"Astral Weeks"
by Acey

And here I am
Standing in your sad arrest
Trying to do my very best
Lookin' straight at you
Comin' through, darlin' -van morrison,

They didn't have tea in heaven. That was a funny thing to note, and a funnier thing to remember, how Zaphkiel used to feign being on business in Assiah just to satisfy his craving. In China first; then, as the centuries passed, he'd stray from his old route, into Japan, and then eventually into Great Britain—a sideswipe once into the American South, a disappointment when he found they drank it cold, saturated in sugar. And from there back again to Japan for the last trip he ever made.

Raphael could conjure up Zaphkiel's face with little thought. Zaphkiel, older than him by those few centuries that only mattered to immortals. He'd already long been Chief of the Thrones by the time Raphael had graduated from the academy and been appointed an aide. Raphael never knew him at his zenith; he only knew the smiling, spectacled man with a blindness he couldn't heal. The man he saw occasionally at conferences and meetings, outwardly pleasant, even chatty.

"Have you ever been there, Raphael?" Fingers curled around a teacup, another of Zaphkiel's imports from Assiah. The rim was pink. "I'm told Japan's cherry blossoms are beautiful in the spring."

"Never."

"Confined to Europe, then?" The corners of Zaphkiel's mouth tilted into an insinuating smile that shouldn't have irritated him, but did. It was the assumption that annoyed him, the idea that Raphael was far too indolent and uncreative to bother visiting anywhere in Assiah where a blue-eyed blond wouldn't escape extra notice.

"I spent a little time in Iran." On assignment, no less, unlike Zaphkiel's tea raids.

"For Tobit, yes? But that was centuries ago."

The unasked question dangled in the air—and you've been there since, haven't you? Not on assignment at all. That was, possibly, what annoyed Raphael most about Zaphkiel. Raphael could catch only half the angles Zaphkiel busied himself with at any given moment, could tell there were plans perpetually in mind without ever having anything to substantiate their existence—which proved more frustrating than if he were wholly oblivious. Raphael's schemes left dregs behind. Zaphkiel's never did.

"I was in France for a bit during their revolution. A few weeks in America about… I'd say seventy or seventy-five years ago." There'd been a dozen other trips in-between—that second, disastrous stop in France, during the battle of Verdun, for instance—but those instances were hardly suitable for conversation.

In 1793 Raphael had caught a glimpse of Alexiel at the guillotine. For a sick, baffling moment he'd thought he'd seen Lucifer standing in the crowd, and Raphael had shoved through the throngs of spectators, his cravat damp with sweat, his heart pounding as he vied for another glimpse, strained to sense that astral signature. But he was gone.

It was just as well, Raphael had supposed later. Another war would have cut into his bevy of preferred patients.

"Both terrible times to drink tea." Zaphkiel grinned. "Have a cup. Please."

Zaphkiel's movements were smooth, utterly poised, and if Raphael hadn't dully administered his physical decade after decade, he'd almost doubt the angel was blind after all. The tea was poured and pushed towards him before Raphael could protest further.

He didn't care for the taste.

He didn't have to take the flight to Japan, but he did anyway. His back was stiff midway through, when the brunette stewardess listed off the meal options with a tired grin he didn't see fit to return. There were well over a dozen American high school and college students on board, laughing, trading snacks and gossip, but for the most part the plane held citizens rather than exiles.

It wasn't half as comfortable as an airship. No legroom, no smoking. His fingers itched for a lighter and found only paperwork in his coat pocket, the identity carved for him out of a falsified passport, birth certificate, and recommendations. Favors.

Zaphkiel hovering over him, that light, easy tone gone already, all blank blue eyes and an utterly closed expression. Zaphkiel who'd pulled him aside that day a week before while Raphael was under house arrest, two days after the girl's execution.

Like a racehorse trading masters, trading bits. Raphael had bent out of habit as much as force. He'd reconcile it later, drag the scenes out frame-by-frame in his mind until he could pretend he'd had a choice in the matter. For now there was only the stale taste of wine in a plastic cup, the gray view from his window, and the intercom announcement that Tokyo lay straight ahead.

His apartment was spacious, pre-furnished. The rent had been paid six months in advance. There was a bank account for him in Japan proper, and another in Switzerland, if necessary. All creature comforts provided, except for the ones Raphael could conjure up himself.

The first night he couldn't sleep. The girl was in his head, her damp curls against his fingers and her screams vibrating through his skull no matter how he tried to drown them out. The second night, he wound down the streets, staring at the flashing neon signs and cars and crowds with a sickened expression stiff and stubborn on his face, glancing over his shoulder, half-expecting a tug on his coattails at any moment. A meager aide of Sevothtarte's, perhaps, or Dobiel's, or Sariel's, itching for the prestige, the honor of catching heaven's most hapless sinner, and delivering him back home in chains.

There was never anyone there at all. The barrier broke just long enough for him to enter. Zaphkiel had done his work well.

By the third night Raphael had ordered greasy take-out and typed his resume, and by the fourth he'd hand-delivered it to Stella Maris Junior High.

The school contacted him shortly afterwards, set up an interview. Raphael played endless tapes and records in the meantime, bought a pile of linguistic textbooks and spent hours working on his own enunciation, until his throat was almost raw. Enochian had its drawbacks- by simple virtue of what he was, he could fake his way into a near-perfect standard Japanese accent, but that would raise more questions than answers, questions that his fabricated backstory could never support. Spooning on another accent was an annoyance at best, forcing his own mild, intentional tense errors aloud was worse. He didn't like to feign incompetence.

He tested himself out over the next few days, buying suits and study materials. He watched the horde, finally, catching snippets of conversation. He'd follow them, pace around the subways, the streets, and he'd test the accent he'd tried to acquire, study their reactions as he asked for directions. He wasn't used to the attention he attracted, the way he'd be glanced at and smiled at. The way they were so helpful toward their newest stumbling gaijin, walking partway with him to almost every location. Raphael wanted to find that old servile smugness behind every grin, the one he'd read so easily on every face in Lakia, but he knew better. He didn't merit that kind of notice. He was a curiosity here, an odd creature come to visit, to take in and then dismiss in the same glance.

A walking exhibit with an extradition date.

"What's your specialty, Raphael?" As if it was another short discussion after a meeting. As if any second now, Zaphkiel would pour himself another cup of tea, disarming and casual. As if any second now, Raphael would excuse himself to his bed.

As if everything was normal.

Raphael's spit tasted like bile in his throat as he answered.

"Resurrections."

Zaphkiel waved one hand dismissively.

"Oh, no, I'm aware. But is it what you prefer? All other things being equal."

"Mental disorders."

"Really? And why is that?"

"Because the cure rate's so poor that they never fail to come back." Raphael was lighting his third cigarette in ten minutes. His hands shook so badly it took six tries.

"Ah. Then what would you say to a challenge?"

Raphael laughed. The sound seemed to catch in his throat, veering toward a cough.

"I don't even have a practice now, Zaphkiel."

"My name is Raphael Dubois. I'm a graduate student at Hoshi University." A timed, apologetic pause. "Well, actually, I'm only studying abroad there, I'll be getting my degree from Loyola next spring."

Her expression softened infinitesimally, half at the school's name, half in renewed interest toward the Saint Christopher medal drooping from his necklace. She had once been a pretty woman, her reddish-brown hair in a perm, her trim and polished business suit- though as far as he'd been made aware, she was a homemaker. She seemed to be reaching for a memory for a moment, eyebrows furrowing together before she dredged up the name.

"Chicago?"

"No. New Orleans."

"I see." Sara's mother pursed her lips. "It's hard to keep the faith here."

"It's hard to keep the faith back home," Raphael responded, lightly, only garnering a dismissive wave of her hand for his troubles.

"You're young, you haven't been here long enough to really see how it is. You will. My mother's people were initially part of the Kakure Kirishitan- the hidden Catholics. It's a shame to think that the beliefs they passed down under threat of martyrdom are dying from pure apathy." She brushed back a stray strand of hair. "My daughter... she's a good girl, and she tries. The Sisters are excellent- as I'm sure you know. But I still worry for her future."

"That's understandable."

"She's fifteen. She's at that age... well, her brother certainly doesn't help matters. That's really why I requested the school send a tutor in the first place."

"I'm afraid I'm under contract to Stella Maris, Mrs. Mudou. No matter how much I'd like to, I can't take on students that don't attend-"

"Oh, nothing like that. He doesn't live with us." Her expression soured. "No. I'm hoping to send her to England to stay with her grandparents after the semester's up. It'll be the best thing for her, once her English is up to par. I've made some preliminary arrangements to- Sara!"

"Sara, this is your new tutor, Mr. Dubois."

xxx

"I'm aware." Zaphkiel's hand came to rest on the table. "I'm sorry about the girl."

Zaphkiel would be. It was odd what the angel seemed to find sorry, at times, everything from banal budget cuts to aggressive border control to the Ions that groveled just beneath Lakia, all the things Raphael was accustomed to, acclimatized to. Zaphkiel's empathy used to be a curiosity when it wasn't a hindrance.

But Raphael, for once, was sorry, too. Zaphkiel's airiness had slipped just for that sentence, tone dropping, voice lowering. Raphael remembered the gleaming scissors against auburn hair, the flurry of feathers, and it almost silenced him.

"I didn't believe it would happen." Raphael swallowed. "Never."

"You had never been caught before." Zaphkiel rubbed at his own knuckles, as though sliding off rings that didn't exist, the motion oddly imprecise, as if he were trying to feel his fingers through a pair of gloves.

"Not by anyone who mattered. Khamael and Michael. Plenty of soldiers. But everyone knew." As if it absolved him. "Everyone always knew. I thought it would go on that way. Not forever, but long enough."

"Because of who you were?" The edge to Zaphkiel's voice, usually so well-hidden, like a knife sheathed in silk, seemed to glint out for a moment like a saber drawn, leaving Raphael stammering.

"Yes. No. I... why did you come, Zaphkiel? I can't picture you getting clearance to see me."

"I told you why. I have a challenge for you." Zaphkiel pursed his lips. Raphael was only half-aware of the hesitation. "You know what happened to Jibril."

For a second Raphael's fingers were under control again, shocked out of shaking. He stared into Zaphkiel's sightless eyes, trying to catch a flicker that wasn't there, a giveaway to tip him off. He thought about delivering the response he'd given a hundred cherubim when they'd demanded to know, the same response he'd written on her file, signed and sealed sixteen years before-catatonia, brought on by insanity.

"Sevothtarte stabbed her with a needle in the back of her neck."

Zaphkiel didn't even blink.

"Very good. But that's only the half of it."

"Then I only know the half."

"She's not in that chair, Raphael. Her soul was split from her body. Currently, Jibril's a young girl on Earth, and her brother- I trust you remember her brother."

"I'm not sure what you're going on about."

"Alexiel."

Raphael stiffened, tried to laugh.

"Alexiel only has female incarnations. You know that."

"Her sword has made things a little more difficult than that, as of late. Or haven't you paid attention? At least for Michael's sake, if not your own interest."

Lucifer's face in the crowd, there on the streets of Paris. The seven-bladed sword. It was so obvious, so disgustingly obvious, that Raphael almost couldn't stand to answer.

"Of course. But I can't interfere where Alexiel is concerned." The words rattled out of Raphael's mouth like a rote memorization, a last bit of feigned autonomy.

"I'm not asking you to, Raphael."

"Then what are you asking? I can't restore Jibril's soul to her body, not without the girl. I can't go to Assiah to retrieve her. I can't go anywhere. I'm under house arrest." Raphael laughed again, the sound sudden and piercing. "It's very courteous of Sevi, isn't it? Imagine, I'm getting to sleep in my own bed the night before I'm tried and executed-rank really does have its privileges, don't you-"

"Bright as you are, that isn't what I'm asking, either." Zaphkiel shifted forward. "A plan like that has far too many variables. I'm only requesting you treat the girl's amnesia. I want her to remember being Jibril."

"I can't-"

"I work in close contact with a rebel group. They've found her location, and they have the resources to transport you to Assiah within the next two hours. Everything you need will be provided."

"And my trial?"

"You'll have attempted suicide, as far as anyone outside this room knows." Zaphkiel paused. "The Anima Mundi will have your likeness in a hospital bed. It isn't a permanent solution, but it should buy you several months in Assiah, at least."

"No. I can't." The words dribbled out as Raphael finished his cigarette and lit another. "You've misunderstood me. I'm not capable of that kind of-"

"You will be." Zaphkiel reached out, hand resting on Raphael's shoulder. "Go. Don't let your life go to waste, Raphael. Not when so many others might depend on it."

xxx

The first sessions went well enough. Subject-verb agreement, a dozen worksheets, and Raphael was oddly amused to find that Sara's halting sentences showed every sign of an attempt at a British accent, lifted from her mother. A British accent he was slowly but surely eroding.

She was pleasant, polite but subdued. Their oral practice relied mostly on an egg timer and strips of paper with mind-numbing topics written on them. What are your hobbies? Describe yourself. What did you do yesterday? What did you do on your summer vacation? What will you do on your winter break? Her answers were almost always complete sentences, as required, with the day's new vocabulary thrown in for flavor. After a few weeks, Raphael added a short-story component out of pure boredom, listened to Sara laboriously slog through page after page of O. Henry, nicked from the campus library.

He caught quick glimpses of her sometimes while she filled out workbook pages, hoping for some brief snap of recognition instead of resigned concentration in those plain brown eyes. He never seemed to find it. She wasn't like Jibril, not really, for all that their souls were the same. His childhood friend was just another girl now, trading off her school uniform for jumpers and listening to visual kei bands on tape. She was ordinary when she had no right to be.

It should have hurt to see her that way, or at least made him feel something- anger towards Sevothtarte, perhaps, for damning her to a banal human incarnation. Irritation at himself for being unable to bring her back yet, unable to trip the wire that would force her memories to return. There was nothing.

There was nothing at all.

After their lessons, Raphael would go out, driving aimlessly through the traffic until the sun set and only neon excesses lit up the highways. The steering wheel was always cold in his hands.

He wondered already how much time he had left to waste on adjectives.

xxx

The afternoon of their next tutoring session was bright, sunny, and Raphael had forgone his suit for a light blue button-down and slacks. Sara had answered the door—her mother was out shopping. He'd managed to make more headway in gaining Mrs. Mudo's trust than he had her daughter.

He sat down at the kitchen table. Her books were already spread out in a hasty sort of way, and he noticed, wryly, that they were all turned to pages from a few weeks before. She hadn't started on today's exercises. She gave him an embarrassed look, started to turn to the right spot, but then he leaned over, splaying his fingers across two pages before sliding the book to the side.

"It's too nice out for us to stay here." He closed her workbook abruptly, and she blinked at him, looking like a cross between puzzled and affronted. "Let's take a walk."

"What?"

She was staring and with a swallow Raphael realized why. He'd been a routine for her, nothing much more consequential than the ribbon she tied her hair back with. A part of her life as bland and unremarkable as the nouns he drilled her on, the timed, hollow conversations, the scribbled essays. He'd been dutiful and he'd been dull, scrawling out his existence in red ink all over her papers, assuming he'd trigger her memory via his sheer presence. He'd forgotten his own rules of seduction.

"Let's take a walk," he repeated. "Fifteen minutes. If we talk at all, it has to be in English."

"That's going to be hard."

"Not at all." He smiled. "You'll remember more than you think, and it's half a matter of application. I had a linguistics professor, when I was working on my bachelor's, who said that we all knew the basic rules of our language without formally being taught."

"But…" Something was struggling in Sara's face, and Raphael suppressed a grin. "Of course that's true, but only for your first language. Anything past that, you have to learn the grammar. Don't you?"

"That depends," Raphael stacked her books, tucked them under his arm, and reached over to lightly tap her shoulder, "on three things: age, effort, and immersion. Now come on."

xxx

(but i don't know what to say.)

(say anything)

(no... you start? please?)

(with what?)

(... tell me... tell me about you. about your house.)

(my house?)

(no. no. i am sorry. your... your home. your country.)

(my country's a big place. but all right.)

(back home the people are shells, Sara, and they have been for a long time. it's not like this city, not like Tokyo, there's nothing new, nothing vibrant. the same faces for thousands of years. the same politics. it's the greatest waste of eternity.)

(back home i had a chandelier commissioned to hang in my bedroom. it was a half-dozen brass snakes coiled around each other and around the lights. i'd lay there on my back, with some girl crawling on top of me, and i'd look at those snakes and laugh and laugh, because i could afford such a waste and yet i could never be let in the chapel doors.)

(those are the real wages of sin, Sara. you don't lose your life, just what makes life worth living. your friends, your reputation, your—soul, even, the best parts of you get smashed up and ground to powder. there's nothing beautiful or romantic about it.)

(it's easy to flee, easy to fall. it's harder, so much harder, to stay on. they call it a cowardly deception, to continue in disgrace, but really it's the only brave path left to anyone. back home or here.)

(maybe you know something of that now, Jibril)

(maybe you do)

She was watching his mouth the whole time. Still watching as he finished, frown of concentration almost embedded in her face.

"You said something about a chapel."

"I did. I said I was an altar boy while I was in junior high."

"I didn't catch that." Her frown deepened. "And a snake, a snake crawling… right? I told you, this is too hard for me, Mr. Dubois."

"You could have interrupted."

"I don't know how to say much more than hello and list off the subjects I'm studying in school!"

He laughed.

"You'll learn. Besides, you read English pretty well."

"Reading it is easier. It's hard to speak it. It's too spontaneous. I don't know." Sara worried her lip with her teeth, another of a half-dozen gestures that she must have caught onto on her own. He hadn't recalled the nervous tic in Jibril. "I've never had a tutor before. I didn't expect one until cram school."

"I've never had a pupil before, so we're even." Raphael rounded the last street corner with her as they headed back to her mother's apartment. She hadn't made it those fifteen minutes. He hadn't expected her to. "An individual pupil, I mean. Group instruction's different. More tiresome."

"So you like this better?"

"Yeah. I think so." The side of his shoe scuffed against the concrete, hard enough to make a mark on the leather. No part of him was relaxed enough to make a real impact on her. Not nearly. Not yet. "I think so."

xxx

Two days later, he found himself turning off past his apartment, changing lanes in a trance, weaving in and out. He tried, briefly, to struggle against the impulses, the phantom hands guiding his own on the wheel, directing him. It was like pushing against a brick wall. He caught sideways glimpses of the odometer. A few more kilometers. A few more. A few more.

He knew what it was. Sevothtarte had found him out. Sevothtarte was yanking him like an animal on a chain, dragging him back to answer for his sins. Raphael was certain of it. The thought was only a dull weight in the back of his throat. No panic, no desperation. They'd been removed as cleanly as his control over his own body.

It would be back to disgrace after all. Zaphkiel had only delayed the inevitable. Sevotharte would probably be ecstatic to think he could add cowardice to Raphael's list of sins. He'd televise the execution along with the trial. Raphael pondered his own demise with an apathy that should have been unnerving. It was as if his nerves had been overdosed on anaesthesia.

He parked the car, leaving the key in the ignition. His footsteps seemed heavy on the concrete, heavier on the wooden steps into the church. The door creaked as he pulled it open. The force didn't let go of his body or mind until he'd stepped inside, striding down the aisle, past pew after pew like a demented bridegroom. Even when he saw who really stood before him in the front of the chapel, he could only half-believe it at first.

"You'll pardon me for that, won't you? I wasn't sure if you'd come otherwise." Zaphkiel, leaning against the altar, a steaming cup of tea in one hand. He was dressed as a priest.

"How did you-"

"My aide has a gift." Zaphkiel straightened his glasses. As if on cue, a blond boy with bright green eyes stepped out from behind the organ, looking somewhat abashed.

"Lord Raphael, I'm extremely sorry but-"

Zaphkiel dismissed him with a cheerful wave of his hand.

"There, there. Raphael's been bewitched before, I'm told. Though he prefers his charmers female, of course."

"That's your aide? He's not even out of the academy yet, is he? I'd bet he's still on the hormone pills."

The boy flushed. Zaphkiel grinned.

"As a matter of fact, he isn't. But I found him thoroughly qualified." He paused. "This won't take long, Raziel. I suggest you take this opportunity to sightsee. Ah-Tokyo Disney isn't far from here, is it? Raphael, you ought to know; unless I'm very much mistaken about your leisure time, you drive past it quite often..."

"Twenty kilometers."

"Excellent. Please, go on, Raziel. You can take his car."

"He what-"

"But Lord Zaphkiel-"

"I have complete faith in you."

The aide nodded before Raphael could finish, hurrying out the back entrance. He stopped midway through opening the door, to turn and give Raphael an embarrassed half-nod, half-bow before turning again and disappearing outside. Unbelievably, Raphael could hear the sound of his car engine cranking up a minute or two later.

"You picked an inconvenient way to get rid of him, you know."

"Raziel's very delicate. The idea of being subjected to you was very nearly indecent enough as far as he was concerned. If he were privy to our discussion, he'd be terrified." Zaphkiel took a sip of tea. "You'll have the vehicle back soon enough."

"Intact?"

"If not, we'll provide you another. Really, Raphael, I'd hoped you'd see there was no sense in flying around here."

"There's even less sense in letting a child use my car."

"You only have it on loan in the first place." Zaphkiel's lilting tone didn't change, even as he sat the teacup down on the altar, next to the chalice and ciborium, and somehow focused sightless eyes directly on Raphael's face. "But no matter. I never would have thought I'd get an opportunity to say you weren't moving fast enough with a woman, Raphael."

Part of Raphael was so starved for divinity he almost didn't mind being berated.

"I've followed your instructions to the letter. What more do you want?"

"Progress, Raphael." Zaphkiel cleared his throat. "The Anima Mundi can't keep the ruse up indefinitely."

"You told me I had months. It's only been six weeks."

"Sevothtarte won't always be satisfied with a video feed and a mannequin in a hibernation chamber."

"He's satisfied himself on less before."

"Not recently. I don't need to tell you how tenuous his grip on Atziluth has become. Sevothtarte sees traitors behind every door. That's why it's imperative that you-"

"I wonder if you weren't the one who set me up in the first place."

Zaphkiel didn't even blink. His gaze remained fixed, mouth that same slightly curved line. Not a muscle tensed. No denial, no agreement. No reaction at all. Zaphkiel was as calm as ever, all starched priest's collar and tidy robe. Unruffled. Beatific. The face of a martyr or an executioner.

"You said it yourself. I was never caught before. My whole career—my whole life, and I'd never been caught." He hadn't ever given voice to the suspicion. Hadn't wanted to imagine it, for all he knew of Zaphkiel, the machinations behind him. His spit felt like acid on his tongue as he spoke, as if it would wear his teeth down to the roots. "I toed the line, but I wasn't careless. Not around the ones that mattered."

"The ones that mattered were all around you."

"Don't give me that sanctimonious bullshit. You haven't changed a bit from the old days, have you? You sabotaged me. You'd ruin anyone if it meant you'd gain one more pawn." Raphael's own breaths felt staggered and stretched out, hands doused in his own sweat. His voice, louder now, echoed back at him against the chapel walls. "Even someone who had nothing to do with you."

"Raphael, you've been ruined for the last five thousand years. It shouldn't make any difference."

"It makes all the difference! It makes all the difference in the world!" and it was a funny expression, a really funny one, so agonizingly human that Zaphkiel smiled and Raphael wanted to choke. "If I was caught- if I'm here because of my own carelessness, then I can accept that. But if you planted that girl-"

"Then you have no agency at all." Zaphkiel lifted the teacup again, stretching it out towards Raphael, as if in a toast. "Please don't act as if it's a novel circumstance for you."

Raphael's fingers coiled into a fist at his side. He felt the air rise up before he realized he'd summoned it, waving cool around his face, a breeze instead of a whirlwind. He focused it for a dim, pathetic second towards the chalice and ciborium, and they collapsed, clinking, on the altar, spilling host and wine down the embroidered cloth. Zaphkiel tilted his head toward the noise but didn't say a word, though one hand slipped to his pocket. Raphael tensed at the motion, abashed when all Zaphkiel retrieved was a handkerchief.

"Tell me if you planted her. Tell me. You owe me that much."

"And you owe me everything." Zaphkiel turned to dab at the spilled wine with the handkerchief, nonchalant, as if this were only another banal, meaningless office visit before a council meeting. "You already know the answer."

"For God's sake, the girl was wingdropped the next morning!"

"Yes."

"Doesn't that matter to you? Doesn't that make any-"

"She knew what would happen to her. She accepted it."

"No one ever accepts a death like that." Raphael swallowed. "There's no martyrdom in it. No—nobility. Nothing. She was just a child screaming."

"She isn't the first one who died for your sins."

"And who's the first to die for yours? Who?" The chalice fell from the altar, rolling down the wood floor. "I'm not like you, damn it, I never intended for anybody to-"

"Raphael, really, you're making a mess." Zaphkiel folded the handkerchief, now sopping wet. He didn't so much as incline his head politely towards the sound of the chalice knocking against the floor. "You've always had your own agenda."

"All I have is your orders."

"And you'd be wise to abide by them." A pause, crisp and nonchalant. "Ah, and Raphael, do be more careful. Too many spikes of astral power here and-"

The wind stirred again, flinging the chalice upright, the wafers rushing up from the floor to refill it like white soldiers, precise and pure and utterly indifferent as Raphael walked away.

xxx

Raphael took the bus home that night. The car was returned three hours later, unharmed. Raziel didn't look him in the eye when he brought it back, though he'd dipped his head in another bow and pressed an envelope in his hand before he'd watched him disappear. Inside were the keys, a rattled apology written in an unsteady hand, and a pair of passes to Tokyo Disney.

He thought, later, that he should have pressed the child for answers. As if he had any. Raziel seemed to be of that irritating breed of candidate that never rejected an opportunity to be nervous and servile, and there never was a poorer combination. Zaphkiel wouldn't entrust anything of value to him.

The next day, passes crumpled in his pocket, he went for his tutoring assignment.

"Can you tell me another story the way you did last time?"

"I didn't tell you a story last time."

"You did. When you talked about your country." Sara winced. A half-finished worksheet was splayed on the table, conjugations and false cognates. "I didn't catch it all, but I knew it was a story, not... not just facts you were rattling off. I meant for you to talk about your city, but I forgot the word for it. And you told me I could only speak in English, so..."

"I could talk about my city now."

"Okay. You're from New Orleans, right? That's what Mother said."

"Yes. But are you sure I didn't bore you before?"

"You didn't! I liked hearing it, at least, even if I couldn't catch what everything meant."

(new orleans is a fine city where the women take off their tops for plastic beads, if it's the right time of year. lakia is much more restrained.)

(lakia's the second layer of heaven, sandwiched above the slums. it's noted for its hospital and commerce. eighty percent of the population lives there. i was born in lakia, kept in an incubation unit for the two-week standard. i wasn't a twin. i wasn't remarkable.)

(in fact, when we first met at the academy, i was shy. my nerves turned to ice around anyone i respected. i'd embarrass myself at the thought of someone grand, someone with position. i stayed that way for centuries after our diplomas were given and promotions handed out-i had to pretend i wasn't, of course; it's a weak thing, to be shy, even here in assiah. it ruins you. but i was shy. i was shy for all the sweet lies i'd mumble to my patients every day at work. i was shy for all that i ended up a commander, a leader, the Chief of the Virtues. i was shy and still terrified that i'd be caught just like before. i didn't know then that i was what they needed. i was the one they could scorn and sneer at. i was the one they could make use of. the example. the folly.)

(but you weren't. everyone thought well of you except the people that needed to. The ions and the grigori still sing your praises. but you wouldn't conspire with zaphikiel and you wouldn't bow to sevothtarte, and that's precisely why you're here now, listening to me prattle and pretend i'm teaching you English when all i'm trying to do is bring you back.)

(and now i barely want to.)

The silence stretched like elastic. For a moment, Raphael forgot that the round, wide eyes he was looking at were brown instead of blue, forgot that they saw nothing eternal at all. Then Sara started to speak.

"I don't know if I'll ever really get good at this, Mr. Dubois."

Raphael's mouth twitched. The expected answer fell out like pocket change.

"I'm sure you will. It takes time."

"Mr. Dubois, I…"

Sara glanced away.

"I… haven't been studying like I should. I've been doing my lessons but… you see, I know Mother… she told you, right? She wants to send me away. I thought that… if I didn't learn, that maybe I wouldn't have to go."

"Sara—"

"I'm sorry. That… I shouldn't have been like that. It's not fair on you or Mother. I'm just wasting your time, Mr. Dubois."

"Raphael."

"What?"

"Raphael. My first name."

"Oh." She flushed, shook her head. "Raphael. I—I'll do better. I promise."

"No, it's all right." The smile that had served him for centuries didn't fail him, the careful, cultivated ease intimating everything and nothing. "Come on, come with me. We'll get sandwiches, my treat."

"But I—"

"You've had a hard time of it. Don't worry."

"Um. Well," she started, chewing worriedly on her lip, "if we hurry."

"We'll hurry. How about the cafe up the block?"

"O-okay."

He didn't take her hand, but he took her textbooks, carrying them under his arm while they walked. The cafe, thankfully, was almost empty, but the sandwiches were fresh.

"You don't have to pay, I have some money."

"Nonsense. I get a stipend through the school on top of my salary. A few hundred yen won't break me."

She studied him for a second before nodding, a bit hesitantly, settling down into her chair, passing him a napkin.

"It- you must think my problems are pretty silly."

"I don't think being sent to another continent is a silly problem at all." He paused. "Why does she want to send you away?"

"My brother. She didn't tell you? She thinks I spend too much time around him, that he's a bad influence on me."

"No. She didn't say a word."

"He..." Sara paused, taking a sip of her soda. "He gets into fights a lot. He used to get bullied, when he was a kid, on account of his looks. Both of us did."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"No, it's all right now." Sara smiled, taking a pensive bite of her sandwich. "What I mean is… what I mean is, it's all right for someone like you to be blond. People expect that. But... you stand out, when you're different. Setsuna and me, we're only a quarter English and it still shows. I used to want to dye my hair so I'd look like everybody else. But that's just looking. It's not being." She paused. "Anyway, I-I'm talking too much."

"No, go ahead. I know what it's like to not fit in."

"But you seem like you're used to it," Sara blurted. "I mean, you seem so sure of yourself all the time."

"I'm resigned to it," and the easy grin didn't leave his face. It had been stuck there for at least a century in total, during much more successful conquests. It didn't mean anything. It didn't mean anything at all. "I'm a stranger in a strange land wherever I go. But it's not without its perks."

"Do you like it here, Mr. Du-Raphael? How long are you planning on staying? If you don't mind me asking."

"At least a semester. Though I might get an extension, depending."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Tokyo's a beautiful city."

"Oh." Sara's lips pursed just slightly. She took a sip of soda. "But you don't like it."

"I like it as well as I like anywhere else." He sliced up his sandwich, cutting away at the corners with a precision that bordered on fastidious. "But enough on me. Your brother doesn't live with you and you attend an all-girls school, so I'm not sure why your mother thinks his influence is such an issue."

"I meet up with him once a month. She doesn't like that." Sara pushed her drink away. "She doesn't want me around him at all."

"Why?"

"I don't know." Raphael caught the way she looked at him, the way her gaze darted, as if she was expecting disapproval, or further pressing. She'd been asked that before. More than once. More than twice. "My mother worries about me too much. I think that's it. And, well, his friend really... I guess I can understand it, a little."

"That's too bad."

"She thinks my brother's strange." Something in Sara's expression changed, as though she was surprised at her own confession. "Things... he has a bad temper, and he's strong. He put a man in the hospital once, a long time ago. I don't know why I'm telling you this," and her index finger ran across the table in smooth circles. "He's not a bad person. He's actually very sweet, but he just doesn't think."

"And your mother thinks he'll hurt you?"

"No. No, of course not." Sara said it almost accusingly, her posture stiffening in her seat. Any further and she'd clamp up entirely. This unexpected inroad would be gone for good, leaving nothing but that stiff, impenetrable courtesy in its place. "Sorry, you don't understand."

"I've pried," Raphael amended, plastering an apology on his face, if not his words. "Let's talk about something happier."

"Like what?"

Raphael pushed aside a last remaining bit of crust on his plate, tilting his head. He didn't smile. "Oh, like… the way they make the imprint on these sandwiches. It's pretty cunning, isn't it?"

Sara blinked at him, then, almost subconsciously, glanced at what was left of her own sandwich, where part of the round head of a panda was burned into the bread.

"They use an iron."

"Do they? I can't imagine." Raphael's expression was so perfectly straight he ventured on overdoing it, mocking. Sara caught it, finally, and burst into laughter, the sound clear and charming. Girlish. Jibril had never been girlish. Not even as a child.

"I didn't think you had a sense of humor, M—Raphael," she said, and he felt the edges of his mouth tilt up until they mirrored hers.

xxx

In the church, Zaphkiel had left the finer details to Raphael's discretion. Raphael wished he hadn't, lips pursed as he mulled them over. He was biding time. He'd been certain, until today, that he was biding time, delaying the inevitable. Zaphkiel's plans would continue with or without his success, but now there was a chink in the armor. Now there was a sign that Sara might be receptive after all.

He thought about a few astral projections. Psychic messages sent in her sleep seemed heavy-handed and coarse. Raphael knew better than to ever imagine himself an expert manipulator, but projections were dime-store interference, nothing delicate, nothing artful- and chances were high she'd dismiss them. Religiosity didn't necessarily breed superstition any more than simple belief meant zealotry.

Mind synchronization was a better choice all around, except that it would give him away.

He pieced memories together in reluctant preparation anyway. Council meetings that they'd both attended. A small, self-righteous crusade she'd lugged him into once, providing inoculations to the Ions- he doubted Sevothtarte had ever sanctioned that visit. A field trip during their academy days. The day when they first began to take their hormone pills, finishing them off each afternoon at lunch with a swallow of water, excited and expectant. She'd have to see it all through his perspective, of course; there was no avoiding that, but she would be there, present in the scene. She would connect it. Eventually.

He started to send them that night, feeding them through. It took energy he was no longer accustomed to using, like atrophied muscles after a cast was removed, and it left him tired when he finally crawled to bed alone, the scent of a woman's perfume still clinging to the bedsheets. But there was something else now, embedded deeper than the cloth, flooding his senses no matter how he twisted and turned. Inescapable.

It was the scent of lilies.