Arcadia Burns

by Kai Meyer

  Rosa glided on to Costanza’s old bedroom. The door was open; the lock had been broken. It seemed that after Rosa left Iole had locked Valerie in again after all—but in vain.

  Valerie was gone. There was no sign of Sarcasmo either. Rosa was sick with worry about Iole, and the disappearance of the dog made it no better. Had Michele done the girl any harm? Had he shot Sarcasmo? And where was Alessandro?

  She quickly moved on to her own room and found it untouched. In the dressing room she returned to human form, slipped into jeans and a T-shirt, feeling dazed, and stole barefoot out into the hallway. There was a cupboard with a lock in the study. Florinda had kept a pistol and ammunition there.

  Cautiously, she snuck down the dark corridors, going from niche to niche, immersed in deep shadow. Where two passages met, she stumbled upon the corpse of Gianni. Rosa turned away and ran on.

  Her skin was stinging as if she had grazed it, but it showed neither injuries nor reddened patches. Maybe her brain hadn’t yet fully registered that she was not a snake anymore. Her joints, too, felt like unfamiliar structures that she would have to accustom herself to using.

  She listened for voices, sounds, footsteps. Nothing. But the palazzo walls were thick, and the old tapestries on the walls swallowed up most noises.

  What would she do in Michele’s place? He wanted revenge, because he thought Alessandro had given orders for the murder of the Carnevares. Part of his retribution was to be Rosa’s death. When he had failed to find her at the palazzo, he must have questioned Iole. She had probably told him, truthfully, that Rosa had driven off in her car, and upon hearing that, he had surely begun searching the whole place for her—a hopeless undertaking, considering all its countless rooms and corridors. It made little difference whether Valerie had helped him or had stayed to guard Iole, particularly once the Hundinga began laying siege to the walls. Michele would have had no time to be thorough in his search; the attack must have taken him as much by surprise as it had Iole and Signora Falchi. Presumably he was nervous now. And a nervous man would make mistakes.

  The study lay at the end of a long corridor on the third floor and had no door; the only way in was a rounded archway, making it almost impossible to get there unseen. In human form she would stand no chance. Even so, she put off her transformation, because she could sense that shifting shape back and forth so quickly was putting a strain on her strength. She had no idea what she could demand of her body. Biologically, the metamorphoses might be impossible to explain, but that didn’t mean that they left no trace behind. Strictly speaking, with every transformation Rosa broke all her bones. In the long run that was bound to have some effect on her physical structure, her circulation, and her metabolism.

  To get to the second floor, she used one of the former servants’ staircases. The days of valets and lady’s maids were long gone, and the narrow steps that they had once used were dusty and covered with cobwebs.

  She entered a corridor on the upper floor through a thin door behind a curtain. There was no one in sight, and no lamp on apart from the faint, sulfurous illumination of the nocturnal lighting. For the first time, she thought she heard voices, but when she held her breath and listened hard, there was only silence.

  On bare feet, she hurried beyond the curtain and turned right. The study was in the north wing, looking out over the inner courtyard. Maybe she ought to have gone the long way around through the kitchen, to arm herself with a knife. But she would lose it anyway at her next transformation, if not before.

  Concentrating hard, she was approaching a bend in the hallway when she suddenly heard sounds. Soft paws on bare stone.

  Alessandro? Michele?

  Or one of the Hundinga?

  Taking small, silent steps, she ran back behind the curtain and leaned against the closed door to the stairway. The wine-red velvet vibrated in front of her face, not a handsbreadth away.

  Through a crack in the curtain, she could see down the corridor. A shadow was coming around the corner.

  Rosa fought down her sense of cold. If she shifted to her snake shape now, the sounds of it would give her away.

  A big cat was prowling closer. The cat’s long tail swished slowly from side to side. Its shoulder blades stood out as the predator kept its head close to the ground, bent and waiting, ready to pounce. Bright eyes glinted silver in the dim lighting. Its whiskers and brows were white; the muscular body was covered with yellowish fur sprinkled with dark brown spots. Each of the animal’s four paws was as large as Rosa’s face.

  The leopard stopped and peered down the hall. Then he began to move again.

  Rosa stood pressing as close as possible to the door, intent on making no sound. And on not touching the curtain.

  The snake stirred inside her as the leopard came nearer. Soon she would lose sight of him because the heavy velvet would be in the way. But she could hear him, his paws on the flagstones, the scraping of his claws.

  Out on the terrace, she had killed a Hunding, a massive, lumbering colossus. One of the Panthera, however, was something else entirely. And Michele might be exceptional even among his own kind. She had seen him hunting, accepted by the others as leader of the pride because he was stronger, faster, more ruthless than the rest.

  She felt her skin tense, suddenly turning dry, and tiny scales trickled from her forehead down her cheeks. Her hair formed strands, her knees stiffened, her elbows hurt. A terrible itching ran over her body in waves.

  Not now!

  Something touched the other side of the curtain, very slightly. Tapped it and withdrew again. The touch was repeated a little farther to the left. The leopard’s gently lashing tail. Its tip brushed the velvet as the animal moved past her hiding place.

  Her T-shirt was too large for her; she felt as if she were simply passing through it, like the hero in The Incredible Shrinking Man. She was the shrinking woman, the snake girl, and in a couple of seconds she would be cat food.

  Somewhere in the house, glass broke.

  She heard the distant sound of Hundinga howling. The echoes resounded in the corridors and stairwells.

  The leopard hissed. Suddenly she heard his paws slapping down on the flagstones several times as he moved into a swift run. Then there was silence.

  Rosa’s back slid down the door until she was crouching, with her knees pushing the curtain outward. There was nothing she could do about it. Her heart sank, and for a moment she didn’t know whether she was in human or snake form. The heavy curtain was pressing in on her, keeping her from breathing. Energetically, she thrust it aside and looked out at the corridor.

  The leopard had disappeared. She thought he had run left. The study was in the opposite direction.

  She struggled to her feet and went that way.

  SUICIDE QUEENS

  THE HALL LEADING TO the study stretched ahead of her like the inside of an accordion, getting longer and longer—an optical illusion. It was all in Rosa’s head. In her crazy, bewildered brain.

  Pictures in black frames with gold leaf flaking off them hung on the walls. Tables and lamps lined the corridor, along with a suit of armor too small for a man. This palazzo had always been a house full of women, often at odds with one another.

  Rosa was sick and tired of hiding. She stepped out into the middle of the corridor and walked toward the open archway leading to the study.

  She saw the desk in front of the glazed door to the balcony. Saw the high back of the chair at the desk—it was empty. Saw herself as a faint reflection in the glass of the window, an outline emerging from the gloom of the corridor, the ghost of her belligerent forebears, or just a girl who had come to break with the past.

  The whole room opened up before her, big enough to be a ballroom. Thirty feet of polished wooden parquet flooring lay between the archway and the desk. The chandelier was not switched on, but several lamps along the walls gave light.

  “Rosa!”

  Iole wore only a white nightshirt that came down to her knees. She was sitting on a leathe
r sofa beside the west wall of the study, with her wrists bound. She tried to jump up, but a slender hand grabbed her arm and dragged her back down onto the cushions. Valerie was holding a silver pistol in her hand, pressing the muzzle against Iole’s temple.

  The corners of Rosa’s mouth twitched. It was almost a smile.

  “Your hardcore is my mainstream,” she said softly—the wording on the T-shirt that Valerie had been wearing when they’d first met in Brooklyn. She didn’t know why that popped into her mind just now. Or why she suddenly laughed, a loud laugh intended to wound. The words were in such absurd contrast to the emaciated, drug-addicted girl with the gun that she couldn’t help herself. She was laughing at Valerie’s betrayal, her sorrow, her naive, obsessive, fatal love for Michele Carnevare. She laughed until it turned to a choking cough, and the look in Iole’s wide eyes showed more concern for Rosa than anxiety for her own fate.

  “Finished?” inquired Valerie. “Then go over to the desk and pick up what’s lying there. Use it.”

  Rosa’s eyes followed her gesture. A syringe ready for injection lay under the lamp on the desktop. The contents shimmered yellow in the sharply outlined circle of light.

  Rosa didn’t move from the spot. She stood in the middle of the room, the archway behind her, the huge oak desk in front of her, and to her right, fifteen feet away, the sofa with the two girls sitting on it.

  “The Hundinga are in the house,” she said, not sure whether Valerie knew what that meant.

  But Val was in league with Michele now. “They want you,” she said. “You and your boyfriend. They’re not here on my account, or Michele’s.”

  “Is that what he said? Did he tell you they won’t hurt you when they come up here? Or do you think they won’t mind at all that there are a few of them lying out by the pool—and not to sunbathe?”

  Valerie slowly shook her head. “I’m the Suicide Queen, Rosa. I’m not afraid.” The gravity in her voice was shattering. Almost enough to make Rosa feel sorry for her. Almost.

  “There’s no need to point that thing at Iole,” said Rosa. “She hasn’t done anything to you.”

  “I hadn’t done anything to your friend Trevini, either, but all the same he wasn’t particularly nice to me.”

  “I just got back from seeing Trevini. He won’t be hurting anyone again.”

  “And how long did it take you to decide to let me go? Two days? Three? Why not right away, Rosa?” Valerie’s voice was sharper now. “What was so hard about telling him to let me go?”

  Rosa held her gaze, but still didn’t move. “Because you deserved it, Val. Every damn minute in Trevini’s dungeon cell. Because you stabbed me in the back not just once, there in New York, but again here. What do you expect? You think that if you shoot Iole everything will get better? That you’ll be better off yourself?”

  “I’m just fine. Michele is here. Everything will be all right.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  Valerie’s eyes flashed. The pistol stayed where it was against Iole’s head. “We know so much about each other, Rosa. All kinds of embarrassing little secrets. Stuff you say in the club at night when you’re drunk. Or outside waiting in line to get in. We were good friends once.”

  “We were never real friends,” Rosa contradicted her. “You didn’t want a friend; you wanted someone who’d look up to you. Admire you.”

  “Well—and didn’t you admire me?” Valerie laughed a soft, mirthless laugh. “Why do insecure, vulnerable girls like you always need someone to cling to? Someone to keep showing them what they aren’t and never will be?”

  “Because they still hope to change. To learn how to change. And not go crawling someday to an asshole like Michele Carnevare, begging him to pat them on the head and act as if they meant something to him.”

  “Michele loves me!” Valerie snapped.

  “Nobody loves you, Val. Nobody ever did. That’s your problem, right? That was it even with the Suicide Queens. And now you’re trying to buy his love by killing Iole? Great plan!”

  Iole frowned. “Pretty damn stupid, if you ask me.”

  Val pushed the gun hard against her skull. “Shut up! This has nothing to do with you!”

  “It’s my head,” said Iole.

  “Leave her alone,” Rosa said again. “This is between you and me. Why are you dragging her into it?”

  “And suppose I do let her go? You’ll turn into a snake, and I’ll be dead before I can fire this gun.”

  “No one has to die, Val.”

  But Valerie wasn’t buying it. “Take that stuff off the desk and inject it into yourself.”

  “And then what?”

  “Michele will be back any minute. You’ll stay in human form if you inject the serum. That’s what he wants.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “I want you to get on with it and do as I say!”

  Rosa knew she’d be dead if Michele got his claws into her in her human form. Her chances as a snake weren’t much better, but if she didn’t change, Michele would tear her to pieces before Alessandro’s eyes.

  That was assuming that Alessandro was nearby.

  Valerie cursed because Rosa still didn’t move. Then she fired the pistol.

  The shot echoed deafeningly back from the paneling. It must have been audible all over the palazzo. Somewhere in the endless corridor, Michele would now be making his way straight back to the study.

  Valerie had lowered the gun. The bullet hadn’t been for Iole’s head. For a moment Rosa thought it had shattered Iole’s knee.

  The girl was white as a sheet, her eyes reddened, but she was still sitting there, rigid with fright. Smoke, or maybe dust as well, was billowing out of a bullet hole in the sofa right next to her leg.

  “The syringe!” Valerie demanded again.

  Rosa went over to the desk. She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder and through the archway. If she were to see the huge leopard racing toward her out of the dim light in the corridor, it would only paralyze her.

  She put out her hand and moved the syringe out of the circle of light cast by the lamp on the desk. The serum shone gold inside it.

  “Hurry up,” said Valerie.

  Rosa reached out her left arm. “You have more experience with this kind of thing than me. Maybe you’d better help me.”

  “Maybe, because I’m also dumb as a post. You can do it yourself.”

  Iole let out a cry of pain as Valerie jammed the pistol into her ribs.

  Rosa put the syringe to her arm, took a deep breath, and thrust it in. It hurt ten times more than at the doctor’s.

  “All of it,” Valerie ordered. “Down to the very last drop.”

  The serum was streaming into Rosa’s arm. She knew that doctors usually injected directly into a vein. Although she could see her own veins clearly beneath her fair skin, she had deliberately aimed to one side. If she injected the serum under her skin instead of into her bloodstream, it might be longer before it took effect. A swelling was already forming around the place where the needle had gone in because the fluid wasn’t dispersing quickly enough.

  Still, she emptied the entire contents into her arm, tore it out again and flung it over to Valerie on the sofa. Valerie jumped, then looked at the empty syringe, and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Michele will be here soon.”

  Rosa put her hand over the swelling and pretended to be massaging the place. Whether she was really managing to delay the effect she didn’t know, or how long it would be for. She had to shift shape as quickly as possible.

  But the pistol was still aimed at Iole. Valerie seemed capable of anything to prove her love to Michele.

  “And what about Mattia?” asked Rosa. “Was that all a show? Don’t you care about his death?” She tried to read the meaning of the slight tremor in Valerie’s features. “Or that it was Michele who killed him?”

  “That’s a lie!” cried Val. “Michele never touched him. Mattia is dead because Alessandro had him murdered. Like all
the rest of them.”

  “The moment Michele opens his mouth he tells lies.”

  A big cat roared somewhere close.

  Valerie smiled maliciously. “Tell him that to his face.”

  Iole was shifting back and forth on the sofa. “My back itches.”

  The roar came again.

  The swelling was going down beneath Rosa’s hand. The serum was dispersing faster than she had expected.

  Another roar, but it sounded different. As if it didn’t come from the same big cat, but from another.

  At the same moment, several Hundinga howled. Valerie jumped up, looking anxious, and hauled Iole to her feet.

  A muted cracking sound was heard. Wood breaking, very far away. Maybe a door being forced open. At the other end of the house, probably two stories down on the first floor.

  “Can you smell that?” Iole’s voice was almost drowned out by animal roars, which were louder now. “Something’s burning.”

  For a moment Rosa forgot Valerie and the pistol. “They’re trying to smoke us out. They’ve started a fire.”

  An expression of satisfaction came over Valerie’s face. “Looks like your fairy-tale castle will go up in flames. What a shame.”

  Rosa could have told her how little she cared about that. How she had toyed with the idea of burning the place down herself. And that she had enough money to buy a new property somewhere else—not to mention all the apartment buildings owned by the Alcantaras.

  At the same time, she realized that she did mind what happened to the house. These walls were part of her inheritance. She had grown fond of this cold, dark, damp palazzo, she suddenly realized, and she wondered how that had happened. Had she become more of an Alcantara than she thought?

  You have so much of your grandmother in you, Trevini had said. It’s you here in front of me, but Costanza looks out of your eyes.

  “Stay where you are!”

  Valerie’s voice made her spin around. Without knowing it, Rosa had taken several steps toward the balcony. She had to see exactly where the building was on fire.