Fana was wrong. Plenty else mattered. But at least that was what Fana would say.
“We all saw it,” Jessica said. “You’re not ready, Fana.”
Now Fana laid her hand across Jessica’s cheek. “I wasn’t ready before, but I’m ready now,” she said like a schoolteacher. “I’ve adjusted. Just being here makes me learn so much faster. I should have veiled the way Teka advised me, but I wanted to show Michel I had nothing to hide.”
Fana sounded satisfied to feel that she shared a pull toward Michel that even Teka didn’t have a vocabulary for. And it might be only Michel’s ruse.
“I’m not surprised, dear Fana,” Teferi said. “Khaldun’s Letter of the Witness says you are ‘mates immortal born.’”
A cold needle pricked the base of Jessica’s neck. “You sound like you’re ready to join Sanctus Cruor,” Jessica said. “Like your Brothers.”
“No, of course not,” Teferi said quickly. “I’m horrified by Michel’s methods and interpretations of the Cleansing, but the Letter—”
“Not now, Teferi,” Dawit said, impatient. There wasn’t time enough to debate the Letter.
“We have to go,” Jessica said. “Fana, you can always come back when you’ve had more time to adjust. If he feels it too, he’ll understand.” She searched for the most complimentary lighting for Michel: the lighting Fana saw him in.
Dawit nodded with agreement. “Caution costs us nothing,” he said. For the first time since she had seen Fana’s tears, Jessica thought it might not be too late. Fana still trusted Dawit, and Teka would follow. Relief made Jessica’s joints tremble.
“This first dinner was tremendous progress already, Fana,” Dawit said, wrapping his arm around Fana’s shoulder; the reasonable man Jessica had married again, the man she had chosen twice. “We know we’re welcome as his guests, but there’s no need for such close proximity. Continue your meetings with Michel tomorrow, but tonight we should fly as far as Los Angeles. This is my most deeply held counsel, Duchess.”
Jessica was so eager to leave this room, this building, this city, that the soles of her feet itched. All of her skin itched. She could already see the plane gathering speed on the runway, breaking Fana free the way they had freed Phoenix.
Slowly, sadly, Fana shook her head.
“I can’t go,” Fana said, resigned. Only her resolve kept her from sounding helpless. Tears peeked out, but stayed hidden. “I have to see him alone.”
A sixteen-year-old mortal girl, Inez, led Fana to Michel’s studio at the opposite end of the hall, walking in practiced silence on the balls of her slippered feet. Fana was relieved to be in the company of a mortal, to loosen her mask for a dozen more steps down the hallway.
Fana probed Inez to learn if Michel treated her well, sifting through the girl’s thoughts: paid well, and barely had contact with Michel, whom she worshipped. Fana couldn’t find evidence that Michel had a reputation for sleeping with the women who worked for him and worshipped him. A santo, the housekeepers called him.
Fana let her mind rest for a few steps.
The floor was already vibrating beneath her feet, so she would need all her mental energy to filter out Michel. The fight against his brightness was giving Fana a terrible headache, but her mind was starving for him, a new kind of wanting. A new appetite.
Fana was still chafing from the shared gazes at dinner, which had rubbed her until she felt bruised, but she was already sinking into his scent again as Inez knocked on the oak door.
“Veni!” Michel’s voice came, in Italian. His earlier joviality was gone. He sounded like he had a headache, too, or worse.
The large studio was crowded with paintings on easels, and splashes of brown skin and woven black dreadlocks made her realize the art was about her. The five-by-five-foot canvas closest to her was painted in an Ethiopian Coptic style—giving her wide eyes and an oval face as she gazed toward the heavens in a cathedral adorned with gold script. Or rode a gray horse in the countryside. Or cradled a golden infant to her breast. His images of her future.
Fana didn’t see him until the vibrations told her to look up. Michel was bobbing thirty feet above her, painting a fresco across the ceiling while he floated on his back. He dabbed at the green and brown flecks of the fronds on his palm trees, nearly real enough to sway.
“No closer, please,” Michel said.
Fana stopped walking beneath him, only a few steps from the doorway. Yes. Thank goodness he didn’t want to be closer. A new space behind her ears was burning. Beneath her forehead. Soon, her desire to fuse their thoughtstreams would feel like fire.
Was it worse for him? The same?
“I’d rather speak only verbally, Michel.” She couldn’t trust herself to receive Michel’s thoughts, or she might try to burrow into him.
“Sí, sí, if that’s easier for you,” Michel said, waving his brush hand.
“You’ve always felt this,” she said. “You knew.”
He had muted his presence more than she’d realized when he visited her thoughts in Lalibela. If she’d known how he would thunder through her, she might not have come.
“Our union lies at the heart of the Letter, and you would expect our meeting to feel ordinary?” Michel said, chastising her. “Did you think this was a boyish infatuation, Fana? The only thing worse than being away from you is having you here. So close, but …”
Fana knew. The hour she had spent comforting her family had passed impossibly slowly, but her time with Michel fell still. The ceiling where he floated warmed the room. She was dizzy again, inching to the border of the necessary gulf between them.
“It must have been terrible when I left,” Fana said.
“Waiting since dinner has been terrible,” Michel said. “Your leaving was indescribable.”
He fell silent, painting with his careful strokes.
“Will it help us be close to each other?” she said. “Talking like this?”
“Of course,” he said. “But not long. I’m not good at restraint, Fana.”
“You’re wrong about yourself,” Fana said. Now that she had tasted his suffering, she was amazed that he had delayed his virus by a year. “Thank you, Michel.”
Michel made a sudden swoop, as if to come down to her, and the air flared around Fana like the heat of blue flames. The burning behind her ears reached for him. Michel flew upward again with a cry of frustration. “Don’t thank me yet, bella,” he said softly.
“I needed to see you,” she said. “To understand.” There was no reason to lie.
Michel landed on the floor far across the room, nearly hidden behind a row of canvases. Seeing his face in the courtyard had opened mental portals she had sealed, nearly swallowing her inside him. Was Michel hiding his face for her sake, or his own?
“I’m happy beyond words you’re here, Fana,” he said. “But there’s something I have to tell you now—right now—so you won’t think I’m cruel for raising your hopes. Once you hear what I have to say, I’m sure you’ll be sorry you’ve come.”
“That sounds ominous.” If not for her pounding heart, she could have made it a joke.
“You won’t convince me to stop the Cleansing.” His voice was stern, the Most High, the one she could not negotiate with.
If she couldn’t reach Michel, she was lost.
“Do you see the future?” Fana said. Her feet tried to take her closer to him, but she held on to the wooden easel to keep her place, to avoid setting herself ablaze in him.
“I see that much, Fana.”
“What else do you see?” Fana said, to know the worst.
“Three days from now, the Cleansing will begin. With you at my side.”
“I would never do that,” Fana said.
“But you will. I can’t wait, Fana. I won’t. Three days may be too long for me.”
He was being honest, too. Or seemed to be, her mother’s voice reminded her.
Fana was hurt, blinking away tears. “This is our fresh start, Michel? Threats?”
“It’s not a threat.” His voice said he wished that it were. He walked along the easels, farther away from her. “You lied to me.”
Now she would learn the cost of sharing her Blood with Johnny.
“I didn’t see it as a lie,” she said. “That had nothing to do with the Cleansing.”
“Our Blood has everything to do with the Cleansing!” he roared. A paint-spattered tarp hanging near her flapped with the power of his anger, falling to the floor in a heavy heap. Michel softened his voice again. “To rub salt in my daily misery, you’ve given me this now. Why did you do it, Fana? Why him?” Michel’s voice hissed with pain.
“He’s earned it through service to me … just like Romero and Bocelli have with you.”
“Don’t insult me! I would scatter them like dust if you asked me to. Let’s trade, Fana: my two acolytes for your one.”
The ring of triumph in his voice made her heart flutter, nervous. Johnny could be collapsing dead somewhere already. Michel wouldn’t have to fumble to find his heartbeat.
“Michel, don’t,” Fana said. She almost said please. She might have to.
“Then how can you compare them?”
“It wasn’t fair to compare them, and I’m sorry. But he earned it, Michel. It’s a mistake for us to talk about him. We said we wouldn’t. See how much harder this is for us now?”
Us. We. Us. She comforted him with the rhythm of her language.
Michel peeked at her from among the canvases. She saw lightning in his eyes before his face winked away, gone. Her instincts warred to rush toward him, but she stepped away from his slow, careful footsteps as he circled her.
“You’re beautiful, Fana,” he said. “No other woman will feel like a woman to me again. You’re the most precious being I know, and I don’t want to touch you. I don’t want to steer you. It’s agony. I’ll never forgive myself for how I hurt you before … and how I will again.”
Fana was silent, more frightened of herself than of Michel. Her head was pulsing as if it had been chopped in half. She wanted to press her face into Michel’s and melt her pain, vanish into him. Quickly, Fana took three steps away from Michel, until her back was against his door.
“How did you stay away so long?” Michel said. “How did you tolerate it?”
She noted the wariness inside his curiosity. She’d had an advantage over him.
“I was so angry,” she said. “That made it easier to shut you away, like a hole in my memory. Just like shutting away the Shadows. But it created a weakness. It blocked my growth. And when I got here … I was surprised.”
Michel chuckled loudly, without mirth. “Anger won’t help me with you. I want to stay angry, because I’m tired of this ridiculous pain in my head!” Rage soaked his voice, volcanic. Then it was gone. “Learning how to be good to you has been the struggle of my life, Fana.”
“Thank you for fighting for me, Michel.”
“Stop thanking me,” he said. A whisper.
“This headache—”
“The headaches get worse,” Michel said. “I hope yours are easier than mine.”
Michel flew high once again, rising as if he were on invisible parachute strings adrift in a wind. Moving away from her. Her headache eased, but a different throbbing emerged at the base of her skull. One pain was sated by distance, another created. Fana studied every sensation, racing to learn and grow.
“Why couldn’t you have been someone else?” Michel said.
“Why couldn’t you?”
Silence burned between them.
“Make your peace with the Cleansing, Fana,” Michel said. “I’ll study the Letter with you. I’ll help you understand. Take comfort in choosing the saved. You can choose each one.”
She wouldn’t have time to reach him if his mind was full of the Cleansing.
“I’m here to marry you, Michel,” Fana said.
Michel held his breath. He waited, expecting her to take back the words.
“I’ll marry you tomorrow,” Fana said. “If that would make you happy.”
Joy lighted his face before he threw his head back, snapping himself from the spell of her promise. “You’ll marry me if …”
“If you admit that you don’t know the future.”
Impatience creased his brow. “But I know the Prophecy, so I do know the future.”
“I can’t marry you if you think everything is decided,” Fana said.
He swooped away. “So you’ll agree to marry me only if I dismiss what I know is true?”
“You’re not dismissing it,” she said. “Only testing it.”
“Everything about you is a test!”
“For me too.”
Their promised marriage was all she had to offer him. Michel knew it as well as she did. If he refused, she had failed already.
“What kind of marriage?” Michel said. “You open your dreams to me once a year? Even if I could stand it, I won’t. Never again.”
“Not just an empty wedding—I’ll give you our union,” Fana said. “Like in the Prophecy, Michel. We’ll join in every way, fuse without masking. We’ll stop this pain. We’ll see what we become next. Both of us. Together.”
Fana surprised herself with the eagerness in her voice. Blocking her mental ties to Michel had clouded her meditation, her Rising. Hadn’t she always wanted to learn to fly?
Michel was so startled by her offer that he landed clumsily, stumbling behind the easels. A can of paint nearly hit the floor before he caught it with his mental stream, setting it upright on the counter. His longing surged, a furnace blast. He couldn’t refuse her.
“Thursday,” he said. “The day after tomorrow. I need time to give the people a proper wedding. Friday, we join in the Cleansing.”
Every time Fana thought she was with Michel, he became the Most High again.
“No,” she said. “I won’t marry you if you plan to make me a slave, Michel. Why should I? I’ll marry you by my will, but my will has to last beyond our wedding day.”
“Fana … do you want me to lie? To speak against my knowledge, against my heart? If I ever say there won’t be a Cleansing, you’ll know I’m lying. I’ll say it now, but it’s a lie.”
“That’s not what I asked you to say, Michel,” Fana said. “You want to marry me on Thursday, but we might wait until Sunday or Monday. You don’t know the future. I have a voice. We have to start there.”
Michel gave an exasperated sigh. “Go,” he said. “Per favore. Leave this room. Your mother knows best, Fana, and she wants me dead. You’re safer in Los Angeles or Santiago, if you’re safe from me anywhere. But … I’m begging you to stay in your chamber tonight. I hope I can sleep a full hour now that you’re here.”
Longing and weariness radiated from Michel. He was fighting himself with all his soul. If he lost his fight, who would she be when she woke up?
“If you try to take me, I’ll kill us both,” Fana said. “I’ll find a way.”
“For the Cleansing, I will take you,” Michel said, near tears. “I have no choice.”
Suddenly, they were back where they had begun.
Fana watched Michel’s shadow glide across the floor as he flew overhead, a moth trying not to burn against her flame. She needed to be away, too, but not too far away. Her mind was raw from him and famished for him.
“Will I stay near you tonight?” she said. “Or will I listen to my family and go?” She wasn’t sure herself, thinking aloud. Either decision would rend a part of her. “Tell me, Michel.”
I DON’T KNOW OUR FUTURE, FANA, Michel whispered. MARRY ME.
His single, gentle thought blew through her like a gale, snuffing the old fires and igniting new ones. Her headache dimmed, but it would be back soon, as long as she was waiting. He had broken their agreement to speak only verbally, or maybe he couldn’t help himself. His essence vibrated through her.
Now she wouldn’t sleep, either. Her mind would sing from his mental scent for hours.
Yes, she said, giving hi
m the words he craved most. I choose you, Michel.
Fana fought Michel’s fire with hers.
Twenty-eight
Addis Ababa
Johnny Wright lingered outside the coffin maker’s shop, scanning the noonday marketplace crowd under the bright orange awning. The shop was packed with upright, colorful caskets with too few buyers. Not enough people were dying. Glow was ruining the funeral business, as the saying went through Ghana and Botswana and South Africa. Who would need these coffins of paisley and quilt patterns, or carved from dark wood? Feeling prideful, Johnny used to joke with the coffin makers about their struggles. The boom was over, he’d said.
Soon, there would not be enough coffins, or enough survivors to build them.
Johnny wished he could set up his own shop with his arm hooked to an IV to give his Blood away like bottled water or canned food before a coming disaster, but he’d seen enough riots at Glow centers even if Fana hadn’t told him about her childhood at the clinic.
He hadn’t realized how hard it would be to walk near the sick and aging with the Blood in his veins, every stranger suddenly a personal responsibility. He’d felt the same way when he was transporting Glow, but he had never carried so much guilt.
We can’t save everyone, Fana often said, a saying from her father.
“You!” the lanky coffin proprietor said in English, recognizing him. “Get away from my shop with that Glow rubbish!” He was half joking, or maybe not. His sneer might be a smile.
“Don’t worry—Glow doesn’t bring back the dead,” Johnny said. He was itching to tell everyone he met. He couldn’t stop flexing his fingers to feel his blood throb in the fat veins on the backs of his hands.
“No kidding, the U.S. says there’s a virus in it,” the coffin seller said. “Get a bad batch and your whole family dies. It happened in North Korea. You should read the newswebs.”
Johnny saw Michel’s work every time he checked the news. Michel’s machinery was seeding its false history of the virus, ready to blame the outbreaks on Glow.
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