Victoria intended to feed her mother’s ignorance by utilizing the gold disk as soon as possible.
However, she had this one last thing to take care of.
It wasn’t hard for her to find the conte. He was under the impression that she’d allowed him to walk away a free undead, so he hadn’t gone far into the villa and was peering through a side window at the ladies being helped into the carriage by Oliver.
“Curiosity killed the cat,” she said as he whirled. She slammed the stake into his chest and added, “and the vampire too.” His poof wasn’t even especially large.
To ensure that they all returned home safely, Victoria crowded into the carriage with Lady Winnie, a pouting Lady Melly, and the dreamy-eyed Lady Nilly.
Two of the other near victims—a Miss Anne Malloren and a Mrs. Stefania Faygan, both Americans—clambered into the carriage as well. Their male companion elected to ride above with Verbena and Oliver, leaving Victoria crushed in the midst of skirts and the target of her mother’s death-gaze.
There was nothing for it, however, and Victoria resigned herself to an uncomfortable—yet oh, so relieved!—ride back to the Gardella villa. Oliver had agreed to take the three others to their quarters, and until they left the carriage, at least, Victoria would be spared the lecture that was sure to come.
Instead she allowed herself to relax a bit, now that her neck was feeling normal and the carriage was moving at a rapid pace away from the horrible villa. As if unwilling to acknowledge the events of the evening, the ladies about her were chatting as if they were returning from a night at the theater. Victoria thought she heard the dark-haired Miss Malloren mention something about swimming with a shark…but that must have been a moment when her mind wandered and she’d misunderstood. Surely no one would be so foolish!
Although…when one considered Victoria’s own vocation, perhaps it wasn’t so crazy.
The other woman, Mrs. Faygan, who was dressed in a lovely gown of rose, decorated with matching pink pearls, seemed to be quite enamored with the Italian pasta noodles she’d become familiar with during their visit to Rome.
This launched the conversation into a direction quite distant from vampires and stakes and eerie villas…and the women began a heated discourse about the merits of cannoli versus English lemon biscuits.
Victoria faded in and out of the conversation, but it wasn’t until they had delivered their three guests to their quarters that she realized what she’d forgotten.
The leather cord, with the splinter, was still lying somewhere in the gardens at Villa Palombara.
Eighteen
Wherein the Ruby Box Is Opened
Max stripped off his soaking clothes and slapped them over a wood-backed chair. His hair was still wet enough to plaster to his face and neck, but at least it wasn’t dripping anymore, and at least it wasn’t long enough to get in his eyes and mouth. He combed his fingers through the wet locks and slicked it back from his forehead and temples and over his ears.
Returning to the Consilium had taken longer than he planned. He had initially hoped to make the trip, then return to the villa in the event that Victoria needed his assistance to find her mother. But because he was carrying the alchemist’s papers—or whatever it was they were—he’d decided to take no chance of being followed or spied upon and took a much more circuitous route than he would have liked. By the time he’d come dripping onto the marble floors of the Consilium, it was nearly midnight, and Wayren asked him not to go back out.As always, it was a request, not an order. But one he could not deny.
The time had come.
He avoided looking at the small ruby box that sat on a little table next to a small lamp. It was so small, yet it beckoned. Here in this sparse room in one of the far reaches of the catacombs that attached to the Consilium—so distant and secret that no one but Wayren and Ilias, and perhaps Ylito, knew of its existence—the small ruby box was the only bit of color.
It mocked him. The life-altering box that he could no longer avoid.
The decision that was no longer his to make.
Had it ever been?
He pulled on the dry clothes Wayren had found for him, annoyed at the way they clung to his still-damp legs, hurrying because the subterranean room was chilly, and so was his skin. As he pulled on his shirt he looked down at the little silver vis bulla. The one that didn’t really belong to him. Brushing his fingers over it, he touched the filigree cross, the impossibly dainty fingernail-size thing that hung there and gave him the power, the purpose, the exoneration he needed.
And then, with quick, nimble fingers, he slipped it out of the areola it pierced.
Immediately the strength ebbed from him. It slipped away like a quilt whipped from over a sleeping body, so suddenly that at first his fingers trembled with the loss. The bullet wounds he’d received only two nights ago, which had nearly healed, now pounded and throbbed deeply in his muscles, reminding him of what was to come. What his future would be.
Of course, he would remember none of this when he woke up.
He placed the vis on the little table next to a small lamp…and the mocking ruby box. And then, as if to counteract the blasphemous presence of Lilith’s box, Max took his small leather satchel and pulled out the few items he’d stored in it.
In the morning, or whenever it was he awakened, the box, the vis bulla, none of it would mean anything to him. The charred satin rose, the black stake with the inlaid silver cross on the blunt end, the small glass vial of holy water, the pearl earbobs, the gold watchcase…the items he placed on the table. None of them.
Max looked away, annoyed that he was feeling sorry for himself. He did what he had to do. There was no question. The day he’d awakened after the tragedy into which he’d brought his family was the day he promised himself in service. For the rest of his life.
And his life was not yet over.
What would he do after this?
Max shrugged. The path would become clear. He had only to watch, and to follow it.
A knock on the door drew his attention, gratefully, from his self-pity. “Yes. Come.”
Wayren entered, her gaze moving quickly over him, the items on the small table, the untouched bed. “You’re ready?” she asked, still standing in the doorway.
“Have you heard from Victoria?”
Her eyes moved sharply over him, and she nodded. “Yes. She sent word by messenger bird, and asked whether you’d returned as well.”
“Melisande?”
Wayren nodded again. “All are safe. Did you drink Ylito’s decoction?”