“How on earth,” I said, briefly forgetting how tired and cold I was, “did you find this place?”
“It wasn’t easy.” Janice unzipped another pocket and took out a folded-up map. “After you and what’s-his-face took off yesterday, I went and bought this. Of course, try to find a street address in this country-” When I didn’t take the map to see for myself, she pointed the torch right at my face and shook her head. “Look at you, you’re a mess. And you know what? I knew this would happen! And I told you so! But you wouldn’t listen! It’s always like this-”
“Excuse me!” I glared at her, in no mood for her gloating. “You knew what, exactly, O crystal ball? That some esoteric cult would… drug me and-?”
Instead of shouting back at me as she was undoubtedly dying to do, Janice merely tapped my nose with the map and said, seriously, “I knew the Italian Stallion was bad news. And I told you so. Jules, I said, this guy-”
I pushed the map away and covered my face with my hands. “Please! I don’t want to talk about it. Right now.” When she kept pointing the flashlight at me, I reached out and pushed that away, too. “Stop it! I have a splitting headache!”
“Oh dear,” said Janice, in the sarcastic voice I knew so well. “Disaster narrowly avoided tonight in Tuscany… American virgitarian saved by sister… but suffers severe headache.”
“Yeah, go ahead,” I muttered, “just laugh at me. I deserve it.”
Expecting her to carry on, I was puzzled when she didn’t. Uncovering my face at last I found her staring at me, quizzically. Then her mouth fell open, and her eyes turned perfectly circular. “No! You slept with him, didn’t you?”
When there was no rebuttal, just tears, she sighed deeply and put her arms around me. “Well, you did say you would rather be screwed by him than by me.” She kissed me on the hair. “I hope it was worth it.”
CAMPING OUT ON moth-eaten coats and cushions on the kitchen floor, way too wound up to sleep, we lay for hours in the dwindling darkness, dissecting my escapade at Castello Salimbeni. Although Janice’s comments were peppered with the odd, knee-jerk buffoonery, we ended up agreeing on most things, except the issue of whether or not I should have-as Janice phrased it-made whoopee with the eagle boy.
“Well, that’s your opinion,” I had finally said, turning my back to her in an attempt at closing the subject, “but even if I had known everything I know now, I would still have done it.”
Janice’s only response had been a sour “Hallelujah! I’m glad you got something for our money.”
A little while later, still lying there with our backs turned to each other in stubborn silence, she suddenly sighed and muttered, “I miss Aunt Rose.”
Not really sure what she meant-these kinds of exclamations were completely unlike her-I very nearly made some snarky remark about her missing Aunt Rose because Aunt Rose would have agreed with her, and not with me, on the issue of me being a sap for accepting Eva Maria’s invitation. But instead, I heard myself simply saying, “Me, too.”
And that was it. Minutes later, her breathing slowed, and I knew she was asleep. As for me, alone with my thoughts at last, I wished more than ever that I could conk out just like her and fly away in a hazelnut shell, leaving behind my heavy heart.
THE NEXT MORNING-or rather, well past noon-we shared a bottle of water and a granola bar outside in the sun, sitting on the crumbly front step of the house, occasionally pinching each other to make sure we weren’t dreaming. Janice had had a hard time finding the house in the first place, she told me, and had it not been for friendly locals pointing her in the right direction, she might never have noticed the sleeping beauty of a building hiding in the wilderness that was once a driveway and front yard.
“I had a heck of a time just opening the gate,” she told me. “It was rusted shut. To say nothing of the door. I can’t believe that a house can sit like this, completely empty, for twenty years, without anybody moving in or taking over the property.”
“It’s Italy,” I said, shrugging. “Twenty years is nothing. Age is not an issue here. How can it be, when you’re surrounded by immortal spirits? We’re just lucky they let us hang around for a while, pretending we belong here.”
Janice snorted. “I bet immortality sucks. That’s why they like to play with juicy little mortals”-she grinned and ran her tongue suggestively along her upper lip-“like you.”
Seeing that I still couldn’t laugh, her smile became more sympathetic, almost genuine. “Look at you, you got away! Imagine what would have happened if they had caught you. They would have-I don’t know-” Even Janice had a hard time imagining the horror I would have been put through. “Just be happy your ol’ sis found you in time.”
Seeing her hopeful expression, I threw my arms around her and gave her a squeeze. “I am! Trust me. I just don’t understand-why did you come? It’s a hell of a drive to Castello Salimbeni from here. Why didn’t you just let me-”
Janice looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Are you kidding me? Those rat-bastards stole our book! It’s payback time! If you hadn’t come running out the driveway the way you did, ass on fire, I would have broken in and searched the whole goddamn castello.”
“Well, it’s your lucky day!” I got up and went into the kitchen to grab my overnight bag. “Voilà!” I threw the bag at Janice’s feet. “Don’t say I wasn’t working for the team.”
“You’re kidding!” She unzipped the bag eagerly, and started rifling through it. But after only a few seconds she recoiled in disgust. “Eew! What the hell is this?”
We both stared at her hands. They were smeared in blood or something very like it. “Jesus, Jules!” gasped Janice. “Did you murder someone? Eek! What is this?” She smelled her hands with great apprehension. “It’s blood, all right. Please don’t tell me it’s yours, because if it is, I’m gonna go back right now and turn that guy into a piece of modern art!”
For some reason, her belligerent grimace made me laugh, maybe because I was still so unused to her standing up for me like this.
“There we go!” she said, forgetting her anger as soon as she saw me smiling at last. “You had me scared there for a while. Don’t ever do that again.”
Together, we took my bag and turned it upside down. Out tumbled my clothes, as well as the volume of Romeo and Juliet, which had-fortunately-not suffered too much damage. The mysterious green vial, however, had been completely crushed, probably when I threw the bag over the gate during my escape.
“What is this?” Janice picked up a piece of the shattered glass and turned it over in her hand.
“That’s the vial,” I said, “that I told you about; the one Umberto gave to Alessandro, and which really pissed him off.”
“Huh.” Janice wiped her hands on the grass. “Well, at least now we know what was in it. Blood. Go figure. Maybe you were right and they were really all vampires. Maybe this was some kind of mid-morning snack-”
We sat for a moment, pondering the possibilities. At one point I gathered up the cencio and looked at it with regret. “Such a shame. How do you get blood off old silk?”
Janice picked up a corner, and we held out the cencio between us, looking at the damage. Admittedly, the vial was not the sole culprit, but I knew better than to tell her that.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God!” said Janice suddenly. “That’s the whole point: You don’t get the blood out. This is exactly what they wanted the cencio to look like. Don’t you see?”
She stared at me eagerly, but I must have looked blank. “It’s just like the old days,” she explained, “when the women would inspect the bridal sheet on the morning after the wedding! And I’ll bet you a kangaroo”-she picked up a couple pieces of the broken vial, including the cork stopper-“this is-or was-what we in the matchmaking community refer to as an insta-virgin. Not just blood, but blood mixed with other stuff. It’s a science, believe me.”