Evangeline opened the top left card and removed the piece of paper from inside. She opened the second card and did the same. Holding the pieces of paper side by side, she saw that her grandmother’s message worked in the same fashion as the images. The message must have been written at one time, cut into squares and sealed into envelopes that Gabriella had sent in yearly intervals. If Evangeline placed the creamy pages side by side, the jumble of words came together to form comprehensible sentences. Her grandmother had found a way to keep her message safe.
Evangeline arranged the papers in the proper order, placing one sheet next to another, until a whole expanse of Gabriella’s elegant writing lay before her. Reading over it, she saw that she had been correct. The fragments fit together perfectly. Evangeline could almost hear Gabriella’s calm authoritative voice as she scanned the lines.
By the time you read this, you will be a woman of twenty-five and-if everything has worked according to the wishes of your father and me-you will be living a safe and contemplative existence under the supervision of our Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at St. Rose Convent. It is 1988 as I write this. You are just twelve years old. Surely you will wonder at how it came to pass that you are receiving this letter now, so long after it was composed. Perhaps I will have perished before you read it. Perhaps your father will be gone as well. One cannot glean the workings of the future. It is the past and the present that must occupy us. To this I ask you to turn your attention.
You may also wonder why I have been so absent from your life in recent years. Perhaps you are angry that I have not contacted you during your time at St. Rose. The time we spent together in New York, in those most important years before you went to the convent, has sustained me through much turmoil. As has the time we spent together in Paris, when you were but a baby. It is possible that you remember me from that time, although I doubt it very much. I used to take you through the Jardin du Luxembourg with your mother. These were happy afternoons, ones that I cherish to this day. You were such a little girl when your mother was murdered. It is a crime that you were robbed of her so young. I often wonder if you know how brilliantly alive she was, how much she loved you. I am certain your father, who adored Angela, has told you much about her.
He must also have told you that he insisted upon leaving Paris immediately after the incident, believing that you would be safer in America. And so you left, never to return. I do not fault him for taking you far away-he had every right to protect you, especially after what happened to your mother.
It may be difficult to understand, but no matter how I wish to see you, it is not possible for me to contact you directly. My presence would bring danger to you, to your father, and, if you have been obedient to your father’s wishes, to the good sisters at St. Rose Convent. After what happened to your mother, I am not at liberty to take such risks. I can only hope that by twenty-five you will be old enough to understand the care that you must take, the responsibility of knowing the truth of your heritage and your destiny, which, in our family, are two branches of a single tree.
It is not in my power to guess how much you know about your parents’ work. If I know your father, he has not told you a thing about angelology and has attempted to shelter you from even the rudiments of our discipline. Luca is a good man, and his motives are sound, but I would have raised you quite differently. You may be utterly unaware that your family has been taking part in one of the great secret battles of heaven and earth, and yet the brightest children see and hear everything. I suspect that you are one of these very children. Perhaps you uncovered your father’s secret by your own devices? Perhaps you even knew that your place at St. Rose was arranged before your First Communion, when Sister Perpetua-in accordance with the requirements of angelological institutions-agreed to shelter you? Perhaps you know that you, daughter of angelologists, granddaughter of angelologists, are our hope for the future. If you are ignorant of these matters, my letter may bring you quite a shock. Please read my words through to the end, dear Evangeline, no matter the distress they cause.
Your mother began her work in angelology as a chemist. She was a brilliant mathematician and an even more brilliant scientist. Indeed, hers was the best kind of mind, one capable of holding both literal and fantastic ideas at once. In her first book, she imagined the extinction of the Nephilim as a Darwinian inevitability, the logical conclusion of their interbreeding with humanity, the angelic qualities diluted to ineffectual recessive traits. Although I did not fully understand her approach-my interests and background resided in the social-mythological arena-I did understand the notion of material entropy and the ancient truth that the spirit will always exhaust the flesh. Angela’s second book about the hybridization of Nephilim with humans-applying the genetic research founded by Watson and Crick-dazzled our council. Angela rose quickly in the society. She was awarded a full professorship by age twenty-five, an unheard-of honor in our institution, and equipped with the latest technological support, the best laboratory, and unlimited research funding.
With fame came danger. Angela soon became a target. There were numerous threats upon her life. Security levels around her laboratory were high-I made sure of this myself. And yet it was in her lab that they abducted her.
It is my guess that your father has not told you the details of her abduction. It is painful to relate, and I myself have never been able to speak of it to anyone. They did not kill your mother immediately. She was taken from her laboratory and held for some weeks by Nephilistic agents in a compound in Switzerland. It is their usual method-kidnapping important angelological figures for the purpose of making a strategic trade. Our policy has always been to refuse to negotiate, but when Angela was taken, I became frantic. Policy or no policy, I would have traded the world for her safe return.
For once your father agreed with me. Many of her research notebooks were in his possession, and we decided to offer these in trade for Angela’s life. Although I did not understand the details of her work in genetics, I understood this much: The Nephilim were getting sick, their numbers were diminishing, and they wanted a cure. I communicated to Angela’s kidnappers that the notebooks contained secret information that would save their race. To my delight, they agreed to make the trade.
Perhaps I was naive to believe they would keep their end of the agreement. When I came to Switzerland and gave them Angela’s notebooks, I was given a wooden casket containing my daughter’s body. She had been dead for many days. Her skin had been badly bruised, her hair matted with blood. I kissed her cold forehead and knew that I had lost all that mattered most to me. I fear that her last days were spent in torment. The specter of her final hours is never far from my mind.
Forgive me for being the bearer of this horrible story. I am tempted to remain silent, keeping the ghastly details from you. But you are a woman now, and with age we must face the reality of things. We must fathom even the darkest realms of human existence. We must grapple with the strength of evil, its persistence in the world, its undying power over humanity, and our willingness to support it. It is little comfort, I’m sure, to know that you are not alone in your despair. For me Angela’s death is the darkest of all dark regions. My nightmares echo with her voice and with the voice of her killer.