“It had been violated,” Geena said, a sick feeling spreading through her belly.
“Yes,” Luciano said, nodding emphatically. “I was just telling the others about it before you arrived. But it’s worse than that. The tomb is empty, Dr. Hodge. All of the bodies have been stolen!”
Geena stared at him, feeling vaguely nauseous.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?” Domenic said, sipping his drink. “Grave-robbers in the 21st century. In Venice! Who would do such a thing?”
Geena knew the answer. She might not trust Volpe, but he couldn’t possibly have moved all of those bodies, unless he had used magic to make them simply vanish, and she had a difficult time imagining that. She felt sure that the surviving Doges had been behind the removal of their relatives’ remains. To her, the question was not who had stolen the withered remains, but why. To give them a proper burial?
She shivered, hoping it would turn out to be something that simple, but certain it would not.
In her pocket, her cell phone vibrated. She frowned, wondering for a moment if it was Tonio calling her back. Then her pulse quickened as she realized it might be Nico. Pulling out her phone, she barely saw Ramus place her glass of red wine on the table before her.
Nico.
“Hello?” she said, cupping a hand over her left ear to block out the café noise.
“Where are you?” he snapped, and she couldn’t be sure if it was Nico or Volpe asking the question.
“Il Bacio. With Domenic and Sabrina and Ramus and a bunch of other people,” she said.
“Good. Stay there with them. Don’t even go to the bathroom. I’m on my way right now. Please don’t go anywhere until I reach you.” He was breathing hard, so she now realized he must be running.
“Why? What’s happened? What’s wrong?” she asked, panic rising, turning to gaze at the people around her. Professor Pustizzi and two of his graduate students were watching her with obvious disdain.
“Is that Nico?” Domenic asked.
He frowned angrily and reached for the phone, but she twisted away from him.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
“They’ve got people working for them,” Nico said, short of breath. “They’ve been watching us. And not just us—the whole team from the Biblioteca project. If you’re all there, there are probably at least half a dozen inside and outside the café who are there to watch you. And they’ll be after you, Geena. They’ve been watching up until now, but tonight they have orders to capture you. Just stay right where you are until I get there. Volpe can help.”
She clicked the phone shut and looked around. Sick fear twisted in her gut and radiated throughout her body. She wanted to scream but could not. Volpe? He was supposed to help? Volpe had been the start of all of this. He was a cancer inside Nico’s body, and she was supposed to trust him?
Domenic tried to talk to her but she could barely hear his voice. She knew she should try to appear calm but realized she was failing badly. As she picked up her glass of wine, her hand shook so hard that some of it spilled over the rim and down along the stem. She glanced around the café, searching for anyone who might be watching their table, watching her.
The man by the bar stood alone, his back to them, his eyes dark in the reflection of the mirror behind the counter. A thin man with a well-groomed goatee was sitting with a beautiful icy blond woman, neither of them speaking as they sipped coffee. The blond woman glanced at Geena, who averted her eyes, and immediately spotted the African man sitting at a small table near the front door with a book in his hand, though he didn’t have enough light to read.
Were they watching? Were these people killers in service to the Doges? Were there others? A terrible feeling came over her and she glanced around the table, at the pretty girl who reached out to push a lock of Sabrina’s hair aside, smiling at the two people with Professor Pustizzi, whom Geena assumed to be grad students. She had thought she recognized most of these people, but even if they were familiar, some were complete strangers.
Her chair scraped back and then tipped over, clacking to the floor as she stood.
“Dr. Hodge?” Ramus asked, frowning at the wine as though it might somehow be to blame.
“Geena, what is it?” Domenic asked.
“I can’t be responsible,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t understand. How could she explain that she could not live with any of them getting hurt because they were a part of her team, because they were her friends?
Nico had told her to stay put, but she could not bring violence on these people.
“Whatever happens, just do what I asked,” she said, staring at him. “Will you, please? Promise me.”
Domenic nodded. “I do. I promise. If you promise to tell me why whenever this—whatever this is—is over.”
She kissed his cheek and whispered a thank you, then started moving toward the door. On cue, the icy blond and her goateed lover stood and, without looking at her, started on a path to intercept. The black man near the door closed his book without marking the page, and then she knew it was all true, that they were really there for her.
She ran, rushing through the crowd, bumping chairs and spilling drinks, nearly plowing into a waiter. The door was in sight. If Nico had been close, he might be here any minute. She could elude them long enough for Volpe to help.
The door loomed ahead. The black man reached for her arm but she shook him off as she grabbed the door and yanked it open.
A man filled the doorway, blocking her path to the street. His white beard had been knotted beneath his chin and his startling green eyes froze her where she stood.
She knew him at a glance. Pietro Aretino.
“Good evening, Dr. Hodge,” he said. “We need to talk.”
Then he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out into the moonlight.
XV
NICO’S BREATH was harsh, muscles weak, limbs shaking as he ran as fast and hard as he could toward his true love. He tried to send her reassuring sensations, but it seemed that he could only concentrate on one thing at a time. I’m coming, Geena, he thought, and he barreled into a couple emerging from a restaurant, stumbling and tripping over the man’s feet. He grunted as he fell, rose again, and ran on without looking back, the woman’s shouts pursuing him as echoes and threats.
He concentrated purely on running, because getting there in time was more important than telling Geena he was on his way. He’d folded his cell and slipped it into his pocket and he dreaded hearing it ring again. That would mean they had her.
But as he turned the corner into the small square where Il Bacio sat, the noises he heard told him that he’d been a fool to hope for anything else.
Help me, he thought to Volpe, and without waiting for an answer he ran at the struggling shapes.
At first he could not see Geena. There was a knot of figures at the café’s main door, and behind them in the square stood several more men and women, armed, tensed, squatting slightly as they watched the commotion. More hired thugs, Nico thought, and two of them turned at the sound of his approach. He was waiting for Volpe to rise up, waiting to feel his hands claw at the air as they scratched out arcane sigils to shove the thugs aside, flip them on their heads, or send them crashing backward through windows. But though he felt Volpe close behind him now—pressing against his eyes and senses like a child eager to see outside—the magician’s attention was focused elsewhere.