Now, leaving the police station, she felt a kind of aimlessness that unnerved her. Tomorrow would be another day. She would talk to Tonio, go to the Biblioteca, lay the groundwork for reclaiming her life once Nico had exorcised himself of the spirit of Zanco Volpe.
Just thinking about it made her tremble. The world had seemed so structured and rational to her only days ago. There had been rules.
There are rules, she thought. You just never knew the real ones.
Volpe. Geena just wanted to be rid of him and everything associated with him. If the Doges truly were as evil as he claimed and were conspiring to spread their influence far and wide, then of course they needed to be stopped. But if Volpe was the lesser of two evils, that did not make him some kind of hero. However noble his motives, he was still a ruthless, brutal man, and Geena trusted him not at all. It seemed very clear that she and Nico were nothing more than useful tools as far as Volpe was concerned, and she feared what might happen if he no longer needed them.
She had to find some way to get an advantage over him, to shift the balance of power between them, just in case. It had been in the back of her thoughts all night, and an idea had begun to coalesce, but it would require more contemplation.
Crossing a canal, Geena stopped on the bridge to watch a gondolier ply the filthy water below. A middle-aged couple sat in the prow of the gondola, snuggling close in a romantic haze, oblivious to the dirty water, the rats scuttling along building ledges, and the dark, malignant powers beginning to wage war in the city around them. She envied them for their blissful ignorance, and hated them for it at the same time.
The gondolier poled toward a blind corner ahead and shouted out to any of his brethren who might be approaching from the other angle. A reply echoed off the stone façades of the buildings around them and the gondolier maneuvered his charges to one side, steadying the gondola as another made the corner ahead, a trio of college-aged girls on board.
The gondoliers greeted one another with a cheerful camaraderie, and it hurt Geena’s heart to see their smiles. Suddenly she could not bear to be alone tonight, could not put off the restoration of her life until the sunrise. How could she sleep at all, alone in her apartment, knowing that Nico was out there with that insidious, conniving magician holding the reins on his soul?
Awash in moonlight, ignoring people who passed her on the bridge and the gondolas now retreating in either direction, she pulled out her phone and stood there listening to the thirteen voice messages that her friends had left her. Even Finch had called twice purely out of concern rather than business, despite the fact that they’d only known each other for a few days.
Tonio wanted her in his office first thing in the morning. His tone was difficult to read, but she knew the conversation would be grim. Yet she welcomed it. Her whole life was crumbling around her and she needed to take action to prevent it from falling apart completely. And whatever was going on in the tomb revealed in Dorsoduro, Tonio would surely know all about it.
There were three new messages from Domenic. He and the rest of the team had gone to a small café in San Polo called Il Bacio where they sometimes gathered, and he said they were all hoping she would join them if she felt up to it. Geena doubted that they were all that enthusiastic about her company tonight, but she believed Domenic was sincere, and the lure of human companionship was powerful. And perhaps she wouldn’t have to wait until morning to ask about the hidden Foscari tomb.
Gripping the phone in her hand like some kind of talisman—a connection to normalcy—she left the bridge and canal behind and started off through alleys and courtyards. In the years she had spent in Venice, some areas of its complex labyrinth had become very familiar to her and she tried not to stray into sections she did not know well. Tonight she navigated the maze purely by instinct. Il Bacio was just a few minutes walk from the Rialto Bridge and she made her way in that direction.
The phone felt solid and real in her hand, but she needed more than that. It was late, but not so late that a ringing phone would alarm anyone. At the risk of waking his children or irritating his wife, she dialed Tonio. Her toe caught on a loose cobblestone and she stumbled but did not fall, cursing softly.
“Geena? Are you all right?” Tonio answered. He’d heard her swear, which was not the way she’d hoped to begin the conversation.
“I am,” she said. “I really am. I’m sorry to call you so late, but I didn’t want to leave it until morning.”
“So you intend to come back to work tomorrow?”
Geena hesitated. “I … of course I do. This is my project. I should be there.”
“And there’s nowhere I would rather you be,” Tonio replied gently. “But you were attacked by your … assistant. You were stabbed. You should take time to—”
“Tonio, please, just listen.”
A brief silence, and then: “All right.”
“I’ve just been to the police. I’m not going to press charges against Nico—”
“But he stabbed you with a knife!” Tonio said, incredulous. “I know you love him, Geena, but he could have killed you.”
“No. There’s … there’s more to it than that. It’s difficult to explain. Anyway, the knife barely drew blood. There’s barely a mark. I won’t even have a scar.”
“Geena, he stabbed you.”
She stopped in the middle of a courtyard where cobblestones were cracked and uneven, the only light aside from the moon coming from an old iron lantern hanging beside the door to a long building that had once been a convent but now contained apartments. If the lantern had run on oil instead of electricity, she might have thought herself in another of Volpe’s memories.
“I know,” she said quietly. “But I promise you there’s more to it.”
“But you can’t tell me what it is.”
She smiled softly to herself, but it faded instantly. “It’s … difficult.”
Tonio sighed. “You love him.”
It wasn’t a question.
“And because you love him,” he continued, “I won’t press charges on behalf of the university. But he no longer has a job here. You understand that, yes? The liability if we were to continue to employ him and there was some further incident of violence would be enormous. But more than that, I won’t have him here. It would seem as if I were condoning his behavior.”
Geena swallowed hard. “I understand. And thank you.”
“You should get as far away from him as you can,” Tonio continued. “I fear for you.”
I fear for myself, Geena wanted to say, but she could not. Tonio would misinterpret her words.
“You’re a good man,” she told him.
“Rest tonight,” Tonio replied. “Regain your focus. Come in late tomorrow if you need the time, but do come in. Not because we need you, though we do, but for your own sake. This is the biggest moment of your career, Geena. I would hate to see you let it slip out of your hands.”
Il Bacio buzzed with the sounds of humanity. Voices were punctuated by laughter and the clinking of glasses and music that came from small speakers overhead and seemed to rise and fall on the dips and swells of conversation. Geena weaved through the busy café with an easy familiarity, tension already easing out of her shoulders. This dose of normality could not erase the madness of the past few days, the horrors of what she had seen and endured just since morning, but it could help her shut it all out for an hour, and she needed that respite.