The Chamber of Ten

XIII

THE SMELL hit her before she was even fully awake—a rancid stew of odors, of blood and death and illness. Geena recoiled as she drew herself up to a sitting position, her face and hair tacky with blood, her clothes stinking of disease. She glanced around the abandoned taverna in the golden gloom cast by street lamps outside and saw Nico lying six feet away.

“Nico?”

Her head throbbed dully as she rose to her feet, surprised to find she had the strength to stand. She reached up to touch her throat and found the pain had vanished, along with the swelling. Dried blood crusted on her face and around her ears and had stained her shirt, but when she experimented tentatively with clearing her throat, she found it clear.

“No way,” she whispered to herself in English.

Grinning in spite of the stench, she stepped around the bloody, scorched spot on the floor where Volpe had done his spell. Geena went to her knees beside Nico’s body and shook him.

“Wake up.”

He lolled his head with her jostling and she saw that the black swelling of his throat had vanished completely. Like her, Nico had dark bloodstains soaked into his shirt and traces where blood had run from his nose and eyes and ears. Whatever Volpe had done, he had made it just in time.

Nico opened his right eye just a slit before blinking and opening both of them. He ran a hand over his face and wetted his lips with his tongue like a drunk waking from a bender.

“What … what time is it?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. I just woke up myself, but … It’s night.”

She let the words trail off. They had been unconscious in here for hours. Volpe might have removed all evidence of the murder of Caravello out in the church square, but she still felt as though it had been a miracle that no one had discovered them. Luck and timing.

“God, the smell,” he said, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

Geena laughed.

Nico stared at her. “What, in any of this, is funny?”

She dropped to the floor, taking both of his hands in hers. “You’re you.”

Nico blinked, glanced around curiously as though waiting for Volpe to usurp his control of his body again. When nothing happened he ran a hand through his hair and turned to smile at her.

“So it would appear.” He took a deep breath, his smile faltering.

He’s still in here, though. Aren’t you, Volpe?

Geena held her breath, listening for a reply. Nico had shared the thought with her purposefully and they both waited for Volpe to acknowledge it. When nothing happened, she let herself hope for a moment before Nico brushed it off with a wave of his hand.

“He’s still here. I feel him. Resting. But for now, I’m me.”

When she had first woken, Geena had been slightly disoriented. Now she began to recall the details of the ritual Volpe had conducted. There had been rats and death and chanting and blood. She glanced down at the palm he had sliced open and blinked in astonishment before looking up at Nico.

He actually healed us, she thought.

Nico nodded grimly. He needs us.

“He needs you,” she said aloud.

“As a host. But he knows that if anything happens to you, I’ll fight him.”

“But that fire,” Geena said. I thought we were both dead.

“No. It was cleansing flame, the same as he used out on the cobblestones. It purifies, but only burns what it is intended to burn.”

“It would have been nice if he had warned me,” she said, though she knew that in the condition they had both been in, it would have been difficult for Volpe to say anything to her at all.

Nausea twisted through her stomach when she thought about how close they had come to death, and the feeling of the sickness clenched inside her. For as long as she lived she would never forget the panic and helplessness of the disease that had ravaged her and brought her to the brink of death in a matter of hours.

“We can’t stay here,” Nico said. “We’ve been lucky so far—”

“Lucky?”

“Perhaps not. Even so, every moment we remain here, we are tempting fate. Eventually someone will notice the broken lock on the side door, or pass near enough to the building to smell the stink of Caravello’s remains.”

Geena shuddered. The stench made her stomach churn, but she doubted anyone passing by would smell it, at least not yet. Much as she wanted to get away from that stink, she knew they had to clean up first.

“Look at me,” she said. “Look at yourself. The owner of the building will have turned the water off. There may be enough in the toilet tanks to wash the blood from our faces, but our clothes are stained. We have to be careful not to be seen like this.”

Nico glanced at the side door and the table they—well, she and Volpe—had bumped up against it. Even if she did not feel the worry coming off him, she would have seen it in his eyes.

“What about Caravello? Do we just leave the body here?”

They both looked at the bar, knowing the Doge’s corpse lay behind it. His eyes … Geena thought. Nico glanced away, responding neither in thought nor word. She could feel that he shared her revulsion, but he also would not condemn Volpe for defiling the corpse, since it had saved their lives.

“He might not be as evil as the Doges, but he’s not your friend,” she said sharply.

Nico glanced up. “I know that.”

“Do you?”

“After what he’s done to my life? To our lives?”

She hesitated, then nodded, feeling the truth in his heart. This was the closest they would come to an argument. They knew each other too well for the kinds of misunderstandings that disrupted many relationships.

Cleansing fire, Nico thought, and she saw an image in her mind of the building going up in flames.

Geena stared at him, unnerved. “Isn’t that a little excessive? It’s just the body we need to get rid of.”

Nico went to the window and looked out. “We should get rid of any evidence we were ever here.”

“Without a body, it’s only trespassing,” she said. “Let’s not add arson to our crimes.”

Nico hesitated, then nodded in agreement. They wouldn’t burn the building, but they did need to destroy Caravello’s corpse to erase any trace of contagion. Geena glanced over at the bar again, imagining the eyeless corpse hidden behind it, perhaps still tainted with the plague.

There would have to be fire.

You cannot stay together.

Nico stood outside the taverna’s bathroom, keeping the door propped open to let the lamplight beyond the windows filter in while Geena used a swatch torn from an old apron they had found in the kitchen to wash the blood from her face. She dipped the rag into the toilet tank and swabbed at her cheeks and her throat, careful not to streak the porcelain. There was no way for them to clean up after themselves entirely, but they were trying to be as careful as possible.

He loved to watch her move. Even now, filthy as they were, he took great pleasure in the arch of her back and the swell of her breasts beneath her shirt.

Geena turned to smile at him, hearing or sensing his thoughts. Nico had created such a powerful connection between them that sometimes he could not hide his thoughts from her even if he wanted to.

“He’s awake, isn’t he?” she asked.

Nico nodded. “For the past few minutes. He is not very strong yet, but he is here, yes.”

“He’s right, you know,” she said, dropping the rag into the toilet tank.

“About what?” Nico asked. He had cleaned himself up already.

“He said we can’t stay together. He’s right.” She replaced the top of the tank and stepped out of the bathroom to join him. “I hate it as much as you do, but if we’re ever going to get Volpe out of our lives, we have to help him figure out if the other Doges are here and what they’re planning. You and he will have to work together. He’ll have ideas about what to do next. But there are things I can find out that you can’t, starting with the building collapse in Dorsoduro and the tomb under it. Obviously the Doges have figured out that it’s where Volpe put their dead relatives, but why knock the building down? Just to expose the tomb? To make sure those deaths are not forgotten? Or is there more to it?”

Nico hesitated, then nodded. He pulled her into an embrace, kissed her temple, and then stepped back to regard her grimly.

“Whatever you can learn will help,” Nico said. “But as far as I’m concerned, you have something more important to do. I want to have a life for us to go back to when this is all over. You need to do whatever it takes to make sure it isn’t in ruins. You’ve got to check in with Tonio, look in on the Biblioteca project. Don’t cut the strings that connect us to our lives or I fear we’ll be swept away.”

Geena kissed him softly. “I won’t let that happen.”

“Good,” Nico said. “But if the other Doges are here, and Caravello found you, they may be able to as well. You have to be very careful. You shouldn’t go back to your apartment.”

Geena frowned as she considered this, then shook her head.

“No,” she said. “If Caravello followed me, it was from the Biblioteca. It was the project that brought him there, the shattering of Volpe’s heart and the opening of the Chamber of Ten. We don’t have any reason to think that he knew where I lived. Never mind that this is all happening so quickly. It doesn’t make sense to think Aretino and Foscari would know anything about me, if the other two are even here.”

Nico did not like it, but he could see she would not be dissuaded.

“If you see or even sense anyone following you or anything out of place at your apartment, tell Tonio and Domenic and the others the whole story. They might not believe you, but they’ll keep you safe for a time. Long enough to finish this, I hope.”

“Where will you go?” she asked.

“I suppose we’ll keep moving,” he said, feeling Volpe waking up further, growing restless inside of him. “Make sure you have your cell phone. Call me if you learn anything, and I’ll do the same. But if, for any reason, we can’t reach each other, we will meet on the north side of Rialto Bridge tomorrow night at eleven.”

“Agreed.”

“Meanwhile, be careful.” Nico reached out and cupped her cheek in his hand, then bent to kiss her softly, ignoring the lingering stink of disease on her breath, just as she must be doing in return.

I wish you could just come with me, Nico thought.

Geena touched his hand and gently pulled it away. “I can’t. We need to know what’s happening with that tomb. And you’re right. By now Tonio will be furious with me. I need to get myself out of hot water and try to smooth things over for you, too.”

“Is that even possible? As far as the rest of the team is concerned, I stabbed you.”

“Let me worry about that,” she said, walking over to a window. “Besides, I’m more concerned about the fact that they reported the attack. If we want to have a future in this city, I’ve got to start with the police.”

Caravello’s corpse burned like the newspaper Geena’s father had always used to start fires when she was a girl, crumbling up the movie section or the real estate pages and shoving them under the logs before setting them alight. They’d caught quickly, the edges flaring orange and red with rising flames, and then they would ignite with crackling, hungry fire.

Her heart pounded as she watched the flames burn away the ancient Venetian’s clothing and flesh as if it were nothing more than yellowed papyrus.

“We’ve got to go,” she said, reaching out to tug on Nico’s wrist. “Someone will see.”

But in the darkness the fire cast dancing shadows on his face and she could see in that smile and those narrowed, furtive eyes that Nico was absent again, and Volpe had taken over.

“Cleansing fire,” he whispered.

She squeezed his wrist. “If we’re caught—”

Volpe shot her a dark look that reminded her that should they be discovered here, it would not be them who were in danger, but whoever had the misfortune to attempt to interfere.

“We won’t be caught,” Volpe assured her.

“If they are already in Venice, Foscari and Aretino will be looking for Caravello by now,” Geena reminded him. “What if they’ve tracked him here? What if they’re out there in the square right now, waiting for us?”

The old magician turned and glared at her with Nico’s eyes, then looked at the side door through which they had originally entered. With a wave of his hand, not even looking at the corpse, he doused the flames. The fire crackled and popped and burned down to cinders in the space of seconds, and all that remained of Caravello were black ashes.

“This way,” Volpe said, leading her through the kitchen.

“Afraid?” Geena asked, both genuinely curious and taunting.

At the thick metal door at the back of the kitchen, he spun to sneer at her. “Of what would happen to my city if they should catch me unprepared, if they should destroy me? Of course I am.”

Volpe passed a hand in front of the lock and she heard it click as the deadbolt drew back. The man would never need a key to any door. He glanced out into the narrow space between the taverna and the darkened bookstore next door.

“And so should you be,” he said, and then he slipped out.

Geena followed, pulling the door quietly shut behind her. To the right, the canal ran by, but Volpe hurried along the alley to the left, pausing to make sure they weren’t being watched.

“Why?” she whispered as she caught up to him. “Because you’re the lesser of two evils?”

“The Doges would control every breath taken by the people of this city. They would corrupt and kill and enslave. There would be a great deal of blood; the Mayor is only the beginning. And while they might do all of this in secrecy, people would still be dead. Those whose hearts continued to beat would live only at the whim of these devils. And they would spread their cruelty and influence across Europe and beyond. Am I the lesser of two evils? I am the Oracle of Venice. The rest is for you to decide. If it helps you to focus, though, consider this: as long as this is my city, you get to live.”

Volpe stepped out onto the cobblestoned street and walked north, ambling along as if he had not a care in the world. The time had come for them to part ways, but Geena stared after him for several seconds before turning south and heading for home, shuddering as those final words echoed in her mind.

Geena stood beside a narrow canal and tried to breathe through her mouth to avoid inhaling the stink from the water. All of the smaller waterways in Venice were rank with human waste and gasoline spill-off from the thousands of small boats that plied her canals, but various factors mitigated the smell. The tides swept in twice a day to attempt a cleansing they never quite managed. The breeze and the temperature also played a part, but there were some places in the city that seemed to stink ferociously no matter what the variables.

From the darkness just beyond the reach of a lamppost, she stared at the grimy, deteriorating façade of one of the city’s police stations. The stink here was especially strong, and the irony attached to that observation did not escape her. The Italian government and all associated authorities were so rife with corruption that people had long ago accepted the fact as immutable. Payoffs to the right officials in sufficient amounts could achieve almost any desired result. And yet in Geena’s experience, day-to-day business in Venice proceeded in the same fashion as that of other cities. The police kept the peace and tried to protect the public to the best of their ability. Of course, it would have been much simpler if the Venice police never did their jobs at all.

Going in, she thought, unsure if Nico could hear her, or even where he might be now. They had parted ways nearly two hours ago, and she could no longer sense his touch at all. Either he had traveled far from her, or he was purposefully keeping himself hidden. Or Volpe was. It was probably a smart decision, but that did nothing to take the sting out of it.

She crossed the dingy stone bridge that led to an alley that ran between the police station and a small hotel that seemed to have frozen in time during the 1950s. Small boats moored at the canal door of the police station and, as she passed, two uniformed officers came out onto the landing and dropped down into one of them, grim-faced and tired-looking.

Geena took a deep breath and went in through the alley door, which for civilians would be the main door, she supposed. The foyer had old benches with cracked leather seats and a thick barrier of glass or plastic—bulletproof, no doubt, and perhaps explosive-resistant as well—separating her from the two officers who sat on the other side, both of them with phones clutched against their ears, snapping off instructions.

Deeper inside the building she could see cubicle dividers and desks, but other than the two men in the front she saw only a handful of people. A woman peered at a computer screen, madly typing away at the keyboard, and two men in suits talked quietly in the back, worried expressions on their faces.

“Excuse me,” Geena said in Italian.

The two cops on their phones ignored her, barking in rapid-fire Italian, reporting the location of various officers and detectives and, in some cases, ordering their deployment to other locations.

Geena took a breath and waited patiently. For perhaps the hundredth time since waking on the floor of that abandoned taverna, she took mental stock of her condition. When she had left there she had rushed back to her apartment, taking a water taxi, too impatient to wait for the bus across the canal. In a taxi there was only the driver to see her bloodstained shirt and smell the lingering odor of sickness on her.

She had showered quickly but thoroughly, and afterward she had stared at herself in the mirror over the sink. The slash on her palm had healed, yes, but so had the wound from where Volpe had stabbed her shoulder. It ached in a hollow, distant fashion, the way her left knee sometimes did in the winter, but there was no longer a wound there, nor any mark at all. Even the small scar on her chin—earned at the age of two from a fall on brick steps—had vanished. The magic that Volpe had worked to purge them of the contagion had apparently done much more.

“Excuse me,” Geena said again, her tone sharper.

This time both cops glanced up at her, though more in irritation than assistance. One of them actually turned away from her to continue his conversation. Geena had pulled her hair back into a ponytail and put on a clean white crenellated top and black Capri pants, trying to look presentable, but though she spoke Italian, all they saw when they looked at her was an American. No matter how fluent she might be, they heard it in her voice, saw it in her face.

“I’m not a tourist,” she muttered, almost to herself.

The officer still facing her arched an eyebrow in apparent amusement. He had gray hair and thick, wiry eyebrows and a ruddy face flushed from a lifetime of alcoholic indulgence, but when he hung up the phone and looked at her, he had a certain charm.

“How can I help you, Signorina?”

“I wanted to clear up a misunderstanding,” she said. “A crazy thing happened. One of my colleagues has been accused of assaulting me—well, stabbing me, actually—and I would like to speak with someone about giving a statement.”

The officer’s eyes had widened when she mentioned stabbing, and now he gazed at her dubiously. One of those thick eyebrows arched upward, but the phone rang before he could speak and he held up a finger to indicate she should wait while he answered it.

He gave curt replies to the phone inquiries, something about a press conference in the morning, and when he hung up, the phone rang again almost immediately. This time he ignored it, muttering something to the younger, black-haired officer, whose only reply was an arrogant glance.

“You don’t look like you’ve been stabbed,” said the officer. He stood up to get a better look at her and she could read his name tag: Pendolari.

“That’s what I’m trying to say. I wasn’t.”

“But someone filed a police report saying you were?” Officer Pendolari asked. “Why would anyone do that?”

Geena hoped her sheepish smile was convincing. “My colleague and I are … involved. We had an altercation in front of some co-workers. They’re not very pleased with him and I’m sure they think they are helping me by trying to get him in trouble—”

“They could get in trouble for filing a false police report,” Officer Pendolari said, wiry brows knitting.

“Oh no. I wouldn’t want that. I just … I’d like the whole thing to go away.”

The phone kept ringing. Past the cubicles in back she could see two men in suits, detectives or ranking officers, perhaps, leaning over the woman who had sat back from her computer to show them something. They must have had a lead on a case, for one started shouting orders immediately and the other snatched up the phone from the woman’s desk.

“Listen, what’s your name?”

“Geena Hodge.”

Pendolari spread his arms wide to indicate the nearly empty police station and the hectic pace of the night.

“When I have a chance, Geena, I’ll see what I can find and I’ll make a note that you came in. Someone may want to talk to you, but do not be surprised if you never hear a word about it. You must know that the Mayor’s been murdered—”

“Of course. I’d heard—”

“Between that and the disaster in Dorsoduro, well, you can imagine what it’s like for us right now. If no one is pressing charges against this man, I suspect it will go away, just as you hope.”

The dark-haired officer slammed down his phone at last and picked up the other, his displeasure evident.

Pendolari smiled apologetically. “And now …”

Geena nodded, gesturing toward the phones. “Yes, yes, of course. And thank you.”

She hurried back out into the night, wondering if the Venice police would have bothered to follow up on her stabbing even if she hadn’t just gone in and lied to them. The Mayor’s murder and that building collapse would be getting worldwide media coverage and the higher-ups would be worried about their jobs and the image of the department. If she could persuade Tonio not to press charges against Nico, maybe it really would just go away, and there would be one less thing for them to worry about if they ever got their lives back.

With every police officer in Venice trying to solve the Mayor’s murder, a little bloodletting at the Biblioteca would be the last thing they wanted to focus on, particularly if the supposed victim denied it had ever happened.

You could do almost anything in Venice this week and they’d barely notice, she thought as she crossed back over the crumbling stone bridge. Halfway across, she faltered, glancing back at the police station and wondering just how true that might be, and how much the theory would be tested.

She needed to talk to Tonio and find out what she could about the tomb in Dorsoduro, never mind doing as Nico had asked and making sure they both had a life to return to when this was all over. And maybe whatever she learned about the building collapse would be moot. A part of her—a willingly naïve part—hoped that it would all be over by the time she and Nico reconnected, that Volpe would have found the other two Doges and … killed them, don’t hide from it … before they were reunited.

Geena just had to hold her life and their shared world together until then.

Are you sure this is a good idea? Nico thought, peering into his own mind, trying to get a sense of what Volpe had planned. All the old magician had said was that they would be searching for Foscari and Aretino, the other two Doges he had banished from Venice.

There are other ways to search, but it would be foolish not to begin with a more direct approach, Volpe whispered in his mind.

“Direct approach?” Nico asked. “If they’re waiting for me, we might both be killed by your ‘direct approach.’”

Though for the moment he had control over his own body, he could feel Volpe smile inside.

Then you should make at least an attempt at stealth, don’t you think?

They had achieved a kind of fluidity in their sharing of Nico’s body, an intuitive flow of thought and control. Nico gave Volpe the cooperation he desired so that the magician could rest—playing puppeteer with Nico’s body exhausted him—and in return, Volpe would keep him and Geena alive, and leave them be as soon as he had destroyed Aretino and Foscari.

Nico would have expected it to be difficult to cede command of his own flesh to an outside force, but found it simple enough to retreat within himself. It was an almost meditative state. He did not like the intrusion, the constant presence of Volpe there in his mind, observing his thoughts and actions, but he could endure it.

He paused in front of a small restaurant, raised voices coming from within. A cheer rose up and he wondered what had caused it, a rush of loneliness filling him. He and Domenic had often crowded into this bar with dozens of others to watch soccer games on the television hanging above the bar. Were they cheering a goal in there now, or some feat of alcoholic indulgence? The situation with Volpe and the Doges had to be dealt with, but in some ways he thought Geena’s mission the more vital. Without her, the life he had led before descending into the Chamber of Ten would be forever out of his reach.

Do not even think about her, Volpe said in his thoughts.

Nico clenched his fists in anger, but he had no one to hit. The magician was right. They did not know the extent of the Doges’ spellcraft, so for the moment it was better if he did not reach out to Geena with his thoughts. Still, it made him all the lonelier.

Stealth? he thought.

It might be wise.

All right, then.

Nico hesitated. His apartment was not far from here, two blocks up and through a narrow alley into a hidden garden courtyard that almost made up for the shabbiness of the musty old building. But that would be the approach that anyone else would take, so he backtracked past the restaurant—leaving the noise of the bar behind—and turned onto a street whose broken gutters slanted down just enough to let rainwater and whatever else flooded into them run the three blocks to the lagoon.

Past a small pharmacy, its green and white light burning though the place was dark, he hugged close to the buildings and watched every doorway and street corner for signs of hidden observers. A small trattoria had been defaced with an obscenity scrawled on the stone wall beside the glass door.

He darted into a side alley that ran for blocks behind the buildings. The stink of piss and garbage had seeped into the brick and cobblestones. Rats scurried behind a row of dented trash cans. Some damn fool had parked a motorcycle behind the service doors of a small apartment building, heavy chains around the tires and looped to a grate in the street.

Where are you going? Volpe wondered.

Nico ignored him. Why the stealth? he asked instead. Isn’t there a spell you can use to find them? If they can sense you—

Were I still alive I could have found them by touching the ground or a stone in any wall and thinking about them. But my bond with the city is frayed. For the moment, at least.

Are you sure they’re not just hiding, somehow? Nico asked. You’ve been dead for centuries while they’ve been out there together, learning more magic. They managed to pool the power they leached from Akylis enough to keep themselves alive this long. Is it really impossible they’ve found a way to make themselves invisible to you?

A ripple of unease went through Volpe. The old magician did not like the question.

I do not know the extent of their magic, Volpe replied. But that is why we have come here. They would have investigated the Chamber of Ten to discover what happened to disrupt the spell of Exclusion, to see if anything remained of me there. Caravello, or one of his lackeys, focused on Geena. Perhaps they sensed her connection to you, and thus to me. If they have traced my essence from the Chamber, they may have followed it here, or located you because of your work at the Biblioteca. They will want to make certain I am out of their way forever. And if they have a way to sense the location of the next Oracle, that might bring them here as well.

All right. I’m convinced it’s worth a shot, Nico thought. But do you really think I’m the next Oracle?

I don’t think it was only your mind-touch that led you to me. And with a magician as powerful as Caravello—imbued with the evil of Akylis … the blood of the Oracle is one of the only things that could have killed him.

How do you know that?

Nico felt Volpe hesitate a moment before forging on.

Do you think that I never felt the dark power lingering down in the well of Akylis? When I first sensed it down there beneath the city, I tapped into that magic.

What?

It did not corrupt me, but it would have if I had been anyone else. That’s why I could not allow other magicians to remain in Venice. The soul of the city is in me, Nico. You must understand that, especially if you are to be the Oracle yourself. And Venice is more powerful than Akylis. The soul of the city resists Akylis’ evil influence.

Nico frowned. So the blood of the Oracle does what? Disrupts the magic keeping them alive?

Precisely. The soul of the city is bonded to mine, and apparently to yours as well.

Geena’s blood was on the knife, too.

For long seconds, Volpe’s voice was silent inside Nico’s mind. He could feel the magician there, and knew Volpe was troubled, but not the source of that unease.

I’ve thought about that, he said at last. But there is another possibility. On rare occasions, a city might choose twins or lovers to share the weight of its secrets and its history.

Wait, you mean Geena and I might both have been chosen?

I sensed something in both of you the moment you entered the Chamber of Ten, Volpe admitted. Your mind-touch, that gift, makes you more sensitive to ethereal powers, but the bond of love between you and Geena … there is precedent.

This isn’t just a guess, is it? Nico thought. I can feel it in your mind. You believe we’ve both been chosen.

I do.

I hope you’re wrong. I don’t want this.

The city chooses the Oracle, not the other way around.

The words weighing on him, Nico reached a wider part of the alley, where moonlight splashed in between the tops of buildings. He hewed close to the rear of a stone structure that had once been a school but was now being gutted and transformed into apartments. The demolition phase had ended but new construction had yet to begin, so the place looked as if a bomb had exploded inside, crumbling the walls and blowing out doors and windows.

A crane sat silent and dark behind the shell of the old school and Nico slipped into its shadow, glanced around to be sure he had gone unobserved, then darted through the arched entry, rubble shifting underfoot.

So this direct approach you’re talking about, Nico thought, you just want to let them find us? If you don’t know the extent of their magic, you cannot be certain you can overcome them.

No, I cannot, Volpe agreed. Which is the reason for our stealth.

Nico continued onward, moving quickly and quietly through the skeletal building to the staircase. He took the steps two at a time, ascending to the third floor, then he crossed the empty space to what had once been a window.

Beyond the gaping hole where the window had been was a stone balcony, and beyond the balcony a tower of metal scaffolding the workers had erected weeks ago. Crouched low, he crossed the balcony and climbed over onto a wooden platform on the scaffolding, and from there he could see across a narrow gap—only five or six feet—into the tall French doors of his own balcony.

Hidden from the moonlight by the upper levels of the scaffolding, he knelt and studied every available glimpse into his apartment. Only shadows lurked within. His home seemed a gray limbo of a place, silently awaiting his return. After five minutes on the scaffolding, he opened his mouth to say as much to Volpe, but before he could get the words out, he saw a shape separate itself from the darker shadows within and move across his apartment before settling again into a corner of the living room that would be out of sight of anyone who might foolishly come through the door.

“Jesus,” Nico whispered.

Hush, Volpe thought, coming forward to seize control again. A passenger in his own mind, Nico could read Volpe’s thoughts for the moment at least. The magician could see better in the dark, and a look at those windows from Volpe’s perspective showed Nico there were two men inside. Reaching out with his mind, he could feel them—

No! Volpe cried in his thoughts.

What? Nico demanded, feeling the magician’s panic.

Volpe shook his head. Never mind. Whoever those men are—lackeys and cutthroats, I would imagine—the Doges are not with them.

So what do we do? Nico asked.

Volpe grinned darkly and shuffled back to the edge of the balcony. He rose to his feet, ran to the edge of the scaffolding, and hurled himself through the night, twenty-five feet above the stinking alley below.

In his mind, Nico screamed.