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Chapter Forty-Eight

CARMINE

There was a girl on the compound, in the villa on the other side of the draining house. She was an infant the day Isotta brought her sister, Elisabella, back with her from town. They both stayed.

The baby’s name was Giulia, and as babies went, she was beautiful. Elisabella was concerned for her daughter’s safety at the villa, but there was no place more secure. At first because there were rules, and eventually, because I was so charmed by the baby, the toddler, the little girl.

Over time, vampires lose the ability to really give a shit about the difference between right and wrong.

Mortal ideas lose their original meanings from era to era.

What was acceptable in Rome in the sixteenth century, is grotesque in parts of America in the twenty-first—with hundreds of evolutions in between.

Vampires observe human standards to maintain secrecy and health. The laws we keep amongst ourselves are simply matters of survival. Ferrante, once I released him from his jail cell, taught them to me.

We do not drink the blood of other vampires. Not our own kindred. Not the other descendants. None. It is as physically repulsive as eating shit.

We do not let the Old Ones age too far past sanity. Once they lose the ability to hide from humans or become a danger to others, they must throw themselves onto the fires or they will be ended according to our rituals.

We do not sire fledglings from humans before puberty.

We may consume human children, but they should not survive it. They must die. We do not feed from them repeatedly.

There are more rules, but none of them saved baby Guilia. Circumstance saved her. The mothers in the villa saved her. And she saved me from a crushing, empty boredom that had started to creep into my heart.

When I land on 110th street, I change into a man. Giulia, the little one who became Luna’s mother, hovers across from the Citadel, breath coming in clouds, pinching her jacket closed at the neck. She looks up at Nazario Corragio’s penthouse like a nun praying to her God.

“I know you’re there,” she says.

I follow her gaze up the building to worship the same goddess. The lights at the top glow in the fog.

“I will take you to shelter,” I say, glancing at her quickly. “Little one.”

“Why?”

“Because Luna wouldn’t want you to be cold.”

“I’m not cold.”

She may be telling the truth. Some Strega can manage their body’s thermostat. I am not sure of the particulars of little Giulia’s abilities. When I knew her, it was obvious she had a deep reservoir of talent, but she was too young for the Strega in the house to be sure of the possibilities.

“You don’t have to worry about her.”

“Like hell.” She turns to me, eyes under the shadow of her hood. “I know what you do. I know what you’re like. I’ve seen that draining house.”

She doesn’t trust me. I don’t blame her. But there’s something more venomous in her voice. Her hostility hurts me in ways I didn’t think were possible.

“You didn’t know what you were seeing.”

“I ran buckets of hot water to that house. Clean towels. Fruit. Sometimes three times a day. You think I didn’t look when they cracked the door?

Or hide, waiting until one of you opened it?

I helped nurse those women. I saw when they woke up screaming for you, or whichever one of you had had them in thrall. ”

“I ran those buckets with you.”

She shakes her head as if I’m just not getting it. “Don’t tell me not to worry about her.”

I can see the little girl so clearly past the cynicism and bitterness, but I see no path through it. “Your son split me in two and left me in a fountain.”

“I wouldn’t have left you there if I could have made you whole. I never wanted any harm to come to you. I…” I speak dozens of languages, but these words do not leave my lips easily. “I cared about you.”

She turns to me with violent incredulity. “Bullshit. You were just waiting until I was big enough to drain.”

She was a Strega on my compound, so technically, she was there for the same reason as the others. But she was little, so that wasn’t the point. Or, at least, it wasn’t the point yet.

“I own a hundred magical objects, and none can do or undo what he did.”

With a pause, she bends her neck to the side and closes her eyes. When she was little, she used to screw her brow up so tightly, I told her she was going to get wrinkles deep enough to use for a change purse.

Little One said, But you told me a woman’s wrinkles made her more beautiful.

She was right. I did say that, and I meant it, and on her, it’s true. She did turn out beautiful. Luna is going to be absolutely stunning. I need to live long enough to see it.

Finally, she speaks. “So how did he do it?”

“It was Amon .”

“The demon who could be warded off by an herb?”

Little One used to ask such direct questions, getting bolder and bolder as time went on. She charmed me in a way I’d forgotten a child can. Now she doesn’t ask questions. Now she prods with statements, like her daughter.

“There was too much you didn’t know. Amon strains against his limits. He has no physical form, and he’s desperate to be born from a woman. He was… I don’t know how I’d say it… but he was haunting the villa. If he entered Laro, then Laro had the power to do a lot of things.”

One of her eyes narrows, squinting at me. She may be generally suspicious, or she may remember the rules more clearly than I’m giving her credit for.

I change the subject. “I have a couple of those wooden swords in my house here. We should practice again. See if you remember what I taught you, little one.”

“I remember all of it, big one.” A little smile teases her mouth at my nickname. “Get me one of the swords. I could run you through.”

“Why would you?”

“Because I’m in a mood.”

I smile at how much Luna is like her. The threat is meaningless.

A fantasy. I don’t have to be afraid of this woman.

But it’s not fear for my life or body that’s keeping me from telling her the whole truth.

It’s fear that she will hate me. Fear that my warm feelings for her are not shared.

It’s an insignificant, weak, human fear that I cannot give in to.

“Laro said you were a pest. In the way all the time. Running on his heels while he was trying to recover from the fire. He caught the demon, used him to split you from your power, and sent him away when you were half a prisoner. He left the other half of you at the Casa di Scugnizzo .”

“I’m aware of how I got to the orphanage.”

She does hate me. Her animosity is a paper edge that won’t kill me, but will cut over and over.

“What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t care for both of us.”

“Bullshit. He wasn’t actually fourteen.”

“He couldn’t get you out and neither could I. I don’t know what will make you happy.”

“The truth doesn’t make anyone happy.” She pauses, scanning the people crossing the street. “That’s not how it happened. It was right after. I didn’t have time to be a pest.”

“Time is different for us.”

“That’s the stupidest shit you’ve ever said.” She’s like a teenager discovering her father doesn’t know everything. “I can’t believe she brought me here. Three people and a fucking snake, right at your feet.”

“Over water too.”

“A tenth grader knows that’s not how light works.”

She’s probably right. All I know is that I cannot cross liminal water and too much light hurts the eyes, so the whole endeavor seems impossible.

I also know what a Strega with exhausted power looks like.

Until she rests, Guilia is just a woman who’s worried about her child.

I’ve seen this before too. It’s a useful emotion.

“It might rain,” I offer. “I’m right off Lexington, on Eightieth.”

“No,” she spits out with disgust. Her brows are knotted and her body keens in my direction as if she wants to attack me. I see so much of Luna in her. “I want my daughter back.”

“I need her.” I don’t mean her blood, which I do need, but all the other things that I have no words for. “And she needs me.”

“By design. God damnit! I told her she was a target. Government was after her. Big pharma. These invisible cabals that I knew existed. I knew, Carmine, and I was wrong to hurt her over it, but I wasn’t wrong to believe it. It was all right here.” She taps her head then points at me. “It was you.”

“I would never hurt her.”

“‘Never’ is another way of saying ‘over and over.’”

“She’s not going to live a normal, human life… whatever that means now. You know it and I know it. She’s a Strega. Like you. Now, do you have a place to stay tonight or not?”

“When you get this knife, will you set her free?” She juts her arm up toward where her daughter is staying.

“She won’t want to be free.”

The traffic light changes. A woman wearing headphones walks across the street, her face lit by her phone’s glow. When she smiles, her teeth flash with the screen’s movement.

Little Giulia turns her face to the glowing fog again and closes her eyes. “Take mine.”

She was a lovely little girl. I helped her carry buckets. I taught her how to dance.

“Your what?”

She’s a stunning Strega now—closer to death than birth. The years between made her more beautiful.

“My blood,” she says. “Let her go and use mine.”

The suggestion is offensive to my pride, because I don’t need her permission.

It offends my body, because it’s weak enough to need Strega blood so badly.

Mostly though, it offends my heart, because that would be a betrayal of Luna and every feeling she forced on me.

I am repelled by a suggestion I would have welcomed in my past.

What is the difference? Why am I resisting? Strega blood does not dilute over generations as vampire blood, so the mother’s won’t necessarily be better or worse. It will be as exceptional from mother as daughter.

More is better. More is more. More is mine to take.

That’s how it’s always been, until Luna bent me like a wire hanger. Now there’s nothing in this world to want besides her.