Blood Ties

Chapter 10

"Hello, ring." The coppery gold band was strangely cold between Damiana's fingers. "I'm sorry, but I don't know your name."

No answer. Of course there wasn't. It was just a ring. She might have attached more significance to the gift, had wedding bands not been one of the most common points of attachment for the spiriti.

That, she had learned from Lazaro's books. She had stolen them away and read them, by covert light. Under the covers. His marginalia was beautiful. Concise. Insightful. His penmanship shaking when he was in pain, slanted when he was excited or enthused.

But no matter how hard she studied, she could never catch him up.

And never impress him. No, she could never impress him. She could come to him with her best idea, her most obscure piece of research, and he might give her, at best, a pitying look that said I learned that years ago.

And then the proxy kiss that held back the worst of his affliction had given him the sight. She recalled his face, his eyes defocusing, looking into the beyond. It was the first bud on the great, pale tree that the necromancers tended within themselves, and it put him beyond her reach. 

Damiana closed her fingers round the ring. She was no necromancer. Even with Giuseppe's potent vitae coursing through her veins, the dead didn't speak to her. She shut her eyes. She had been fine, as a fugitive. Why now, in the relative safety of Giuseppe's house, did she feel the overwhelming need to be comforted. To be held? Maybe, she thought, it's because out there no-one would have judged me for crying myself to sleep. In here? I'm just another bourgeoisie princess who needs grandfather to kiss everything better.

With a sigh, Damiana got up, smoothing the creases from her skirt, and refastened her hair. She took a long, hard look at the swords mounted on the wall of Giuseppe's study. They were uniformly sleek and practical, some of them short enough to conceal under a skirt or a dress. No, she decided. He'd probably kill me.

She got her gloves, and her coat, and China's letter, and stepped out into the night.

The address China had given her was a seedy place on Cannaregio, near Tommy's place. The man on the door raised an eyebrow when he saw her, but waved her past.

There were thin, hungry-looking girls, dressed in sequins and feathers and diaphanous cloth, up on the stage and winding sinuous past the patrons. Patrons who included, Damiana noted, more than one group of squadristi officers. Damiana eyed them warily as she walked to the bar. Hopefully China had better sense than to date one of them.

She asked for the name China had given, Gabriele, and the barman gestured round to the end of the bar, where a younger man stood.

He was handsome, Damiana had to admit. His smooth-shaven jaw was strong and tanned, and his eyes were a deep and soulful brown. He was elbow deep in a bucket of soapy water, his waistcoat cinched tight around his muscular torso.

China's beaux was a dishwasher?

"Ma'am?" He looked up.