show. She pulled off the rabbi’s boots and gave them to Lea, then slipped on Lea’s shoes even though they were two sizes too small.
“Don’t leave this cave until you can no longer see me. Do you hear me? Then, once I’m gone, go to the border with Julien. He’ll find the way.”
There was something unexpected in Ava’s tone. A sort of terror was folded inside the words.
“Where will you be?” Lea asked, feeling Ava’s terror.
“I will be doing what I was made to do,” Ava told her.
When she led the angel away, he would assume he was following Lea into the dark woods, and by the time he realized his mistake, it would be too late. The moment to take her would have passed.
Before Ava left, she and Lea threw their arms around each other. They didn’t need to speak.
I beg you for one thing. Love her as if she were your own.
This was how it had begun, and how it would end.
Ava set out in mortal guise, the angel following. She made certain not to be too fast and went at a mortal’s pace. She forced herself to think like a mortal. This way or that? Over this rock or around it? Mortals hesitated. They stumbled. There he was, at her heels, in his black coat, carrying his book, ready to open its pages. She was so concentrated on the Angel of Death that she made a very human mistake. She could see a distance of a hundred miles and could inhale the sparks of fires burning in Paris, for the city was in chaos, and would be liberated in a matter of days. But she didn’t spy the shadow of a man lying in wait. A German soldier on his own was camped nearby. He had killed too many people to count or remember. He had one thing in mind, how to go on living. He spied Ava long before she took note of him, and when she was almost upon him, he lifted his rifle.
Ava stopped in her tracks. In a way she was relieved. If meeting with the soldier was meant to have caused Lea’s death, it was a death she would have gladly taken on. But he would find out she wasn’t mortal soon enough. She would trick him as she’d tricked death.
“Come here,” the soldier told her in German. “Do as I say and I won’t shoot.”
He had no idea that a single letter was more lethal to her than any weapon, and so she went to him and lowered her eyes so he wouldn’t know she had no fear of him.
“What are you doing here?” he wanted to know.
Not wishing the Angel of Death to hear her voice, she didn’t answer.
“Can’t you speak?”
She pointed to her throat and shook her head.
“So you’re dumb?” A smile curled at the young man’s lips.
Ava felt the heat of compassion that radiated from Azriel as he sat above them. He was preparing himself. He was ready to take a mortal life into his arms.
The soldier nudged her with his rifle. “Do you know the way to the border? Can you take me there?”
She nodded. By now, Lea and Julien would be on their way. By now the stars were shining. The night was clear and cold. How strange that when one was pretending to be mortal, it was possible to shiver.
“Good,” the soldier said. “You’ll take me there.”
They ventured on, with Ava slowing her gait so he could keep pace with her. She led him around aimlessly, something he didn’t realize until they stumbled upon the place where he had made camp.
“What sort of trick is this?” the soldier cried, hitting her with his rifle.
She ignored his attack, horrified by what she saw. There was a makeshift tent and a fire pit. Beside them he’d set up traps to catch his dinner. There above them hanging from a rope was the heron, shot, with blood on his breast, gray feathers littering the forest floor. A howl escaped from her throat.
“This miserable thing.” The soldier shrugged. “Not worth eating.”
Ava’s fury burned hot inside her, her loss was immeasurable. This world that could be so heartless had stung her through and through. When she turned on the soldier it was as if the wind had caused his fall. Once he was on the ground, she climbed on top of him. Did he believe she was a mere woman? She was a monster, wasn’t she? She was made for