THE FOREST IN SOREL’S dreams was moonlit and foggy, tendrils of mist creeping between the trees. She crept alongside them on her fox-feet, sniffing the air. Alongside the dark, earthy smell of the forest there was a strange perfume, compelling, drawing her onward. It reminded her of the parade through the streets in Kuritsev—the scent, maybe, that had clung to the ink-dark hair of that girl she had wanted to talk to before Isser interrupted her.
Grinning, she trotted after the scent. In the forest before, in her fox shape, she’d been afraid, feeling the dog on her trail. Now she was relaxed, feeling no hint of danger. In such an optimistic mood, she could appreciate the keenness of her own senses and the busy activity of a forest at night, with little creatures rustling in the litter on the ground and in the branches over her head. Her fox paws did not tire the way her human feet did, and felt their way easily along the broken ground, leaping over tree roots and skirting obstacles with such grace it was impossible not to enjoy.
Soon enough she came upon a stone wall with an iron gate. Here was the source of the perfume: a profusion of flowers that nearly obscured the stones of the wall. Roses she recognized. The flowering trees on either side of the gate, thick with pale pink, star-shaped clusters, she didn’t know. The place looked abandoned, yet she felt a promise in it.
Sorel slipped beneath the rusted iron gate and trotted up the drive, over moss-covered cobbles displaced by frost heaves and the occasional sprouting bramble. The house, when it came into view, was even grander than her own father’s estate. It rose four stories to a gabled roof that seemed to scrape the dark low-hanging clouds, the grey stone of the facade hung with more roses and ivy.
Sorel the Fox felt no compunctions about approaching the door, where a single lantern gave out a misty light that barely broke through the fog. She stood on her hind legs and clattered the knocker until the door opened.
Behind it was Isser, looking down at her. He was dressed as a footman from the last century in knee-breeches and stockings with his hair curled at his temples and a pair of spotless white gloves. Isser with his own face, this time. Fox-Sorel grinned and chattered at him.
He stepped back and opened the door wider to let her in but stopped her just past the threshold. Inside, the house was lit by the same wavering blue lights, leaving pools of shadow in every corner.
“I’d better take your coat,” Isser said. “She won’t want you in the house like that.”
Sorel sat on her haunches and scratched her shoulder with a hind leg. She who?
“The lady you’ve come to see,” said Isser, not making eye contact. “Have you got fleas?”
Maybe! Sorel laughed. I don’t know how to stop being a fox. You look all right as a footman. But what is this place?
“It’s a Gehinnom,” said Isser. “Come on then, if you must be a fox, at least you can be a clean one. Please stop scratching.”
Sorel gave her ears one last good scratch, just to spite him, and trotted after him to a hidden door that led to a servants’ staircase.
You and I have a lot to talk about, Isser Jacobs, she said in her fox chatter. What’s this with Shulem-Yontif and stealing a book?
“Shh,” said Isser. “You shouldn’t even be here, so don’t go asking too many questions or you’ll be stuck forever.”
He opened another door, leading them into a bedroom where two small figures stood on either side of a steaming porcelain bathtub. They might have been children, or just child-sized. It was impossible to tell, as one had the head of a cat and the other the head of an owl, and both had the bare clawed feet of barnyard fowl. The owl-headed page was holding a stack of towels, and the other one a stack of folded clothing.
Sorel didn’t wait to be invited to wash. The water looked so clean and warm, and somewhere under her fur she remembered she had human muscles that ached from running and walking and leaping out of windows. She put her paws up on the edge of the tub and launched herself in with a splash.
When her head came out of the water, she saw she was human again, and naked, as if the fox coat had simply melted off her. Isser handed her a bar of soap without looking at her, though she found she didn’t mind his presence all that much. The little creature-servants goggled at her unashamedly, so she stared back. They too were dressed in last century’s fashions, one in satin breeches and the other in a lace-edged pinafore, though Sorel didn’t want to assume that meant the one was male and the other female.
“Where are we?” she asked Isser again, as she massaged the sweet-smelling soap into her hair. “I thought I was dreaming, but I’ve never smelled perfume in a dream before.”
“You’re not dreaming,” Isser said. “It’s real. You’re just not in the world. Like I said, you shouldn’t be here.”
“Because I’m not dead, like you?”
He stared down, frowning at a spot on the floor rather than looking at her, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she was naked, or because he didn’t want to talk. She felt, in a remnant of the connection between them, the echo of a sullen reluctance.
“Yes,” he said, after a grudging moment. “Because you’re not dead, yet. And I’d rather you stayed that way.”
She ducked her head under the water to rinse the soap out of her hair. Isser came forward and plucked a comb and a pair of scissors from the top of the stack of towels in the owl-page’s arms and started to finger-comb her hair.
“You’re in Agrat bat Machlat’s country estate,” he said. “Or anyway, part of you is. Don’t ask me what part, I’ve never understood souls and everything at all. And part of me has been here since I died.”
“Why?” Sorel leaned back and relaxed, letting him even out her pocketknife haircut. “Who’s Agrat bat Machlat?”
“She’s an angel,” said Isser. “Everyone knows that.”
“My father doesn’t let superstitious servants stay in his house,” said Sorel. “So, no, not everyone.”
Isser sighed, exasperated. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to go out alone on a Wednesday night? Or on the Eve of Shabbat?”
Sorel shrugged. Maybe. “I wouldn’t have listened if they had.”
“Well, those are the nights the lady goes riding with her demons,” said Isser. “And if you’re not careful, she’ll steal you.”
“So, what, you’ve been stolen?”
“No. It’s more complicated, in my case. But she almost stole you last Shabbat, you idiot. Who goes to a bathhouse in the middle of the night no matter what day it is?”
“I was dirty!” Sorel protested.
“God protect us,” said Isser. “Anyway, she got a look at you then, and now she wants to speak to you. So here you are.”
The owl servant held up a towel, which Sorel took as a hint that she ought to get out of the bath and dry herself. While she wrapped herself in the one towel, the pages industriously scrubbed her limbs dry with two more. It was a far cry from her cold night in the Kuritsev bathhouse.
When she was dry, Isser helped her dress in the clothes the cat-servant had been holding: a Hussar’s uniform, crusted with golden embroidery. It felt very strange to wear, but when Isser guided her to a mirror, she found that she liked what the shape of it did to her appearance—broadening her shoulders and making her chest look deep and flat. With the whisper of a mustache on her upper lip, plucked for her wedding but growing back now, and her hair cropped neatly short, she almost believed that she was a real officer.
She caught Isser’s eye in the mirror and grinned at him. He gave her a crooked smile in return, as if he couldn’t help it.
“You look all right,” he said. “Try not to tell her any secrets, will you? Even if she likes you, she has reasons to trick you.”
“The angel that steals people?”
“Yes, only don’t call her that to her face. You can just say ‘my lady.’ She likes when people are polite.”
Sorel wasn’t the most practiced at politeness, but she was intrigued by the house and everything in it and couldn’t help wondering about its mistress. She’d never heard of a female angel, much less one that ran with demons. Was this the sort of thing boys learned in their yeshivas? Only, no, Isser didn’t have that kind of learning. Maybe it was the sort of thing people learned from their mothers.
The two little creature-servants escorted Sorel down a grand staircase, leaving Isser behind—he didn’t explain, and the pages walked too quickly for Sorel to turn back without losing them.
Sorel and her father usually dined in the library, leaving the dining room at his estate for holidays, Seders and such, which Sorel always hated because her father and his male guests would talk politics and scholarship and any women brought with them would try to engage her in conversation about things she didn’t understand. Kalman would only invite guests who he deemed worthy of their house, which meant women who spoke French (Sorel didn’t speak it well and this embarrassed her) and talked about music and German philosophy, neither of which she knew anything about. She was supposed to be too cultured for the adventurous novels she did read, and therefore had nothing to talk about at dinner parties and had learned to hate them.
She didn’t know what to expect of a dinner hosted by a lady, much less a lady who was an angel or a demon, and who drank blood, or whatever it was Isser was afraid of. When the owl-page opened the door to a brightly lit dining room, Sorel felt an involuntary shudder of social inadequacy. The feeling left her entirely as she realized not only were the guests not the sort of cultured people her father would have approved, many of them were certainly not even human. Admittedly they were all seated already and looking at her, as if they’d been expecting her arrival—but there, on the left, a young man was looking at her with a pair of cat’s eyes in his otherwise ordinary head and across the table from him was the girl with the inky hair from the parade on Sabbath eve and behind them was a creature like a wolf on its hind legs, dressed in a fine silk waistcoat, and next to him was a girl with dripping wet tresses who might have been a rusalka and, then, another owl-head.
“Alter ben Kalman!” the kitten servant announced, in a yowling voice. Sorel hadn’t realized the little imps could talk and jumped at the announcement.
“Our guest of honor!” cried a lovely female voice, accented with something familiar but unplaceable. It belonged to the lady at the head of the table, tall, dressed in a ruby-studded evening gown of the same last-century style as Isser’s uniform, her masses of dark curls elaborately pinned atop her head. She smiled and gestured to the empty seat beside. “Baruch haba, Alter.”
Sorel—Alter—stepped forward, and the guests made polite applause then returned to their meal. Some of them were eating delicacies such as Sorel-Alter could imagine seeing on any human table, but the owl-headed woman was politely carving slices off what was, unmistakably, a huge, raw mouse. Sorel-Alter shuddered and turned back to the lady—Agrat bat Machlat.
“I appreciate you accepting my invitation,” Agrat said, laying her warm hand over Sorel-Alter’s. “I’ve wanted to speak to you for some time. Did you enjoy my gift?”
“Your, uh, gift?” Sorel-Alter found it difficult to speak with the lady making eye contact. Her eyes were a deep golden color, difficult to look away from. She was really very beautiful. Sorel-Alter had not quite intended to follow Isser’s advice and be cautious, but Agrat’s beauty was too much. It was terrifying.
Agrat laughed, a rich, deep sound. Sorel-Alter tore their eyes away, looking instead at the glittering table setting—fork and knife of polished bone, a crystal glass of wine. Was it safe to drink wine here?
“The body in the river,” the lady explained. “That was my gift to you—no one will now be looking for Sorel Kalmans. Clever, don’t you think?”
Sorel-Alter’s gaze was drawn inescapably back to her face. “The body? You mean—it wasn’t. It wasn’t real, was it?”
Agrat bat Machlat simply smiled.
Sorel-Alter caught sight of Isser standing in the shadows by the door. He caught their eye and made a face which seemed to indicate they were doing a bad job. His disapproval was, somehow, reassuring.
“Be polite” he’d said. “Thank you, my lady. That was, uh, a very—unexpected generosity.”
“It was nothing,” said Agrat bat Machlat. “Please. Eat.”
Sorel-Alter looked to Isser again. He gave a tiny nod, and they turned to their plate. It was not a raw mouse, thankfully, but a roasted quail, appetizing in a honey glaze. When they cut into it, they found it stuffed with mushrooms and currants, sweet and dark and rich. The food filled them up like nothing they’d eaten all day in Esrog.
“Now,” said Agrat bat Machlat, after awhile, “there is one little thing you might help me with, if you felt the need to show your gratitude for my assistance.”
It didn’t take a diplomat to understand she wasn’t really asking how they felt. “What’s that?” they asked, brightly and perfectly civil but meticulously worded. Making no promises.
“There is something of mine that was stolen from me,” said the angel. Her plate was empty, but she traced some invisible pattern on it with a finger as she spoke. “It is somewhere in the city, but I cannot get it. I am not able to set foot in Esrog at this time.”
“Why not?” said Sorel-Alter, surprised. “You seem, well. Powerful.”
“Thank you, dear.” Agrat patted them on the shoulder, then went back to drawing her invisible patterns. “The Esroger Rebbe is an old enemy of mine. As I understand it, you don’t like him much yourself?”
“I don’t know that much about him, to be honest,” said Sorel-Alter, then caught Isser’s eye again and shoved a forkful of quail in their mouth to stop being so honest.
“He set up his Eruv very carefully, to keep certain presences out of the city,” said Agrat. “But this is not how things are meant to be. Do you understand? I have an ancient contract with rabbis much greater than that man. Certain times and places are mine, other times and places are interdict. It is unfair to me that the contract be made so strict.”
It was a surprisingly petty complaint. After all, what was Esrog? Just a city. On the other hand, Sorel-Alter understood the aggravation of being told by a man where they could and could not go.
“And what is it that’s in the city?” they asked.
“A book,” said Agrat simply. “Just a little book. It’s not so special to look at—old. But it is important to me.”
“Not the book—Sefer—the Book of the Angel of Silence?”
“I had asked another to retrieve it for me,” said Agrat bat Machlat. “But he failed.” She gestured to Isser, still half-visible against the wall in his servant’s uniform. “And now he owes me a great debt. His debt cannot be repaid without that book. And now that you and he are the same—neither can yours.”
Her smile was different this time. More teeth in it. Sorel-Alter smiled back, uneasy.
“Do you know who has it?” they asked, though it felt risky to push. “The person who killed Isser?”
“It happened in the city,” said Agrat. This seemed to be a no. “Do you know?”
Sorel-Alter was running through what they knew about Isser’s death again. If it happened in the city, it truly couldn’t be Shulem-Yontif, could it? He and Isser met on the other side of the river, in the same cemetery where Sorel-Alter was sleeping now, or had left Sam and Adela sleeping, however this worked. It could have been Pavlikov, but if so, it seemed unlikely to be connected to the book. What would a gentile know about a Jewish holy book?
They didn’t want to consider the rebbe as a possibility. He was too close to their father. Yoshke, then, maybe.
“No,” they said at last. “I don’t know.”
“Isser does not remember,” said Agrat. “It torments him. You will have to find out for all our sakes. Now, before you go, my dear … there’s one more thing you ought to know. You’ve been trusting someone you shouldn’t.”
Sorel-Alter blinked. “Who? Not Adela? Surely?”
“No, no. Adela, what a lovely girl she is. No. When you wake up, Alter, take a look in Sam’s bag. Remember that, all right? Now. Drink your wine.”