Archangel's Heart
Page 71But the words Elena’s mother had remembered were almost all ones of love, ones a doting mother would say to a cherished child. Marguerite had been loved, deeply so, that truth a distant but potent memory that had allowed Elena’s mother to survive foster care with her soul undamaged.
“. . . Raphael . . .”
The single word sliced right through her preoccupation.
Looking to her left, she caught the eyes of the slender teenage boy who’d been speaking. Maybe fifteen or sixteen at the most, he paled under the light brown of his skin, his hazel-brown eyes going huge. “What about Raphael?” she said with a smile.
If anything, the boy paled even further, while his friends looked at her as if just waiting for her to pull out a crossbow and punch a bolt through the boy’s heart, leaving him broken and bleeding on the dry earth.
The chill inside her grew harder, colder.
26
“I’m Elena,” she tried again, keeping her tone friendly and hoping he spoke English. “What’s your name?”
His Adam’s apple bobbing desperately, the boy found the courage to say, “Riad.”
Sweat broke out over his face, but he came. Then he blurted out, “You want me?”
It could’ve simply been his grasp of English, but the blunt question struck her as subtly wrong. “Just to talk,” she said once he was close enough that she could speak to him without raising her voice—though the friends who’d come along with him in a silent statement of solidarity could no doubt hear her. Good. “I don’t harm kids. If you know who I am, you know that to be true.”
Swallowing again, Riad whispered, his eyes wide, “Hunter angel.”
Elena groaned at the moniker that haunted her. “Yeah, yeah.” Putting her hands on her hips, she glared. “Guild Hunter, if you don’t mind.”
For some reason, that seemed to make the teenager relax.
A faint smile emerging out of the fear, he said, “I heard stories. You fought ten vampires all together.” He lifted one hand, punched the air. “Pow!” Another air punch. “Pow!”
Grinning while his friends nodded as if synchronized, she said, “I might have.” She glanced around the area before turning her attention back on Riad. “Why so scared?”
“No reason.” Scuffing at the dirt, he stared down, his face pale once more and his pulse so rapid, she could see it jumping in his neck.
Taking out the scarf, she wrapped it around her head like a Moroccan hunter friend had shown her. This pattern of wrapping would provide shade, protecting her face. It also had the side effect of hiding her hair, which might be a benefit if she didn’t want to freak people out with her resemblance to Majda—that is, if there was anyone still alive who’d known her. And if she’d had any connection to this town at all.
Mouth falling open, Riad said something in the local tongue that had all his friends daring to step closer. All five boys stared at her. When she raised an eyebrow, four blushed and pulled back. Riad was the one who spoke. “You look like . . .” A scowl, a quick discussion before they seemed to decide on the right word. “Like a cousin,” he finished. “Like us but different.”
“My grandmother was Moroccan.”
The excitement that lit up their faces was a bright, innocent thing. “Really?” another of the teens asked, seeming to forget his fear in the face of this unexpected piece of knowledge.
“Really,” she confirmed. “Who knows, maybe I have ancestors here.”
They all laughed, taking it as a joke, but she had an escort of five teenagers when she walked into the market proper, the others of her group having spread out until she couldn’t spot anyone in the immediate vicinity. Her impromptu escort seemed to confuse the wary storekeepers and citizens until the boys chattered at the adults and a few smiles began to cut through the heavy miasma of fear that shadowed every face.
She figured out soon enough that the boys were sharing her Moroccan heritage. To her disappointment, however, no one looked at her in a way that hinted that they saw her as anything other than a foreign angel. Interesting maybe, but that was it. Definitely no sense of being recognized.
It had been a long shot anyway. Morocco was a big place and the woman who might be her ancestor could’ve come from any part of it. Just because Majda had been at Lumia and known Gian didn’t mean she’d been a local.
The elderly man stared at her with faded brown eyes, his frown so deep that it dug dark furrows into the wrinkled skin of his forehead. “You wish to buy a carpet?”
“Not today.” Elena ran her fingers over the handwoven threads. “I come only to admire.”
The carpet maker made a noise at the boys that was clearly an order that they stay out of the store, the interaction so familiar she guessed the boys belonged to market families and had grown up running wild through its streets.
Scuttling out, the teens yelled that they’d wait for her outside.
She laughed, went to make a comment about teenage exuberance, and as she turned, her scarf slipped down to reveal her hair. The carpet maker sucked in a breath, staring at her as if he’d seen a ghost.
“Did you know her?” Elena asked softly, not wasting time. “Majda. Did you know her?”