“Your dad told me what happened today,” she said once they were outside. “Would you like to talk about your panic attack?”
The sweet scent of orange blossoms filled the night alongside the chirping of the crickets.
“Is that what it was?” Lupo passed his fingers over the edge of a gardenia shrub, and a fresh, flowery scent reached his nostrils. “I’ve never experienced anything like that before.”
“Do you remember what happened before the attack?” Camelia lowered herself to a stone bench, while he sat on the edge of one of the smaller reflecting pools gracing the landscape.
“Quintilius has already asked me, but I don’t think nothing strange happened. I was in the car, chatting with him, when I felt a weight on my chest and I couldn’t breathe.”
“I can help you remember. Would you like that?” Camelia placed her hands on her lap, her white wolf gently pawing at Lupo’s.
“I don’t know. Whatever happened back there put me in that state, and I’m not sure I’d like to go through another episode.” Lupo followed the fluid movements of a pair of koi fishes until they disappeared under a large lily leaf.
“If you know what triggered the attack, you might be able to lessen its effects or avoid it altogether, should it happen again.”
Camelia’s voice was calm and soothing, and her words made sense to Lupo.
“If you think it could help me—” He dipped his hand into the water, creating a ripple effect that scattered the rest of the koi fishes around the edges of the reflecting pool.
“I do.” Camelia raised from the bench, and walked toward him in that elegant stride of hers that resembled gliding. “Relax.” She reached her hand down to his forehead and gently caressed him.
Her touch was as soothing as her voice, and combined with sitting by the water, it did the trick, and his eyes soon felt heavy. He closed them, and images and thoughts formed in his mind.
“Tell me what you remember,” she coaxed.
“We were stuck in traffic, and I thought that one day I would be flying instead of waiting for the car in front of me to move out of the way.” As the images of a futuristic Rome formed in his mind, he smiled. “I like the idea of aerial freeways.”
“That would be nice. Especially in Rome.” Camelia deepened her massage. “Then what happened? What did you think next?”
“I thought that as a shifter I’ll only have to wait and see for myself what the future will look like.” The smile disappeared from his face, and his wolf whined.
“Isn’t that something to look forward to?” she probed.
“I suppose it is when you are immortal.”
“But?”
“I don’t know…”
“You don’t like the idea of living for a very long time?”
“Not when I won’t be sharing my life with Jasmine.” At the admission, some of the darkness that had lingered at the periphery of his thoughts lifted.
“That was it.” Camelia lowered her mouth to his crown for a motherly kiss. “The idea of a future where Jasmine isn’t present triggered your anxiety attack.”
“But it was just a harmless thought.” His mind and body relaxed, Lupo opened his eyes, but one last image was pushed to the fore and he gasped.
“What else did you see?”
“The BMW that chased us through Trastevere. It was behind us while we were waiting for the road to be reopened. I had a glimpse of it just before the panic attack started.”
“And that explains why it happened precisely then. You had your accident in a BMW, and your brain just put things together.”
“I heard Jasmine again—” Lupo removed his hand from the water and dried it on his jeans. He then grabbed a small pebble and tossed it from one hand to the other, faster and faster.
“That would be normal given the circumstances.” Camelia stopped his nervous playing by applying pressure on his elbow. “Was it the first time you heard her?” Her voice held concern, but also curiosity mixed with wariness.
Lupo gulped down his answer.
“It wasn’t the first time then.” Camelia sat with her legs by the side, facing him. “You can talk to me.”
Gathering courage, Lupo placed his palms down, pressing his fingers on the soft ground, feeling the texture of the rough earth grains and the seedlings pushing toward the surface. His wolf and Camelia’s lay among rows of lavender, the dark head of Lupo’s nestled close to the white wolf’s flank. “I used to talk to her in prison. Every night, I would tell her about my day. She answered my questions and commented on my tales. It was like having her with me.” He paused, worried to find judgment in Camelia’s face, but she smiled at him. “I know she wasn’t real, but I didn’t care.”
One koi fish jumped out of the water, spraying him with droplets.
“But you have stopped hearing her voice?” Camelia changed position, and sat on her heels.
“About five or six months ago, one night, we were talking. She sounded so real, and for a moment, I forgot she wasn’t… then she disappeared from my head.” Lupo looked up at Camelia, his hands full of grass he had been ripping in chunks. “What does that mean? Why haven’t I been able to summon her again? She’s my fantasy.”
“It could mean lots of different things.” Camelia hugged herself, and Lupo removed his suit jacket and passed it to her. “Thanks.” She wrapped herself with it. “Your subconscious might be telling you to move on with your life.”
“I can’t.” Just the thought pained Lupo. “I’m not ready to accept a life without Jasmine.”
“Are you planning on being celibate for long?” Camelia tilted her head to the side.
Lupo’s cheeks warmed. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that.”
“Just answer me.”
“It feels like a betrayal just to think of someone else.” He wondered how much of his sentiments were due to the purist curse, but even that line of reasoning procured him deep uneasiness.
“What about Vera?”
“What did my father tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything. You just did.” Camelia laughed.
Lupo groaned. “I have known Vera for two days and you are already playing matchmaker?”
“How do you feel about her?”
“She’s nice, but I’m not interested.” A suffuse pink spreading from Vera’s neck to her throat came to his mind, but he shook the image away.
“Did you know she’s from the Den of Rejects?”
“Nope. As I told you, I’ve just met her.”
“During one of Quintilius’s visits to the den, Vera approached him and said she needed a job. It was around the time everything happened… you, me, Iris dying. Vera is good with numbers and eager to earn her salary, so after a week trial, Quintilius hired her.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?”
“Just to give you the information.”
Lupo couldn’t deny that knowing Vera came from a similar background to his put her in a different light, but he wasn’t interested in furthering the conversation around the curvaceous she-wolf. “You said it could be different things.” To her perplexed expression, he added, “The reason why I can’t summon Jasmine any longer.”
Camelia nodded. “Do you know my story?”
Lupo frowned. “More or less.”
“Then you must know that, before coming here and meeting Quintilius, I had a soulmate back in Spain.”
“I heard about it.”
“He was a Sacred Heart werewolf. Have you ever heard of them?”
“No, I don’t think I have. Who are they?”
“The werewolf equivalent of the Purists. Same idiotic fixation with keeping the race pure, and similar gifts bestowed upon their members. Mind-reading, mind-speaking, and so on.”
“Were you one as well?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“But you were at least from the same species.”
“To his family it didn’t matter, because I wasn’t one of them
.” Camelia’s lips turned up in a sad smile. “The whole clan wasn’t happy about me, and I’m sure they rejoiced when I was sent to Rome, to be Quintilius’s betrothed.”
“I’m sorry.” Lupo could read between the lines of what Camelia was saying, and her hurt was still palpable.
“The last night we spent together, I promised him I’d never betray him, and he made the same promise to me.” Camelia’s eyes went far away, then she shrugged. “Then he told me he would leave his clan to be with me and to be ready to elope.” Her hands went to the lapels of Lupo’s jacket, and she closed them tighter. “I waited for him, night after night. Then the day of my departure came, and my parents sent me away. During the long trip, and even after I finally reached Rome, I waited for him. The wedding day loomed closer, but I still believed he would come to my rescue. I even told Quintilius. Then the moment came when I had to face the truth. He wasn’t coming.” She sighed. “You know the rest.” With a bigger smile she added, “But there’s a reason I’m telling you all of this. I hear my lover’s voice too.”
“What do you mean?”
“In all these years, I’ve never stopped talking to him. Every night, before I go to sleep, I look up at the sky and I think of him. Usually, soon after, I can hear his voice calling me. We talk as if he were with me.”
“Do you still love him after what he did to you? After all this time?”
“I was angry at first, mostly at myself because I couldn’t stop loving him. If he were to appear tomorrow, I would welcome him in my arms. No questions asked.”
“Does it give you peace of mind to talk to him? Even if you know it isn’t real?”
“Yes, it does. Sometimes, I think that’s the reason why I haven’t gone mad. If I stopped hearing him, I would miss him more than anything else in the world.”
“So you can understand me.” Lupo’s wolf raised his muzzle to be gently licked by the white wolf.
“I can.”
“But as far as you know your beloved is alive, while Jasmine is dead. It isn’t the same thing.”
“It would seem that way—” Camelia let her words trail away, an inquisitive light shining in her eyes.
“But?”
Unfolding from her sitting position, she raised up. “Everything happens for a reason.”
Chapter Seventeen
A week passed.
Then a month.
At the beginning of the summer, Lupo could finally manage a whole day at the office without having to ask his father or Vera for help.
He was enjoying a small personal victory against the office copy machine by taking a ten-minute break, when a timid knock on his doorjamb made him turn. His office was open—after spending a year behind bars, he didn’t like to be closed in—and Vera was peeking inside, but didn’t dare cross the threshold.
He made a come-hither gesture, then said out loud, “I don’t bite,” when she didn’t give any sign she would move away from the door.
“A euro for your thoughts,” Vera asked, her voice a mere whisper, even if she was now standing before his desk. She never seemed comfortable around him.
“They aren’t worth that much.” Lupo followed her fleeting glance to his throat and then to his shirt, and remembered he had removed his tie, which lay discarded on the desk. His suit jacket was draped around the back of his chair, and his button-down shirt was halfway open. Before she knocked, he had been facing the window, basking in the bright warmth of the sunrays. “Is there anything you wanted?” he asked, when she kept staring at him.
“Nothing important—”
“You walked all the way here from your office next door, the whole step and a half of it, it must be for something,” he teased her, while he closed his shirt. He didn’t go as far as to wear the tie or the jacket. It was too warm in the office, but he wanted to keep the windows open so he had disabled the AC unit.
“I was wondering if you wanted to grab a bite with me, but if you’re busy it’s okay.” She was already disappearing behind the door frame, when he called her back.
“I’m hungry. Let’s go.” He pushed his chair away, grabbed his jacket, but left the tie on the desk, and walked to the door. “Where to?”
Eyes to the floor, Vera played with the purple curl purposely dangling out from her short haircut. “Is there any place you’d like to go?”
Pizzeria Della Lupa’s name immediately came to Lupo. The distant restaurant’s location made it difficult to eat there for lunch, and Lupo and Quintilius had never come around to make the trip after that first failed attempt. “I don’t know. Any place works for me, as long as it serves good food,” he answered instead, because the pizzeria was a place he would have liked to take Jasmine to.
“Okay.” She nodded, then said, “There’s a French bistro at the corner between the pharmacy and the bookstore.”
“How are the portions?” Lupo opened his arm to the side to indicate the foyer.
“Hmm—” She walked alongside him, her heeled steps producing a staccato tick-tick as she tried to maintain his pace. “We might want to avoid French food if you are looking for big plates.”
Lupo snorted. “I definitely expect to eat, not to nibble at crudités, when I go out for lunch.” He slowed for her.
“I imagine you need lots of food to fill your frame.” Her eyes widened as soon as she said it, as if she hadn’t meant for the comment to leave her mouth.
Opening the elevator’s door for her, he laughed. “Are you saying I’m fat?”
“No, of course not,” she croaked, visibly shrinking. “You’re anything but fat—” She put a hand to her mouth and shook her head.
Lupo waited for her to walk to the back wall, and he took position by the door. The elevator car was large enough to afford them personal space and some. “So, where are we going?” He pushed the ground floor button.
She managed to raise her eyes to his face, and in between chewing on a fingernail, she asked, “A rosticceria would be okay?”
He smiled. “That’s more my style.”
“Good. I know of a rotisserie just around the corner from the office.” With her head high and a more confident gait, she exited the elevator and led him outside.
On the street, the temperature was several degrees warmer than inside, and Lupo didn’t wear his jacket, but left it dangling from his hooked finger. He was glad the place was nearby. When he had told her to decide where to eat, he hadn’t thought her choice might have requested driving. He wouldn’t have her on his bike, sitting behind him, hugging his waist. It would have been too intimate. Neither would he have felt comfortable riding in her car.
A few minutes later, they were seated at a quaint rotisserie with wooden rafters and terracotta tiles. Several prosciuttos hung from the ceiling, alongside salami and garlands of fiery red and bright orange peppers. The smell of roasting chicken and fried potatoes permeated the cozy family-owned restaurant, and whetted Lupo’s appetite.
“Is this place okay?” she whispered the question after the waiter placed two white paper mats on the red and white checkered paper tablecloth.
“The mat is an overkill, I’m more a metal-tray-and-plastic-forks kind of guy, but I can deal with it.” He winked at her, rocking on the shabby rustic chair.
Her breath hitched at first, and Lupo imagined she had understood his reference to his previous life as a convict, but then she smiled and relaxed her hands that had been shredding the tablecloth.
****
Two months later, Vera knocked at his door to ask if he wanted to go out for lunch.
After their first meal together, Lupo had been too busy to share lunchtime with her.
A new acquisition was in the making for the company, and Lupo was working with Quintilius, ironing the details of the contract. In truth, Quintilius and his army of lawyers did all the ironing, but Lupo did his best to keep up with them and make his father proud.
In his spare time, he read legal texts, and he had also enrolled in an online class to study mar
itime law. At first, he had finished every session with a huge headache and the certainty he would never understand any of it. Then, day by day, small pieces of knowledge fell into place, and he realized he comprehended most of what the professor said in the course. He had never thought he would ever appreciate the intricacy of a well-written legal text, but soon he found himself looking forward to lunch breaks and his online studies. Maybe, he would take the test to get his high school diploma so he could start college, as Quintilius had suggested.
Lupo looked up and noticed she was wearing a sundress that was molded over her soft curves and left her shoulders bare. She had freckles all over her arms and a golden tan that brought out the green in her otherwise blue eyes. Her smile was pretty. “I can’t. I’m sorry,” he finally said, gesturing at the pile of files in front of him, then at the screen where the video of his latest class was paused on an awkward frame for the professor whose mouth hung loose.
If she had been bouncy and joyous when she had asked him out, now her expression was downcast and her lips turned down. “It’s okay.” She turned and stepped out of view.
Passing a hand over his jaw, Lupo sighed, looked at his homework, then at the screen. He still had forty minutes left on the class, and he had a test to finish as well. He couldn’t afford to go out, but at the same time he felt bad for her.
“Vera?” he called.
She was at the door right away. “Yes?”
“What about dinner?”
“Dinner?” Her eyes became as big as saucers.
“Yes, tonight, after work. Are you free?”
“Yes!” she gasped, then in a more subdued tone, she said, “Tonight works for me.”
“Great. We’ll grab something to eat before going home then. I’m skipping lunch and I’ll be ravenous later.”
“Sounds great,” she said with a nod and left.
He clicked play on the video and was soon immersed in the class again.
Later, on his way out, Quintilius stopped by Lupo’s office. “Camelia just called me. She need something picked up from the dry cleaner, but I’m headed to Civitavecchia for a problem with one of the last ships we bought, and I won’t be back in time to pick up her clothes before the cleaner closes.”
Lupo (The Immortals Book 8) Page 12
