The Stars Afire

by Elizabeth Hunter

  Enzo rolled onto the side of the bed, rubbing sleepy eyes. “Did you just get home? How was the library?”

  “It was fascinating, darling, but why are you awake?”

  “I heard you come in, I think. The gate…”

  “Ah, of course.” The gate to the massive old house was very close to his room. “I’ll be sure to be quieter tonight. We were talking loudly, I think.”

  He nodded, his eyes falling closed. “I should go back to bed.”

  “Yes, do. I’ll be sleeping late today. Do you have plans?”

  “Angela said something about the market.” He yawned and sat up. “And Rudy and I are helping her decorate the house. She’s fun.”

  “Such a good boy.” She ruffled his hair. “What would I do without you?”

  “Get lots of work done and be very boring.”

  “Oh.” She groaned and rolled into the pillow as he laughed. “You know your mama.”

  “Did you have fun?” he asked. “You sounded like you had fun at the library.”

  “I did,” she said. “It’s a wonderful thing to love your work.”

  “Good.” He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Good night. Good day, I mean.” He bared his teeth. “Soon you’ll be just like the vampires.”

  She laughed, but within minutes of Enzo closing the door, Fina had fallen asleep.

  When she woke, it was to the dip of her bed. Fina opened her eyes to see Beatrice leaning over, fangs hanging down in her smiling mouth.

  “Aah!” Fina sat bolt upright, scrambling toward the headboard.

  “Hey!” Beatrice said. “Sorry I surprised you, but you will not believe what I found out today!”

  “Are you going to bite me?”

  Finally understanding that Fina was terrified, Beatrice leaned back. “What? No.”

  “But your—” Fina motioned to her mouth, heart pounding. “They’re just… long and—and sharp. And you’re not going to bite me?”

  Beatrice cocked her head. “Do you want me to bite you?”

  “No!”

  “This”—she waved at her mouth—“happens for a lot of reasons. Excitement is one of them. Sorry, I was just so jazzed about what I found. I’ll have to keep that in mind.” She smiled, and Fina noticed her fangs were a little shorter. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” It really wasn’t, but Fina did understand her employers were not human. She knew that. Maybe she just didn’t know that as well as she’d thought.

  Fangs. Long, sharp fangs.

  Zeno would have them too.

  “You were the last one sleeping,” Beatrice said.

  “Oh.” She looked toward the window. The sun was already down, and she could hear a football skittering around the cobblestones of the courtyard below. “Enzo?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  There were other voices too. Male voices. Shouting something.

  “Mitto!”

  The skidding ball.

  “Mittere!”

  Another kick.

  “Misi.”

  “Missus!”

  Fina frowned. “Is that…?”

  “Gio invited Zeno over for Angela’s dinner. I think he’s going to the market with us later too.”

  She sat up, totally forgetting that Beatrice’s fangs had scared her. “Zeno’s here? And they’re—”

  “Declining Latin verbs while they kick around a soccer ball? Yes. Yes, they are. My husband thinks Latin is God’s language and everyone should know it.”

  Fina started laughing just as they started on habeo.

  “My son, your husband, and Zeno are… They’re being such… There is an English word, but I cannot remember.”

  “Nerds,” Beatrice said, joining in the laughter. “They are being really, really big nerds right now.”

  “Yes.” She couldn’t stop laughing. “Yes, that is the word.”

  Beatrice stood and walked to the window where the kicking and shouting had ceased.

  She waved at whomever she saw and said, “I think Zeno heard you laughing. He’s got that hungry, dazed expression on his face.”

  And all of a sudden, she was thinking about fangs again. “Hungry?”

  “Not the kind of hungry you’re thinking.”

  She flushed and Beatrice laughed.

  “Okay, now it’s the kind of hungry you’re thinking. Oh my, I bet he loves that blush you have.”

  “It’s incredibly embarrassing. I’ve blushed since I was a girl. I hate it.”

  “You better get used to the fangs, Fina, because when this goes up”—she pointed the finger of her right hand straight—“these go down.” The other hand came up, two fingers dropping like fangs.

  “Oh.” Well, that was more than she’d ever expected to know about vampire sex. “That’s… interesting.”

  “Yes, it is.” Beatrice grinned. “You and Zeno couldn’t keep your eyes off each other last night. I noticed.”

  “Was I that obvious?” She paused, thought about what Beatrice had said. “It was more than just me?”

  “Oh yeah. What kind of letters have you two been writing for the past couple of years?” She waved out the window again, then pointed down and nodded. “Gio wants me to come down and meet them. I’ll hold Zeno off from charging up the stairs until you’re ready.”

  “Please do.”

  Why was she talking about this with her employer? But employers didn’t break into your room and jump on your bed, excited about a discovery. They didn’t call their husband a nerd while that husband was playing football with your son. They didn’t tease you about a man—vampire—you were dangerously attracted to.

  “Beatrice?”

  She paused at the door. “Yeah?”

  “Are we friends now?”

  Beatrice smiled. “I’m trying to be. I don’t do very well with the whole scary-vampire-lording-over-humans thing yet. Give me a few hundred years or so, and I’m sure I’ll have it down.”

  Fina smiled. “I don’t have many friends. I didn’t want to assume.”

  “Assume away.” She glanced down the hall. “But don’t take long to get ready. Those boys are champing at the bit.”

  Fina didn’t know exactly what that meant, but she quickly dressed and hurried downstairs.

  And she did it wearing red lace under her clothes.

  Well, Nonna, life certainly is interesting now.

  Beatrice watched Zeno as Fina came down the stairs. The hungry look was back, but his cheeks had color, so she knew he’d fed recently. Smart of him. He must have sensed Fina was cautious about vampires, so he was being considerate and not taxing his self-control. Zeno was still talking with Enzo, debating soccer, which they both avidly followed. They shared a love for the same Italian club, and conversation seemed to swing between perfect excitement and utter despair. Often within the same sentence. When Fina came down, she joined them and the three talked like old friends while Beatrice watched from across the room.

  Excellent. Things were progressing nicely.

  Gio bent down and kissed her temple. “Happy, darling?”

  “I’d be happier with presents.” It was just so fun to annoy him about the present thing.

  “You’re hopeless.”

  “No, I’m present-less.”

  “You poor deprived girl.”

  “Have you ever thought about trying to steal Zeno away from the Vatican?”

  He narrowed his eyes at the change in subject. “Many times. He’s a quiet sort, but I know for a fact he can take care of himself. Doesn’t attract much attention, and he’s a bulldog when it comes to research. He’d be an ideal employee. Previously, I’d not had anything to tempt him away from his comfortable cave in Rome, but now…”

  She looked up at him innocently. “Look how helpful I’m being, meddling like this. You’re so lucky to have me.”

  Giovanni smiled, his green eyes sparkling. “I know exactly how lucky I am. And I have to say I approve. As long as Fina continues to like him, of course. I have no interest
in replacing her, but I think she could use some help.”

  “He’d be perfect for it. And I’d breathe easier knowing that there was someone we trusted at the library. Someone stronger than a human.”

  “I’ve been thinking along the same lines.” The humor fled Giovanni’s face as he sat down next to her. “My reputation and Emil’s protection have so far warned off anyone who might cause trouble, but as word of Andros’s books spreads, I don’t want to take chances. My sire’s collection contains secrets I’m not even aware of. There could be others threatened by it. Even someone as well trained as Rudy would not be enough.”

  “So, Zeno or no Zeno, we need to find a vampire to live and work in Perugia.”

  “I think so.”

  She looked back at the pair, who were totally engaged. “Well,” she said, “hopefully this will end well for everyone.”

  “Let’s get business out of the way, then go find some Christmas pipers for Enzo, eh?”

  “Sounds good.” She raised her voice a little. “Hey, let’s go over what we found today, and then we’ll eat.”

  All business, Zeno and Fina walked over to the dining room while Enzo drifted to the kitchen, uninterested in the “library stuff.”

  The excitement made Beatrice’s blood run. She’d been on and off the phone all day with Dez in California and the priest whom Zeno had referred her to last night. What they’d put together brought Rafael’s manuscript much closer than she ever would have expected.

  “After we looked over the letters last night, I had my assistant in California look up some of the ship manifests and passenger lists we’ve collected from that period.”

  “Why did you collect those?” Fina asked. “Just curious.”

  “To examine what was being shipped in and out of California at the time. Most of our interest has actually been in the cargo, but I had Dez look for any passengers out of Monterey from 1803. We know that was the last letter that Rafael sent. Know that he told his friend he had a plan. So I started looking there.”

  “Meanwhile,” Zeno said, “I asked a certain priest who specializes in genealogy to look into Father Pietro. There were only so many Franciscans named Pietro who came from prominent families in Rome during that time. And from his handwriting and vocabulary, he had more than a church education. Pietro came from wealth.”

  They all sat comfortably at the dining table, Giovanni and Beatrice on one side, Zeno and Fina on the other. Beatrice had to bite back a smile at how close the two were sitting to each other.

  Zeno continued, “There was one Franciscan who stood out. The third son of a very prominent family, his brothers had taken over the estate, but he was educated for the church. Why he became a Franciscan, I do not know. But there were records of his family because they owned quite a lot of land and were minor nobility.” Then he smiled. “And what we found is very interesting.”

  “A sister?” Fina asked. “Was there a sister?”

  Zeno’s eyes locked with hers. “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. Just suspected. How else would Rafael have been so confident that Pietro could give Antonia his message? She had to have been part of his family. A sister seemed the most likely.”

  “Very clever,” Zeno said. “Yes, Pietro had a sister named Antonia. There was a mention of her marrying in 1805, but after that, we could find nothing. And nothing about the identity of whom she married either.”

  “So we don’t know if they found their way back to each other?” Fina looked stricken.

  “Not necessarily,” Beatrice said. “Dez found him. There were numerous Rafaels who sailed from California in 1803 and 1804, but only one with a name that jumped out at me. Rafael Szarka left the Presidio of Monterey in March of 1804. He sailed down to Mexico—well, Baja California—then back to Spain. After that, we have no idea.”

  “Szarka is not a Spanish name,” Zeno said.

  “No, it’s Hungarian.” Beatrice waved a hand. “Don’t ask. I can’t tell you. But this is our Rafael, I’m certain of it.”

  “So we know his name,” Fina said. “And presumably he went back to Spain. But we have no idea what happened after that.”

  Zeno squeezed her hand where it lay on the table. “We’ll keep looking, cara. This much progress is already far more than I would expect to learn in such a short time.”

  Giovanni nodded. “Now, let’s eat. Then we will go show Enzo the city at Christmastime.” He put his arm around Beatrice. “I think we’re all ready for a little fun.”

  Fina couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun. Giovanni and Beatrice dragged them all over Rome. They gaped at churches and piazzas decorated with thousands of lights. They visited the giant Christmas tree near the Colosseum. They wandered past the shops near the Spanish Steps and took in the toys and luxury fashions that decorated the store windows.

  Spending time with Zeno was effortless. The more she knew him, the more she liked, though she still hadn’t caught a glimpse of the rumored fangs. He joked with Enzo, listening to everything the boy said, and appeared to truly enjoy their conversations, unlike some adults who only condescended to children. He took her arm with old-fashioned manners… but then, he was old-fashioned. He casually mentioned how Rome had changed over decades, but he still seemed to enjoy the modern lights and markets.

  He was… perfect.

  And he was a vampire. He would never die. Never grow older. She tried not to think too far ahead, but the simmering interest she’d nurtured over years of correspondence had heated to a full, rolling boil. She wanted him. And she suspected he wanted her. But was it only a casual interest in a woman or something more serious?

  Fina didn’t have casual affairs. In fact, Zeno spending time with Enzo broke one of her cardinal rules. The few men she’d dated over the years had never met her son. No relationship had become serious enough for that. But Enzo had already met the vampire, and she could see the hero worship starting to take hold. The boy had no paternal figures in his life—her own papa and brothers no longer acknowledged her—and she knew her son was hungry for male interaction, especially as he’d grown older. It was part of the reason he looked forward to Giovanni’s visits.

  “Fina.” Zeno called her over to one stall as they strolled through the market of the Piazza Navona. “Look at these!”

  He was laughing, holding up gaudy earrings with flashing Christmas lights on them, only to have them short out when he held them up to his ears. He grinned and pulled a few euros out of his pocket to give to the vendor.

  “No,” she protested. “Look. They’re…” She started to laugh. “Well, they’re awful, aren’t they? And they don’t even work, Zeno.”

  He leaned down and took her arm, whispering in her ear, “They probably did, cara. But vampires and electronics do not get along well, do they?”

  “Oh?” Then she remembered. Beatrice had told her the current all immortals carried in their touch, called amnis, wreaked havoc on anything electronic. She wasn’t sure why. She smiled up at Zeno. “And here I thought you were only a Luddite.”

  “Oh, I am. Computers are not my friend.” He hadn’t leaned away from her ear. “I prefer a hands-on approach when I want to research something.”

  Her heartbeat took off. He was so close. Just beside her neck, his breath tickling above her scarf. The perfect position to kiss her. Or bite her. She looked around for Enzo, but he was in a circle surrounding a couple of street musicians with Beatrice and Giovanni.

  “Cara mia…,” Zeno said gruffly. “Surely you know.”

  She could hardly breathe. “Yes.”

  “And would you?”

  “It… depends.”

  He pulled a little away to look into her eyes, but his arm was still linked with her own. “On what does it depend?”

  Were those fangs behind his lips? He was murmuring, but was it because he did not want her to see him?

  “It’s not that you’re what you are, Zeno. Maybe a little, but it is more that…” She glan
ced over at Enzo again. “I do not bring people into my son’s life who are casual. I rarely date, and when I do—”

  “Why would I be interested in dating you?”

  Her heart plunged. Was that derision in his voice? How could she have been so wrong? Her face felt as if it were on fire.

  “Dating,” he continued, even as she looked for escape, “is a ridiculous modern concept. Why would I take you to the theater or the cinema once a week for months when I could work with you for one day and know you better? And I don’t eat regular meals, not the kind you do. So dining is not an option. Dating is useless.”

  “But I—”

  “We already suit each other, Fina. It was obvious before we even met.”

  Was she starting to see the side of him that was the “terror of the Vatican?” She could see his temper brewing.

  “Zeno, I think we misunderstand each other.”

  “I am not interested in something casual. Do I look like a casual person?” His head swung around the marketplace. “I am older than everyone here, save Vecchio and that old vampire sitting by the fountain.”

  “There’s a vampire by the fountain?” Her wide eyes looked over his shoulder.

  “He’s not dangerous—pay attention.”

  Her own temper piqued, she pulled her arm away and said, “I am not one of your assistants to order around, Zeno Ferrara. I may be a quiet person, but quiet does not equal meek.”

  “Are you afraid of me?” He stepped closer. “Is that what this is about?”

  “No!”

  “Then why do you step away from me?”

  “I do not.” Did she?

  A pair of young men came up to them, clearly interested in the scene. She knew their type. Calling at the girls. Hungry to feed their ego with feminine embarrassment.

  “Signorina, does he bother you?” one asked.

  The other said, “Old brute, you should leave the lady alone.” Then he laughed. “She is too pretty for you anyway. Signorina, run away with us! Leave the rude one. We know how to take care of a lady.”