The man stroked Hortensa’s chin and jaw with one hand. As he tilted her head to expose her throat, he turned the donna slightly toward the door. She stared straight at Cass without seeing her. Her eyes were glassy, thick, as if she were drunk. Or drugged. Hortensa’s eyelids fluttered closed as the man kissed the side of her neck. As he caressed her, her lips parted and she sighed.
Suddenly the donna’s body seemed to fold in on itself. She crumpled against the man. He steadied her on her feet, whispering something into her ear. Hortensa smiled dreamily. The wineglass fell from her fingers, shattering on the stone floor.
Cass gasped. The man looked up and saw her standing outside the door. Lightning-quick, he lowered Hortensa to the floor and headed straight for Cass.
She turned and fled, racing back down the hallway, making her way down the staircase in a couple of leaps, thrusting herself into the throng of masked revelers. She pushed her way roughly through the gyrating bodies and headed back toward the kitchen. The crowd had thinned somewhat, easing Cass’s escape. Were there others tucked away in rooms, doing whatever Hortensa was doing? Cass’s heart battered itself against her rib cage. What had Hortensa been doing?
“Signorina Livi.” Piero spotted her and called out, pushing his own way through the masked revelers.
She didn’t stop. She made her way down the second staircase, tearing through the hallway and into the kitchen. She hit the back door running, the nighttime shadows reaching out for her as she fled into the street.
Flinging her mask to the ground, Cass ducked immediately around the corner, heading toward the front of the house, toward the Arno, the direction from which she had arrived. She stopped. What if the man from upstairs was waiting for her there? She spun around, retraced her steps, and thrust herself into the alley that ran behind the mysterious palazzo instead. She’d cut back over to the main street in a couple of blocks, when she was a safe distance away from the blond man, and from whatever it was she’d witnessed.
The darkness seemed both wide enough to swallow her up and heavy enough to crush her, but Cass was more afraid of what she knew might be behind her than of the unknown lurking ahead. She squeezed herself into the inky space between a pale gray palazzo and its red brick neighbor, pausing for a moment to catch her breath.
Leaves skittered past her ankles as she inched her way between the two buildings. She emerged onto a larger street and turned north toward the Piazza del Mercato Vecchio and Palazzo Alioni. She walked slowly, practically without breathing, praying that Falco was right and there were no such things as vampires.
The thought of Falco calmed her, but just for a second. She knew that even if no one was waiting to drink her blood, plenty might be waiting to spill it. Thieves, or worse. The image of Cristian flashed before her. What had she been thinking, following Hortensa into that place all by herself?
She hadn’t been thinking. She had just been so desperate to speak to Hortensa that she would have followed her straight into the mouth of hell if it had come to that. And for what? A lot of good it had done.
Cass shook her head. She had been stupid, and reckless. Agnese would have a fit if she knew. Then she’d ask Cass the same thing she always did: What would Matteo say? Agnese was rather single-minded when it came to how she and Cass appeared to her late husband’s heir, even though Cass doubted the two of them ever crossed the boy’s mind. Under other circumstances, the thought might have made her smile.
The southern entrance to the piazza should have been straight ahead, but instead Cass ran directly into a blacksmith’s shop. Fear bubbled up inside her. Suddenly, nothing looked familiar. The sharp angles of shops and palazzos cut into the night sky, stealing the bulk of the moonlight. Her blood began to pound in her ears. No. She needed to stay calm. Perhaps she had turned too soon. Cass continued along in the same direction, and a couple of blocks later she saw the piazza off to her right. She was relieved to see the statue papered with pasquinades and the peeling paint of the back of Palazzo Alioni.
A burst of laughter from across the square made her jump. She went to flip the hood up on her cloak to hide her face and then realized she’d left it at the Palazzo della Notte. Swearing under her breath, she tucked her chin low, and then snuck a glance toward the laughter. A trio of boys were weaving drunkenly across the square.
Cass was hoping they wouldn’t notice her walking all by herself. She must act confident. That’s what Falco would do.
As soon as she thought of Falco, Cass realized one of the boys had dark hair that curled toward his chin. Hair that looked identical to Falco’s. It was as if Cass’s mere thoughts had conjured him from the air. She blinked, then rubbed her eyes, expecting him to transform into a university student, or for the whole piazza to become her dusty little room at Palazzo Alioni.
But she wasn’t dreaming. There, just a few feet away from her, unmistakably, was Falco.
fourteen
“Lust, love, madness: the holiest trilogy of all.”
—THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE
Cass couldn’t move. She stood there, transfixed, speechless, letting her eyes wander over his whole body. The moonlight outlined his broad shoulders and the dark brown hair that had grown even longer since she’d last seen him, the ends of it brushing against his cheekbones and dangling below his square jaw. He broke away from his friends with a wave and began to cross the piazza toward her, the collar of his shirt flopping open to expose a triangle of muscular chest. Warmth bloomed in Cass’s cheeks. Her hands had been all over those muscles just a few weeks earlier.
Falco’s jaw dropped slightly as he approached, his lips curving into the lopsided smile she had missed so much.
“Starling,” he said. “I cannot believe it. Are you the product of too much wine or too many wishes?” He reached out, taking one of her hands in his own. “You feel real enough.”
“Hello, Falco,” she managed to say. She felt as if she might explode. Only now did she let herself realize how she had missed every tiny detail of him. More than anything, she wanted to pull him into her arms, to press her lips to the tiny scar beneath his right eye, to bury her face in the warmth of his hair.
Falco lifted her hand to his mouth, brushing his lips gently across her soft skin. It was an innocent gesture, but Cass could sense the urgency beneath it. He felt exactly the same way she did. She knew it.
Pulling her close and cradling her face in his hands, he said, “I have visited Florence’s breathtaking cathedrals and reviewed the works of the masters, but you are the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since I left Venice.”
Heat coursed from his fingers into her skin and the blood and bones beneath it. Falco’s hands smelled faintly of paint. Cass smiled. She couldn’t help herself. For a second the two of them were back on San Domenico, kissing on a bench in her aunt’s garden. For a second, desire budded and bloomed inside of her, as scarlet and fragrant as Agnese’s roses. Intoxicating. For a second nothing had changed.
Only everything had changed.
She stepped back from his touch, but the wanting didn’t fade. The air had grown warm, too warm. “I thought I might never see you again,” she said.
“Here I am.” If Falco was dismayed by the fact that she had pulled away from him, he didn’t show it. “And what about you? What can you possibly be doing here?” He raised his eyebrows and held up a hand. “Let me guess. You’ve gotten yourself into more trouble.” Before she could respond, he continued. “Come with me. I know somewhere we can talk.”