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Chapter Fifty-Nine

CARMINE

The lobby door closes. Nazario’s eye twitches when he speaks.

“Are you so greedy?”

“The Luganos’ collateral is safe. The deal hasn’t been broken.”

“You think this is about the deal?” He pounds his cane against the wood.

“You think I came here to arbitrate what you could have figured out yourselves?” He lifts the cane and points it at my chest. “You think this is about your own petty immortality?” The tip drops back to the sidewalk. “It is not.”

“What’s it about then?”

He regards me from head to toe and back. His disdain is an uncomfortable place. “He’s using her to get to you, and every time you put her in an unsafe situation, he gets closer to your ring. Already, the vampires of this city have been running off. Some disappear. Do you want to be next?”

“I’m not worried about me.” This is Vesuvia’s fault, but I bite back the blame. It will not be received well. “How does he wear two rings? How has the ground not opened under him? How has he not been swallowed already?”

“Vesuvia isn’t a story men told themselves.

Ours is not an all-powerful, make-believe God who can do anything but chooses to do nothing.

She can do what she can and chooses what’s best.” He takes a deep breath.

“If he gets all five rings, you’ll be enslaved, and you won’t be alone.

And he will be powerful enough to challenge the goddess Vesuvia herself. ”

“And she will destroy him as she destroyed Somma.”

Nazario Corragio looks at the sky and closes his eyes as if in a prayer for patience. “Mortality hasn’t made you smarter.” He ends his prayer and faces me. “No harm will come to the Strega as long as you stay away.”

“We’re on the same side.”

“Do not test the goddess again.”

He goes inside. Sam follows. I’m left outside alone to take my raven form and fly home.