The Silver Bird: Immortal Secrets Trilogy Book One (Immortals Secrets Trilogy 1)

by S J Williams

  “It might be wise.” Sebastian agreed as he gestured for Effie to precede him to the other car.

  “Does Catarina have something against nerds?” Effie asked as Sebastian opened the car door for her. She settled herself into the middle, leaving the long-legged men the larger footwells on either side.

  “Not nerds necessarily.” He slid Effie a wry look under one raised eyebrow. “I think she’s just a little tetchy at the moment.”

  Henry, who had come round the other side of the car, let out a bark of laughter. “And I thought I was the king of understatement.”

  Sebastian gave the driver the destination in a spill of fluent French that Effie listened to with deep admiration. She’d mastered Italian over the course of her studies but French was still out of her reach.

  I might have time to learn it, she thought. If we get through this.

  Lucien’s home was a quaint two storey building sandwiched in a rustic cobbled terrace halfway up the butte of Montmartre. As soon as Effie saw it, a delighted grin spread across her face.

  “Oh, I like this.” She said, stepping back after getting out of the taxi to get a better look at the building. Even though it was night, she could tell that the plastered walls would be a warm cream in daylight, the perfect offset for the sage green shutters that hung on either side of the square windows.

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Lucien said from where he was standing in the doorway. She turned her smile on him.

  “Shall we go in?” Sebastian asked, striding forwards without waiting for her response. Effie stared after him. Where had his bad mood come from? He’d been laughing only a few minutes ago. She realised, a little too late, that Sebastian might not take it very well if she so openly praised another man’s house. Guiltily, she tried to think of what she’d said of his house in Florence as she followed him inside. She’d liked it, as soon as she’d seen it, of course, but she’d had other things on her mind that night. Oops.

  The inside of the house was as charming as its exterior. And, though Effie kept her thoughts to herself this time, she couldn’t help but notice how old and solid the walls were. Ever the history nut, she asked Lucien, when Sebastian had disappeared upstairs to claim a room, how old the house was.

  “The building, as it is presently, is getting on for two hundred and fifty years. I’ve owned this plot for much longer than that, though.”

  “Really?” She asked, fascinated by this insight into Lucien’s past. “Are you originally from France then?”

  “No, my birth land lies in what is now Iraq. France is more of my adoptive country. But we can talk about history later. Right now, I am eager to see what articles you wanted to go over.”

  “Of course.” She said following Lucien’s lead into a study that, once he’d lit the antique lamps dotted around, glowed a warm gold. “I’ll need a computer, though.”

  “Here,” Lucien gestured to a PC on his desk. “Help yourself.”

  “The articles I was thinking of speculated about what Fra Amedeo was doing in the four years or so after he gave up painting. Around 1500 to 1504.” She booted up the PC. It slowly came to life, blinking like an old man waking from a deep sleep. “I thought it might give more insights into the lives of the people I was researching.”

  “And did it?” Lucien asked, leaning over her shoulder as he waited impatiently for her to find the article in Google Docs.

  “No. At least, not the people I was looking for. But, now that I think about it, it did mention another monk.”

  “You think this might be the vampire?”

  She glanced up at him. “I have no idea but it might at least give us something new to work on. Ah, here it is.” She opened the article.

  “Do you think you could print me a copy?” Lucien asked. She grinned at him. He sounded as eager as a school boy.

  “I think I could, yes. You have a printer?”

  He already had the USB cable in his hand.

  A short while later they were both combing through the articles Effie thought might be relevant.

  “Here.” Lucien said excitedly, leaping up to show her the page that had caught his attention. “I think this is what you were talking about. It says here, Savonarola recommended a friend of his to take ‘the painter’ under his wing. The author thinks this painter was Fra Amedeo.”

  “That’s right.” Effie found the same page on the laptop screen. “I made a link here to another article where this same monk was mentioned. I was going to research more about him but something must have distracted me because I never got round to it.” She looked up, a nasty feeling in the pit of her stomach. “You don’t think Bartholomew controlled me? You know, made me forget about it?”

  Lucien shrugged.

  “That is the trouble with mind control. When it is done subtly, it is very hard to tell what is our own will and what is the will of the other.”

  She frowned at him in confusion. “Have you ever been controlled?”

  “I have not been controlled as an immortal, no. But I had one experience at the hands of a vampire many, many years ago. As with all my memories, it has stuck with me, as vivid as if it was yesterday. Clearer, even.” His face darkened for a moment. Then it cleared, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “But, vivid or not, that is ancient history. Now there is no vampire to distract or control you. Do you think you can find out more about this mysterious person.”

  Effie nodded. “I can certainly try.”

  Sebastian knew he was being petty, knew that normally he liked being in Lucien’s house. But, right at that moment, he found he couldn’t stand the sight of it. She liked it, did she? This rustic old cottage?

  “Those thoughts of yours are so dark, I was starting to think there was a thunderstorm in here.” Henry said mildly, leaning against the door frame.

  Sebastian straightened up from where he had been bending over his suitcase, a shirt in his hand. He slanted his old friend an annoyed look.

  “And what are you so pleased about?”

  “Pleased? I wouldn’t say ‘pleased’ was the right word. Amused? Entertained? Tickled? That’s more like it. I am tickled by your jealousy.”

  Sebastian balled up the shirt and lobbed it at Henry’s head. Caught off guard, Henry spluttered as the material wrapped itself around his face.

  “Ouch.” He said, once free of the shirt. “That touched a nerve. She’s not going to leave you for Lucien, you know. No matter how pretty his house is.”

  Sebastian plucked a phone charger from out of the case. Henry’s eyes widened. Holding his hands up in surrender, he said, “Okay, okay. I’ll leave it. Just don’t let her see you like this. She never was the type to get all sentimental when you went caveman on her. Remember that time she deliberately went off on her own, just to prove a point?”

  Sebastian sighed. He did remember. Vividly. The sheer panic he’d felt that night… It wasn’t too dissimilar from what he was feeling now. Only now, the terror of having Effie taken away from him wasn’t just the result of a paranoid protective instinct. Now, it was a very real possibility.

  “Pretty or not,” he said, “we need to defend this house against any attackers who might have followed us here.”

  Abruptly serious, Henry nodded. He walked into the room and took one of the chairs arranged by the window.

  “I was watching while we walked through the station but I didn’t sense anyone. It might be we left Florence soon enough to avoid picking up a tail. Still, it would be useful to have some friends on our side in case we need extra help.”

  Sebastian nodded, mentally going through all the allies he had who were presently in Paris or who could make it within the next twenty-four hours.

  “I know Lucien has some friends on the council.” Henry continued. “We might be able to count on them for support.”

  “If things get that bad,” Catarina said from the hallway, “then it’ll probably be too late for a councillor to do anything, friendly or not.”

  Sebastian
grimaced, recognising the truth in that.

  “We can fight off a few attackers.” Henry brushed off her comment.

  “And if there are more than a few?” Catarina folded her arms and leaned against the doorframe. “You might not have sensed anyone following us, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know we’re here. I wouldn’t put it past Sonya to double cross us if things don’t go her way.”

  Sebastian sighed and turned back to his suitcase. He wouldn’t put it past Sonya either. Henry paused for a moment, his expression bleak.

  “Well,” he said, recovering a little of his usual optimism. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  A shout from downstairs drew all of their attention. Walking out onto the landing, they saw Lucien at the bottom of the stairs, waving a sheet of paper.

  “Come and look at this! You won’t believe what we’ve found.” He exclaimed, his face flushed.

  A minute later, they were all crowded around Effie where she sat in the study in front of a PC.

  “Here.” She said, and pointed to a portrait that looked as if it dated from around the fifteenth century. “Who do you think that is?”

  Sebastian frowned at it, leaning in to get a closer look. It was a portrait of an Italian monk, his handsome features somewhat disguised by his doleful expression and severe robes.

  “Isn’t that…?”

  “That’s Bartholomew, isn’t it?” Catarina blurted out.

  “That’s what I think.” Effie confirmed. “But let me explain how I got here. It was a stroke of luck really. Or, rather, a stroke of luck I had some time ago and I’ve only just managed to collect on it.”

  She opened another article on her screen, this one a detailed biography of Fra Amedeo. “What we know about Amedeo is that there are a few mysterious years when he starts following Savonarola and stops painting. The diary dates from those years, so we know he was interested to some extent in Galen and medical philosophy as well during this time. What we didn’t know,” she split the screen so that the portrait and the article with Amedeo’s timeline were side by side, “is that he was still painting during this time.”

  “And this time was when exactly?” Henry asked.

  “Between 1500 and 1504.”

  “So after Bartholomew lost the medallion?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you think his interest in Galen and all that came from meeting Bartholomew, if Bartholomew was already interested in Galen before he met Amedeo?”

  Effie took a deep breath. “I’m willing to say that, yes.”

  “So, in this period we know that both Amedeo and Bartholomew were interested in Galen’s philosophy and that Amedeo was corresponding with an immortal on the subject.” Catarina looked round at the others, eyebrows raised. “Is it just me, or is there a link here?”

  Lucien shook his head. “From what we know of Florence at the time, most immortals were steering clear of it, especially after Savonarola’s government took over from the Medici dynasty. Unless Amedeo knew an immortal from outside of Florence, there weren’t many he could have been talking to.”

  “And we know the vampire was local to Florence because they needed to be around to try the potions.” Effie added. “That’s what I was talking about when I said I’d had a stroke of luck a while back. I’d noticed these references, you see, and I’d got excited because I thought it would be relatively easy to narrow it down to someone Amedeo would have known who was in the city while he was in the abbey of San Marco. The references weren’t obvious, and I would have missed them if I hadn’t been reading another article on Savonarola at the time. That one suggested Amedeo was taken under the wing of another monk. It was only then that I was able to put the two together.”

  “And here we have a portrait painted by Fra Amedeo of Bartholomew dressed as a monk.” Catarina’s smile turned cruel.

  “If it was Bartholomew who originally started Amedeo on this path, then everything that is happening now can be blamed on him. Whatever he offers the council, they can’t overlook this. We’ll have him.” Lucien finished, eyes gleaming.

  “Do we have anything specific we can use to pin this on Bartholomew?” Sebastian asked. He knew all too well how any sceptics would jump on the lack of concrete evidence as a hole in their argument.

  “We have a portrait of him dressed as a monk.” Catarina gestured emphatically at the screen.

  “But there’s nothing to say he was the monk who took Amedeo under his wing. It could be said that he dressed as a monk to fit in with Savonarola. It wouldn’t be the first time a vampire has hidden himself in a monastery to steadily work his way through the monks living there.”

  Effie sucked in her lower lip. That did not paint a pleasant picture. Shaking off the grisly thought, she returned to the problem at hand. “Proving Bartholomew’s involvement is tricky. After all, you said you thought Bartholomew had left Florence after I’d died.” She looked from Sebastian to Henry. They both nodded. “So anyone could point to your report to say that it couldn’t have been Bartholomew. Except…”

  She paused and rubbed at the back of her neck. “Except, I think this portrait is quite late.” She pointed to the face on the screen. “In terms of Amedeo’s progression, I mean. See the use of these colours? And these brush strokes? I’m not sure if this would stand up in court, but I’d say this portrait was done towards the later part of Amedeo’s painting career. I’m saying this, because he doesn’t really use these techniques until after 1504. So, with that in mind—”

  “You think Bartholomew must have come back to Florence to be painted by Amedeo?” Catarina butted in.

  Effie nodded again. “Either that, or he never left.”

  Sebastian exchanged grim looks with Henry. What he would have given to have this information back then, when nothing had mattered except finding – and destroying – Bartholomew?

  “How did you get hold of this painting?” Henry asked, nodding towards the screen. “Surely you would have recognised your boss if you’d come across it while doing your research.”

  “That was another stroke of luck, really. Well, it was Lucien’s luck, not mine.”

  They all looked at Lucien, who shrugged. “I happened to mention a gallery which had had an exhibition on Fra Amedeo. Effie looked up the website and found this as one of the featured artworks.”

  Effie flicked onto a webpage from a small gallery in Venice.

  “It was called Fra Amedeo: The lost works, appropriately enough.” She said with a gentle laugh. “I have to wonder if Bartholomew ever heard about this. It was some years ago now but that’s quite an oversight if he let it slip by him.”

  Catarina wrinkled her nose. “Will it be enough, though?” She looked around at the other. “He won’t confess to this, will he? He knows better than anyone he’ll never survive if this comes to light.”

  “Hang on,” Effie objected, “isn’t he a vampire? I thought that meant he was already a fugitive. You guys are hunting him just for existing.”

  Sebastian grinned despite himself. “That is one way to put it. But that’s just immortals. There are a lot more vampires out there. He might be able to escape immortals, but vampires as well? That puts him in big trouble.”

  “Then why is he doing it? Why take the risk, if he knows the consequences?”

  Everyone was quiet at Effie’s words.

  “It’s a good question.” Henry said at last.

  Sebastian stood back, folding his arms as he frowned down at the screen. “I can just see him using that argument to deny it. And take great pleasure in using everyone’s assumptions against them.”

  Effie groaned.

  “This is hopeless.”

  Not liking to see her look so defeated, Sebastian stepped forward to wrap his arm around her crestfallen body. “It’s not that we should abandon this idea, we just need more proof. Specifically, a clear reason to take the blame away from you and point it at Bartholomew.”

  Effie sighed, sounding incredibly
weary. “I’ll keep working on it.”

  Sebastian shook his head, using his arm around her shoulders to draw her out of her chair and propel her towards the door.

  “No. Right now, you need sleep.”

  Henry chuckled darkly. “Hate to say it, but this is a marathon, not a sprint.”

  Effie glanced at the time on the computer screen and winced. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  “All the more reason to get sleep while you can.” Sebastian said, all but pushing her out of the study. She leaned against him briefly before heading upstairs in front of him.

  Sebastian wished he could do more than offer an arm for her to lean on. If there was some way he could make this whole situation just disappear…

  He glanced back over his shoulder to see Lucien seating himself in front of his computer, Catarina bending over his shoulder. If there was some way, they would find it. They had too. The alternative was unthinkable.

  Effie opened her eyes to gentle light creeping from behind the blinds over the window. Her head was resting on Sebastian’s biceps, her back pressed against his chest. She could feel his slow heartbeat, his measured breathing. Still asleep, she thought. For a moment, she considered joining him and returning to slumber. Then her bladder reminded her why she’d woken up. Wrinkling her nose, she began to carefully ease herself away from Sebastian. She hadn’t got far when Sebastian’s other arm, which had been lying relaxed across her waist, suddenly tightened.

  Effie froze. Then she looked over her shoulder. Sebastian’s eyes had cracked open. He raised one eyebrow.

  “And where might you be going?” He rumbled sleepily.

  “The toilet?” It came out as a question. Almost a request. Which was daft. She was pretty sure there was nothing in their relationship that said she needed his permission to get out of bed.

  Sebastian grunted, but did let her go. Which was just as well, Effie thought, as she slid all the way out of the bed. His arm around her middle was not doing good things to her bladder.

  By the time she’d finished in the bathroom, Sebastian was up and picking out clothes. He was shirtless, clad only in the underwear he’d worn to bed. His bronzed skin gleamed in the early morning light. His shoulders were broad, the powerful muscles stretching over them with satin smoothness. He looked like an open invitation for touch. Her fingers itched.