The Stars Afire: An Elemental Mysteries Anthology

by Elizabeth Hunter

  “If he was a member of the clergy, it’s possible he—”

  “Had connections with someone in the church there. I figure that’s why. Anyway, I’d misread ‘informe’ as a verb, not a noun. But un informe would be a… report. An account of some kind. Something written down. At least that’s what the context would imply from what I remember.”

  He paid half a mind to what she was saying and the other half to the excitement in her voice. The animated way her eyes lit up as she tugged the thread of history hidden within the papers before her.

  It was almost ridiculous how he loved her.

  “So if this priest was writing down his practices and sending them to his contemporaries in the other missions, it might not be just a report, but maybe a journal? A book? Which is exactly what the Hungarian wants and I thought didn’t exist. But now I think it does! I just need to find out how many copies he made of this thing and pray one survived. If I can figure out where he sent them… I’m hoping there’s something in the letters to Rome that will give me some more to go on.”

  Giovanni pursed his lips when he realized what letters she was referring to. “The letters? The… Roman ones? Written from the Vatican?”

  “Yes.” She closed one box and opened another. “Well, they were written in Rome but were sent to a California Franciscan. So they should be in here. All my mission correspondence—I just… can’t…” She sighed. “This is driving me crazy. I’ve been looking for hours.”

  It really was too bad that he hadn’t skipped the meeting with the impossible vampire and come home hours ago. “My love, I think I know the letters you’re speaking of.”

  “I know!” Beatrice threw up her hands, and they landed on her hips. “I remember cataloguing them last fall. They should be in this box, but they aren’t.”

  “Well…”

  “Gio?” She must have caught the look on his face. “What did you do with my letters?”

  “They were written from Rome.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, but they were written to a priest in California. Clearly they needed to be with the mission letters.”

  “One could argue”—he cleared his throat—“that they were more properly filed with Vatican correspondence. Since they were written from the Vatican.”

  Beatrice’s mouth dropped open. “You did not.”

  He shrugged. “You were in the middle of some research with Lucien, and I was having a number of things transferred to the Perugian library, so—”

  “Gio, you didn’t!” Her hands gripped her hair. “You sent my letters to Fina?”

  The library that Giovanni’s deceased son had established in Perugia had continued to be run by Serafina Rossi, the human Lorenzo hired to curate the collection in his absence. She truly was a very competent human who had proven to be trustworthy despite having been chosen by his scheming son. Gradually, Giovanni and Beatrice had enlightened Fina and her son, Enzo, about the immortal world they’d been dragged into unawares. Both had come under Giovanni’s protection, and he did not take the responsibility lightly. Plus Fina was a superb archivist with a background in art history.

  “The Perugia library has far more room than this one, tesoro. And you know I’ve been transferring materials there when they fit the collection—”

  “But they’re not Vatican letters! They’re mission letters! I cannot believe you lost my materials—”

  He drew up, slightly offended. “I did not ‘lose’ them. They remain catalogued here, and I put a notation in the files that they were being stored in Perugia with the Vatican papers there.”

  Slightly mollified, Beatrice stopped yelling, but her angry expression did not wane. “You took mission letters.”

  “I took Vatican letters.”

  “Sent to a mission. My mission.”

  He bit back a laugh. “I do not believe you have a greater claim than the church, my love.”

  “And I know there’s a reference in those letters to this journal or book about winemaking that the Hungarian wants. And it’s all the way in Perugia! And I can’t ask Fina to dig through all that stuff—”

  “There is no ‘digging’ necessary.” He felt his skin heat in anger. “Beatrice, you’re acting as if I threw them in a cardboard box and tossed them in a suitcase. I would never—”

  “You’re right.” Her expression softened. “You’re right. That was out of line. You would never treat original documents that way.”

  “Thank you.” He was still a bit put out. To think she’d accuse him of being that careless…

  “Well,” she said. “There’s really only one thing to do.”

  “What?”

  Her frown turned to an impish grin. “Clearly we’re spending Christmas in Italy this year.”

  Christmas in Italy? Away from both their families and all their employees?

  Giovanni tugged Beatrice to him, and her silk-covered hands came up to brush his cheeks as he took her mouth in a lingering kiss.

  “What a truly”—he nipped Beatrice’s lips and pulled her toward the low couches at one end of the room—“truly excellent idea.”

  “I know.” She grabbed his perfectly pressed dress shirt and tore the buttons off as she pulled it open. “I’m brilliant that way.”

  His fangs dropped as he licked up her neck, murmuring, “Buon natale to me.”

  “Wait!” She pulled away from his kiss. “Is Italy one of those countries that doesn’t exchange presents until January?”

  “Yes, January 6h. The Epiphany.”

  “No!”

  “You’ll survive. Now kiss me.”

  Chapter 1

  Citta di Castello

  Perugia, Italy

  Serafina Rossi carefully sorted the letters her employers had asked her to find from within the mass of correspondence recently added to the Vecchio Library. Though she understood Dr. Vecchio’s reasons, she had to agree with Ms. De Novo’s somewhat frantic email. The letters, despite being written from Rome, appeared to belong within the De Novo Library in Los Angeles, which specialized in early Californian—particularly Spanish-era—history.

  Fina walked around the massive library tables that occupied the floor in the central quadrangle of bookcases. Soft lights illuminated the letters from discreetly hidden sources in the walls of the villa. She reached a long arm to straighten two of the letters, nudging them into a perfect line in chronological order.

  Everything was ready for her employers’ arrival, and she’d taken a short nap that afternoon in preparation for a late evening, as she always did when Dr. Vecchio or Ms. De Novo was in residence. They stayed in the villa if they needed to use the library for research. She knew they had an estate near Florence, but they preferred to stay in the convenient rooms her former employer had renovated on the second floor.

  What they needed the California letters for, she had no idea. But she was a librarian. Her task was to conserve and organize the information, not ask questions.

  Written by a young, well-connected Franciscan in Rome, the documents Ms. De Novo had requested were addressed to “my dear friend, Brother Rafael of Mission San Jose” in California. The first were dated in 1798 and the last in 1803. Five years of the earliest correspondence in mission-era California. They were… not terribly interesting, in Fina’s opinion. Speaking mostly of church matters, the earliest were written in a familiar tone. She hadn’t had time to read them all yet. The most curious thing was the identity of the writer. “Father P——” was the only designation given.

  There were inquiries about the establishment of the mission. A few mentions of holidays, university classes, and mutual acquaintances with very prominent names. These Franciscans were far from country brothers, which made the assignment of the Spanish priest to the California missions rather unusual.

  Yes, definitely materials better sorted out in the De Novo Library.

  But it was not Fina’s job to decide these things. In the two years she’d worked for the Vecchio-De Novo family, she had experienc
ed far more than the usual quirks her colleagues at private libraries reported.

  But then, as far as she knew, their employers were entirely human.

  “Mama!” Her son, Enzo, called from the front garden. “I think I see the car!”

  The winter sun had fallen several hours before, and Enzo was looking forward to their company.

  It was a quiet life she and her son lived in Perugia, which did not bother Fina, though the country was beginning to chafe at Enzo, twelve years old and the center of her universe.

  Enzo, books, and the odd request from vampire employers. It wasn’t the life she’d thought she’d be living twelve years ago when she finished her time at university, but it had given her independence when her family had shunned her. She was from a small town outside Venice, and though her parents paid lip service to sophistication, the reality of an unwed daughter expecting a baby made them balk.

  Only her grandmother had remained in contact after Enzo was born. And she’d lost her nonna when her son was only five.

  It was losing Nonna that had hurt the most. Fina had always been a quiet child. It was Nonna who had encouraged her to follow her dreams.

  “Fina, dreams will not come to you. You must go out and chase them.”

  She’d chased them all the way to university before she’d been swept off her feet and into her professor’s bed. His scoffing rejection of her and the baby they’d created had caused her to retreat.

  In her heart, she knew Nonna would be disappointed. But Fina lived for Enzo now. His happiness and security were far more important than her own.

  She felt far older than thirty-eight years. She lived alone and didn’t fit with the friendly, domestic mothers in the village where her son went to school. Yet rarely could she leave the library that had been her responsibility for twelve years to go to professional conferences or gatherings of her peers. Not only was she a single mother, but the Vecchio Library was her creation. Other than Enzo, its organization was her greatest achievement.

  She supposed few would understand that.

  Another set of letters caught her eye, tucked into the front pocket of the briefcase on the edge of the table and filed in a manila envelope. Those letters were not written by an eighteenth-century Franciscan but a somewhat mysterious colleague at the Vatican Library in Rome.

  She’d never met Zeno Ferrara, but the former priest turned immortal had been introduced to her—via handwritten letter, of course—by Dr. Vecchio. In the past two years, Ferrara had offered her a wealth of information regarding anything to do with church history. And though Ferrara was no longer a priest, he still worked at the Vatican Library in some unknown capacity.

  They had never met. But through the odd intimacy of their correspondence, Fina had begun to wish that they could.

  It was silly, she supposed.

  And yet the often terse letters Ferrara sent had lately shown evidence of… something.

  “My dear Signora Rossi, I wonder whether I should be flattered or annoyed by your persistence. Are you always this forward?”

  Forward? If she was forward, he was the only one who had ever implied it. The irritating man had put off her question about Pope Alexander VI for over three weeks. When he finally did answer, his letter was so thorough it could have been submitted to an academic journal.

  “…I wonder if I should be flattered or annoyed…?”

  Flattered? The implication brought a hint of the furious blush to her cheeks that had plagued her since childhood.

  “Surely a young woman has better ways of spending a weekend than organizing papal correspondence. Or are the charms of Perugia such that you seek excitement from church relics?”

  Well, really.

  What kind of man became a priest and then a vampire anyway? Did he look like the priests she’d grown up with, paternal men with cheerful faces and kind eyes? Or would he look like the vampires she’d met when Dr. Vecchio or Ms. De Novo had brought visitors? Beautiful—almost all the vampires she’d met were beautiful—but remote. Cold. Her employers seemed to be exceptions to the rule. From the wry humor that slipped through Signor Ferrara’s letters, she thought Signor Ferrara might be too. Their letters had begun professionally but became familiar. Past his quips, Fina could see that Zeno Ferrara had a passion for his work that she could appreciate.

  What would he look like?

  She couldn’t imagine. And, she supposed, it was better that she didn’t. Ferrara was a colleague. It behooved her to remain aloof should they ever meet. Daydreaming about what the vampire’s eyes might look like was a childish distraction.

  She heard the car doors slam shut, then Enzo began shouting in rapid Italian despite the English she’d so carefully tutored him in.

  “Dr. Vecchio, this car is—”

  “Please, Enzo.” A laughing voice interrupted her son. “You must call me Giovanni. How many times have I asked now?”

  “My mother would not want me to be so informal, signore.”

  “Signor Giovanni then,” a woman’s voice suggested. “And Signora Beatrice for me.”

  “If you like,” Enzo said politely just as Fina reached the door.

  “Dottore, signora.” She held out a hand as their driver stowed the car and himself… somewhere. There was always a near-invisible human servant or driver escorting the Vecchio-De Novos everywhere they went. They didn’t carry phones or briefcases; the driver did. Fina had almost become accustomed to it. “Welcome,” she said. “It is so good to see you.”

  “Please, Fina,” Beatrice pled with her. “Please call me Beatrice. There is no need to be so formal.”

  Fina hesitated. She’d allowed herself to become familiar with her former employer—going so far as to consider Paulo a friend—only to discover after he had died that he was not a good man at all, but rather a vicious monster who had killed many, including Beatrice’s own father. Only for Serafina and Enzo had he redeemed himself. Paulo—Lorenzo—had reserved all his humanity for them.

  She didn’t know why. She would never understand. But she had learned caution. Things were not always what they appeared to be in the vampire world.

  But if her employers wished her to be more familiar, she would be.

  “Of course,” she said with a smile. “Beatrice. Giovanni. How are you both?”

  “Well, thank you,” Giovanni replied. “As always, we appreciate your accommodating us.”

  “Of course. Signora Giannini has prepared the upstairs rooms for you if you’ll be staying here.”

  “We will be,” Beatrice said. “Thanks, Fina.” Beatrice’s eyes lit up. “Now, let’s see those letters.”

  Fina saw Enzo’s face fall just a little. He masked it quickly.

  But not so quickly for Giovanni not to have caught it.

  “I’d love to stretch my legs a bit,” he said, kissing Beatrice with easy affection. “Why don’t you and Fina start, and maybe I could trouble Enzo to kick a ball with me for a bit.”

  “Yes, of course,” the boy exclaimed. “Let me go to the house.”

  Fina glanced down at Dr. Vecchio’s impeccably polished shoes. “Dottore—”

  “Again,” he said, “please call me Giovanni. And I am happy to play a bit of football with your son if he is willing to indulge me.” He winked at her. “My nephew is too busy for me these days. And Enzo is a good boy.”

  Fina’s heart melted. “Of course. He is very excited to have you both visit.”

  Beatrice smiled. “We’ve been looking forward to seeing him too.” She hooked Fina’s arm with hers. “Now, let’s leave the boys to their games and go look at my letters.”

  “She’s so lonely,” Beatrice said later that night after she and Giovanni had locked themselves in the secure, lightproof room on the second floor of the library. Rudy, the young valet Caspar was training, had taken the small room off the garage.

  “Who?” He frowned, looking up from the book he’d been reading. “Serafina?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Beatrice pulled her earr
ings off and set them on the dresser in the lavish suite Lorenzo had designed. They hadn’t had time to redecorate it, but it wasn’t as ostentatious as most of Giovanni’s late son’s holdings. “I think she works too much. This library is her life.”

  Giovanni frowned as if he didn’t quite understand why that was a problem.

  Her husband. Five hundred years old and still somewhat clueless about the female of the species.

  “So what is it that you want to do?” he asked. “Move the library? We cannot do that. I mean, we could, but it would be horribly wasteful. Lorenzo may have been a monster, but this facility…”

  It was the one thing that his son had ever done right. Possibly the only humanity Lorenzo had retained. And she knew it was one of the reasons Giovanni liked to be here. Maybe why he hadn’t changed a thing. Not even their room.

  “I don’t want to move the library,” she said. “The library is perfect.” The slight tension in his shoulders disappeared. “And I think Fina likes to be here. She’s a quiet person. But maybe we should make an effort to see that she leaves occasionally. Think about it, Gio.”

  “She’s isolated here.” He nodded. “Yes, I can see that.”

  “She’s estranged from her family. She and her son occupy that weird between place of living in both the vampire world and the human one. It’s not like she’s in LA where Enzo could go to Ben’s school and be around other day people’s children. Whom does she confide in? Where does she vent?”

  Giovanni said, “I hadn’t thought of that. But you’re correct. If I think about our human employees at home, they mostly socialize with us or other vampire employees. There is a community there. Here, there is none.”

  “Matt and Dez. My grandma and Caspar. Rudy has already become friendly with everyone. Fina has no one here. If she were closer to Rome…” Beatrice shrugged.