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Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Six

LUNA

The meeting with the doctor left us all a little shaken. We thought this one object was the answer, but it’s only created more questions.

Does the intent of the person holding the knife matter as much as the wishes of the one who’s broken?

Does one stab or just cut? Can we lay it on him for the cure?

Who’s going to do violence, if that’s what’s required?

How much blood can I give Carmine before it stops helping?

How much time does he have left?

When we get back from the doctor, Serafina’s getting food ready for the event. The dining room table has a fresh cloth and candles, and the sideboard is covered in dishes.

“Where’s the knife?” I ask when I see it’s not on the table.

“I buried it in the yard,” she replies as she opens the oven. The scent of sweet cakes pours out.

“China cabinet,” Nunzio adds.

I check for it. The strap of the orange bag is still wrapped around the hilt.

“Is Orlando coming?” I ask. Normally, a werewolf would avoid a scene like tonight’s, with a room full of vampires and allied humans.

“No.” She drops the hot cookie tray on the stove burners. “Nunzio will keep that strigoi away from me.”

She’s talking about Laro, who killed Domenico in front of her. They live in the same house for now, but have been avoiding each other. They’re never in the same room. Tonight, that will be impossible.

“Everything okay with you guys?”

“Fine.” She raises an eyebrow and plucks a spatula from a drawer.

That’s been her answer since they had their initial sixty minutes on the steps of the Met, and their second one-hundred-and-twenty at a café on Park Ave.

It’s fine. He’s fine. They talked about fine.

No details. Just fine. I can’t tell if she doesn’t want to jinx it, or if she’s getting me back for not telling her about Carmine sooner.

Ferrante and Corrado arrive that night. As soon as Corrado sits his master down, I run into his arms.

“How are you doing?” I say when I break the hug.

“So much better.”

“You look amazing. Gorgeous.”

“He’ll never eat another fig in his life!” Nunzio says with joy.

They exchange a handshake and back slaps.

Ferrante’s arm is in a sling, and it has skin.

“You can touch it,” he says when he catches me staring. He pushes the sling aside to give me room. The skin is soft, but what it covers is rock hard.

“It’s healing fast,” I say.

“You’re worried about Charles.” He puts the sling back in place.

“Little bit.”

“We are hard to kill. You didn’t see if the fire was put out before the heart was consumed. No one knows if wearing three rings protected him. Like the knife, we’re in unknown territory.”

“I hate that you all are so old and don’t know everything.”

“We’ll figure it out. Gunnar may have some data when he wakes up.”

“Whenever that is.”

Another thing the almost two thousand years of collective experience in this room cannot answer.

“I heard about one called Scout?” Ferrante asks.

“He’s upstairs. And it’s him , okay? No fucking around, old man.”

He laughs and joins Ario and Viaro. In no time at all, they’re all gossiping in Italian. When Scout comes down, they draw him into the fold and continue telling the story of Charles’s demise in English.

Dr. Watanabe doesn’t believe in our method. He thinks my idea is dangerous. He’s here anyway, hands in pockets, trying his best to fit in.

Mom sits at the end of the table, shuffling her cards with a riffle, then overhand, cutting and recutting. I sit diagonal from her.

“I like your hair,” I say. Scout gave her a cut and Serafina blew it out.

She touches it, then drops her hand. “It’s going to be a fuzzbomb in an hour.”

“Do you want anything?”

“To get the fuck on with it.”

No one’s ready for that yet. They’re too happy. Even Carmine’s laughing as he shows Ferrante his body pose under liminal water.

“How about an amaretto instead?”

“She said no.” Laro appears behind Mom and puts his hand on her shoulder.

She lays her hand over his. It’s a shame she can’t see how handsome he is. Or maybe it’s for the best. I can’t sort out their exact relationship. He can’t either. He seems to have all the maturity of a grown man, but none of the development.

This morning, I went into the little room Laro’s been using for an office. The door was open and he was banging away at the keyboard’s number pad like a mad pianist.

“What’s going on with you and my mother?” I asked after he ignored my soft knock.

“Whatever she wants.”

“How do you feel about her though?”

“Why are you asking?” His fingers didn’t slow one bit.

“I don’t want you to… I don’t know… kill her?”

His hand stopped. He finally looked up at me.

“She’s fucking beautiful.” He held up his hand to shut me up before I asked after the state of his soul’s coil. “That was obvious before we blood-locked. So whatever you think is going on has more to do with whether or not I measure up. Okay? That enough of an answer?”

It wasn’t. Neither were any of my mother’s explanations, which had amounted to something like, “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

He turned back to the screen. “Close the door on the way out.”

“Sure.” I reached for the knob and closed it halfway before stopping.

He was so different from the boy in the draining house who tried to force me to look at a Dream Deck card, insisting that the king with two hearts meant he could take my blood.

Nothing like the kid who dropped out of the sky as a pigeon, completely mad, screaming nonsense about killing me, cutting me up.

He’d been convinced I was truly dangerous.

“What?” he said impatiently while still working.

“Did she really say all that about me? The goddess? That I’m the worst and my blood is poison? Like that I have to be killed and my body spread over the earth? Or were you like?—”

“Hallucinating?” He looked up at me while his fingers took a few more stabs.

“Making it up?”

“No and no.”

“Do you know what it means?”

He folded his hands together and stared up at me with the patience of a parent.

“It means nothing, because you mean nothing. The goddess is eternal. She has always been and will always be. You’re a bunch of cells walking around for sixty to ninety years.

You are an organism. A plant in a forest. You pose no threat and offer no benefit. ”

“Then why?—?”

“Do you know what slowly drives us mad? No matter how long we live, we don’t know everything. The only knowledge we gain how is how little knowledge we have. Now, please close the door so I can finish this.”

Hours later, when the house is full and Serafina has stopped serving and started eating, the conversations peter out. The jokes get shorter and the laughs get quieter.

It’s time.