“I know,” she whispered.
He tilted her face up and she was struck by the anguish in his expression.
“I was wrong to stay away from you for so long. I didn’t know. And I hurt you. This is my fault.”
“We don’t know if we would have found him even if we had been together.” She ran her hand up his chest and into the hair at the nape of his neck. “We don’t know. He may have left before we could get here years ago. There’s no way of knowing.”
“I think you need to see a few things on the bookcase.”
She sighed and hugged him closer. “Just give me a minute.”
They stood holding each other for a few more minutes in the empty bedroom. She heard the trickle of a stream running outside the terrace doors. Eventually, she took Giovanni’s hand and walked back out to the living room and the wall of books.
“Here.” He pointed toward a corner of the room. “These are textbooks for the study of old Arabic and old Persian. It appears he taught himself how to read both.”
“Why?”
“Alchemy. Remember what Tywyll said? The manuscript was about alchemy. Much early medieval alchemic work was done in the Middle East, so if he wanted to learn more, he might have started there.”
She paged through the books, looking at her father’s familiar scrawl in the margins of each volume. Most of it, she couldn’t understand.
“Aristotle,” Giovanni murmured, dragging his finger along the spines. “Zosimos, Mary…did your father read classical Greek?”
“A little,” she muttered, paging through a dense history of the burned library of Alexandria in Egypt.
“He appeared to be well-versed in Greco-Roman roots of alchemy and was studying the work done in the Middle East. Khalid ibn Yazid. A lot of Geber.”
“Who?”
“Ah…he was known during my time as Geber, but he was a Persian, possibly Arab, medieval alchemist. Jabir ibn Hayyan was his Arabic name. It also appears he was looking into Bön, Spagyric-”
“What?” she asked with a frown. “I haven’t even heard of those.”
“Bön is an ancient Asian belief system. I’m only familiar with it through Tenzin. Spagyric refers to a subset of alchemy, plant alchemy. Again, Tenzin studied it at one point.” Giovanni stepped back and shook his head as he surveyed the wall of books. “What were you up to, Stephen?”
She looked through the section in front of her. “I’m also seeing stuff on Newton and Boyle. I know Newton, who’s Boyle?”
“Early modern chemistry.” He walked slowly, his head cocked to the side as he moved down the wall.
“So, chemistry, languages, philosophy, religion…what wasn’t he studying?”
He snorted. “Alchemy is a very twisted subject. It blurs lines between science and superstition. Chemistry and magic.” He heaved a sigh, and she could see the air stir in the light of her small flashlight.
“Gio?”
“Sì, tesoro?” he asked, absently bending down to the far corner where something appeared to have caught his eye.
“Why don’t we-”
“Beatrice, look at this.”
She walked over and knelt down next to him.
“What?”
Giovanni pulled out a small book. It was a black and white composition book, like the ones she remembered using in high school. It had no label, only the number “1” written on the front cover in black marker. She pulled it from his hands with trembling fingers, knowing somehow that this book was different from the others.
Beatrice sat on the floor, cross-legged in the corner as Giovanni knelt next to her. She opened it to the first page.
“‘August 20, 1996,’” she read in a shaky voice. “‘Dear Mariposa, I had to say goodbye to you tonight-’” She choked on the sob that tore from her throat and before she could blink, Giovanni had picked her up and was rocking her in his arms on the floor of the lonely cottage.
Beatrice wept, deep, gut-wrenching sobs that tore at her heart and shook her small frame. Giovanni held her as she emptied her sorrow, fear, and frustration into his chest. He didn’t try to calm her, only stroked her back as she let six years of anger and grief pour out into the still night air.
“Why isn’t he here?” she finally choked out. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he dead? Is he hiding again?” She shook her head and clutched at his neck. “I want my father! I want all this to be worth it, somehow. Carl and the other bodyguards, and-and the blond girl in Greece. And all the people he killed. And Ioan and Jean’s granddaughter and who knows how many other people who had nothing to do with this,” she practically yelled. “Why is this happening to me? To us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why?” She raised her tear-stricken face to him, but he could do nothing but cup her cheek and wipe at the tears that fell fast and hot. “I’m past sad. I’m just pissed-off now! I want this to end so I can get on with my life-with our life. Is this ever going to end?”
“Yes,” he pressed his cheek to hers. “This is going to end. I told you six years ago that I would find your father, and I will, Beatrice. We will find him.”
She sniffed, and he reached down to hand her a handkerchief from his pocket.
“Why do you always carry handkerchiefs? You never need them.”
He didn’t say anything, but she could feel him press the cloth to her cheeks as she lay her head on his shoulder and allowed him to hold her up.
“Beatrice, don’t read the notebooks here,” he murmured. “There are too many of them. Take them back to Houston. I know your grandmother would want to see them, too.”
She clutched the notebook to her chest and nodded. “Okay.”
“We should go. I don’t think there’s anything more.”
“Will you remember all the books? Should we make a list?”
“I’ll remember.”
“Okay,” she said before she paused. “Let’s go then. There’s nothing here.”
She sat with her back against a chair as Giovanni pulled out the stacks of composition books. She didn’t stop to count them as she dried the last of her tears and piled them by the door along with the few personal items she’d found in the bedroom and small bath.
“Tesoro, look at this.”
She glanced over to see Giovanni standing over the same blue atlas that they’d used to play the string game sitting out on the small cafe table near the kitchen.
“Where was that?”
“Behind the notebooks. Tucked against the wall.”
She looked at his raised eyebrow and then back to the book.
“There’s something in there.”
“I believe you’re right.”
Beatrice walked over to the table and started paging through the atlas in front of her. She grew progressively more frustrated with each map she turned, only to find it devoid of any clue to Stephen’s whereabouts. Finally, she felt Giovanni’s hand still her own.
“Let me. I have an idea.”
“Fine,” she muttered, ready to leave the small, empty cottage and go home. He opened to the large map at the center and pointed to Greece.
“He has already studied the roots of alchemy.” His finger slid east. “And he told Tywyll the manuscript he took from Lorenzo was Persian.”
He looked at her, locking eyes for a moment before she heard his finger move across the page again. This time, it slid farther east, through the heart of the Middle East, past northern India, and over to the far edge of China.
“He had books about Asian alchemic traditions and study, and another that related to Bön. I know of one vampire who is revered for his knowledge of both.”
“One vampire? You think my father would have looked for him? Who? Where?”
He frowned and flipped to the page showing a larger map of the Northern Chinese coast and pointed to a small gulf east of Beijing. She leaned down to look closer and her mouth fell open when she saw a lone pinprick in the center of the Bohai Sea.