A Hidden Fire: Elemental Mysteries Book 1 (18 page)

“No, I certainly can’t blame you, Caspar.  They’re stunning.”

Caspar cocked an eyebrow, but Giovanni continued.  “If things get dangerous in the city, take Isadora to the house in Kerrville.  You’ll both be out of the way there.  I don’t want to have to worry about you.”

“What about B?”

“No, she stays here.  I’ll need her.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged.  “Don’t worry.  Nothing will happen to her.”

“Because you need her?”

He glanced at Casper in the flickering light.  The fire had started to die down, and he could feel the dawn beginning to tug at him after his long journey.

“You need her,” Caspar repeated, “so you’ll keep her safe?”

“Of course.”

Caspar nodded and finished his drink, setting it down on the coffee table and standing up from the sofa.  “Of course.”

The old man walked upstairs, his step slightly slower than the year before as he climbed to the second floor.  The next year would be slower still, until it would be necessary to move his old friend to one of the rooms on the ground floor.  Though he knew Caspar was in excellent health, he also knew that the passing of time carried inevitability and with that would come loss.

He spent another hour staring into the fire before he finally banked it and climbed the stairs.  He entered his walk-in closet, took off his old watch and put it on the dresser before he stripped out of his clothes and placed them in the laundry basket for Caspar to tend in the morning.  He punched in the code to his sleeping chamber and walked through the reinforced door.

As he entered, he looked around at the spartan furniture that decorated the space.  There was only a small bed; despite his tall frame, his body would hardly move while in its day rest, a desk where he kept some writing paper, the older fountain pens he still preferred, and a rotary phone.  The one piece of decoration was the photograph of the Arno River that flowed through the heart of Florence and the arches of the Ponte Vecchio that spanned it.  The picture had been taken in the middle of the day, and the shops along the bridge glowed vividly in the searing Italian sun.

On the wall opposite the framed photograph, there was a large bookcase filled with his collection of journals.  In them were the collected memories of five hundred years; no one had ever read them besides himself.  As he lay in bed and waited for the pull of day, he tried to imagine Beatrice in this small, confined room.

He could not.

Giovanni heard her before he scented her, and he scented her when she walked in the house.  He forced himself to sit at the table in his library and examine the fifth letter as Beatrice chatted with Caspar in the kitchen.  It was a lighthearted letter; with Poliziano teasing about the debates in Rome and warning his friend to not speak publicly about the mystic texts Andros had given him.

“I do hope you keep in mind the rather stringent positions our Holy Father has taken regarding anything of a mystical nature.  I know you are enamored of your Eastern texts and your thoughts of philosophical harmony, but I do not wish for you to fall under his scrutiny.  I have no doubt the result would be to no one’s liking.”

The debates, he remembered, had not been successful, and the Pope had only been angered.  He smiled when he saw the closing paragraph.

“On a more pleasant note, I was pleased to read Jacopo’s letter, and gratified he recalls his time in Benevieni’s household so fondly.  Indeed, my friend, along with your philosophical work, I believe what you have accomplished with his education will be one of your finest achievements.”

He paused in his examination when he heard Beatrice climb the stairs.  He couldn’t help but notice her step did not have its usual exuberance.

“Hey.”

He looked up to meet her dark eyes, immediately tempted to throw away every stern admonition he had given himself when he saw her form-fitting black shirt and slim burgundy skirt.  He glanced at her feet and smiled when he saw she was wearing her combat boots again, but he forced himself to stay seated.

“Hello, Beatrice.”

“So I heard you got it.  The Lincoln speech.  Was the buyer happy?”

He nodded slowly.  “Yes.  Happy parties on both sides, and a good commission for me.”

“Great.  That’s great.”

She sauntered into the library, eventually making her way back to the desk where her computer had rested silently during her absence.  She turned it on, and Giovanni searched his mind, trying to find a way to bypass the wall that had risen between them.

He had an idea.  “I have another project for you.”

She frowned a little as she concentrated on the computer screen.  “Oh, really?” she said.  “What’s up?”

“It’s related to the Pico letters.”

Her eyes met his, obviously surprised.  “The letters?  You mean—that’s…you trust me to find stuff about the letters?”

He frowned, “Of course I do.  Why do you think I wouldn’t trust you?”

She just stared at him for a few minutes before a sharp laugh escaped her, and she shook her head.  “Do I think…I don’t—Giovanni, I don’t know what to think about you.  About anything.  I just—I should just stop trying to figure you out, honestly.”

Giovanni took a deep breath and stood, perching his hip on the corner of the large table before he answered.  “Beatrice, that night at the pub—”

“Did you mean it?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.  “That kiss?”

Yes,
he thought, but remained silent as she stood and walked toward him.

She looked at him, frowning as she bit her lip.  “Because at first I thought you did—I mean, it felt real to me—and then you implied that you were acting.”

I wasn’t,
he thought again. 
I wanted to sink my fangs into you, drink your blood, strip your clothes off and—

“But then, I thought about it more.”

He felt his fangs drop and his skin begin to heat as she drew closer, and he forced his body to remain still instead of rushing to meet her.

“I thought about it more, and realized there are some things a man can’t fake.  And the way you kissed me…”  Her lips were full and flush from when she had bit them nervously.  He crossed his arms on his chest so he couldn’t touch her as she continued in a low voice, “The way it felt, Gio, I don’t think it was fake at all.”

She stood in front of him, her eyes bold as she met his hungry stare, and all Giovanni would have had to do was take one step and he could have wrapped his body around hers, laid his mouth on her soft neck, and swallowed the thick blood that called to him.  He swallowed slowly, and ignored the burn in his throat and the smell of honeysuckle and lemon that filled the air.

“I’m not going to deny that I’m attracted to you, Beatrice.  Denying that would be foolish and insulting to us both.”

“But you’re not going to kiss me again, are you?”

“No.”

“Did you want to bite me?”

He searched her eyes, trying to determine what answer she wanted, but though he had observed humanity for five hundred years, her enigmatic eyes were still a mystery to him.

“Yes.”

“But you won’t do that, either?”

His body yearned to say yes, but his mind rebelled at the consequences of that kind of intimacy.

“No.  I won’t bite you,” he said, hoping he was strong enough not to break his word.

“Why not?  You could.  I’m not strong enough to stop you.”

He straightened his shoulders and tore his eyes from her to look toward the fireplace.

“It wouldn’t be a prudent decision, Beatrice.  For either of us.”

He saw her swallow out of the corner of his eye and detected the thin edge of regret in her eyes before she turned and walked to her desk.  He knew his answer had pleased neither of them, but she was too valuable to be anything more than a human under his protection.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, neither of them looking at the other, as the fire crackled in the grate.  Eventually, he heard her open a desk drawer.  She pulled something out and walked over to him where he stood at the table, his arms still crossed and his hands clenched.  She was carrying a notepad and a black ball-point pen.

“So, what do you want me to find, boss?”

Chapter Fourteen

Houston, Texas

April 2004

“
J
ust taste it,” a playful voice implored. 

“I’m telling you, I don’t like lamb!”

“But, darling, you have never tried
my
lamb before.”

The sound of Caspar and Isadora’s voices drifted out from the kitchen, interspersed with the occasional chuckle or tinkling laugh.  Beatrice saw Giovanni frowning toward the door from his seat at the dining room table, and she had to stifle a laugh.

“Caspar!” her grandmother shouted before breaking into a fit of what could only be described as giggles.  Now Beatrice was the one frowning, and she glanced over at Giovanni to find him watching her with an eyebrow cocked in amusement.

“Do you wonder?” he asked. 

She shook her head.  “Absolutely not.  I don’t even want to speculate.”

He chuckled and continued sorting through the catalogue printouts she had made for him.

They had finally fallen back into a comfortable work rhythm after the kiss in January, eventually finding a way to work with each other while giving each other space.  Ironically, it was even more evident to Beatrice that she had developed serious feelings for Giovanni the longer they worked together.  It didn’t help that they were now pursuing the same project and had even more time to interact.

Following his hunch, Giovanni and Beatrice searched for other documents he thought might have been sold or donated from his original collection of books, manuscripts and letters.  He speculated that Lorenzo was attempting to draw her father out of hiding, and if Lorenzo had given some documents away, he might have given or sold others, as well.  If Giovanni knew
why
Lorenzo was so determined to find her dad, he wasn’t telling her.

She’d discovered a cache of documents donated to the University of Leeds that Giovanni thought might have been the original Dante correspondence Stephen De Novo mentioned to his father, and Giovanni unearthed another set of letters between Girolamo Benevieni and Giovanni Pico that had been bought by a private collection in Perugia.

“This is odd,” he muttered as he looked at the details from another auction in Rome.  “There’s something…Beatrice, call Carwyn, will you?”

“Sure, he’s outside with Bran?”

“Probably trying to cover up another horticultural disaster that beast has inflicted on my gardens.”

“Aw, Gio, you’ll miss him when he’s gone.”

“Carwyn, yes.  The dog, no.”  Just then, Doyle jumped on his lap and shoved his fuzzy grey head under Giovanni’s hand.  Beatrice had to chuckle that neither seemed to notice the cat’s hair standing on end every time Giovanni touched him.

“No, no one will miss the wolfhound, will they, Doyle?” he murmured, continuing to stroke the cat’s back as he read.  Watching the vampire read at the table with his dark hair falling into his eyes, a frown furrowing his brow and his lips pursed as he tickled under the cat’s chin gave Beatrice the irrational desire to crawl into his lap and curl up, just to see if she might get the same treatment.

“Beatrice?”

“Hmm?” she asked in a dazed voice as she stared at the cat.

She finally looked up to see him watching her, his eyes hooded and his hand still on Doyle’s back.  “Were you going to—”  He cleared his throat and looked out the dark window.

“Carwyn.  Right.  I’ll just…I’ll call—you know, I’ll just walk outside and find him.  I could use a…walk.”

She got up and quickly exited the room, just as another burst of laughter rang out from the kitchen.  Beatrice winced and walked quickly through the French doors and across the brick patio by the pool.

She didn’t mind her grandmother and Caspar dating.  In fact, she was ridiculously happy that they got along so well; it was just somewhat cruel that her sixty-eight-year-old grandmother had a more exciting love life than she did.

A boy from Beatrice's art history class had taken her to dinner the weekend before, and she had enjoyed it.  His name was Jeff, and he was polite and funny.  She even laughed a little when he related stories about the drama in the office where he was interning and would probably work in the fall.  He took her back to her grandmother’s house and gave her a really nice kiss.

She had absolutely no desire to see him again.

Beatrice cursed Giovanni’s superior kissing skills and intriguing personality as she walked through the grounds.  Summer had almost settled on Houston, and the air hung heavy with leftover warmth from the day and the smell of honeysuckle.  The roses were blooming and, as she rounded the corner near the small gazebo, she heard Carwyn muttering to his dog again.

“—not going to let you come back next year if you keep this up, Bran.  And honestly, I don’t understand your fascination with rose roots.  Is it just to annoy him?”

She heard the dog snort and half-expected him to respond.  After all, vampires existed, so why not talking wolfhounds?  She heard additional words that sounded a lot like curses, but she was pretty sure they were in Welsh, and couldn’t understand them.

“Carwyn?” she called across the lawn.  The vampire turned to her with a guilty expression, and she watched in fascination as the numerous piles of dirt in Caspar’s prized rose garden started crawling across the lawn and back toward the holes the dog had dug them from.  The dark earth didn’t float, exactly, but appeared to simply move by its own volition when Carwyn flicked his fingers at it.  It was almost as if the dirt had become a living thing, and small piles chased each other across the dark grass.

“B!  No need to tell the professor about Bran’s indiscretion now, is there?”

She just stared at the self-moving dirt.

“That is so freaking cool.  How do you—I mean, I know you—that is just so…cool.”

“Thanks.  This?  This is no big deal.  Try fixing the mess that six or seven of these monsters make in a vegetable garden before a scary nun finds them.  Now that’s a challenge.”

“Really?”  She frowned as she continued to watch the small piles of dirt gradually disappear into the earth.  Even the grass seemed to knit itself together where the dog had dug it up.

“No, not really.  I’m joking.  Moving boulders is a slight workout.  Or causing an earthquake, manipulating faults, things like that.  Gardening isn’t really much of a challenge anymore.”

“You can cause earthquakes?”

He sighed, a playful look in his eyes.  “There’s such a delicious joke there, but I’m going to be good and hold back.  With the amount of sexual tension permeating these grounds, even a bad ‘rock your world’ line is liable to ignite something.”

“Very funny.”  She rolled her eyes and tried to remember why she came to find him.  “Gio’s got a question for you, I think.  Something about a private collection in Central Italy?  Or maybe it’s the auction he’s curious about, I’m not sure.”

Carwyn immediately ran to the house at vampire speed, leaving Beatrice and Bran in the garden.  She looked at the dog, who seemed to smile playfully before he loped off in the direction of the hydrangeas.

“Slowest thing here,” she muttered.  “Why do I always have to be the slowest thing here?”

When she reached the French doors, she heard Carwyn speaking in quick Italian into the rotary phone by the small desk in the living room.

Italian and Spanish had enough similarity that she could understand snatches of what she heard.  She knew he mentioned books, and she heard the Italian words for “Vatican” and “library” pop up more than once.

He finally put down the phone and Giovanni started in with the questions, this time, at least, they were in English.  He kept his voice low, mindful of Caspar and Isadora in the kitchen.

“So?  What did the he say?”

Carwyn shook his head and spoke quietly.  “Not one of theirs.  He says that sounds close to one of the fronts they’ll use in private auctions sometimes—enough that someone who was bidding more casually wouldn’t suspect—but it’s definitely not them.  And he doesn’t know about any new Savaranola correspondence, though he sounded like he was practically drooling at the thought.”

Giovanni frowned.  “So if it
is
Lorenzo, and he’s not using these to draw De Novo out—because these would hold no interest for a Dante scholar—why was he selling correspondence books from the fifteenth century, and buying them from himself?”

Carwyn had been leaning against the wall, looking out the dark windows with a finger tapping his chin.  Suddenly, he smiled wickedly.  “Oh, Giovanni.  Virgil himself would be impressed with your virtue.  He’s doing it because he’s a clever, clever boy.  And clever boys who want to clean money might just use a private auction to do it.”

Giovanni let loose a string of Italian curses and slapped a hand on the table, scaring the cat, who jumped off his lap and ran upstairs.

“What does he do?” Beatrice asked.

They both looked at her as if they’d forgotten she was there.

“I mean…that’s laundering money, right?  That’s what you’re talking about?  Don’t drug dealers do that kind of thing?  Is he a drug dealer?”

Carwyn shrugged.  “He’s got his hands in any number of fairly dirty pots.  Smuggling mostly, and other types of clandestine shipping.  Not all of it necessarily illegal, but most of it…questionable.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he has his fingers in drugs or anything else.  The question is – why does he need some of his funds clean at this point?”

“He won’t need it to find her father.  He has other channels for that.  He’s planning something,” Giovanni muttered, frowning again and biting a lip in concentration as he studied the printouts in front of him.  “In the human world?  Something legitimate?”

Carwyn was still tapping his chin.  “Whatever it is, it has something to do with the books.”

“Why?” she asked.

Giovanni was sitting silently at the table, shaking his head. “Too much coincidence.  To many pieces moving at once,” he muttered.  “Her father.  My books.  The letters.  Now the money…” He kept muttering to himself as suspicion grew in her mind.

Her father.  Giovanni’s books.  Lorenzo stole the books and wanted her father.  A connection started to tickle the back of her brain, but she shoved it to the side for the moment and turned to Carwyn.

“Isn’t it easier to do that stuff electronically?  Laundering money?  Why is he doing it through auctions?”

Carwyn chuckled.  “I’m sure it is, and someone with half a fool’s worth of knowledge in electronic markets could do it better than he could.  But he’s not all that up on digital technology, I’m betting.”

“He’s not, though I’m sure he thinks he is.  Lorenzo was always overconfident.  He was never very good at adaptation.  Many immortals aren’t,” Giovanni said.  “I know some vampires who took fifty years or so to even start driving a car.”

Beatrice rolled her eyes.  “You crazy international men of mystery, you.”

Giovanni chuckled and looked at her.  “You think
we’re
backward, you should meet—”

“Tenzin!” the priest yelled then lowered his voice, looking over his shoulder at the kitchen door, as if suddenly remembering the humans in the house.  “Oh, she’s the worst, isn’t she?  Has she ever been in a car?  I’ve never seen it.  And I can’t even imagine her getting in a plane.”

Giovanni snorted.  “I got her in a carriage once in India, and she nearly kicked the door down getting out so fast.”

Beatrice just listened to them talk about their friend, intensely curious about the woman who seemed to inspire such simultaneous awe and affection.

“How does she get around if she doesn’t drive or fly?  Does she walk everywhere?” she asked.

They both stopped chuckling and looked at her.  Carwyn winked.  “Who says she doesn’t fly?”

Her jaw dropped.  “No freaking way!”

“‘Like a bird,’” the priest sung under his breath.  “So bloody convenient controlling air, isn’t it?”

“Carwyn,” Giovanni muttered in warning.  “Not your place.”

“Oh, B won’t say anything when she meets her, will you?  Besides, I imagine Tenzin’s already seen her in a dream or two anyway.  She probably knows Beatrice better than she knows herself.”

Giovanni huffed and began putting his documents away.  “Ignore him.  It’s getting late.  You should probably get your grandmother home.”

She rolled her eyes.  “That’s right.  Don’t want to get the kids in bed too late, do we?  Besides, if we get in too late, our friendly neighborhood surveillance guys might start sweating in their minivan.”  She had begun teasing Giovanni about their guards after her initial discomfort about them wore off.  Now, she liked knowing they were there.

“Well, B.  This is goodbye for now,” Carwyn walked over to embrace her.  “But not goodbye forever, you must promise.”

She let herself be enveloped by the mountain of a man who had become a trusted friend and confidante over the last four months.  She had known he was leaving the next night—though she had no idea how any of them traveled—and Beatrice struggled to hold in the tears that wanted to escape as she hugged him.