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Chapter Fifty-Six

LUNA

As soon as our fingers touch, I am lifted off my feet. I cling to him, wrapping my arms and legs around his shoulders and waist. He laughs and holds me as we rise, rise, rise, drifting away from the building and over the street.

“You’re not going to drop me,” I say into his shirt, convincing myself of a future where I live to see tomorrow.

“Correct.”

“Where are we going?”

“Look at me.” With a hooked finger, he lifts my chin just enough to see him. “You are not afraid.”

The terror does not leave me completely. My brain still works. I can still imagine the horror of the seconds it will take to fall. But my body obeys him instead. My heart stills, the hard twist of fear leaves my thighs, and my lungs empty, then fill again.

“That’s a great trick.” I look down.

We’re over the park now. It’s a dark package wrapped with fairy lights. Headlights move over the curved roads with casual serenity.

“I didn’t know you could fly. Without the literal wings, I mean.” I look up at him. “How is it possible?”

“Is it possible for you to just enjoy it?”

“How fast are we going?”

“Not fast, and I won’t take you far.”

“It feels really fast.”

“There’s not a bird in history who ever thought so hard about it,” he says.

“Wait, are we going down?”

“It was inevitable.”

“There’s nothing there.” I cling harder. It’s the only sensible thing to do. “It’s just dark.”

“Yes, Luna. I’m bringing you to an undiscovered black hole in Central Park.”

“You think this is funny?”

“I’m charmed by you. Sue me.”

Before I can call a lawyer, the space under me ends, gravity takes control, and my knees support my weight. Then the ground beneath me shifts. Carmine holds me up.

“Where are we?”

“Darling.” He puts his hand under my chin. “Your eyes are closed.”

He’s right, of course. I open them, and everything is explained. We are alone, on a long boat, in the middle of a body of water. Carmine positions himself to stand in the rear.

“Where?” The sparkling skyline surrounds the lake. Two identical towers rise over the trees between us and Central Park West. “Oh. Central Park Lake.” I turn for the three-sixty. A breeze picks up my skirt. “Couldn’t you have gotten me here through the liminal?”

“Are you second-guessing me?”

“I’m curious. Also, not looking forward to swimming or flying home.”

“Liminal water cannot be crossed. It’s dead. It cannot be sailed on, because it does not move, and it cannot be flown over because it will suck us down.”

I shove my hands in the hoodie pockets. “That’s a lotta rules.”

He kisses my cheek. “I won’t bore you with the rest.”

“I’m still in my nightgown.”

“Yes. You are. Delightfully so. Sit.”

There are two wooden cross benches. I sit on the one closest to the back, facing front. The orange falls out of my hoodie pocket and rolls. I catch it before it gets too far.

“I forgot about this.” I start to peel it, but he takes it from me.

“Let me.” He holds it in his right to peel with his left, but stops. His left hand shakes when he tries to use it. He switches so his right is the peeler and left holds the orange still, but there’s something off about the entire attempt.

“I’m going to save it for later.” I take the orange from him. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” He’s not. I’d bet forty-nine-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-nine dollars on it. He stands on a shelf at the back of the boat and takes up the long oar hinged there. I face front as he unlatches the oar. “Your hand was doing that in the meeting. Little shaky.”

“And you held it.”

“My hands get like that when I’m hungry. I didn’t want them to see it and think you needed blood.”

“Are your hands shaking now?”

Behind me, the oar slips into the water, and we are thrust forward.

“Not yet. I have the orange when I do. But you… is that why you shake?”

“I didn’t expect to see you. I was moved by desire. Quaking at the knees because you were near. My nervous system went absolutely haywire with delight.”

I chuckle. His joking fosters delight.

“And what about just now?” I ask.

“Same. I am utterly apoplectic in your presence.”

I roll my eyes. Such a goofball. He’s not going to give me a straight answer right now, but I’ll get it out of him.

“Where are we going?” I ask, hands folded between my knees.

“Nowhere, really. Under the Bow Bridge first, then I’ll row this gondola until I can’t resist you another minute.”

“Are the gondolas in Venice like this?”

“That’s Northern Italy.”

“So, you don’t know?”

“So, I don’t care.”

Every cell in his body is probably different from what they were five hundred years ago, but he still retains his Southern Italian pride.

“Don’t they sing to you?” I ask, leaning back to look up at the dark orange sky.

“Northerners will do anything if you pay extra.”

“I have fifty thousand US dollars.”

“Is it in that nightgown?” The oar creaks in its metal ring. “In your sneakers? Show me.”

“It’s on an American Express card.” I bend back farther, until I can see him upside down. “I promise a life-changing tip. Not even a true Neapolitan could refuse such a sum.”

He smiles. “Well, in that case. Sit straight and I’ll entertain you.”

I face forward. A white stone bridge comes into view. After a few more turns of the oar, he sings in Neapolitan. He’s not loud, but his voice is powerful. I let the melody wash over me and become part of the lake, the stars, the rustling of the leaves. When the last word trails off, I sigh.

“Wow. Could you always sing?” I ask.

“It came with the change.”

“That’s a nice upgrade.”

Creak, splash, creak, splash. A gently arched stone bridge appears up ahead.

“Tell me about how it happens.” I don’t elaborate. I don’t have to.

“It is unbearably ugly.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“It happens when a man loses blood.”

“Never a woman?”

“Never.” He pauses. “There was an exception. One. But she’s not the usual.”

“Noted. You’ll tell me about her another time.”

“I don’t promise.”

“Also noted. So, this theoretical man loses blood. Go on.”

“If his heart stops beating but can still sustain life, and his brain is still alive… if he’s caught in that moment between. He can be fed our blood and become one of us. But like I said, it’s terrible. Not everyone survives.”

He stops as if this detail-free description of a change so epic it makes you immortal is the entire story.

“Carmine.”

“Yes?”

“You don’t have to be embarrassed that this happened to you.”

He tsks . “Come on.”

I lean back to see him upside down again. “Are you trying to protect me from gross things?”

His shrug is an admission. “Human life is revolting enough.”

This is true. My body is giving uncomfortable signals. I’m thirsty. I’m tired. My legs are cold. Our frailties are disgusting, but they’re also irrelevant.

“Does it hurt?” Facing front so he’ll answer, I narrow the question. “The change?”

“Of course.”

“How?”

“A lot.”

“Not how much . But how .”

“You want to know?”

“ Si, la mio moglie .”

“By the goddess, your pronunciation will drive me overboard, but your gendering will kill us both.”

The front tip of the gondola goes under the stone bridge. Carmine stops rowing.

“You can spank me for it after you tell me about the change.”

“You forced me to need to please you.” He pulls the oar out of the water and locks it.

“And I am in thrall.”

He takes a deep breath when he sits opposite me. Two lungs full of something gray. Regret, maybe. Shame? Could be that as much as it could be annoyance that I’m not more pliable.

“Come here.” Taking me by the back of the neck, he pulls me to him so he can kiss my cheek, my ear, and of course, my throat.

When his tongue touches the pulsing vein, I exhale in short, shallow breaths.

“What is this?” He pulls the silver chain from my nightgown.

“My mother gave it to me.”

“A cimaruta .” He holds the charm in his palm.

“It wards off creatures of the night. Doesn’t work, obviously.”

“Wear it anyway. Always. Every minute of every day.” He slips it back into the neck of the nightgown.

“Well, now I have to.”

“It’s a worthy precaution.” He leans back on the other bench, facing me. “My blood is a living thing.” His hands skim the surface of my legs, teasing the parts under the nightgown hem. “Every cell is its own being, but no single cell can live without the rest. They are a community of one.”

“Is there a queen?”

“A queen?”

“Like bees. They’re a colony with one being queen they all service.”

He scrunches his eyebrows together and tilts his head. He looks genuinely interested in something he wasn’t aware of. It’s a lovely expression on a man old enough to think he knows everything.

“If the queen bee dies…” When he kisses my neck, my thoughts are lost in a sigh. “What happens?”

“Fucked if I know. I think it’s different for bees and ants and…”

He kneels in front of me, drawing his hands inside my bare legs, gently opening them. “Go on.”

He kisses inside my knee and down to the ankle. We’re fully under the bridge now. Our movements have created an invisible tide.

“I’m not a bugologist. I did three days of BugTok.”

“ Scusa ?” Curiosity is now coupled with frustration. I don’t need a magical ability to read emotions to see that explaining it will overwhelm him, and this entire conversation, complete with his tongue leaving that wonderful venom on my skin, will get yeeted into the moon.

“I’m not an expert. That’s all I’m saying. Anyway…”

“Anyway, there is a kind of queen. It is deep in the heart. It’s what this stake missed.”

He sets my foot on the bench he’s sitting on. I lean back with my elbows braced on the platform he stood on. He reaches under my nightgown, barely touching inside my thighs.

“You don’t have to talk about that now. Not while you’re…” As he drags his fingernail along the center of my underwear, the words disappear.

“Telling you about the change?” He spreads my knees apart. “I don’t think you want to know how it happens.”

“I do, I do.”