by Camilla Monk
Oh, I did, with hands that were shaking so badly you’d think I had Parkinson’s. And it was a good thing because we were supposed to share the street with a tram car, but Silvio didn’t feel like it. He nearly snapped the gear stick in half as he sent the car spinning across the road to cut the tram off. I saw myself die. Twice, when a bus barreled from the right, honking madly. I swear I felt it graze us.
We kept speeding along the tram tracks toward a patch of green. Ryuuko told Silvio, “Is the park. You go ahead, I open the Porta for you.”
Ahead. Straight into that low wall and the iron fence atop, then. I gripped my seatbelt and yelled, “Silvio, hit the brakes!”
Surely, he must have mistaken one pedal for the other, because we kept gaining speed. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed, bracing myself for the impact. And he fricking did it; we crashed straight into the wall at full speed with Katharos’s evidently armored SUV. Bricks flew all over the place, hitting the windows without managing to shatter them. The fence clanked under our wheels as we bulldozed over it. Through the cracked windshield, I saw that we were tearing across a deserted park, straight to another obstacle—another wall, or rather the ruins of one, much thicker, and on which the shape of a single stone gate remained. Except it was just concrete filling it. No way through. That . . . that would definitely smash the car—and us.
“Stop! You’ll kill us!” I pleaded as the pair of stone deities guarding the gate grew ominously closer.
“No, you go full throttle,” Ryuuko ordered him, clutching her grim treasure tightly.
I heard Silvio slam the gas and I shrank back in the seat, gasping for air. This time the impact never came. The wall ahead seemed to shimmer and ripple as we made contact, letting us through as if it were shiny Jell-O. I think I closed my eyes for a second, maybe even less, and when I reopened them everything around us was white.
My head lolled on my chest, and by then, I was pretty sure my eyes had popped out of my skull; I could feel them dangling out of my eye sockets, hanging by a thread. Okay, maybe it’s a metaphor. What I’m trying to say is I brushed death here. Licked it. Tasted it.
Yet after the shadows, Faust’s death, the bum commando, the car chase, and our subsequent crashing through a magic Jell-O wall, I was somehow still alive. I blinked my eyeballs back in place and took a dizzy look through the windows. The ground under our wheels had become soft and squishy. The snow was everywhere, coating centenary trees and antique statues. The SUV was driving up a wide alley leading to a villa that reminded me of Katharos’s Villa Malespina, only smaller. It was the same nearly flat-tiled roof and rows of ornate windows on all three floors. We drove through an archway, and, at last, he stopped the car in a vast courtyard hemmed by round bushes that looked like ice cream scoops under their cap of snow.
After the engine went quiet, I registered Silvio’s ragged sigh, echoing mine. My jaw resting somewhere between my chucks on the floormat, I watched Ryuuko undo her seatbelt. “Is the Villa Palombara,” she announced. “I live here. I do research.”
Well, all right then.
She stepped out of the car, her tall wooden sandals sinking into the powdery snow when she shuffled around to the trunk. I managed to stop trembling long enough to unbuckle and scramble out of the SUV as well. “Where are we?” I asked, getting up on legs that were dancing the Charleston.
“At the Villa Palombara,” Ryuuko repeated tersely.
I ran a hand across my face. “But where is it? Because, I don’t know if you noticed, but . . .” I pointed a shaking finger at the white expanse surrounding us. “It’s snowing here.” Was this some sort of dream thing like the Libro? I glanced down at my feet, buried in snow. This was different. In the Libro, I’d felt nothing, no heat, even as I stood in that burning room. But here, the air was crisp and cold, and melted snow was starting to seep through my Converse, drenching my socks. This place was real . . .
“Here, it’s in Rome, but not in Rome,” Silvio grunted unhelpfully as he came to stand by me as Ryuuko opened the trunk, revealing Faust’s curled form, hastily rolled in black plastic tarp by Montecito’s men. My chest grew tight. I gritted my teeth, blinking back the heat in my eyes. Silvio removed his Puma flat cap and pressed it to his heart, his mustache falling over his lower lip in grief.
Unaffected by the solemnity of the moment, Ryuuko single-handedly pulled Faust out of the trunk and hoisted him over her slim shoulders. “I keep him. For research.”
Silvio stiffened, his eyes narrowing behind his sunglasses.
“We need to bury him,” I said. “You can’t . . .” I gave a weak shrug. I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I hope she understood—even though that girl or witch or . . . dragon clearly hovered somewhere on the autistic spectrum.
She stared at my chest for endless seconds, before stating, “He’s dead. I do research.”
When she took a step away from the car, I leaped sideways to bar her path. I balled my fists, wondering what would be left of me if that tiny Japanese hulk decided to take me down. “Ryuuko, you have to put him down and—”
“Yes, Ryuuko, put me down, please.”
In the span of a single heartbeat, I went through a roller coaster of emotions at the sound of Faust’s muffled voice—horror, relief, and ultimately a sort of panicked joy I could feel throb all over my body and squeeze my lungs. “Oh my God . . . Oh shit!”
Ryuuko dropped him in the snow with a fleeting air of disappointment, and the second after, I was on my knees, clawing at the tarp to free him. When his mess of blond curls and a tired smile appeared, I could have slapped him for scaring Silvio and me that badly. I balled my fists not to. My voice cracked before I was done asking him, “You’re alive?”
“Emma, I’m immortal.”
As he shrugged off the rest of the tarp, his chest appeared. Where the charred wound had been minutes ago was a new patch of skin with a dusting of blond hair, completely healed. I risked trembling fingers to the burned edges of the hole in his T-shirt, grazing the skin beneath. Warm, alive. I snatched my hand back and clasped it over my mouth. It was one thing to accept the notion that Faust had stayed young for two millennia and he couldn’t die, but seeing his chest healed like that . . . I thought of Montecito and Lucius and Lucius’s waxy, eerie features, preserved by the embalming spell. This was the miracle she had begged Perses for—warm blood and skin, a beating heart, forever.
Faust’s face drew close, his forehead almost brushing mine. “See?” he murmured. “It’s just like in Highlander, when the girl discovers he’s immortal.”
I swallowed, unable to look away from the disc of skin showcased by the hole in his T-shirt. “What does she do?”
He tilted his head, inching even closer. “She kisses him.”
My hands jerked to push him away before he could score. “Um, yeah . . . no.” I cleared my throat and got to my feet, dusting snow from my jeans under Silvio’s curious gaze and Ryuuko’s stony one. “Do you think you can get up?” I asked Faust.
He craned his neck my way, his gaze infinitely tender, as if he could see my cheeks reddening. I bit the inside of my cheek. Maybe if we’d been alone, I’d have let him . . . not because he was growing on me or anything. Just for the sake of kissing an immortal guy once in my life. Bucket list stuff, basically.
“I’m afraid I’m going to need a little help,” he said at last, an impish grin piercing through his beard.
His hope was short-lived. Silvio was faster than me. He went to hook his arm under Faust’s and hauled him to his feet, before patting his shoulder roughly. “Nessun diavolo può ucciderti.” No devil can kill you.
Faust’s fingers felt at the large hole where the Salvation Army logo used to be on his T-shirt. “Well, they certainly tried.”
“It was because I moved,” I admitted in a guilty breath, remembering Montecito’s victorious smile when I’d let go of Faust. “She wanted me out of the way.”
He sobered, but I sensed no reproach in his reply. “I think she’s come t
o understand the nature of your power.”
I shivered, suddenly hyperaware of the cold seeping through my hoodie and directly to my bones. “She wouldn’t touch me, back at the station. She knows she can’t. But she has Lily.”
He shook his head. “Lady Montecito won’t take the risk to hurt Lily. Not if she’s hoping to find us: she knows Lily is her best bargaining chip.”
I pondered this, rubbing my arms to fight chills. “Was it true? All that stuff she said about the table, when she said I could . . .” I flicked my wrist. “unseal it, whatever that means.”
Faust nodded to himself, his lips working in a visible effort to answer my question without breaking his damn contract. “Not quite. She said she believed you might be able to break the seal.”
“You see a difference?” I asked bitterly.
“You open your piggybank, or you smash it?” Ryuuko asked, her gaze impassive.
I blinked down at her. “It’s empty anyway. So, neither, I guess.”
Her eyes became judgmental slits. “You’re stupid.”
“Hey,” I warned her, squaring my shoulders and clenching my fists.
“Ladies, ladies . . .” Faust chided, rubbing his hands together. “Why don’t we go inside to discuss matters of the universe?”
I gaped at him, remembered the last thing he’d said before all hell had broken loose in Termini. “The titan expert . . .” I looked between him and Ryuuko. “Come on, don’t tell me she’s the expert!”
Ryuuko pulled out Lucius’s dried up arm out of her silk bag and waved it at me menacingly. “You respect me.”
I recoiled in outrage. “Put that shit away!”
Faust ran a hand over his beard and scratched it at length while Silvio stared past us, stoic amidst all the drama. I gave up on my beef with Ryuuko and wobbled around in the snow to follow the direction of his gaze. We weren’t alone. I squinted my eyes at the figure standing in the villa’s columned doorway, a woman in her late thirties—much younger than her silvery bun hinted—and clad in a long blue petticoat dress. Clutching a lace shawl around her shoulders with one hand, she motioned to us with the other. “Ryuuko dear, bring our guests inside.”
The antisocial dragon didn’t bother with an explanation or even an introduction; she tucked the arm back in her bag and marched straight to the villa without looking back.
Faust’s laid-back smile became a solar grin. “Emma, would you like to meet Lady Palombara?”
Oh.
I gave the woman a perplexed once-over while she kept waving at us excitedly. Open smile, Betty White kind of vibe; Lady Montecito’s polar opposite. I knew better than to trust appearances, though. This snowed-in haven was just another door in the house of mirrors that was Faust’s reality. The question was: what lay on the other side, this time?
I scratched my hair. “I guess . . . I mean, if she can tell me what’s going on in here, yeah, sure.”
“Then let’s go,” he offered.
Lady Palombara called him from across the pristine lawn. “Come, Faust! You’ll certainly catch a cold if you stay outside in this weather.”
She was right—well, I would catch one, anyway: the sweat cooling on my neck would soon turn into an icy crust, and my fingers were getting numb. Next to me, Silvio had screwed his cap back on his balding skull. He gauged me from behind his sunglasses and said, “Good luck.”
I winced. “You’re not staying?”
He flicked his wrist at the wrecked SUV, allowing me a glimpse of a tacky red Nike watch. “I’ll get rid of the car.”
“Thank you, my friend,” Faust told him.
Silvio shrugged it off and turned on his heels, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his tracksuit.
Faust trudged close enough to rest his left hand on my shoulder—so I could guide him, I realized, when I caught the twitch of his empty fingers, seeking his cane out of habit.
“I’m sorry about your cane,” I said, while we treaded through the velvety powder across the silent park. “I tried to pick it up after Montecito took you down, but it turned to dust in my hands.”
He gave my shoulder a light squeeze. “It’s all right, you couldn’t know. I wouldn’t have wanted my old friend to change hands anyway.”
My guilt returned at once, like a dull ache in my belly. “Can you still—”
“Yes, don’t worry. I liked to use it to channel my power, but it was never more than a defensive artifact.”
Imbued with magic, and which I’d destroyed with a mere touch. “I’m just sorry.” I sighed. “I can tell it meant a lot to you, even though you’re being cool about it.”
“It’s all right, Emma. If anyone can help us at this point, it’s Lady Palombara.”
“Is she a witch too?” I whispered, eyeing our host’s round cheeks and cheerful attitude as she welcomed Ryuuko and bent to marvel at the contents of her bag, clasping her hands in apparent delight.
“Oh no, she’s a titan.”
Lady Palombara was a titan, and at the moment, she sat on a gilded pink brocade couch among a dozen hat boxes full of multicolored pieces of fabric and just as many different reels of sewing thread. She held up Faust’s coat, inspecting the hole in the brown wool against a square of embroidered mauve velvet. “How about this one? Isn’t it lovely?”
“I like,” Ryuuko noted dryly as she poured a fragrant green tea in four china cups which sat on an antique lacquered coffee table. She took one for herself, supporting the delicate saucer underneath with her palm and went to sit in an armchair whose flowery yellow brocade matched the couch, of course. She raised her head once to acknowledge us, and said, “You drink.”
I made no move to touch my cup, staring at the two of them in a state of stupor that was roughly 50% awe, 30% dude-what? and 20% . . . okay, let’s call it mortal fear in the face of the unknown.
Ryuuko nudged the cup my way. “You drink,” she repeated.
My eyeballs slowly rotated south, to the green water sloshing in the cup, before they rolled back up to focus on Ryuuko. “You’re a titan too?”
“I’m a dragon.”
Sure. I shot her a canted look, scanning her small hands for scales, or the folds of her lavish kimono for a tail. Finding no visual clue, I gave Faust his cup and took mine without daring to drink it. I feared I was reaching my limit and I’d taken all the weird I could.
Lady Palombara set aside Faust’s coat to bring her cup to her lips, careful to keep her little finger up and hold the saucer like Ryuuko was. She took a slow sip, then another, before her deep black gaze rose to meet mine. I noticed for the first time that she didn’t seem to have pupils; her irises were dark pools that seemed almost navy depending on the angle of the light. I was looking into the eyes of an old goddess, and a tremor in my hand made my cup clatter in its saucer when it dawned on me that no one in this room was entirely human . . . not even me?
“Is that something you worry about? Not being human?”
I nearly dropped my cup. Drops of hot tea splashed my wrist, but I barely registered the burn; I was worried about my jaw, which had just unhinged and rolled to the Persian carpet at my feet. She could . . . She could read my fucking mind.
Her head snapped up. “No swearing, Emma dear.”
Shhhh—oo . . .
The corners of her eyes crinkled in approval. “Better.”
Next to me, Faust suppressed a snicker in the rim of his cup. I kicked him under the coffee table and took a sharp breath before answering Palombara. “Four days ago, I was in New York, serving tuna rolls in a fast-food restaurant. And now,” I motioned to the windows, through which I could see snow fall over Lady Palombara’s world—which was in Rome, but not in Rome, according to Silvio. “I’m here, and you just read my thoughts. So yeah, I got a lot on my mind, and I think this is where I need to start before I can tackle anything else.” I massaged the bridge of my nose forcefully to focus, hold on. Just hold on through all this. “I need to understand what’s happening to me.”
She repeatedly nodded like a doctor. “What are your symptoms?”
I didn’t have time to answer. I just thought about it, the frozen seagulls of my childhood, Lucius’s arm, Chronos’s Table, the way Faust had grabbed my hand to break the Libro’s spell, his cane crumbling to dust . . . It all flashed behind my eyelids at once, a confused mosaic of memories that couldn’t have lasted two seconds. Lady Palombara’s dark eyes widened slowly. She took a sip of her tea that she seemed to let sit on her tongue as if to better savor it and raised an eyebrow at Ryuuko. “And here you are, pestering me about taking a Netflix subscription because nothing fun ever happens in Rome. There you have it—fun.”
Ryuuko shrank in her seat, her face bunching in evident displeasure, before dipping her lips in her tea cup as well.
“Look,” I told Palombara, “I don’t know what you find so funny about all this, but I just need to know what’s wrong with me, like if I’m cursed, or, I don’t know . . .”
Her shoulders hitched. “Cursed? That’s such a disheartening way to put it. Why not chosen?”
I heard Montecito’s quivering voice again. He chose me. Yeah, no; I didn’t want to go there. Besides, no one had ever chosen me for anything in twenty years, except the manager who’d hired me at Tuna Town a year ago. Typing my resume in an internet café and bullshitting my way through the interview afterward—that was more or less when I’d peaked as a human being.
Lady Palombara smiled. “You remind me of Faust when I first met him. Same doubts, same questions.” My eyebrows shot up, and I forgot to be pissed that she kept reading my thoughts like that and wouldn’t let me say a damn word. I glanced at Faust, whose breathing had slowed down while he listened to our exchange—likely dissecting every subtle nonverbal signal he could pick up. Her expression softened, almost tender as she recounted, “When I met him, he’d just sealed his pact with Chronos, and he wouldn’t believe he was immortal.
“I remember that afternoon as if it were yesterday: I sat in the grass by the Tiber, under a bridge we used to call the Pons Fabricius, and I watched him jump and jump and jump . . . until he grew tired of it, and when he came out of the water for perhaps the tenth time, I told him, ‘Centurion, even if you could die, that bridge wouldn’t be high enough to kill you.’”
