His quarters were tight, and the only place to sit, other than the bed, was a plain wooden stool that rested in front of the shelves. Cass didn’t want to go near the shelves. Her skin twitched again at the thought of the cage full of spiders. Still, the room was starting to break apart. If she didn’t sit somewhere, she knew it was only a matter of time before she passed out.
She lowered herself to the stool, which wobbled dangerously beneath her. She rested a hand on the lowest shelf for support, averting her eyes from the covered cage.
Her fingers landed on parchment. It was the journal Cass had flipped through the previous day. She noticed some of the pages had been torn out. The anatomy sketches were still there, but the mysterious symbols and notes were gone. Her other hand bumped something farther back on the shelf, a fluted glass vial with a stopper made of cork. It had a symbol stamped on the top of it, a triangle with a T inside of it. Cass twirled the vial in her good hand. Dark liquid sloshed around in the container. Perhaps it was some sort of medicine. Made from spider venom.
She returned the vial to the shelf. Glass clinked against glass. Casting a quick glance at the door, Cass bent down so that her face was level with the lowest shelf. It was completely packed with glass vials.
Cass lifted a second vial up close to her eyes. The cork stopper was marked with three overlapping circles. The fluid inside this one looked a deep red.
Like blood.
Cass replaced the vial in the spot where she had found it and picked up a third. This one was stamped with a lily insignia. Her fingers flew immediately to her necklace. Was she holding a container of her own blood?
twenty-three
“Traditional wisdom speaks of four liquids, or humors, found within the body. It is these four fluids that determine the nature of a human being, from health to temperament.”
—THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE
The next evening Cass again pretended to take the mandrake draught, and again poured it out when Piero wasn’t looking. She hadn’t waited for him to return to his chambers the previous night—after seeing the vial of her own blood, she’d fled back to her room, needing time to puzzle through what this meant. Not only was he draining her blood, but he was saving it.
Now she lay awake, expecting him to sneak back into her room with his needle and syringe. Turning on her side, Cass stared at the dark curtains that blocked every drop of starlight that might have squeezed through the shutters. The whole house seemed shrouded in a haze of sleep. Even the malevolent presence she sometimes sensed lay dormant. Everything was quiet.
Perhaps she was just finally healing. Perhaps all the flashes of foreboding were connected to her fevers, which were finally going away. The ache in her arm was fading, and for the first time since Piero had rescued her, Cass felt well enough to realize just how alone she was.
And then she heard the door to her bedroom creak ever so softly as it swung open. Her whole body went tense, and her heart battered itself against her ribs as she thought of what she would say to Piero, how she might defend herself against him and his bloodletting. Her stomach roiled as she thought about the vials of blood that stood in neat rows on Piero’s shelf. But she quickly realized that the dark form creeping across the floor wasn’t Belladonna’s physician.
“Falco,” Cass said. Her heart was still pounding, but for a different reason. “Did you find it? The Book of the Eternal Rose?”
“No.” His hair fell forward as he leaned down to brush his lips against her forehead. “But the entire villa seems to be empty. I thought we might sneak into Bella’s chambers and do a little investigating.” He winked. “It’ll be like old times.”
Cass sat up so quickly that her head went fuzzy and the room began to rotate. “You have the key?”
Falco held up a tiny scalpel, which Cass knew he sometimes used in his painting. “Who needs a key?” he asked. He dropped the instrument into his pocket and took both of her hands in his.
Cass waited for the dizziness to fade and then let Falco help her to a standing position. The floor was ice beneath her. Her left leg wobbled as she slid her feet into the dyed leather shoes she had worn to Belladonna’s birthday party. She cursed under her breath, tightening her grip on Falco’s hands until her legs felt steady.
“Do you think you can make it?” he asked. “I could go and search alone, but I might not find anything, and I know you won’t be satisfied until you see for yourself.”
“Just go slow with me,” she said sharply. So Falco still didn’t believe her and was doing this only to appease her, or maybe to prove she was wrong. Well, she would be the one proving him wrong. Cass knew the book was in Belladonna’s chambers.
Falco lit a candle from her washing table, and with Cass leaning slightly upon him, the two stepped through the doorway into the hall.
The house was dark and quiet. Falco led her down the long corridor toward Belladonna’s chambers, holding the candle out in front of her so that she might navigate the occasional statue or pedestal shrouded in blackness. Beside her, he moved as if he needed no light at all, as if he’d spent his entire life walking the halls of this villa instead of just the past couple of months.
Something tugged at her ankle, and she raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.
“What is it?” Falco pulled Cass in toward him, his other arm out as a barrier between her and any possible threat that was lurking in the dark.
She looked down and realized it was only a braided tassel on the edge of an Oriental rug that had gotten caught on her shoe. “Nothing,” she whispered. Shaking her head, she freed herself from the tassel and continued down the corridor.
Carvings of Venus, Victoria, and Diana looked out from the wide arched door that led to Bella’s chambers. Cass leaned forward to press her ear against the wood. The room beyond was completely silent, but what if Bella was simply asleep?
“You’re sure she’s not here?”
“I saw her leave with a group of men not long ago,” Falco said.
Cass’s mind filled in the details he didn’t. A group of men from the Order.
She held the candle while Falco made quick work of picking the lock. He grinned crookedly in satisfaction when the mechanism disengaged with a telltale click. Pocketing the scalpel, he pushed open the door.
Resting her free hand on Falco’s lower back for support, Cass followed him into the room. The flickering flame illuminated only a small circle of the darkened chamber, but again Falco moved around with ease. He took the candle from Cass and toured the room while she stood just inside the doorway.
“Here we have the bed.” It was a giant canopy bed made of dark wood, with long shimmery turquoise flaps that hung loose over the mattress. Falco pushed aside one of the flaps and lifted the pillows so Cass could see there was nothing beneath. He ducked down and peered under the frame. “Nothing on the floor.”
“What?” Cass had stopped listening for a moment. Even in the dark she could see Falco’s latest painting of Belladonna, the one of her springing forth naked from a rose, hanging on the wall opposite the bed. Cass forced herself to look away. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, and she could clearly identify the outline of a washing table, a dressing table, and an armoire.
Falco turned a corner into the large adjoining bathroom. It was empty except for a pair of mirrors and a circular bronze basin for bathing. “See, there’s nothing here.”
Cass returned to the main chamber. “What about the armoire?”