Matt looked incredulous. ‘But where would you even start?’
‘With him,’ said Em, pointing at Caravaggio.
The artist raised his eyebrows. ‘Me?’
Em gave him a winning smile. ‘Michele, before the Duke of Albion got you out of Italy on the day the world believes you died—’
‘The day you stole a painting that the Camarilla had paid for,’ Rémy cut in.
‘I know what I did,’ said Caravaggio, his expression darkening.
‘You were… close to the Nephilim for a while,’ said Em. ‘You must remember something. A small detail about his past that may help us know why he’s crowning Rémy in that relief.’
‘Luca didn’t talk in his sleep if that’s what you’re asking.’ Caravaggio shifted over to the window sill next to Matt. ‘The frieze represents the prophecy in the Book of Enoch: that a Conjuror will be crowned King of the Underworld and bring forth Chaos into this world.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Maybe Rémy’s the real enemy after all.’
Rémy lunged, but the artist was quick and darted out of the way.
‘If you’re holding anything back, Michele, I’ll kill you myself before the Nephilim gets his hands on you,’ Rémy swore. ‘You owe us.’
‘He’s right,’ said Em, crossing her legs under her on the couch. ‘We’ve let you roam free in our world for longer than we agreed. Don’t push your luck.’
Caravaggio bowed deeply towards Em, but his body rippled with anger. ‘I am most grateful for the extra time,’ he said. ‘But you know that I still need to clear my name and find the one who murdered my lover. That was my deal.’
‘Come on,’ Em scoffed. ‘You’ve shown no interest in pursuing this supposed murderer since we met. You were full of shit then, and you’re still full of shit now.’
*
The tension in the room screamed in Rémy’s head. He stuck one of his earbuds in and tapped on the low static he kept on a playlist to cut through the strange eerie noises that haunted his head. ‘With every step forward we take to try and stop the Camarilla, more people get hurt and more are put in danger,’ he said tightly. ‘I need to find out exactly what I can do to stop any more of that happening. So stop being such a prick.’
Em put her hand on Rémy’s arm. He felt calmer.
‘I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few days studying my mom’s journal,’ he said. ‘And she really believed that if this Second Kingdom is allowed to rise from Chaos, then the world will become enslaved to the Watchers like they were demonic dictators, mindlessly following their rule and existing only to serve their needs.’
The others were silent.
‘There is some comfort in not having to think for yourself,’ said Caravaggio thoughtfully.
‘Shut up,’ said Em, scowling at him.
Matt rounded on her. ‘Don’t be a bitch.’
‘Don’t call me a bitch!’
Rémy shook off the clashing cymbals in his head. ‘Listen to us!’ he said in exasperation. ‘Our nerves are frayed. We are not the enemy.’
The others quietened.
‘Em and I can go to the Abbey and do some research,’ Rémy went on. ‘And Matt and Michele can go wherever and do whatever. But let’s take a break from each other over the weekend and regroup on Monday.’
He could see the others were tempted.
‘If Vaughn finds out we’ve left even for a day,’ said Matt at last, his dark hair curling over the frayed neck of his vintage Bowie T-shirt that had once belonged to his dad, ‘he’d never trust us again.’
‘If he found out,’ Caravaggio said. ‘Given our recent pasts, there’s reason to assume that he would.’
‘Michele is right,’ said Rémy.
‘Since when do you side with him?’ said Em to Rémy.
‘Since he started agreeing with me.’
‘We would need to visit an art gallery,’ said Caravaggio who draped himself over an armchair. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, there’s no art of any kind in this entire mansion that we could use to travel through.’
‘It’s risky,’ agreed Rémy. ‘We don’t know for sure that Vaughn doesn’t have someone watching us. But we have to get out of here, or we’ll kill each other.’
‘I’m hungry,’ said Em, getting off the couch. ‘Let’s think more about this while we eat.’
‘Do I have to cook dinner?’ asked Matt.
‘It would be my pleasure to cook,’ said Caravaggio, unsheathing his knife from the band of his leather trousers.
‘No way,’ said Em, disgustedly. ‘I’m not eating squirrel.’
‘I’ll do dinner,’ Rémy said.
He slipped his harmonica from the pocket of his jeans, blowing a few notes to get their attention. Starting slowly with a riff from a Leon Bridges song, he then tapped his feet as the notes quickened in tempo. The music carpeted the bright airy room in a surreal multi-coloured mist. Suddenly the swirls of colour and the sounds took shape.
‘Pepperoni on mine,’ said Matt approvingly.
Rome
10.
Weep Not
With the original drawing safely in his messenger bag, Callum ducked into the museum’s most visited room for the last time.
Directly above the first level of the Spanish Steps, Keats’ bedroom contained the single bed in which the poet had died at the age of twenty-five from consumption: tuberculosis. Looking down from the wall was his death mask, created only hours after Keats’ final breath by his closest friend, the artist Joseph Severn. Since Pietra’s death, Callum had found himself drawn to the cloistered space.
The air in the room smelled musty and sour, but Callum felt a strange energy here, as if the vestiges of love and loss lingering in the room were calling out to him. Grief was a right hook to his head, hitting him hard and fast. He rarely saw it coming. Looking up through tears to see the painting of Joseph Severn bathing Keats with lilac water, dabbing the trickle of blood from the corner of the poet’s mouth where it had settled after his final gut-wrenching cough, Callum felt the purest envy. He hadn’t been so lucky. Pietra’s casket had been closed, her heart sealed from him forever.
He wiped his sleeve across his face, admonishing himself for wasting precious time. Once the sale was final then he could grieve, preferably far away from here. He was meeting his buyer in an hour.
He had first met Fiera Orsini shortly before Pietra’s accident, at her family’s Trastevere restaurant, Osteria Armando. Ruthless in all her endeavours as her father and his father before him, people underestimated La Madrina di Trastevere, the Godmother of Trastevere, at their own cost. Signora Orsini knew Pietra’s family and had seen samples of Callum’s work, but had still demanded assurance of his veracity.
The day of their meeting, Callum had been seated at the only unshaded table on the apron patio. Pietra had warned him of La Madrina’s temperament. ‘Do exactly what she asks,’ she’d instructed him. ‘Don’t mess her around.’
Sucking up was usually not in Callum’s repertoire, but he’d sat baking in the sun for two hours, sweat pouring down his back, his pale Celtic complexion getting redder and redder, until he’d spotted an elegant looking silver-haired woman standing at the wide sliding doors into the restaurant.
‘For you,’ said the waiter, handing Callum a linen napkin with a stack of euros wrapped inside. But when he had looked back at the doors, La Madrina was gone.
Callum turned when he heard footsteps on the museum’s stairs. He could have sworn he’d locked the front door. He instinctively hid his satchel with its precious contents under the gift-shop counter. When he looked up, an older woman with mirrored sunglasses holding her hair off her face dressed in a white maxi dress was standing in front of him. At first glance, he thought her from the south of Italy, but when he heard her accent he wasn’t sure.
‘One please,’ she said, digging in a Louis Vuitton bag for her wallet.
‘I’m afraid we’re closed today,’ said Callum, combing his fingers through his hair, brus
hing away his despair.
She looked surprised. ‘But the door was open. I’m leaving Rome tomorrow morning and I really wanted a quick look round. I promise I’ll be fast.’
Callum glanced at his watch, suddenly feeling quite charitable. Now that he had the original illustration in his hands, he did have a little time before he had to leave to meet Signora Orsini.
‘OK,’ he found himself saying. ‘But be quick.’
11.
Touch has a Memory
The woman paid her admission and bought a published guide to the museum. A twinge of anxiety jabbed Callum’s gut as he escorted her into the wood-panelled main room. What was he doing? Why had he let this woman in?
‘I studied the Romantics at university,’ he said.
‘What a coincidence,’ said the woman, smiling pleasantly. ‘As did I.’
Callum didn’t believe in coincidences. Especially not today. Too much was at stake. He needed her out of the way, and he needed to get the hell out of there. She could see herself out. He was about to encourage her to browse on her own when he heard himself say: ‘Let me get you started on the tour.’
The words kept coming, almost of their own accord. He told her of the museum’s history, how Keats and his friends had rented it for the poet in the hope that Rome’s air would keep the tuberculosis at bay. It hadn’t, but the flat still became a salon renowned for the European literati of the time. Why couldn’t he ask her to leave?
His phone beeped. The woman waved him off.
‘Take it,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Callum returned to the gift shop and clicked on Signora Orsini’s text message.
Usual place @ Noon.
His thoughts were clearer now that he was away from the woman. Grabbing the hidden satchel, he crept down the stairs to the front door – only to discover he had locked it after all. He reached for the brass handle, and yanked his hand back with a yelp. The knob was red hot.
He looked at his palm, biting back a howl. A raw imprint was seared into his skin, wet blisters already forming. He pulled the tail of his shirt out and covered his other hand. But before he could reach for the handle a second time, the entire lock-piece began melting, dripping like molten wax down the door and on to the tiled entranceway, a slight yellowish glow to the metal. What the hell was happening?
With his hand throbbing, Callum bounded back up the stairs and into the gift shop. He shoved his satchel back under the counter and grabbed a souvenir T-shirt, quickly wrapping his hand with it. He wasn’t sure covering a burn was the best idea, but at least it dulled the throbbing and hid the watery blisters.
Loosening his tie and the top button of his white shirt, he took a deep breath to calm himself. Then he flew into the library to confront the woman. Who else could have destroyed the lock and trapped them both inside? He was going to be late for his sale.
She wasn’t in the library any more. She was in the room with Keats’ folios.
‘Might I see one of these?’ She tapped the glass case whose contents he’d robbed earlier. ‘It would be so inspiring to get a closer look.’
Callum couldn’t get any words to come out of his mouth.
‘Are you hurt?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Your hand?’
Callum stared, stupefied, at his hand. Why was it wrapped in a T-shirt? Carefully, he unwrapped it and stared at his palm. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see, but it looked normal. The thin scar on the pad beneath his fingers where he’d sliced it when… when… the memory flitted away. He couldn’t remember how he’d got the scar. He opened and closed both his hands. For a second, he wondered if he was having a stroke.
‘The folios?’ prompted the woman.
Callum’s thoughts were foggy, and a dull ache was growing behind his eyes like the residual of a rough night, the pressure of a hangover. He couldn’t seem to cut through the fuddle. Had he and Pietra finished the wine her father sent for her birthday? He didn’t think he’d been partying. Pietra. Pietra. No. She was dead.
The woman touched Callum’s arm. ‘How about it?’
‘I’m… I’m…’ Callum stuttered. ‘I can’t unlock that.’
‘Who’s to know?’ she said, squeezing his wrist.
She was right of course. No one would know. He’d gained the trust of the museum’s curator weeks ago. A flush of heat drifted up Callum’s spine and into his chest. He was sweating. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket. The dull ache thumping behind his eyes was a full-scale drum solo. He swayed where he stood.
*
‘Get away from there this bloody minute!’
Callum looked down at his feet. Instead of his scuffed Italian loafers, he was in gym shoes, white shirt, striped school tie and grey shorts. More importantly, he was standing on one of the most treacherous ramparts of Edinburgh Castle.
‘Callum!’ yelled his dad. ‘Don’t move!’
Callum wobbled on the edge of the parapet. His foot slipped. His hands grabbed air. His dad lunged and grabbed his sweater, dragging him back over the wall, tearing his hand on the jagged stone.
*
The museum swam back into focus. Callum rubbed his thumb across the puckered scar on the pad of his right hand absently. He remembered now. He’d needed six stitches, and was taken back to school a week before spring term began, where he had sat alone at night sobbing, feeling sorry for himself and letting his anger at his dad fester.
He looked at his watch. Dammit. Forty minutes until his meeting with Signora Orsini and he was still in the museum. He stood up too fast, and floaters filled his vision.
In the small loo behind the gift shop, he splashed water on his face. His eyes were bloodshot and his nose was bleeding a little. He was drying his hands and face when he remembered the satchel.
12.
Summer Daze
While Callum was forgetting, Lucius Ferrante was remembering.
He pushed open the shutters on the second floor of his townhouse on the northwest corner of Trastevere, welcoming a breeze inside for the first time in five hundred years. Spider webs fluttered like fishing nets from the ceiling and a threadbare tapestry rustled against a crumbling wall. Leaking water had stained the high ceilings and there were holes as big as fists in the skirting boards.
Despite the years of neglect and the ravages of time, the room was as Luca had left it. Ragged quilts on the regal bed were thick with grime, preserving the alabaster skeletons of the last man and woman he’d seduced, their bones tangled together in the filth as if waiting his return from the cellar with another flagon of wine.
It was the hottest month of summer, but a recent shower had soaked the uneven flagstones of the square. Luca owned property all over the world, but this part of the neighbourhood was sacred to him. It was where he had experienced the greatest joys of his life and his deepest sorrows. Tilting his head towards the sky, Luca let the sun light up his face.
Home.
On the balcony that ran along the back of the house, he breathed in the scents of the piazza below: the rain-damp cobbles, the rich aroma of coffee from a nearby café, the succulent fruits and the perfumes of roses in plastic buckets, all neatly stacked under the arched portico of the Basilica di Santa Maria. The city’s oldest Catholic church was built like so much of Rome on the foundations of its ancient glorious empire. An empire that Luca had pledged to see rise again.
His shoulder blades twitched at the rich scent of oranges. Suddenly alert, he scanned the square for the source. Not the vendors below. This scent was distinctive, ripe and full-bodied: an ancient odour. Above him he heard the dubdubdubdub of a helicopter hanging low in the sky, and admired the ingenuity that kept such a fat bug of a machine in the air. The helicopter banked towards the heliport inside Vatican City where it landed.
The smell intensified. And Luca knew the Inquisitor was in the world.
Time was running out for humanity.
In the piazza below, he watched a woman wiping bird sh
it from the steps of the fountain with napkins from the café before sitting to sip her coffee. Her daughter, a young girl of about five years old, was hopscotching on the cobblestones. Every two skips she’d stop and take a bite from a pastry in her hand.
‘Careful, Ilarya,’ said the girl’s mother in Italian. ‘It’s slippery from the rain.’
The girl was jumping faster and higher, ignoring her mother’s warnings. Luca closed his eyes and unfurled his wings.
Suddenly, the child screamed.
Her mother dropped her coffee and ran to her daughter on the ground. She scooped the child into her arms, scolding her and kissing her. ‘I told you the stones were slippery, cara!’
‘No, Mamma,’ Ilarya said, rubbing a rosy mark on her leg. ‘He knocked me down.’
The mother scanned the square, squeezing her daughter tighter. ‘Who knocked you down?’
Ilarya pointed to Luca’s balcony. The space was empty, tattered curtains billowing in the summer breeze. Puzzled, the mother looked more closely at the mark on her daughter’s leg. It was a burn not a scrape, raw blisters erupting on the skin. What kind of person burned a child?
‘Can you see the man anywhere?’ she asked sharply.
‘Silly. It wasn’t a man,’ said Ilarya, itching her skin. ‘It was an angel.’
*
Having brushed the girl’s leg with the silver tips of his black wings, Luca landed in a blur of light in a nearby square. Only certain people could see him in his divine form. Animare with their talent for bringing art to life, Guardians and their power in taming and shaping emotions, Conjurors wielding music like a weapon; and certain gifted children. Not because of their innocence or their susceptibility, but because the demands of the world had not yet cloaked their imaginations. Children didn’t have supernatural powers, but they were free thinkers. Luca liked that. He hoped the girl and her mother would bicker all the way to school. Creating chaos in individuals’ lives amused him. Opening Chaos itself was another matter.
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