Free Angelology by Danielle Trussoni

that she’s been stealing my jewelry these twenty-five years.”
    Percival laughed. “You haven’t let on that you’ve known. If you had, Otterley would have stopped ages ago.”
    His mother waved the observation away as if it were a fly. “I know everything that goes on in this family,” she said, adjusting herself on the divan so that the arch of a wing caught the light. “Including the fact that you have not been taking proper care of yourself. You must rest more, eat more, sleep more. Things cannot simply go on as usual. It is time to make preparations for the future.”
    “That is precisely what I have been doing,” Percival said, annoyed that his mother insisted upon directing him about as if he were in his first century of life.
    “I see,” Sneja said, evaluating her son’s irritation. “You have had your meeting.”
    “As planned,” Percival said.
    “And that is why you have come upstairs with such a sour look—you wish to tell me about the progress you’ve made. The meeting did not go as planned?”
    “Do they ever?” Percival said, though his disappointment was plain. “I admit: I had higher hopes for this one.”
    “Yes,” Sneja said, looking past Percival. “We all did.”
    “Come.” Percival took his mother’s hand and helped her from the divan. “Let me speak to you alone for a moment.”
    “You cannot talk to me here?”
    “Please,” Percival said, glancing at the party with repulsion. “It is completely impossible.”
    With her audience of admirers captivated, Sneja made a great show of leaving the divan. Unfurling her wings, she stretched them away from her shoulders so that they draped about her like a cloak. Percival watched her, a tremor of jealousy stopping him cold. His mother’s wings were gorgeous, shimmering, healthy, full-plumed. A gradation of soft color radiated from the tips, where the feathers were tiny and roseate, and moved to the center of her back, where the feathers grew large and glittering. Percival’s wings, when he’d had them, had been even larger than his mother’s, sharp and dramatic, the feathers precisely shaped daggers of brilliant, powdery gold. He could not look at his mother without longing to be healthy again.
    Sneja Grigori paused, allowing her guests to admire the beauty of her celestial attribute, and then, with a grace Percival found marvelous, his mother drew the wings to her body, folding them to her back with the ease of a geisha snapping closed a rice-paper fan.
     
    Percival led his mother down the grand staircase by the arm. The dining-room table had been stacked with flowers and china, awaiting his mother’s guests. A small roasted pig, a pear in its mouth, lay amid the bouquets, its side carved into moist shelves of pink. Through the windows Percival could see people hurrying below, small and black as rodents pushing through the freezing wind. Inside, it was warm and comfortable. A fire burned in the fireplace, and the faint sound of muted conversation and soft music descended upon them from upstairs.
    Sneja arranged herself in a chair. “Now, tell me: What is it you want?” she asked, looking more than a little annoyed at being escorted away from the party. She took a cigarette from a platinum cigarette case and lit it. “If it is money again, Percival, you know you’ll have to speak with your father. I haven’t the slightest idea how you go through so much so quickly.” His mother smiled, suddenly indulgent. “Well, actually, my dearest, I do have some idea. But your father is the one you must speak to about it.”
    Percival took a cigarette from his mother’s case and allowed her to light it for him. He knew the moment he inhaled that he had made a mistake: His lungs burned. He coughed, trying to breathe. Sneja pushed a jade ashtray to Percival so that he could extinguish the cigarette.
    After recovering his breath, he said, “My source has proved useless.”
    “As expected,” Sneja said, inhaling the smoke from her