A picture of what her father had stumbled into was beginning to form in Beatrice’s mind, but most of her brain was furiously searching for some way to escape the harmless looking old man with the scary black gun.
“Dr. Scalia,” she stopped and turned, desperate to deflect his attention. “I don’t know anything. I promise. You can tell Lorenzo.” She tried to wear her most innocent expression. “This is all so confusing. Even the letters-the letters don’t make sense to me. I don’t know anything about the books. I don’t know-”
“Of course you don’t,” he tried to soothe her, “but Stephen does, and he shouldn’t have run. I know it’s upsetting, but it’s all so much bigger than our own small role. After all, I was the one that persuaded him to keep your father.”
Dr. Scalia smiled then, and Beatrice could see the edge of madness in his eyes. “I told him how knowledgeable Stephen was, what a good scholar, and how many languages he spoke. I said he would be an asset.” He looked at her and smiled. “I saved your father!”
She began to lose hope she would be able to elude him when she saw the stairwell approaching. She began to beg. “Dr. Scalia, if you could just put the gun away-”
He only walked more quickly. “Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you. He just needs you to persuade your father to come back. That’s all. He promised he wouldn’t hurt you.”
“But-”
“Open the door, and no more talking,” Scalia said in a cold voice. “We wouldn’t want to echo in the stairwell.”
Beatrice opened the door, praying fervently for some employee to find them as she slowly walked down three flights. They passed the door to the first floor, and she realized with dread that he was steering her toward the basement. She began to panic and tears came to her eyes.
“Please, Dr. Scalia, if you just let me go-”
“Quiet, we’re almost there.”
He shoved the gun between her shoulder blades as he forced her to the basement. The walls began to close in as he guided her down a long hallway with flickering lights. She’d never been in the basement of the library before; as they turned a corner, she almost ran into a grey metal door. No window revealed what was on the other side, but she could hear the sound of dripping water echo from somewhere beyond.
She felt tears begin to leak down her face.
“Please…” Beatrice turned and pleaded again. “Dr. Scalia, I don’t want to go with-”
He put his fingers to his lips in a hushing gesture. “We all do things we don’t want to sometimes.”
She heard the door creak behind her, and a cold hand touched her shoulder. She felt the amnis creep along her collar, but unlike Giovanni’s warm touch, it felt like a cold trickle of water crawling up her spine, until her eyes rolled back and darkness took her.
When she woke, Beatrice was disoriented and slumped in the back of a moving car. There was a pale vampire sitting next to her and a dark-haired one was driving. Neither one paid her more than a glance.
“Where are you taking me?”
She looked around, but both acted as if she’d said nothing. She sat up, just in time to see the car turn into the gates of Giovanni’s home.
“Why-who are you?” she asked her captors. “Why are we here?” The sick thought of Giovanni being captured or hurt ate at her. She still felt dizzy, and her stomach was tied in knots. Nausea, either from the touch of amnis or from sheer panic, threatened to choke her. The only reason she wasn’t sitting in a quivering heap was because she had hoped Giovanni was already planning her rescue.
The two vampires were silent as they parked behind the garage. They bared their fangs when she slapped at them, ignoring her protests as they pulled her out of the car and across the small courtyard to the kitchen door.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t-” She broke off with a gasp.
In the shadow of the bubbling fountain, tossed like yesterday’s garbage, were the crumpled bodies of Carl and her other guard, still leaking blood where their necks had been torn open. Their guns lay scattered around their corpses like discarded toys.
“No-” Beatrice choked out a moment before she emptied her stomach near one of Caspar’s potted plants. Tears she had smothered in the car leapt to her eyes at the sight of her steady, silent protectors laying broken on the ground. She spit out the gore that coated her mouth, and her captors pulled her inside.
She sniffed and wiped away the tears as they passed through the deserted kitchen and into the living room, where she saw Lorenzo sitting in Giovanni’s chair. The water vampire had a roaring fire lit, and a glass of Giovanni’s scotch in his hand.
Sitting across from him was Gavin Wallace, the owner of The Night Hawk, who glanced at her with bored eyes.
“How much longer are we going to be here?” Gavin asked, as they shoved Beatrice to the couch where she and Giovanni had watched horror movies the night before as they finished the bottle of champagne.
“I don’t know.” Lorenzo turned to her. “Beatrice dear, did your darling Giovanni tell you when he’d be back from feeding and fucking strange women? So lovely that you’re not bothered by that, by the way, very progressive of you,” he said with a wink. “Not like these silly girls in romance novels. I like that he’s trained you so well.”
Beatrice didn’t know where Giovanni was, or how he was going to get them out of their current predicament, but she certainly wasn’t going to give Lorenzo any clues, so she said nothing, curling her lip as tears fell down her face.
“Oh,” Lorenzo said with a condescending smile. “Look how clever she is. No useless whining or begging for her. I like her; she reminds me so much of Stephen. He never cried or begged, no matter what I did to him.”
He cocked his blond head, examining her before he smiled again. “So admirable. He was one still acquainted with honor. And that, my dear, is why you’re such a wonderful prize!”
Gavin rolled his eyes. “Really, Lorenzo, it’s not as if-”
“Oh! I hear Giovanni,” Lorenzo broke in with an almost childish giggle. “He’s almost to the gate. Listen, B-that’s what your friends call you, correct? You and I get to solve a mystery tonight.”
He scooted over next to Beatrice and put an arm around her, drawing her close to his side and stroking her long hair.
She noticed he made no effort to heat his skin as Giovanni and Carwyn did, and his clammy fingers made her skin crawl. She heard the soft growl of the car engine as it came up the drive, and she tried to dry the tears on her cheeks. She sniffed as Lorenzo cocked his head at her.
“Look at her. She’s trying to be brave. Do you think she loves him, Gavin?” Lorenzo said. “It’s so precious.”
Gavin let his head fall back into the chair. “Shut up, you little prick. Why do I have to be here?”
“Witnesses, my dear man.” Suddenly Lorenzo’s tone took on a more serious bent. “I’m making a deal with my father, and I need an impartial observer. Everyone knows your reputation, Wallace. That’s why you’re here.”
“Fine,” the Scotsman huffed. “But I’m pouring myself another drink.”
The room was quiet, except for the clink of Gavin’s glass, and Beatrice could hear Giovanni’s steps cross the courtyard. He paused before the door opened, and she wondered what he was planning as he looked at the bodies of the men he had hired to keep her safe.
Lorenzo gave her another giddy smile, and she was reminded of a Botticelli angel again. She looked away from him and glanced toward the dining room where she and Giovanni had eaten her cake the night before.
Instead of the usual candles that decorated the table, she saw stacks and stacks of books, bound in an assortment of dark leathers, spilling onto the chairs, even some that lay on the ground. They were assorted sizes and appeared to be different ages. There were scrolls and stacks of loose vellum, along with a series of large, identical books with a small stack of parchment on top of them.