wondering why it was so hard to speak. “I know. I’m simply saying there may be more to the situation than seems apparent.”

  “Actually,” Darius surprised her by speaking calmly, “Helen has a point.”

  “Really?” Griffin’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Please enlighten me, brother, because I can’t seem to find it.”

  Helen flinched at the sound of his voice. She had only known the Channings for two days, but already it was difficult to reconcile Griffin as the furious, volatile person in front of her, while Darius sat in the chair, surveying the situation within the calm of his own mind.

  “He said not doing the killing himself was ‘part of our agreement,’” Darius reminded his brother, recalling the conversation in which Helen had told them everything, word for word, that Raum had said during their brief encounter.

  “I understand that he’s working for someone else.” Griffin stopped pacing, dropping into a chair next to the sofa where Helen sat. “It doesn’t matter. If he’s the one who killed our parents—the one who plans to murder us—we have to stop him.”

  Darius nodded. “I agree. But don’t you think it would be wise to use him first?”

  Helen looked up at Darius. “What do you mean?”

  “If we allow him, he might lead us to whoever is ordering the killings,” he said. “That seems smarter than killing him now and never knowing who’s behind the executions. If Raum is nothing more than a hired killer, disposing of him without getting to his employer would be foolish.” Darius waved his hand absently in the air. “His employer would only hire someone else once Raum is gone.”

  For a minute, Griffin said nothing. He heaved a tired sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Besides,” Darius said, “we have a new clue. We might as well use it.”

  “What clue?” Griffin looked sharply at his brother.

  Darius pulled a long yellow envelope from his jacket. “This one.”

  He handed it over to Griffin. Opening the flap, he pulled a stack of folded papers from its interior. Helen checked her impatience as he flattened the papers across his knee, holding them up to the light of the lamp. His brow furrowed in concentration as he read, shuffling through the papers with increasing speed until he finally lowered them.

  He looked at his brother. “Where did you find this?”

  Darius shrugged. “In the room at the top of the loft.”

  “You didn’t say anything.” Griffin’s voice was heavy with accusation.

  “Yes, well… It was right before the clatter from below.” He looked at Helen, as if she had been responsible for the noise instead of Raum, who had dropped the key to the concrete ground just before running.

  “May I?” Helen held out a hand toward Griffin.

  He passed them to her. “They’re addresses.”

  Helen flipped through the parchment. Griffin was right. They were addresses.

  Theirs.

  Darius explained. “They contain the locations of every Keeper who has been murdered. Plus ours.”

  “We were next.” All the anger seemed to go out of Griffin as he said it.

  Darius nodded.

  Helen read her address among the others, all of them reduced to numbers and street names. A rope seemed to wind its way around her heart until her chest felt so tight she wasn’t sure she could go on breathing. She forced the air into her lungs. If she started mourning now, it might go on and on until it killed her as sure as if she had died with her parents.

  She looked at Darius. “I don’t understand how these addresses can help us find Raum’s employer.”

  “They can’t,” he said. “But the parchment might.”

  Flipping through the papers on her lap, she scanned them for clues. A moment later, she raised her eyes, shaking her head.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “That’s because you’re in the wrong light.” Darius waved her over to his seat by the fire.

  She stood, crossing the few feet between them with Griffin on her heels. Darius rose, taking the parchment from her hands and holding one of the pages up with the fire behind it. The parchment was fine and thick. Very much like Father’s, Helen thought.

  Even still, the fire highlighted the shadow of the watermark, faintly visible on the paper.

  “What in God’s name…” Griffin leaned in until his face was mere inches from the parchment. Helen wondered if he needed spectacles. “They’re letters, I think.”

  He straightened, looking first to his brother and then to Helen.

  She could make out the shape of them, but the detail was lost. Rather than moving closer, as Griffin had done, she leaned back, trying to see the letters hidden in the watermark as part of a bigger whole, relaxing her mind and hoping it would see what was there.

  A moment later, it did.

  “They’re initials,” she said, looking from Darius to Griffin. “I’m almost sure of it.”

  “I think you’re right.” Darius glanced at his brother. “And I think my brother’s eyes are in need of assistance.”

  Griffin glared at him before turning to Helen. “Can you tell what they are?”

  Helen held the note to the light of the fire once more, trying to see the image that was shadowed there. For a moment, she wondered if she had been wrong. The image suddenly looked very much like a set of triangles. But when she leaned back, looking again at the paper as a whole rather than focusing on the mysterious images hidden in the center, she saw it.

  “It’s a V, I think. And an A. There’s a crest behind them.” She shook her head as she tried to make out the image. “It appears to be an animal of some kind. A bull, perhaps?” She lowered the paper, turning to the brothers.

  “VA…”
Griffin muttered. He looked at Darius. “VA with a bull behind it. Does that mean anything to you?”

  He shook his head. “But we’ve had a long night. Maybe it will come to us by morning.”

  “May I keep this for now?” Helen asked, indicating the envelope.

  Darius nodded. “If you think it will help.”

  “It might.” Her eyes itched from the strain of staring at the parchment. She resolved to think about it more tomorrow. “I’m so tired. But…”

  “What is it?” Griffin asked.

  “Do you think it’s safe for us to sleep?” She was thinking about the envelope containing the Channings’ address.

  “If he’d wanted to kill us tonight,” Darius said, “he could have done it two hours ago.”

  Helen heard the question implicit in his statement. It was the same one she’d been asking herself since Raum had fled the warehouse.

  Why hadn’t he killed her when he’d had the chance?

  She was halfway up the stairs when Griffin caught up to her.

  “I’m sorry if I was harsh in the library.” His voice was low as they reached the top of the stairs. “When I saw you on the floor of the factory, I thought something had happened to you.”

  She heard how hard the words were for him to say, though she didn’t know why that would be true. When she glanced over at him, she saw the same stray piece of hair falling into his eyes, a pained expression on his face that reminded her of a worried little boy.

  “I understand,” she said. “I was as shocked as you and Darius. I’m still shocked, actually.”

  They made their way through the darkened halls, and Helen marveled that they could seem familiar after so short a time. She tried to recall what it felt like to traverse the hallways of her own home, but the memory was just out of reach.

  “Did he…” Griffin paused as they came to her chamber door. “Did he hurt you?”

  He faced her, turned away from the lamplight along the wall. His eyes shone green and gold in the darkness.

  She shook her head. “I fell scrambling for the key. I didn’t know what it was at first. I only heard the sound and saw something drop from his hand.”

  He seemed relieved, but when he spoke, it wasn’t relief she heard in his voice but determination. “Tomorrow we’ll spend the day working with the sickle. I hope you won’t have to use it, but I don’t like the idea of you being helpless if Raum comes after us.”

  For a moment, she bristled inwardly, but the protectiveness in his eyes soothed her ire. Besides, after seeing the brothers fight the wraiths in the street, she had to admit that she was not well equipped to face the threats that now seemed probable.

  “All right.” She smiled into his eyes. Something unnameable but dangerously close to affection stirred between them. Finally, she looked away, placing a hand on the doorknob to her room. “Good night, Griffin.”

  “Helen?” His voice stopped her as she was turning to close the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Why didn’t he kill you?” Griffin’s face was a mask of puzzlement. “Raum, I mean? Why didn’t he kill you tonight when he had the chance?”

  She wanted to hand him a reasonable answer, and she pondered the most obvious of the ones she could supply.

  We were childhood friends.

  He remembers me as I remember him.

  The memory took him by surprise.

  But none of it seemed to account for Raum’s abrupt flight from the factory just as she was at her most vulnerable.

  All she could do was meet Griffin’s eyes and tell the truth. “I don’t know.”

  It was a relief to be in the privacy of her chamber where she did not have to field the many questions that seemed to have no answers. It was as if she were standing on the deck of a ship in a roiling sea. Every time she thought she got her balance, something else came along and knocked her down again. She couldn’t explain most of it to herself, let alone the brothers.

  Her bed had been freshly made, a basin of hot water left on the washstand. She surveyed the room with some suspicion, wondering again how things were attended in the Channing house. She had yet to see anyone other than Griffin and Darius.

  She gave in to the mystery, washing her face and changing quickly, remaining in her chemise as she had the night before. The clock over the firebox chimed twice as she got into bed.

  Her eyes burned with tiredness, but her mind would not stop turning over everything that had happened. She reached for the key on the bedside table. It had a dull sheen in the light of the fire, and she held it up, turning it over and inspecting it as if it held the answer to Raum’s actions at the factory. She imagined it left in the charred rubble of the home in which she now slept. The home of the young men who had become her friends. The thought pained her, and she slipped the key back onto the table. She could not reconcile the loss she had suffered with the man who had let her go in the factory. There was anger, of course. Fury, really, that he had allowed—no, commanded—such horrific acts.

  Yet there was something else, too. She wanted to call it gratitude for sparing her life, whatever the reason. But deep down, she knew it something far more complex.

  FIFTEEN

  They were finishing breakfast in the library when a knock sounded at the front door.

  Both brothers jumped to their feet, toast almost sliding to the floor as they set their plates hurriedly on the tea table.

  Griffin looked at Helen. “Stay here.”

  He did not wait for her response before following his brother out of the room, his hand on the sickle hanging at his side.

  Helen waited in the silence of the library as she was told, though she did creep to the doorway, craning her ears for sounds from the entry.

  She jumped back a moment later when she caught sight of Darius and Griffin making their way back down the hall.

  “Don’t try to pretend you weren’t looking.” Griffin entered the room first, four large brown packages wrapped with string piled high in his arms. “I saw you.”

  “I stayed in the room just as you ordered,” she insisted.

  “Your interpretation of instruction is frighteningly loose.” Darius sat down, picking up his plate and continuing his breakfast.

  She ignored the barb as Griffin set the packages on the small sofa where she had been eating.

  “These are for you,” he said.

  She leaned down, inspecting her name, written in large scrolling script across the top.

  “My clothing?” She tried not to sound excited. It was difficult to be the only girl around so much manliness.

  “It looks that way.” Griffin grinned, seeing through the charade of her nonchalance. “Why don’t you change, and we can start training in the ballroom?”

  She looked for him in the library some time later, the fabric of her strange new skirt brushing against her leg. After finding the library empty, she searched the remaining rooms on the ground floor until the only one left was the kitchen. She came upon him there, crouched at the back door and muttering something unintelligible to someone she couldn’t see.

  Approaching cautiously, she spoke softly so as not to startle him.

  “Griffin?”

  “Huh? What?” He turned, clearly startled despite her best efforts. “Oh, Helen! That was fast.”

  He shut the door quickly behind him.

  She waved toward it. “Who is that you’re speaking to?”

  He feigned surprise. “That? No one. There’s no one there.”

  She tilted her head, trying to place his strange demeanor. “But you were talking to someone.”

  He shook his head, leaning against the door as if that would prevent her from opening it.

  She crossed to it in two long strides, reaching for the knob. “Don’t be ridiculous. I heard you speaking to someone.”

  She tugged on the knob, trying to open it, but he wouldn’t move.

  “Griffin! Why are you acting so strange?” She continued without waiting for an answe
r. “I realize we don’t know one another well, but surely you know me well enough to know that I’m not leaving until that door is opened and I see for myself who is on the other side.”

  He stared into her eyes for a second before stepping aside with a sigh. “Very well. Have a look at my small companion, then.”

  She held his gaze a moment longer, wondering at his choice of words, before pulling open the door.

  No one was there. She was standing on the same small porch she had used to escape the house and follow Darius and Griffin that first night, but it was completely empty.

  At least, that is what she thought before she heard the unmistakable meow at her feet.

  She dropped her gaze, noting the black-and-white kitten lapping cream from a fine floral dish. Then, she understood.

  She looked up at Griffin, leaning against the door frame, his face reddening slightly under her gaze.

  He waved her off before she could speak. “It’s nothing to make a fuss over. The poor thing was bedraggled when it first came to the door. Anyone in my position would offer it some cream.”

  A smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “You feed the cat? That’s who you were talking to?”

  “Well, technically, there is more than one of them. It didn’t seem right to turn away Mouser’s friends.” He bent to pick up the kitten, now done with the saucer of milk. “Isn’t that right, Mouser?”

  “Mouser?” Helen said, trying to suppress her smile.

  He held the ball of fluff against his body as if he had done it a thousand times before. “He needed a name.” A note of defensiveness crept into his voice. “And he brought me a mouse the first night he appeared on the step, as if he wanted to trade it for some food.”

  “It’s a fine name.” Reaching carefully toward the kitten, she let it sniff her hand before touching it gently. “And for the record, I quite like people who take in strays.” She met Griffin’s eyes with a smile, and something powerful and warm rose in her as she stroked the animal’s silky fur, her hand brushing Griffin’s as he did the same.

  “I suppose we should work in the ballroom before nightfall,” he said, reluctantly putting the cat back on the ground. “You’ll need good light to train with the sickle.”