Muse Read online

  I remember Ryan. I remember everything about him. The way he looks when he’s feeling impatient, the way I feel when he holds me close: messed-up, buzzy, wired. Like he’s the greatest drug in the universe.

  I need him for selfish reasons I can barely articulate. When I’m with him, I feel less like a freak. He makes me laugh. He makes me angry. He makes me feel alive, in the way I once was. But most of all, he gets me. And he makes me feel safe. He’s the only person who doesn’t treat me like a broken toy that must be fixed. And they’re pretty potent things after centuries spent wandering the wilderness that is this earth: alone, deranged, damaged.

  Did Ryan get my message? Or does he truly believe me … dead?

  Is he grieving? My God, did I cause him grief? Did I hurt him?

  I love Luc. That’s a constant. He’s always been there, always. A face in my dreams, a voice in my head. We were meant to be together. We were made to be together. We have a connection that not even time, distance or remorseless exile can sunder. Some day, some day soon, we’ll be together again. I know it. It’s what’s sustained me all along: the thought that one day this might all be over and I might be allowed to go home, to find Luc waiting for me. That hope kept me together, gave me something to steer by, even before I could begin to grasp again who he was, and what he’d once meant to me.

  But right here, right now? There’s Ryan. And I’m too afraid to name what I feel for him, because in no universe would someone like him and someone like me ever work out. What Ryan makes me feel is all an illusion, because feelings are for humans, and I’m not human. I know that much. My thing with Ryan can go exactly nowhere. But there’s no crime against wishing, no crime against dreaming, is there? So when I’m with him — when circumstances don’t transpire to tear us apart — I cheat and tell myself to take it one day at a time, to live in the moment.

  But I also need Ryan to help Luc find me, if that makes any kind of sense. Because if Ryan and I are together, Luc will finally have some clue as to where upon the surface of this floating, teeming world I am. He had said so himself in my dream. Find the mortal boy, return with him to Paradise and then we’ll be together again.

  But I can’t ever tell Ryan any of this. Because maybe then he wouldn’t want to help me any more, and I can’t risk it. If Ryan loves me, really loves me — and not just because I once helped save his twin sister’s life — then I don’t know what that would do to him, telling him he’s got competition from a guy who was created to be peerless and immortal. Who needs to hear that?

  He’s been hurt enough for one lifetime.

  I need to find him quickly. To apologise. To explain. To confess.

  That he just may be my skeleton key, my wild card, my circuit breaker. My way out of this hot, damn mess.

  The girl with the two-coloured eyes crosses her arms, trying to catch and hold my gaze in the looking glass. ‘You bloody well didn’t, did you?’ she snarls suddenly. ‘Did you?’

  My eyes fly to hers in the mirror and I wonder why she’s so angry.

  ‘You’ve held it together for six months and now you go and start using again?’ she yells. ‘I’m not interested in all the stupid excuses you always have ready — it just happened to be there; and how could I say no?

  ‘I warned you! You’re not going to talk me out of it this time, because I can’t do this any more! All the sneaking around for you, all the lying, when it’s obvious to everyone what’s wrong with you. You’re even more out of it than usual. I quit. Hear me? I’m quitting.’

  She turns and paces towards the rumpled bed, while I try to work out what I’m supposed to have done.

  ‘Look at you!’ She turns on me accusingly. ‘You say you’re “clean” but I’ve never seen you so spaced out and paranoid. I don’t know how you got your hands on some, but after today — after those tedious, bloody fittings — we’re done, we’re through. You’re a junkie, Irina. You need to get proper help, before you lose your mind. Or your life. I didn’t sign up for this. I’m not prepared to walk in one day to find you dead on the floor.

  ‘Are you getting any of this?’ she says, sitting down on the edge of the bed, sounding defeated. ‘And don’t pretend your grasp of English has failed again, because I know you understand me perfectly.’

  ‘You … can’t … quit,’ I reply with difficulty, the first words I’ve said since ‘waking’ here. Even to me, Irina’s heavily accented voice sounds awkward, almost rusty, although the accent itself seems familiar.

  ‘Because I’m …’ I struggle to remember the word the English girl had thrown at me, ‘clean.’

  I frown, still trying to make sense of the word’s meaning in the context of her accusations. What is it exactly that I’m supposed to have … used?

  Her answering laugh is shaky. ‘Good try, but I’ve seen it all before, remember? The zombie eyes, the inability to conduct a logical conversation, the paranoid belief that something’s trying to eat its way out through your skin. You probably woke everyone on this floor with your screaming. You must be coming down like a lead balloon. I still don’t know how you managed it — I never let you out of my sight yesterday.’

  Russian, my inner voice pipes up suddenly. Irina’s accent is Russian.

  ‘Hello?’ she snaps. ‘You’re doing it again — spacing out!’ She waves one hand in front of my face. ‘You don’t even remember me, do you?’ she says softly. ‘Gia? Gia Basso? Hired to make you look good? Hired because I speak enough Italian and French to give you an edge over all the other girls who’d plunge a dagger into your back and step into your shoes in a heartbeat given half the chance.’

  ‘I am not spacing out,’ I reply, a touch of anger creeping into Irina’s husky voice. ‘I’m thinking. There’s a difference.’

  Gia snorts. ‘Where there’s smoke there’s always fire. I can’t believe you’d jeopardise your comeback like this! We’ve only been working towards this day for months. Honestly, you are your own worst enemy.’

  I feel a surge of irrational fury that makes the fingers of my left hand involuntarily curl into talons. I have to stop myself lifting the judgmental little twerp off the ground by the lapels of her cherry-blossom-patterned kimono and giving her a hard shake. She doesn’t understand how far I’ve come just to get here; how I’ve started to do something that I’ve never been able to do before.

  I’m beginning to learn. I’m beginning to accumulate knowledge; to make connections again, however random they may seem to you. Like how I seem to have an immediate geographical fix on where I am right now. And how I’m able to recognise Gia’s accent, even Irina’s. And how I’m walking and talking without feeling an ounce of physical distress. I could have been born in this body. It could be my body. From distal phalanges to metatarsals, from calcaneus to crown, it might almost have been mine, ab initio, from the very beginning. That gap that’s always been present, between thought and deed? It’s dissolving.

  But most important of all is the fact that I can remember every second I spent as Lela Neill. She may be alive no longer, save in my memory, but I recall everything that happened when I was her. It’s proof that I’m growing stronger, that I’ve started to circumvent the strange blockages in my mind, those obstacles that the Eight have somehow placed there. In some unholy way, I’ve begun to regenerate. Or mutate. Or evolve. And the process is getting … faster.

  I think that, like a machine, I used to be set to delete. That’s why I’ve never been able to remember anything more than impressions really, sixteen, thirty-two, even forty-eight lives out of context. But something’s changed. Some things are beginning to stick.

  Or maybe, like acid, like flame, some kind of dangerous contaminant, I’m beginning to burn back through. And what’s more, no one has any idea of the extent to which I’m back. Only me.

  No matter how high the Eight might try to build up that wall of thorns around me, from now on, Sleeping Beauty is awake. And she’s angry.

  There’s no reason I can’t keep to the plan that I
started when I was Lela Neill. The face, the body, even the specifics, may have changed, but there’s nothing to stop me just picking up where I left off. Around me, time always gets misplaced, you know? It runs too fast, runs too slow. I’ve always had a problem with chronology, with the order of things. But starting today, I’m taking control before the sucker gets away from me. I ran out of time when I was Lela, and it’s not going to happen again. As soon as I can get my bearings, figure out what Irina’s story is, work out where the exits are, I’m going to reconnect with Ryan Daley and bust my way out of here.

  Gia looks startled when I growl in Irina’s heavy Russian accent, ‘You want to quit? Go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.’

  I stalk past her, calling her bluff, and fling open the first door I see. It leads into a spacious walk-in wardrobe containing an ironing board, half a dozen heavy white terry towelling robes, blankets, towels, slippers and umbrellas, all embossed with a fancy, crested hotel logo. You could comfortably house a small African village inside the space, but there’s not a single scrap of clothing I could actually wear. I shut the door disgustedly.

  ‘What are you, uh, doing?’ Gia says uncertainly, as I try another door to the left of the first one. Again, I don’t bother with the light switch. I don’t need to.

  I find myself staring into a luxury all-marble bathroom with its own flat screen TV and built-in sound system. It’s covered in enough personal effects to bury a person alive, but there’s nothing in here remotely resembling anything to wear, and even I draw the line at walking the streets in my pyjamas. Only crazies do that.

  I might hear voices in my head, but that doesn’t make me crazy.

  I slam shut the bathroom door and turn to face the girl on the bed. ‘Where are my clothes?’ I demand.

  Gia starts to laugh so wildly, she sounds like she’s crying.

  ‘Where are my clothes?’ I say again, fiercely. ‘I need to go out. There are things I have to do.’

  Top of the list? Locate one of those all-night internet joints I used to frequent when I was Lela. I need to use that seething, wholly man-made ‘web’ I still can’t get my old-school head around to draw Ryan to me, the way I did before. Across oceans, across time zones.

  In all this time, I’ve never been able to find Luc and he’s never been able to find me. But Ryan, at least, has a physical location on this earth. He comes from a small town called Paradise that’s as far from it as it’s possible to get. But it’s a real place, perched on an ugly stretch of beach in a country I don’t even have a name for yet. I’d been forced to leave Lela’s body before I’d managed to find that out.

  Even if Ryan hasn’t reached home yet, he’s going to be checking his emails. I can get a lock on him again, I know it.

  Gia’s still laughing. ‘Where are my clothes!’ she whoops. ‘Listen to yourself! You sure you’re “clean”?’

  I frown, still unable to see the joke.

  Gia leads me out of my bedroom and into a massive sitting room that’s decorated in more of the same riotous rococo excess. There are too many occasional tables, mirrors, knick-knacks, table lamps, armchairs, divans, vases of scented, white blooms, hand-knotted silk rugs and footstools for one lone skinny female like me to use.

  We pass a coffee table surrounded by deep, winged armchairs, and an elegant dining table with eight chairs around it that’s been placed beneath a set of windows facing out onto the street to catch the light and the incredible view. I’m in part of an old Milanese palazzo, I realise, looking around. The proportions of the rooms are baronial. Beneath all the unrelenting froufrou, the place has old bones.

  ‘Is all this all … mine?’ I murmur.

  ‘We’re sharing it,’ Gia says over her shoulder, ‘like we always do. Although you always make sure you give me the smallest room in the suite.’

  We come to a stop outside two doors on the other side of the vast sitting area that are painted a discreet olive-grey colour, with inset door panels outlined in gold leaf. Both doors are closed.

  Gia points at the one on the right. ‘That one’s mine and it’s off-limits,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘The last time you asked to borrow one of my vintage Jean Desses cocktail dresses, I found myself at Paris Fashion Week staring at a photo of it on the back of one of your supermodel “friends” at a hotel nightclub opening in Miami. You know, the one who always forgets to put on her underwear before she goes out. You swore you had no idea how it got there and when I finally got it back after threatening legal action, the dress had part of its skirt missing.’

  I look at her blankly. She’d lost me at the word vintage and she knows it.

  Gia sighs, opening the door on the left and flicking on the light. ‘Does this answer your earlier question?’ she says with heavy sarcasm.

  I can see why she’s incredulous. The vast room has had all of its furniture removed and is filled with matching bespoke luggage in an expensive-looking black, tan and white chevron pattern. There would have to be sixteen pieces of the stuff at least, and the initials I.D.Z. are emblazoned across the front of each one in large, bright green script, with a matching navy blue and green racing stripe running down the centre of each piece.

  ‘Flashy,’ I drawl in Irina’s husky voice.

  Gia gives me an odd look. ‘These are just your “essentials”,’ she replies. ‘We had a screaming match over the six other suitcases I forced you to leave at home because we’re only supposed to be here for, like, five days.’

  Spilling out of every open case is a wealth of coats, dresses, jackets, tops, skirts, trousers, shorts, sweaters, wraps, jeans, leggings, boots and shoes in every colour and texture imaginable, along with handfuls of filmy lingerie. It’s a sea of leather, denim, fur, feathers, couture, vintage and velvet. Irina is clearly not averse to a sequin. The room is like an Aladdin’s cave of high-end apparel. There’s enough clothing here to dress an army of women for a week without anyone having to lift a finger to do laundry.

  When I think about Carmen Zappacosta’s one dingy sports bag, her little boy’s clothes and her much-loved flat, grey toy bunny with its fur all worn-down in places, its reattached glass eyes, I feel almost misty. Ditto Lela Neill’s haphazardly stored collection of threadbare second-hand clothing, most of it past its use-by date the first time around and dyed an unbecoming black, green or purple.

  How could one person have so many … things?

  ‘Are these all mine, too?’ I say idiotically, knowing the question is basically rhetorical and that I fully deserve the look Gia is giving me now. The crazy-long inseams on the crystal-studded, low-rider jeans draped across the nearest case are a dead giveaway. Plus, Irina has long, bony, ballet-dancer’s feet that match the pair of towering snakeskin stilettos slung carelessly near the door. Gia’s feet are like something from the days of Imperial China: doll-sized.

  ‘You know I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer,’ Gia replies as she ushers me out of the room and back into the warmly-lit sitting room.

  She paces across to an antique secretaire against one wall and retrieves a pile of glossy magazines from it, thrusting them in my direction.

  ‘You’re Irina Zhivanevskaya, remember? Supermodel, tabloid darling. One of the most recognised faces on the planet? Women all over the world copy the way you dress, the way you wear your hair, the places you hang out. They follow your every move, every disastrous hook-up, with morbid interest.’

  I quickly scan the covers in my hands and Irina’s mesmerising face is on every one.

  Gia gives a small laugh. ‘You’re one of the “one name” girls — like Gisele or Daria, Elle, Lara or Iman. You can’t just “go out”,’ she says. ‘You haven’t been able to just “go out” for several years. It takes full hair and make-up and a decoy car or two for you to just get up and leave any place. Let alone here. And especially now.’

  She takes back one of the magazines in my hands and flicks through it until she finds the cover story and hands it back to me. I frown as I read about
Irina’s latest battle with a very public addiction to drugs that’s left her dangerously erratic. I look up to see Gia’s cool eyes on me.

  ‘It’s mostly just old gossip hurriedly cobbled together because no one’s quite sure how bad it really is, not even me, because you lie and lie. I’ve quit on you three times already and you’ve somehow always managed to lure me back. You always know which buttons of mine to push. And I’m no fame whore, but I still kind of like the crazy shit that happens around you. Nobody else on earth gets a chance to see what you see, be where you are …

  ‘I expect you’ll sack me now,’ Gia says, looking down at the floor, ‘for talking out of turn like this …’

  I shake my head. ‘On the contrary,’ I reply in Irina’s distinctive smoke-and-whiskey voice. ‘I value your honesty.’

  I didn’t used to. When I’d first begun to realise there was something really wrong with me — that the face and body I happened to be inhabiting never seemed to bear any correlation to the person I was inside — I was so wound up and brittle, so wary, that I’d truly believed that honesty was for simpletons. But that was then, and this is now, and I could use more of it. The Eight? Luc, even? They’re all keeping something from me, something bad. I can feel it in my bones.

  I rifle quickly through the other magazine articles about Irina and it’s clear that she may be famous, beautiful and rich beyond reason, but she’s a monster. Irina’s been pulled off an aeroplane for slapping a flight attendant who asked her to get off her mobile, she’s thrown champagne and punches at a love rival in a Berlin nightclub, had nude photos uploaded onto the net by a vindictive ex-boyfriend, been filmed scoring, mainlining and passing out, and already labelled a has-been at the ripe old age of nineteen. She’s a bitch-slapping, hair-pulling, tantrum-throwing piece of work.

  As I hand the magazines back to Gia in amazement, she says, ‘The fact you’ve had to give yourself a refresher course and don’t appear to remember the highlights from your own life speaks volumes …’