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passed through Carmen’s body … two lives ago? Or does this ability come from somewhere else, some when else? Some ‘life’ even further back than the time I was Carmen?
    The cool-hued room seems to tilt. There’s a sudden sensation that I’m freefalling, though my physicalbody sits here, unmoved. What’s inside always so very different from what’s outside.
    As if from very far away, I hear Gia enquire frostily of our guest, ‘Tea?’, before picking up the silver thermos and pouring a shot of hot, dark amber liquid into one of the crested white teacups on the table before her. It’s a trait so peculiar to the English, and as I direct my unfocused gaze at the steam coming off the surface of the drink, I can almost make out every particle rising.
    Felipe shakes his head dismissively, unfolding a road map from a pocket of his overcoat. He spreads it out on the table between us with his tanned, long-fingered hands, before uncapping a gold and onyx fountain pen.
    Something tugs away at my subconscious, begging to be made plain. That small voice inside me, that’s always one step ahead of my waking self, murmurs: Gabriel, Uriel, Michael, Jegudiel, Selaphiel, Jeremiel, Barachiel, Raphael .
    Eight names more familiar to me than my own. Eight names that could be a poem. Or … a prayer.
    Inexplicably, that YouTube clip of Uriel walking on water, the one Ryan had told me to look at, replays itself in my head. He was gliding across the surface ofan icy Scottish loch, searching for something or … someone?
    And on the heels of that thought — the recollection that when I touch someone — someone unguarded, someone human — their thoughts and emotions, even their memories, become like an open book to me.
    How are these things even remotely connected to the fact that when I’m pushed to the brink I can hurt people with my bare hands?
    Twice now, I’ve almost torn myself free of the body I’ve been placed in. It happened once when I was Carmen, when I was wild with fear and anger. It happened again when I was Lela. I’d placed a hand upon Lela’s mother as she lay dying and had somehow seen inside her cancer-ridden body. I’d even tried to heal her from the inside out — before I’d been forced to return into Lela.
    I hadn’t been able to save Karen Neill, because Azraeil had already marked her for his own.
    Azraeil . I frown.
    Like the Eight, he’s one of the elohim . But one thing sets him apart from the others. His touch can bring … death. Or restore life in equal measure.
    Traits. They’re all traits, I realise suddenly. These things I can do that I can’t explain. Even that strangeability Azraeil has, which no one else possesses — mastery over death itself. All these are traits. Peculiar to our kind. In us, when we were first … created.
    I squeeze my eyes shut, chasing down thoughts that refuse to come clear.
    Gia turns to me and queries, ‘Irina? What do you think of braving Via Broletto today? Too risky?’
    I shake my head blindly, waving at her, at Felipe, to decide.
    When I was Lela, I met a rogue malakh — a kind of supernatural messenger — who’d chosen exile on earth rather than fulfil the task for which it was created. Somehow it had glimpsed me inside Lela’s skin; had claimed that it could detect the protective mark of the elohim upon me. It had begged me to intercede with the elohim on its behalf because it needed a human body in which to live out its days. For in turning away from its original purpose, it had doomed itself to an eternal and painful half-life as a wandering, formless spirit.
    It had envied me — me! — and the fact that I was constantly being reborn in a succession of mortal bodies.
    Elohim. When I was Lela, even probing the meaning of that word had caused me unimaginable pain.
    But now, that small voice inside me, which is always, always, one beat ahead of my waking self, whispers: Most holy, most high. Together with a thousand others that no mortal alive has ever