The Stars Afire

by Elizabeth Hunter

  “It’s not even three hours by car. She could visit there if she liked. Even use the house in town. Angela would love it.”

  Beatrice smiled. “We need to offer it to her. She would never ask. She’s still so formal with us.”

  It bothered Beatrice. Unlike many immortals who chose not to grow attached to their mortal helpers, she considered most of their employees family. Granted, she was young. She knew it would be harder to bear the loss over hundreds, possibly thousands, of years. But Giovanni treated them the same, and he was far older than her.

  Beatrice stripped, the feeling of cool air against her sensitive skin welcome after the stifling confinement of winter clothes. She now understood why her husband preferred to be naked. Any clothing was uncomfortable, though it was a discomfort she had learned to live with. She shuddered to think about the poor immortals who had lived through more restrictive fashion periods of history. Corsets? No, thank you.

  But one had to blend. It kept the rest of the world comfortable. Beatrice still felt, in many ways, very human. Though there were differences between them, her best friend and assistant, Dez, was still her closest confidante. And though she’d once been a loner, she had created close relationships with her vampire family and her friends.

  But Fina kept her distance. No doubt the revelations about Lorenzo had shaken her. But the woman was still here. She could have run away, but she’d stayed. Probably for the books.

  Glancing at her husband, whose nose was back buried in his novel, she decided it was definitely for the books.

  “You know what?” Beatrice mused. “She’s kind of… you. A human female version of you.”

  “What?” He looked up, frowning. “Who’s me?”

  She smiled as she sauntered over to the bed. Dawn was still an hour or so away, so her mate would have plenty of energy. And Beatrice decided that he definitely needed distracting. She crawled up the bed and took the book from his hands, setting it on the side table.

  “Mmm,” he murmured. “Hello, my wife.”

  She straddled his legs and brushed the hair off his forehead. He’d been wearing his dark brown curls long again.

  “Oh yeah,” she said, leaning down to bite the edge of his ear. “You’re definitely pulling off the sexy-yet-distracted-professor thing.”

  “I am not distracted anymore.”

  He put both hands on her hips, teasing the lace of her panties where they lay on her skin. Now that sensation she enjoyed.

  “I was saying that Serafina is a female, human version of you, Professor.”

  “Hmm.” His fangs fell, and he traced them lightly over the skin on her neck. “That’s Dottore to you. And let us conference on this particular topic at another time, signorina. I don’t find it pertinent to the matter at hand.” His hand stroked down and cupped her under her panties.

  “Oh, Dr. Vecchio,” she whispered. “I’m not sure we should be having this conversation. It seems so unprofessional.”

  “It’s highly unprofessional.” Giovanni swiftly rolled them over so she was under him, and within seconds the delicate lace panties were scraps on the floor.

  Then Beatrice’s husband proceeded to ace every single sexy-professor fantasy she’d ever had. With honors.

  “You’re incredibly detail oriented,” she panted hours later. “Yay for me.”

  His cheeks were flushed with the blood he’d taken from the inside of her thigh. “I pride myself on being thorough.”

  “Well done.”

  He grabbed her chin and covered her mouth in a hard kiss that slowly turned soft as he settled next to her in bed. She could feel the dawn coming in her blood. Giovanni still slept during the day, and on mornings when she’d taken his blood, she could sleep a little herself. Her own special version of afterglow.

  “You know,” he said, his eyes closing, “if you think Serafina is a female version of me, then all she really needs to be happy is her own version of you, tesoro.”

  Beatrice smiled and slid over to rest next to him, her body relaxed but her mind humming. Another version of herself? Thinking of the letters she’d spotted peeking out of Fina’s briefcase, an idea began to form.

  It was Christmas in Italy. Perhaps Beatrice could work a little magic of her own.

  “You want Enzo and me to join you in Rome?” Fina looked between Giovanni and Beatrice with wide eyes. “For Christmas? I am very flattered to be asked, but—”

  “Don’t feel flattered, Fina, feel welcome,” Beatrice urged her. “Please join us. We don’t know many people in the city, and we’d love to have you and Enzo along. Surely you won’t be working while he’s on holiday from school.”

  “Well no, but—”

  Giovanni said, “Holidays are always so much more enjoyable with children around.”

  “Even though you heathens don’t exchange presents until January,” Beatrice muttered.

  He turned to her. “Again? We’re having this argument again?”

  “Epiphany. I have to wait until January to get presents. So unfair.”

  “Such an American,” Giovanni said before he turned back to Fina. “My housekeeper in Rome is beside herself that we came without Ben, though he is hardly a child any longer. Angela would be delighted to have both of you come with us.”

  Could she? Most Christmases with Enzo were quiet affairs. She would build a small ceppo and fill it with lights and small gifts, always letting Enzo put the star on the top. She hung gold lights in the house and baked the panettone recipe her grandmother had taught her.

  “Sweet bread for a sweet year, my Serafina.”

  Gifts had often been small when Enzo was young and she didn’t have much money to spare, but the little presents always appeared like magic to his child’s eyes. Christmas was quiet. Simple. She liked it that way.

  “Per favore, Mama! Please, please, can we go to Rome? I want to hear the pipes and flutes, and there are all the trees. Please, Mama! I can tell all my friends—”

  “Enzo, we do not boast of generosity,” she whispered to her son. “Dr. Vecchio and—”

  “Beatrice and Giovanni,” her employer said, smiling, “would be very happy if you joined them.” Then Giovanni nudged Enzo’s shoulder and said, “And you should definitely hear the zampognari and pifferai. Though I warn you, some are quite bad.” He laughed. “We’ll find some good ones for you.”

  “Please, Fina,” Beatrice said. “We’re staying until the Epiphany, and we’d love it if you would join us.” She paused. “And while I know you won’t officially be working, there is a possibility that I’ll be able to search the Vatican Library for more information regarding the mission letters. I’d love to have your help.”

  Fina tried to stop the color she could feel rising in her cheeks. “The Vatican Library?” Where Zeno Ferrara worked?

  Surely Beatrice didn’t intend…

  “I wrote to my friend Zeno before we came,” Beatrice said. “And I think he might have an idea who the priest in Rome was. I’m sure we’d be allowed to visit the library.”

  Giovanni frowned. “You wrote to Zeno?”

  “Of course,” Beatrice said. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  They exchanged a look that Fina couldn’t interpret because her mind was racing.

  Beatrice continued. “You two have exchanged letters, haven’t you? About some of the collection here?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I… Yes, Signor Ferrara and I have corresponded. He’s been very helpful.”

  “Excellent! I’m sure he’d enjoy meeting a colleague with so many of the same interests. Zeno is passionate about preservation.”

  There went her stomach. This was ridiculous. She was not a schoolgirl. “Passionate?”

  “Oh yes,” Giovanni said, smiling at his wife. “Zeno is a man of very strong passions. About books and… history. And terrorizing his assistants.”

  “Ignore him,” Beatrice said. “Zeno’s lovely. He worked in the Italian resistance during World War II, did you know that? When he was s
till a priest. I believe he’s from Naples originally. I think he was quite the problem child within the church.”

  “That’s fascinating.”

  Rome for Christmas? Taking Enzo to see the lights and music of the great city. Sharing lodging and meals—best not to think about that one—with her employers, who were quite obviously trying to make her a friend.

  Seeing the Vatican Library.

  Possibly meeting the man—the vampire—who’d been the subject of so many flights of imagination.

  “A man of very strong passions,” Giovanni had said.

  Oh, Nonna, she thought. You didn’t teach me anything about this.

  What would her nonna say? A quiet family Christmas with her son or the mysteries of the Vatican Library and a holiday with vampires?

  She knew exactly what Nonna would say.

  “Pack your red underthings. Red is good luck.”

  “I’ll go,” Fina said, watching Enzo erupt with joy. “We’ll go. Thank you for the invitation.”

  Chapter 2

  Vatican City, Italy

  Zeno Ferrara erupted from the table. “You are an idiot. A brainless, directionless idiot! Has the collar cut off all the circulation to your head?”

  The young priest paled and stepped back. “But Brother Zeno—”

  “And I am not your brother anymore!” He raked his hands through the hair that hung in his eyes. He needed a haircut. Again. But if these stupid young priests didn’t stop misfiling his documents, he was never going to leave the archives.

  The young human took another step back. “Are you going to bite me?” he whispered.

  Zeno’s head turned to the vaulted ceiling of his workroom. “Father God,” he shouted, “save me from imbeciles before it comes to murder.”

  He heard the footsteps behind him and spun in a blur.

  “Please stop scaring the young ones, Zeno.” Arturo Leon raised a lazy eyebrow as he entered the room. “It’s getting harder and harder to find you assistants.”

  That prompted a flurry of arguments in Latin between the two men. Old arguments they’d had for decades, with a few new digs thrown in. Zeno barely noticed when the young priest who’d lost the box of eighteenth-century correspondence slipped out of the room.

  “I never thought I’d say this, my friend, but I believe you need a holiday.” Arturo sat down at the table and crossed his legs, examining the odd assortment of papers, inks, quills, pens, magnifying loupes, and different artificial lights that decorated the center of the table. Zeno zipped around the rows of bookshelves, looking for the box he’d set out the night before. The box that had been misfiled somewhere within the cavernous room Zeno considered his own.

  He finally stopped the blur of movement, appearing before the old priest with a grey document box in his hands. A box that looked exactly like the thousands of others that filled the room. A single string of numbers on the front was the only identifier.

  “It may be in here.” Zeno set it down on the table. “And I don’t have time for a holiday.”

  “You do realize how odd that sounds coming from someone who is immortal.”

  “Yes, yes. But Vecchio and Beatrice will be here in an hour. And while three hours would have been more than enough time for me to go through the letters from California and find the ones they are looking for, now I cannot even find the box. Because of idiots with more devotion than brains!”

  “Careful, Zeno. And why are we allowing Vecchio into the archives? He’s a known thief.”

  “That all depends on how you define thief. He’s a scholar. A respected one. His other skills are secondary, and it’s not like you haven’t used them in the past.”

  Arturo sniffed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Zeno grinned. “Liar. Only one man could have procured that very elusive—and inconvenient—gospel from Ethiopia. How many copies were there?”

  “Only two.”

  “And now both are tucked away in your secret rooms, Arturo. And Vecchio is granted access to mine. I don’t expect any objections.”

  “You presume much, Ferrara.”

  Zeno ignored Arturo, who’d been no more than a baby when Zeno had been turned in 1938. Now the child had become an old man, a powerful one. In charge of all immortal clergy and laypeople attached to the Catholic Church, Arturo wasn’t a bad sort of human. In fact, Zeno considered him more of a friend than any others of the stuffy Church bureaucracy. The fact that he had to wade through their politics still chafed, even though he’d been doing it for over sixty years.

  But he had more freedom and resources here than anywhere else, and the documents, the letters, were his calling.

  They filled the cavernous room, missives from all over the world, stretching back as long as humans had taken pen to paper or parchment to communicate with others at a distance. He found the letters, procured any with even a passing link to the church, and then he dissected them. The authors, the recipients. Where and when were they written? Who did they mention? Correspondence was his passion.

  The modern blasphemy of email, his bane.

  Mostly Zeno was left alone, which suited him. He’d been released from his earthly vows ten years after he’d been made immortal as he’d felt unable to serve the church and remain steadfast in immortality. It was one thing for a human to reform at age thirty-five and take vows to God for the next forty years. Quite another to face an eternity of sacrifice with no end in sight. Zeno decided he could serve God far better if he retained his sanity. And his humor.

  Maybe the young priests didn’t see his humor, but it was there.

  Sometimes.

  The bits of socializing he did were with others of his kind. His life was his work. History was written by the victors, but the letters… Letters told the true tale. Zeno Ferrara specialized in the discovery of secrets hidden within the handwritten word.

  He glanced at the letter from Beatrice De Novo, whom he’d met only two years before. He’d known her mate far longer and was enormously pleased that his old friend had found a wife who was so like-minded. Beatrice was a delight, though he’d never cease arguing with her about the sacrilege of electronic communication.

  Thank God computers had no place in his library.

  The letters. Again. His eyes stole back to them. Letters were truth. Not only the words written but how they were written. What pace did the pen keep upon the page? Where did the writer hesitate? Where did she rush? Sometimes he could fancy the pen in his own hand, the letters stretching out across his skin.

  Giovanni and I will be in Rome over Christmas, and I’m really hoping you’ll have some insight into this set of documents. If you have any of the complementary letters or know anything about the writer, we’d be so grateful, Zeno. We’ll be in Perugia before we travel to Rome.

  Perugia. Vecchio had an enormous private library in Citta di Castello, though Zeno had never visited. The librarian there…

  Serafina Rossi.

  He could see her name written neatly across the bottom of the very professional letters she’d written to Zeno about one matter or another. He always enjoyed answering them because the woman asked excellent questions, and after some correspondence, her letters contained a prim wit that intrigued him. The handwriting told him she was young and educated. But it told him nothing of her hair. Or her eyes.

  Which were really none of his business, were they?

  Except he wanted to know. More than one of his acquaintances had mentioned the “unique charms of the Vecchio Library,” and he doubted they were talking about the bookcases or the stained glass.

  What did she look like as she wrote to him? Did she have long hair, tied back as she worked? Was it short, mussed from hands tugging it in concentration? Did she wear glasses?

  He had a weakness for women in glasses.

  Did she curl over her desk as she wrote her very proper responses to him or sit upright with shoulders held carefully?

  Did her lips purse when she wrote his name?<
br />
  Her signature vexed him. The neatness of her given name was misleading. It was the sensual dip and swell when she signed Rossi that had caught Zeno’s attention.

  Fina.

  Beatrice had once referred to the librarian as Fina in a letter.

  Fina. Shortened form of Serafina, a name drawn from the Biblical “seraphim.” Hebrew in origin. It meant “the burning ones.”

  A fiery name signed with such control.

  Fina.

  What would it look like in her own hand? Would the F’s angled upstroke be pointed like a dagger? Would the downstroke dip and swell beneath the line?

  Zeno felt his lips curve into a smile. Over their two years of correspondence, he had to admit he’d developed a bit of a preoccupation with the woman. She understood passion for work as he did. He would be most intrigued to see Fina sign her first name.

  Perhaps she would accompany Vecchio and Beatrice.

  But probably not. Beatrice had mentioned a child who lived on the property, and it was doubtful that a young woman with a family would want to be away during the Christmas holiday. There were things to celebrate. Gifts to exchange.

  Rubbing the silver-dotted stubble he’d let grow for months, Zeno tried to remember the last time he’d celebrated Christmas. The 1980s? Surely it hadn’t been that long. But then he rarely took holidays. The few bits of leisure time he indulged in were spent with the two other immortals in Vatican City, playing the hardest, fastest football the three could manage without tearing up the carefully manicured lawns. Both the other vampires were priests and needed the physical challenge as much as he did. He really ought to take up mountain climbing again, but that would take too much time away from work.

  Nobody understood the work.

  He dove back into the box of letters, smiling when he found the one he’d been hunting.

  Mission San Jose, 1798

  My dear Pietro, you cannot imagine this land we have found…

  “You’re here.”

  Giovanni looked up from his notebook to see his old friend, but the vampire was looking past him. He glanced over his shoulder to see Beatrice and Fina following him down the hall. He muffled the smile. It seemed that Beatrice had not been far off in her suspicions. Clever woman.