And when they want it, they seek him out. So this is what she was doing."
"You seem to know quite a lot about him."
"I've seen him. I've watched them. Frazer and women."
"Some might say he's merely had better luck with women, Mr. di Fazio. What do you make of that?"
"I know what you're trying to say. Don't think I'm foolish. I'm telling you how it is with him. So I ask you this: If Frazer Chaplin wasn't the man she'd taken as her lover, then who was it?"
It was an interesting question, Isabelle thought. But far more interesting at the moment was the fact that di Fazio had seemed to know what Jemima Hastings' every movement had been.
TWO OF THEM hovered. Their form was different. One rose from an ashtray on a table, a cloud of grey that became a cloud of light from which he had to turn his head even as he heard the booming cry of The eighth choir stands before God.
He tried to block the words.
They are the messengers between man and man's Deity.
The cries were loud, louder than they had ever been and even as he filled his ears with music, another cry came from another direction, saying Battlers of those who themselves were born of the bearer of light. Distort God's plan and be thrown into the jaws of damnation.
Although he tried not to seek the source of this second shrieking, he found it anyway because a chair swept into the air before him and it began to take shape and it began to approach him. He shrank away.
What he knew was that they came in disguises. They were travelers, they were healers of the sick, they were inhabitants of the pool of Probatica at whose shores the infirm lay awaiting the movement of the water. They were the builders, the slave masters of demons.
He who healed was also present. He spoke from within the cloud of grey and he became flame and the flame burned emerald. He called not for righteous anger but for a flood of music to issue forth in praise.
But the other fought him. He who was destruction itself, known by Sodom, called Hero of God. But he was Mercy as well, and he claimed to sit at the left hand of God, unlike the other.
Incarnation, conception, birth, dreams. These were his offerings. Come with me. But a price would be paid.
I am Raphael and it is you who are called.
I am Gabriel and it is you who are chosen.
Then there was a chorus of them, a veritable flood of voices, and they were everywhere.
He worked against being taken by them. He worked and he worked till the sweat poured from him and still they came on. They descended till there was one mighty being above all, and he approached. He would not be denied. He would overcome. And to this there was no other answer that might be given so he had to escape he had to run he had to find a place of safety.
He himself gave the cry against the multitude that he now knew was indeed the Eighth Choir. There was a stairway that emerged from the light and he made for this, for wherever it headed. To the light, to God, to some other Deity, it didn't matter. He began to climb. He began to run.
"Yukio!" came the cry from behind him.
"SO I HAVE the impression the engagement is all in Paolo di Fazio's head," Lynley said.
"Dominique did a bit of eye rolling when I offered her my congratulations."
"Now that's an interesting bit," Isabelle Ardery said. "Well, I did think six times engaged was rather pushing the envelope in the human relationship area. I mean, I've heard of six times married - well, perhaps only with American film stars in the days when they actually did get married - but it's rather odd that with all the engagements, he's never made it to the altar. It does make one wonder about him. How much is real and how much is imagined."
"He may have done."
"What?" Ardery turned to him. They'd stopped at the delicatessen, which occupied one of the railway arches. She was making a purchase of olives and meats. She'd already bought a bottle of wine at the wine cellar.
Lynley reckoned these would likely stand in place of her dinner. He knew the signs, having worked for so many years with Barbara Havers and having thus become accustomed to the single