First he was Nico, and then he changed. His eyes grew wider and darker.
“The Mayor has been murdered?” he said again in that deep, ancient voice. Then he closed his eyes and sat back in his chair. “That changes everything. They are moving even faster than I feared.” He opened his eyes again and stared at her, and there was something compelling about him. The mystery, perhaps, or the power she knew he must hold …
The power Zanco Volpe must possess to do what he was doing now.
“Geena, Nico loves you, and I see that you have a good heart. If you’ll hear me now, I’ll do my best to explain why I need you. And why the future of Venice might well rest in your hands.”
XII
YOU ARE a historian, are you not?” Volpe said.
Sitting there across from him, knowing it was him speaking through Nico, Geena studied him in fascination. Nico’s face, yes, but the expressions were all wrong, and when Volpe came to the fore of Nico’s mind—took him over like some puppeteer—his eyes had a perpetual squint that had never been there before. And his speech retained the flourishes of a Venetian dialect that no one had spoken for ages. Yet only flourishes, as though he had accessed Nico’s mind to master modern Italian.
You’re in shock, she told herself. You’re just focusing on details because you’re trying not to scream.
A thin smile parted her lips.
“Have I amused you?”
Geena felt her smile vanish. “Not in the least. You make me feel as if I might vomit at any moment.”
Volpe looked—Nico looked—stung by this. His nostrils flared.
“I hardly think that’s productive.”
“What is productive? Murder?”
At this, those squinting eyes narrowed further. “It has its uses,” he said, lowering his voice. “But you were there, Geena. I had no alternative. I saved all of our lives. Il Doge would have—”
Geena closed her eyes and held up a hand. “Stop.”
He did. For several seconds she sat and listened to the sounds of the café, the Babel of tourist languages, the clink of spoons and cups, the creaking of the fan above their heads as it turned.
“Il Doge,” she said quietly, and it was not a question. More an affirmation.
“Please, let’s not spend any more time pretending that you do not believe what you saw with your own eyes, or inside your mind,” Volpe said.
Geena studied him, and though the ancient Venetian had come entirely to the fore, occupying Nico’s body to what she presumed was his full extent, she thought she saw a bit of Nico stirring in there as well.
Are you there? she thought, sending the question out into the ether.
And she felt a wash of love and worry in return that made her hand tremble as she lifted her coffee cup from the table. A bit of it splashed onto her lap, but it was not hot enough to burn.
We are both here, Nico replied.
She could sense the other in him. Volpe might not have Nico’s ability, his touch, but their mental communication was no longer private. They had an audience. Whether or not Volpe could consciously utilize Nico’s touch she did not know, nor did she have any desire to find out.
Volpe sighed and rolled his eyes. “Really, Geena, why do you keep running from the truth? I am here. I am real. You wanted to know what all of this is about, and I think it is only fair that I explain it to you. Your life has been irrevocably changed. You can accept that, and perhaps survive, or deny it and surely die.”
She took a sip of coffee. Hand still shaking, she set the cup down. It was much too sweet, but the fault was her own. Four sugars. What the hell had she been thinking?
“I choose to live,” she said.
Volpe smiled with Nico’s mouth. If she had not known that mouth so intimately, it would almost have been convincing.
“Back to my question, then. You are a historian?”
“Archaeologist.”
He waved the word away. “Yes, yes. A historian. Similar enough. I learned much of your work the first day and night after I returned, sharing this flesh with your lover.”
Geena felt her face flush with embarrassment. Lover. She and Nico had made love that night and during sex, with him thrusting inside of her, she had sensed him become distant and cold and more aggressive, as though he did not seem like himself. Nausea roiled in her gut.
“Go on,” she said, teeth snapping off the words.
Perhaps Volpe read her thoughts, though she did not feel Nico’s touch. It might have been that he simply knew how to read people, to interpret their faces, for one corner of his mouth turned up in a momentary smirk, as though he knew exactly where her thoughts had led her. She hated him for that.
Rape? She might not be able to call it that, but the violation and loathing she felt were nonetheless fierce.
“I am the key to a thousand mysteries, the answer to a thousand riddles that you historians have encountered in your studies. Perhaps one day we will have opportunity for me to introduce you to all of the secrets of Venice and beyond, but for now—”
“I don’t give a shit about Venice right now,” Geena said. “Tell me about you and the Doges. Tell me what you’ve gotten us involved in.”
His nostrils flared again and she felt a ripple of fury emanating from him, felt it through Nico. And then, in her mind, Nico’s voice. Volpe. Explain.
Volpe smiled. “Fine. But speak to me in that tone again and, Nico’s cooperation or not, I’ll leave you to the Doges’ mercies.”
Geena felt all the blood rush from her face.
“You wouldn’t dare. Or if you would, Nico wouldn’t let you. It’s obvious that you can’t control him completely. You need him, which means you need me. So get on with it. You’re wasting time.”
She signaled the waitress for a refill on her coffee.
“All right,” Volpe said, breaking off a piece of biscotti. “But enough of your skepticism. Accept what is before you.”
She nodded for him to go on.
“In the time of my youth, the Doge ruled Venice, but he did not have absolute power. Beneath him was the Council of Ten, and beneath them the Senate. Often the Ten exerted a great deal of influence over both Doge and Senate, so any man who could control the Council of Ten could chart the course for Venice himself.”
“And you were that man,” Geena said. She had seen much of this in the visions she had shared with Nico, which she now knew were flashes of Volpe’s memory connected with parts of the city.
Volpe’s smile sent an icy shiver down her back.
“I was. For many years of beauty and enlightenment, far beyond the standard human life span, I controlled the Ten. They saw me as their most trusted advisor, and in that role I manipulated them to my own ends, and through them the Doges as well. From time to time, a Doge would discover his own ambition and attempt to assert his power. Those who could not be controlled were ruined. But over the time of my influence, there were three whose ambitions were greater, and darker, than any of the others, ruthless men whose desires reached far beyond the limits of Venice, and who would have sacrificed anything to fulfill those desires.”
“And you stood in their way,” Geena said.
“Each of them ordered my assassination, at least once,” Volpe said. “They failed, of course.”
Geena took this in, sipping at a glass of water the waitress had brought. “Caravello,” she said. “Aretino. Foscari.”
Volpe blinked Nico’s eyes in surprise. “Your link with Nico is stronger than I realized. You have plucked these names from his thoughts?”