The Descent (15 page)

“Adair needed us to do his dirty work, yes, but he needed us to adore him, too. He liked to be adored, the same way a king likes to be surrounded by flattering courtiers and bootlickers,” he said, meanly enough to make me squirm. What place had I held, then, in this unflattering gallery? Savva rose then and bent down to kiss me on the cheeks as he prepared to take his leave. “Be very careful, Lanny. I wish I could talk you out of this crazy mission of yours. You don’t want to run afoul of the queen.” He tugged on his gloves, looking the very picture of a gentleman. “Anyway, I hope we see each other again, but I don’t know that you’ll be able to recognize me at all, if we do. I feel as though the most peculiar changes have been coming over me lately.”

“What sort of changes?” I asked, suddenly seized with anxiety now that Savva was leaving me to navigate the underworld alone.

He made a face, coloring high on his cheeks. “I don’t know if I should tell you this—it’s rather embarrassing—but I think I’m beginning to grow a
tail
. There seems to be the littlest nub at the base of my spine. I can’t imagine for the life of me what that must mean.”

We kissed good-bye again and I let him melt into the crowd before I collapsed back into my seat.
Growing a tail.
There was no doubt what it meant: he was turning into a demon. If this was the case, it meant that the demons Savva had seen accompanying the queen and I had seen in my dreams might have been Adair’s companions, too. His companions had been hurtful beings in life, and it seemed they would go on to fill an even worse role in the afterlife. A horrible thought, that we had an assignment waiting for us in the underworld.

It wasn’t until I rose to leave that I realized I had no idea where to go next. I doubted I was meant to remain in 1830, and yet I had no notion how to leave. I tried to retrace my steps, moving slowly down the lobby. Finally, I came to what, I was pretty sure, was the door I’d originally come through. When I gripped the doorknob, it tingled in my hand like a premonition, and I knew it was the right door. I pushed it open and stepped over the threshold.

TEN

A
dair pulled an armchair next to the bed where Lanny lay. At the sight of her face, tranquil but motionless, he groaned with displeasure. He couldn’t help but be upset at the sight of her: though pink-cheeked and dewy-fleshed, she was so still, she could be mistaken for dead. And as unsettling as it was to see her like this, he found it more unsettling to leave her. He sat at her bedside with the tense, expectant air of a spouse in a hospital room. He stared at her for hours on end, watching her face in the hope of seeing a twitch or flutter of an eyelid, the first sign that she was on her way back. When his anxiety got to be too much to bear, he would remind himself that he could always revive her. It was within his power—theoretically. True, she’d be mad at him for bringing her back too soon, but if he claimed he’d acted in her best interest, she wouldn’t be able to stay mad at him. Still, he’d given her his word and could only hope that Lanore intended to keep her word, too, so he continued to be patient and wait.

Nonetheless, he still had misgivings about the mechanics of transportation to the underworld, the science of moving someone through planes of existence. It was as though he’d sent her off in a car that he’d cobbled together from spare parts without quite knowing how it would actually work. She might end up in a ditch on the side of the road with no way to ask for his help . . . except that she had the vial. The fact that it had washed up on the shore here gave Adair some hope, as though it had some special homing property with magical powers all its own.

Days passed, Adair parked in her bedroom like a worried dog waiting on its master’s return. He was shocked to realize only a few days had passed when it felt like an eternity.

He looked down on Lanore, laid out like his own Sleeping Beauty, fully clothed, her blond curls spread over the pillow like twisted ribbons, her pink lips moistly parted. He watched her bared sternum rise and fall. The edge of her bra was just visible under the neckline of her dress, tempting him to touch it, to finger the lace and the soft flesh under it. She was achingly molestable. If only they’d had sex before she’d left, he thought, this waiting might be easier to endure. He kicked himself for not bringing it up at the time, afraid of what she’d think of him. It made it all the harder to sit next to her now without imagining what it would be like to have his way with her. He was seized with the idea of taking his clothes off and lying next to her. If he could hold her body against his, he’d be able to half sate this intense need for her.

As he sat thinking slightly obscene thoughts, Adair realized Terry was beside him, appearing out of nowhere and twitchy as a snake about to strike. “No change? Is she still asleep?” she said with what he was sure was false solicitousness. He’d told Robin and Terry that Lanny had taken ill and was sleeping off her sickness. “You might as well come to bed. It won’t change things, you watching her like this . . .”

“Someone should be here when she wakes up.”

“We can leave the door open. We’ll hear if anything happens.” Robin had edged up on the other side and now was massaging Adair’s shoulder a little too desperately.

“No, you two go to bed. Maybe I’ll join you later.” It was a complete lie, as he had no intention of going to their bedroom tonight or, in all likelihood, any other night. He didn’t want them hovering at his elbow, waiting for him to betray so much as one lovesick look at Lanny.

Terry ran a hand over his shoulder, then his chest. “Come to bed,” she protested. “It’s been days and you’ve barely left this room. This is getting—weird.”

Robin tried, too, tugging his arm. “I want you. I’m horny,” she said plaintively, like a child asking for a glass of water.

The thought of having sex with the two of them was, frankly, mildly revolting. He had no appetite for anyone except Lanore. How could he go off and enjoy himself with these two while his love was submerged in the underworld and might need his help? Adair felt displeasure bubble up inside him, ready to explode.

“Not tonight. Don’t wait up for me,” he told them.

“Adair—”

“Enough! Leave me!” he bellowed, impatience crackling
in the air between them. They scurried out quickly and he closed the door and then, after a moment’s consideration, braced a chair under the doorknob. He climbed into bed next to Lanny and lay on his side with his head resting on one arm, his topmost arm lying on her stomach. His head was even with hers and he noted the details of her face, the way her eyelashes fanned against her cheeks, the rim of her lips. He wished for her eyes to open as nothing he’d ever wished before.

Wake up,
he thought.
Be here with me
. He wanted to gather her body in his arms and pull her to him, cradle her to his chest like a big, limp doll. The sight of her, corpse-like, had disturbed him so much that he needed the comfort of her touch, for reassurance that he hadn’t lost her completely. He remained pressed against her on the narrow bed, his face buried in her hair, and listened as the wind shook the glass in the window and howled as it soared to the roof, as angry as a woman scorned. Slowly he drifted off to a space in between sleep and wakefulness, hoping it would bring him all the closer to her.

V
ENICE
, 1262

Adair crouched on the landing of the back stairway in the doge’s palace. He was a boy, fifteen, gawky and thin, a scarecrow in a nobleman’s finery. He hid in the shadows, listening for the footsteps of a guard that might be between him and the door to the alley. He heard nothing. The palace was quiet.

He had been living for a month in the household of the
doge of Venice, Reniero Zeno. The doge was doing this as a courtesy to Adair’s father, a Magyar lord, the equivalent of a duke in Italy. It was a curious practice of noble families, this shuttling of family members around like pawns. Daughters barely out of swaddling clothes were betrothed and left with a family of strangers, growing up alongside their intended spouse like brother and sister. Sons were sent to serve in a powerful competitor’s court as a token of good faith, a hedge to keep one realm from attacking the other.

In Adair’s case, there was no betrothal or enmity: it was pure courtesy and nothing more. His father needed a place to send his youngest son away from the wagging tongues at Magyar court after his tutor, the crazy Prussian Henrik, was arrested for heresy. Bad enough the lord had a son who did not wish to rule, but to make the matter worse he was interested in
science
. He had been born curious about everything. Always asking too many questions, eager to take a thing apart to see how it was put together, and that included dead animals, live reptiles, pig and sheep fetuses cut out of the womb. The clergy at court were angered by his experiments, fearing they disrespected God.

Adair had found a new alchemy tutor since coming to Venice. Officially, he was studying medicine with Professore Scolari, the doge’s physician, known for his learned lectures on medicine and physiology. But Adair had been thrilled to find out that one of the bishops often seen in court, Bishop Rossi, was a devotee of alchemy, and managed to get Rossi to invite him to his private laboratory. It wasn’t entirely surprising that Rossi, a clergyman, had an interest in alchemy, as it was the fad of the day and nearly everyone practiced it—well, anyone with a lick of education and any intellectual curiosity at all. The pope himself was rumored to dabble.

Sure that the doge would not want his ward practicing alchemy—it had to be part of the bargain with Adair’s father, he was sure—Adair began sneaking off to the bishop’s palazzo. He wasn’t too nervous about being stopped along the way as he had nothing on him that would merit being brought up before the inquisitors. He had in his satchel only a few bottles, each containing drams of rare metals to share with the bishop as thanks for this hospitality and to signal that he was not a complete novice. He wanted to show the Venetian noble, whom he imagined to be well versed on the subject, that while he might come from the dark Magyar mountains, he was not backward and ignorant.

Nonetheless, Adair was careful on his journey, for he was alone and the city was notorious for its cutpurses and thieves. He listened carefully for any whispers or scrabbling of movement in the shadows and kept one hand on his sidearm at all times. After what seemed like entirely too long a journey along shimmering, black-faced canals, he came to the bishop’s palazzo, not far from the Rialto Bridge. A footman led him into the house and asked him to wait in the entry hall while he informed the bishop of Adair’s arrival.

Adair had just slipped out of his cloak when he caught a glimpse of movement overhead, and glanced up to see a beautiful young woman crossing the mezzanine. She wore a gown of ivory silk and her dark hair was pinned up with pearls. She looked as luminous as a ghost in the darkness. When she saw that he’d caught her staring down at him, she hurried away like a doe running for the cover of the forest.

Just then the bishop entered, and following the trajectory of Adair’s upward gaze, registered the source of his attention, as a knowing smile crossed his lips. “Young lord! I am so glad you are able to join me in the laboratory tonight.” He tossed back the voluminous satin sleeves of his robe to take Adair’s hand. With a forthrightness that Adair appreciated, the bishop added: “I see that you have noticed my goddaughter Elena.”

Adair nodded. “She would be hard to miss. Your goddaughter is very beautiful, sir.”

“She is indeed. Elena just arrived this week from Florence. Her father is an old friend of mine and wanted to get her out of the city for a while.” Rossi nodded to his young visitor, dropping his voice to a stage whisper. “A less than desirable young man has formed an attraction to her, her father says, and he hoped that some time apart will weaken her suitor’s ardor.”

“I see. . . . Is the attraction mutual?” Adair asked as he followed his host down a corridor and deeper into the palazzo.

“I blame it on Elena’s youth. At her age, when a boy turns her head, she is sure there will never be another. She has found her soul mate, the man she is meant to be with forever, and all that rubbish,” the bishop scoffed, and then abruptly changed the subject: “Come, my young lord. A fire has been building in the furnace for some time now and it should be of a sufficient temperature to begin our experiment.”

As the bishop prattled on, describing the recipe he wished to attempt, Adair quickly realized that Rossi had miscalculated from the start. They would need to begin by reducing mercury to its essence, a tricky and time-consuming process:
it could be ruined in an instant and thus required constant watching, which meant they would spend the entire evening on this
one
step. Adair fidgeted as his host went through his preparations for the experiment. Between the bishop’s dithering and the obvious newness of the equipment, Adair came to the conclusion that Rossi was a rank novice. When Adair’s father had informed him that he was being sent away, the one hope Adair was able to salvage was that he’d find someone more experienced to tutor him in Venice, so that he might advance more rapidly. Since arriving in the city, however, he’d had no luck, and it seemed Rossi would be no help in this regard. Adair tried to mask his disappointment.