Arcadia Awakens (51 page)

BOOK: Arcadia Awakens

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The diving lessons had been not just preparation, but also a welcome distraction from the visits of the presidents and business managers of the Alcantara companies, who came to take a suspicious look at the
piccola ragazza
, and on whom her fortunes would now depend. She had made an appointment with the diving instructor for as early as possible every morning.

Her equipment was lying on deck, not far from a gap in the rail. She checked the instructions on the oxygen cylinders again. One of the crew came over and was helping her to get the cylinders over her shoulders when the captain suddenly called, “We have a visitor. Another craft to port. She’s making straight for us.”

She wasn’t about to waste time getting the heavy oxygen cylinders and her flippers off again. Impatiently, she waddled over to the opposite rail in them. Suddenly the sun seemed even warmer.

“I know that ship,” she said.

The sailor beside her shouted up to the captain, “She says she knows the ship.”

“She’s the
Gaia
.”

“She’s the
Gaia
,” the man shouted.

Rosa gave him a look that silenced him.

The snow-white Carnevare yacht came racing up on a crest of foaming sea spray. The engines of both vessels cut out when they were thirty feet apart. Both of them were at the precise spot whose coordinates Ruggero Dallamano had marked on his charts. The statue of the Panthera and the Lamia ought to be standing on the seafloor a hundred and twenty feet below them.

There was no one in sight on the deck of the
Gaia
, and her mirrored windows allowed no view of anyone inside the cabin.

Then, unexpectedly, the sound of trumpet fanfares came over the yacht’s loudspeakers. Rosa recognized the introductory accompaniment at once. The next moment a song was ringing out over the water, clear as glass. A song she knew very well. “My Death.”

Soon the volume was turned down and Alessandro appeared on the lower deck of the yacht in a dark blue diving suit, with oxygen cylinders on his back, his diving mask pushed up on his forehead. He held something that glittered metallically in one hand.

“He has a gun!” shouted the man beside Rosa.

“No,” she placidly contradicted him, “that’s not a gun.”

Alessandro grinned, and with his forefinger he traced a figure 3 in the air. The others onboard must have thought he’d lost his mind, but Rosa smiled.

She stepped clumsily over to the deck chair. Her iPod was lying beside it. She took the cable out of the earphones and went back to the rail with it. Sunlight shone on the silvery case. As it did on the device in Alessandro’s hand.

“‘My Death’ was my mother’s favorite song,” he called. “She used to listen to just that one song. After her death I played it over and over again myself. But then, on that plane—I thought it was time to put an end to it. Or at least try to.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Didn’t work too well.”

“You switched them. While I was asleep.”

“You knew?”

“I’ve known for quite a while. When I was in your mother’s villa that first time … the song felt like a part of it.” Like Gaia’s ghost.

He raised the player in his hand and let the sun sparkle on it. “This is yours. I thought I’d bring it back to you. Maybe you can use it.”

“Underwater?”

“Who knows?”

She weighed up the flat device in her own hand and swung back her arm.

Two silver arcs cut through the air above the sea. The crew exchanged baffled glances.

The iPods collided in midair at the highest point of their trajectory and fell into the sea.

Alessandro sighed. Rosa laughed. They looked at each other, grinning.

“Let’s go after them!” she called over to him.

And they both dove into the deep blue sea at the same time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KAI MEYER is one of Germany’s most successful authors, with millions of books sold worldwide, and his novels have been translated into thirty languages. The British edition of
THE FLOWING QUEEN
(published in the U.S. as
THE WATER MIRROR
) won the 2007 Marsh Award for Best Children’s Book in Translation and his historical novel
THE VOW
was turned into a movie by celebrated German director Dominik Graf. Kai lives in Germany. You can visit him online at www.kaimeyer.com.

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CREDITS

Cover design by Sarah Hoy

COPYRIGHT

The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut, which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Arcadia Awakens
Copyright © 2009 by Kai Meyer
Translation copyright © 2012 by HarperCollins Publishers
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meyer, Kai.
[Arkadien erwacht. English.]
Arcadia awakens / Kai Meyer ; translated from the German by Anthea Bell. — 1st U. S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When seventeen-year-old Rosa Alcantara travels from her native Brooklyn to her ancestral home in Sicily, she falls head over heels for Alessandro Carnevare, whose family is the sworn enemy of hers, and must confront both of their families’ criminal—and paranormal—pasts.
ISBN 978-0-06-200606-6 (tr. bdg.)
EPub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN 9780062092960
[1. Organized crime—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. Shape-shifting—Fiction. 4. Vendetta—Fiction. 5. Sicily (Italy)—Fiction.] I. Bell, Anthea. II. Title.
PZ7.M57171113Arc 2012
2011024829
[Fic]—dc23
12 13 14 15 16 LP / RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First U.S. Edition, 2012
Originally published in Germany in 2009 by Carlsen Verlag.