To be the Oracle, he needed a body.
I’ll be all right, Nico thought, the words a salve to her troubled soul. But words were not enough.
Geena could not risk letting him see more of what was in her mind. I’ll see you an hour before dawn. Until then, don’t search for me. Don’t reach out. We’ll make it through this, honey, and we’ll be together again, just the two of us.
She felt his concern and his love and his fear for her, but just before the connection between them was severed, what Geena felt more than anything was his trust, and that gave her the strength to go on.
Nico sagged back against the stone wall of the catacombs beneath the Volpe family crypt, feeling the absence of Geena in his mind like the urgent nothingness of a missing limb. The shadows were fluttering moths in the dim, jittery candlelight. More than anything, the place felt dry, all of the moisture drawn from the bones of the dead long ago.
As though stepping out from the dark recesses of his mind, Volpe slunk forward. What do you suppose she’s up to?
“You were listening in,” Nico said. “You know as much as I do.”
Or did he? He knew that Volpe had heard the thoughts he and Geena had exchanged, but how much more had he been able to understand?
You are her first priority—
“I was. But if your old friends are telling the truth—”
Caravello carried the plague in his blood, under his control, like a weapon. We must assume they are telling the truth.
Nico winced, both from the lingering ache of his healed-over wound and from the strange glee he felt coming from Volpe.
“You’re happy about this?”
We were going to have to face the two prodigals regardless, but I could not have chosen a better location. It was the locus of my power and influence for all these many years.
“But they must know that, and they still plan to attack you there.”
They want access to the well.
Nico froze. “The well? You mean where Akylis’ tomb is buried?”
The Old Magician’s remains were never buried, Volpe said, the tone—even in Nico’s mind—like that of an adult correcting an errant child. The well was dug, the dolmen erected around the corpse, and then the well was capped. There is no awareness there, nothing lingering of Akylis’ mind. But as his body liquefied, the magic and evil remained. All that power, down there at the bottom of the well. Though it had been capped, when I built the Chamber of Ten, I sealed it with magic of my own and a new stone cap.
An image flashed across Nico’s mind and he realized he had seen the well cap. He had been too distracted when they had first entered the Chamber, too absorbed with the power emanating from the urn where Volpe had preserved his heart. But when he and Geena and the rest of the team had watched the footage Sabrina had shot, he had seen the granite disk set into the floor of the Chamber.
“Why do they need to open it?” Nico asked. “You said they’re already leaching Akylis’ power.”
Don’t you see? They want to bathe in it, to absorb it all at once. It would probably kill them, but I can’t risk the possibility that it won’t, never mind the potential that Akylis’ evil, unleashed from the well, could taint the hearts and spirits of all of the people of Venice. I can’t allow it.
“But we’re still going to meet them there?”
Are you suggesting we ignore this summons? That we leave your woman and all of the people of my city to die?
“Of course not! But it’s obvious they’re not afraid of you.”
They will be. They’ll never unseal the well. I won’t allow it. Besides, they don’t know what awaits them in the Chamber of Ten.
“And what’s that?”
The past.
Nico felt Volpe shifting inside of him and he felt himself expanding the way he did when he drew a deep breath, lungs filling with air. But this wasn’t air—the empty spaces in his body and mind were being filled up with the spirit of Zanco Volpe. A flash of panic sparked inside of him and he thought of the impressions he had gotten from Geena, her certainty that Volpe intended to betray him and take over his body …
“What are you doing?” Nico asked.
Making myself comfortable, Volpe replied. We will have to work together as never before if we are to survive to see the dawn.
“We?” Had Volpe not heard his thoughts and doubts?
How could I not know of your suspicions? I would fear the same if our situations were reversed.
“All right. So how do I know I can trust you?”
You have no choice.
Nico felt a chill that had nothing to do with the bones around him. Or perhaps it did … were these not the remains of generations of those foolish enough to make enemies of the Volpe clan?
We are in swift waters now, Nico, and we have little influence over where they will finally cast us ashore. The magician’s presence and even his inner voice diminished. We have several hours before we must depart for this rendezvous and the best use of that time for both of us is to rest and heal. Sleep now. Soon you and your love will be reunited.
Even as Volpe’s magic clouded his mind and dragged him down into a healing slumber, his suspicions were at work.
“For how long?” he whispered.
But the magician’s only reply was oblivion.
Geena stood again in the courtyard of the church of San Rocco, paranoia creeping like spiders along her arms and up the back of her neck. The taverna where she and Volpe had burned the corpse of the Doge Caravello remained dark and undisturbed.
The façade of the church had an appealing plainness to it, and its windows were just as dark as the shops. It seemed to be waiting for her, offering a sanctuary she only wished she could claim.
The shops were dark, only a rare light visible in the windows of the apartments above them. Surely no one would be awake now, and yet she could not dispel the fear that even now she was observed. It was not the feeling that prickled her skin, not the certainty she had felt when Caravello had been stalking her.
She took a deep breath and began walking again, not across the courtyard—that would have been foolish—but retracing the same roundabout route that she and Volpe had used to depart the taverna earlier in the day. If things went as she hoped, being observed approaching the church would not be a problem. But if she had to improvise, if there was damage done, she did not want anyone to be able to say that they saw her there.
Is this my life now? I’m a criminal?
The thought upset her, but only for a moment. The old rules no longer applied—if they ever really had.
Geena worked her way around to the side of the church. Even the moonlight did not reach into that narrow alley between buildings. At the back of the building, another structure was attached. An arched doorway recessed into the stone marked the entrance to the rectory. She raised her fist and hammered on the door to the priest’s residence.
The noise echoed off the walls, amplified in that enclosed space, and she left off seconds after she began, waiting to see if her pounding would bring anyone to the door. Again she pounded on the door and this time she kept it up, hammering away for ten or twenty seconds, pausing, then starting up again. The second time she paused she heard the scrape of metal on metal from inside, followed by the clank of a deadbolt being thrown back.