by Kai Meyer
THE GAIA WAS CRUISING the Mediterranean with no other vessel in sight. Evening dusk was falling; the first stars appeared in the clear sky. It was still warm, around sixty degrees, and the water reflected the light from the yacht’s portholes.
“What does love mean to you?” asked Rosa.
Alessandro didn’t even have to think about it. “Lying awake at night, realizing I’m going to die sometime—but that doesn’t bother me, because there’ll be someone with me when the time comes.” He glanced sideways at her. “How about you?”
“Honeymooning in the Bronx.”
“Romantic.”
“No, that’s the point. People honeymoon in Paris or Vienna or Florence, so they won’t have time to fight in those first few weeks. There are so many sights to see, so much else to think about. They’re using history to anesthetize the present. But if you really love someone, then you can make do with a couple of weeks in the Bronx. Or Detroit. Or Novosibirsk. That way it’s not all about ancient monuments and museums, it’s just about the other person and yourself. And that’s love.”
They had made themselves comfortable in the seating area on the top deck, and were looking into the flames of two dozen little candle lanterns arranged around the table and the deck itself. In the candlelight, the two blue marks on Rosa’s upper arm left by the needle of the syringe were clearly visible.
They had felt like junkies, injecting each other with the serum last night. But they had stayed in human form for quite a while, and when the transformations finally seemed about to begin, they had risked a second dose.
Alessandro had given himself the serum before, for sporting events and other occasions at his boarding school, and he swore that he had never noticed any side effects. Rosa had been forcibly injected with it twice, so at first she had been nervous. But she had not for a second regretted taking the serum, and she was actually the one who had insisted on the second dose.
Twenty minutes, twice running. In retrospect it seemed to her much longer, and yet not nearly long enough. Her intention of gaining control over her transformations as quickly as possible was even stronger now. She didn’t want to rely on a strange serum, harmless or not. In the old days she had always refused to drink diet soda and energy drinks because of all the toxins they contained. And now here she was injecting herself with some dubious substance, which—if she was right in her assumptions—had been developed by the archenemy of the Arcadians. All the same, she could hardly wait to load up the syringe next time.
Alessandro was barefoot, wearing only washed-out jeans and a pale T-shirt. She liked his feet. The skin over his insteps was the same brown as his chest and his arms. In the candlelight from the lanterns, his body shone like bronze.
Rosa was resting with the back of her head on his lap, letting him push unruly blond strands back from her forehead. He did that often, and very lovingly, but she had only to move and her hair was as untidy as before. Typical, she thought, resigned to it: I can’t even control my own hair.
They had taken the yacht out so they wouldn’t be disturbed. The sofa where they had been lounging around all day was upholstered in the best white leather, and was as showy as everything else on the vessel. Alessandro’s father had fitted the Gaia out with the most expensive finishings, from paneling in African woods in the saloon to gilded faucets in the galley. Alessandro was embarrassed by it. More than once, he had mentioned selling the Gaia. If he didn’t, it was only because of the name of the yacht. His dead mother’s name.
Rosa was wearing a black top and a short skirt. She thought her knees were too red and her calves too pale, but it didn’t seem to bother him. With Alessandro, she felt for the first time that she wasn’t entering some kind of competition. Their families might be rivals, but they weren’t.
He kissed her forehead, the end of her nose, her lips. She put her hand on the back of his neck, drew him down to her again, and held him until neither of them could breathe and they moved apart, laughing.
“Do they still hurt?” He pointed to the blue marks where the needle had gone in.
“I’ll live.”
He made an instinctive sound as she moved away from him and sat cross-legged on the sofa. She watched him as, once again, he gave her the youthful grin that didn’t seem to suit the capo of a Mafia clan. A fresh evening breeze blew her hair in front of her face, and she tried to hold it back with both hands.
There was a buzzing sound. Her cell phone was lying on the table in front of the sofa. The vibration from the ringtone made it circle around the glass surface like a drunk bumblebee.
When she looked at the display, she recognized the number. “The lab. Finally.” Before they had left the palazzo for the coast, Rosa had sent a driver to Enna with a vial from the cellar and what was left of Alessandro’s serum. They must have come up with the results of the tests.
She took the call, as Alessandro expectantly pressed his lips together. A little later she thanked the caller, said the laboratory was to invoice her at the office in Piazza Armerina, and put the cell phone back on the table.
“The same substance,” she said. “Probably still effective, even after all the years it’s been stored down there.”
“Then Tano really was in touch with this Apollonio. Or some other TABULA go-between.” She had told Alessandro that her father had forbidden the attorney to pursue his own inquiries, saying that he would follow the trail of Apollonio himself. She suppressed the thought of that empty tomb as best she could, for now.
“Try as I might, I can’t remember ever hearing the name before,” said Alessandro. “Tano and Cesare talked about many of their business associates, but not an Apollonio…or at least not when I was present.”
“And the people at the lab said something else. The substance is really an antiserum derived from blood. They tried to isolate its components, but they thought there was something wrong with the original blood.”
He looked at her as if trying to estimate just how bad the news about to follow was.
“They can’t classify it as either human or animal blood,” she explained. “Obviously the serum has features of both, different proteins or…or whatever. But the serum we sent them is from a single donor, so it’s not a mixture of several.”
“Sounds impossible,” he said.
“That’s what they thought, too.”
“As long as we’re in human form, everything about us is human, including our blood. And after transformation—”
“Yes, our blood is also animal. One hundred percent.” She nodded slowly. “However, the raw material for the serum came from someone who’s both. Human and animal at the same time.”
Alessandro linked his hands behind his head and leaned back with a groan. “Hybrids.”
Rosa frowned. “Hybrids?”
“Arcadians who stop changing in midtransformation. Half animal, half human.”
“Stop changing?”
“It’s only a rumor. Don’t worry about it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If that means I’m going to be walking around with a snake’s head someday, then I have plenty to worry about.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“And that’s why you never mentioned it before?”
“Sorry.”
“What else have you kept from me?”
“I haven’t kept anything from you,” he snapped.
“How often does that kind of thing happen?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Once a month? Once a year? Once in a lifetime?”
“You’re not going to get hysterical, are you?”
She jumped up, almost sweeping one of the candle lanterns off the table. “As if having to change into an animal wasn’t bad enough! And now there’s the risk of ending up as a sideshow act on top of it. The amazing reptile woman.”
“The risk of dying of a perfectly normal cancer someday is probably a hundred times greater. Or a thousand times. How would I know?”
“So what abo
ut the blood in the serum?”
He sighed quietly. “Yes, you have a point there.”
“Does TABULA breed these creatures?”
“Why would they do that?”
She went over to the rail and leaned against it. “Why would they capture Arcadians and then skin them? Why would anyone make coats out of the pelts? Damn it, it doesn’t matter why all this happens! Just that it does happen.”
“You think that the experiments carried out by TABULA—and we only know about those from hearsay, right?—led to the creation of hybrids of some kind?”
She took a deep breath and watched him in the light of the flickering candle lanterns. He looked slightly ill. “We don’t know anything for sure, do we? But we have to start somewhere.”
“Start?” He stood up and came over to her. “Is that the plan? Put a stop to the activities of TABULA? Do away with evil? In the Land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t care less about heroics.”
Alessandro smiled. “Because strictly speaking, we represent evil, right?”
“What’s TABULA, then?”
“Maybe just a specter thought up by men like Cesare to justify what they do. A phantom image of the enemy. Just an excuse to behave even worse than the others.”
She held his gaze, felt for his hands. “Is that what you really think?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“I want to know what Costanza was up to. And what became of my father. All the things that have to do with me.”
With us, said his eyes.
“With us,” she whispered.
THE VISITOR
“YOU CAN’T MOVE IN here, Signora Falchi, and that’s my final answer.”
The tutor was standing on the flight of steps leading up to the entrance of the Palazzo Alcantara. Rosa herself was only just back from the coast when the woman drove her Toyota into the inner courtyard. Now her two bags were sitting on the dusty pavement in front of the steps, with Signora Falchi between them, and Rosa strongly wished that she were anywhere else.
Raffaela Falchi crossed her arms. Her glasses flashed in the sunlight, making her look even readier for a fight. “You wanted a good tutor, right?”
“Yes.”
“You wanted the best tutor available for this difficult child.”
“Yes.”
“And you wanted her for six hours a day.”
“Yes!”
“Well, now you’re getting her for twenty-four hours a day. At the same price.”
“But that’s not the point!”
“In this house, I have witnessed toothpaste tubes lying around with the tops left off. The desecration of graves. Whipped cream sprayed straight from the can into people’s mouths. The desecration of graves. Dirty shoes on parquet flooring. Oh, and did I mention the desecration of graves?”
Rosa groaned. “You’re always complaining. You’re in a bad mood all day. You get irritated with Iole, and you think I’m too young to look after her. So why do you want to come and live here?”
“First: You are too young to look after her. Second: You don’t want to be responsible for Iole; you can’t even cope with being responsible for yourself. And third: I’ve split up with my boyfriend.”
“You had a boyfriend?” Rosa had expected almost anything, but not that Raffaela Falchi might be in a relationship. Having sex.
“He’s a musician.”
“Plays the flute, maybe?”
“Singer. In a rock band.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Ex-boyfriend.”
Rosa realized that she was standing on the stairway as if defending it with her life against the unwanted intruder. Legs apart, right in the middle of the steps. The pair of them must look ridiculous.
“Why would I want you to live with us?” Rosa asked, sighing.
“I have green thumbs. Ten of them.”
“We don’t grow plants.”
“My cousin in Caltagirone has a florist. She’ll give me a discount. And then there’s my other cousin—she runs a perfumery. She could get you—”
“Okay. All right.” Rosa could hardly understand why, but she went down the steps, picked up one of the bags, and nodded in the direction of the porch over the entrance. “But if I see—or smell—either of your cousins, you’re fired.”
For the first time, she saw Raffaela Falchi grin, and for a moment, for a fraction of a second, she thought she saw something behind the tutor’s usual reproachful expression that might even attract a rock singer.
“Did you go on tour with him?” she asked, as they hauled the baggage up the steps.
“I’ve had tinnitus ever since.”
In the entrance hall, Iole came toward them in one of her white dresses. She stopped dead when she saw her tutor there with Rosa.
“Oh,” she said, as her eyes fell on the luggage.
“You’d better put on something else,” said Signora Falchi, her tone of voice skeptical. “Whenever you wear that outfit I feel as if I’m seeing the world through white highlighter.”
Iole wrinkled her forehead. “Maybe your glasses are clouded up.”
Glancing sideways at Rosa, the tutor raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t buy her those clothes, did you?”
Rosa raised her hands defensively.
“I bought them online,” said Iole. “They have such lovely music on that website. You don’t get nice music on every site, but you do on that one. I think it makes the dresses even prettier. And if you order three, you get a free packet of sunflower seeds and a CD to help you meditate. Only no flowers came up. I planted them all—well, the seeds, I mean; not the CD. And I watered them. And talked to them.”
“I can show you how to grow sunflowers,” said Signora Falchi, a little less sternly. “And then we’ll order you something new together.”
Rosa nodded when Iole looked at her doubtfully. “Signora Falchi is cool,” she commented, with a touch of sarcasm. “Her boyfriend is a musician.”
“Ex-boyfriend.”
Iole glanced at the two bags. “You’re going to live with us now?”
Raffaela Falchi looked inquiringly at Rosa.
Rosa nodded again. “For the time being. It’s better not to have so many rooms standing empty. To air them. They’re damp from the walls.” She had expected opposition from Iole, but the girl only rubbed the back of her neck thoughtfully and then shrugged her shoulders.
“Okay,” she said.
The tutor beamed.
“Which room is she going to have?” asked Iole.
Rosa gestured in the direction of the ceiling. “We have twenty-three empty bedrooms. Take your pick.”
Iole reached for one of the bags and was about to go ahead, but then she stopped and pointed to a small table near the porch. A padded white envelope lay on it. “A courier brought that yesterday. It’s for you, Rosa. From Avvocato Trevini. Feels like two cell phones.”
Rosa’s heart sank like a stone. She went over to the packet, picked it up, and saw that it had been opened. “Feels like two cell phones?”
Iole went red. “I was curious. But I didn’t take them out. Word of honor.”
Rosa weighed the envelope in both hands, took a deep breath, and then put it back on the table. She would watch the video—later. Probably.
Iole carried the case upstairs to the third floor. Signora Falchi followed her. Halfway up, Iole remembered something else.
“Oh, yes,” she said, looking over her shoulder.
Rosa had to force her eyes away from the envelope. “Hmm?”
“Twenty-two.” Iole switched the bag over to her other hand. “Rooms, I mean. There are only twenty-two still empty.”
“What happened to the twenty-third?”
Somewhere in the house, Sarcasmo barked. Had he been barking the whole time? It sounded a long way off, as if it came from the other wing of the palazzo.
“You have a visitor,” explained Iole. “She see
med so tired. I told her she could rest in one of the bedrooms.”
“Visitor?” repeated Rosa quietly.
“Very, very tired,” said Iole.
Rosa stood before the closed door.
Nothing else seemed to exist. Even Sarcasmo’s barking had died out. The dog had left his post outside the room and was now standing at a safe distance, wagging his tail and feeling proud of himself for enticing Rosa this way.
She stood in the dark corridor, on cracked flagstones and in front of faded wallpaper, in the yellowish light of the lamp. Stood there staring at the door of the room where her visitor was waiting for her.
She listened, but couldn’t hear anything.
Then she slowly raised her hand to knock. And lowered it again. She took a deep breath. Damn it, this was her house. She didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to go into one of the rooms.
Put her in a taxi to the airport, she had told Trevini. And you’d better book her on a flight to wherever she wants. She sensed another attempt at manipulation on the attorney’s part. If the new video wasn’t enough to upset her—seeing her would do the trick.
Her fingers touched the doorknob. The metal, clouded with vapor, felt cold in her hand. Sarcasmo growled.
When the handle moved as if of its own accord, she realized that someone had been standing on the other side, hesitating, the whole time.
“Hello, Rosa,” said Valerie.
Very tired. Now she knew what Iole had meant. Except that the exhaustion in that face, in those eyes, wasn’t ordinary tiredness.
Valerie looked even worse than she had in Trevini’s dungeon in the hotel, although she must have showered, because her dark hair was wet. Iole had given her clean clothes. Valerie was wearing Rosa’s black There Are Always Better Liars T-shirt. On Val, it struck Rosa as very appropriate, although it hung from her bony shoulders as if it were on a coat hanger.
Her eyes lay deep in their sockets; her nose looked long and thin. Triangles of shadow under her cheekbones were emphasized by the ceiling light. When Rosa had first met her, Valerie had just stopped wearing braces; now her teeth were discolored and yellow, and half of one incisor had broken off. It was only with difficulty that she seemed able to stay on her feet. She clearly needed a doctor.
