Arcadia Burns (25 page)

Not now!

Something touched the other side of the curtain, very slightly. Tapped it and withdrew again. The touch was repeated a little farther to the left. The leopard’s gently lashing tail. Its tip brushed the velvet as the animal moved past her hiding place.

Her T-shirt was too large for her; she felt as if she were simply passing through it, like the hero in
The Incredible Shrinking Man
. She was the shrinking woman, the snake girl, and in a couple of seconds she would be cat food.

Somewhere in the house, glass broke.

She heard the distant sound of Hundinga howling. The echoes resounded in the corridors and stairwells.

The leopard hissed. Suddenly she heard his paws slapping down on the flagstones several times as he moved into a swift run. Then there was silence.

Rosa’s back slid down the door until she was crouching, with her knees pushing the curtain outward. There was nothing she could do about it. Her heart sank, and for a moment she didn’t know whether she was in human or snake form. The heavy curtain was pressing in on her, keeping her from breathing. Energetically, she thrust it aside and looked out at the corridor.

The leopard had disappeared. She thought he had run left. The study was in the opposite direction.

She struggled to her feet and went that way.

T
HE HALL LEADING TO
the study stretched ahead of her like the inside of an accordion, getting longer and longer—an optical illusion. It was all in Rosa’s head. In her crazy, bewildered brain.

Pictures in black frames with gold leaf flaking off them hung on the walls. Tables and lamps lined the corridor, along with a suit of armor too small for a man. This palazzo had always been a house full of women, often at odds with one another.

Rosa was sick and tired of hiding. She stepped out into the middle of the corridor and walked toward the open archway leading to the study.

She saw the desk in front of the glazed door to the balcony. Saw the high back of the chair at the desk—it was empty. Saw herself as a faint reflection in the glass of the window, an outline emerging from the gloom of the corridor, the ghost of her belligerent forebears, or just a girl who had come to break with the past.

The whole room opened up before her, big enough to be a ballroom. Thirty feet of polished wooden parquet flooring lay between the archway and the desk. The chandelier was not switched on, but several lamps along the walls gave light.

“Rosa!”

Iole wore only a white nightshirt that came down to her knees. She was sitting on a leather sofa beside the west wall of the study, with her wrists bound. She tried to jump up, but a slender hand grabbed her arm and dragged her back down onto the cushions. Valerie was holding a silver pistol in her hand, pressing the muzzle against Iole’s temple.

The corners of Rosa’s mouth twitched. It was almost a smile.

“Your hardcore is my mainstream,” she said softly—the wording on the T-shirt that Valerie had been wearing when they’d first met in Brooklyn. She didn’t know why that popped into her mind just now. Or why she suddenly laughed, a loud laugh intended to wound. The words were in such absurd contrast to the emaciated, drug-addicted girl with the gun that she couldn’t help herself. She was laughing at Valerie’s betrayal, her sorrow, her naive, obsessive, fatal love for Michele Carnevare. She laughed until it turned to a choking cough, and the look in Iole’s wide eyes showed more concern for Rosa than anxiety for her own fate.

“Finished?” inquired Valerie. “Then go over to the desk and pick up what’s lying there. Use it.”

Rosa’s eyes followed her gesture. A syringe ready for injection lay under the lamp on the desktop. The contents shimmered yellow in the sharply outlined circle of light.

Rosa didn’t move from the spot. She stood in the middle of the room, the archway behind her, the huge oak desk in front of her, and to her right, fifteen feet away, the sofa with the two girls sitting on it.

“The Hundinga are in the house,” she said, not sure whether Valerie knew what that meant.

But Val was in league with Michele now. “They want you,” she said. “You and your boyfriend. They’re not here on my account, or Michele’s.”

“Is that what he said? Did he tell you they won’t hurt you when they come up here? Or do you think they won’t mind at all that there are a few of them lying out by the pool—and not to sunbathe?”

Valerie slowly shook her head. “I’m the Suicide Queen, Rosa. I’m not afraid.” The gravity in her voice was shattering. Almost enough to make Rosa feel sorry for her. Almost.

“There’s no need to point that thing at Iole,” said Rosa. “She hasn’t done anything to you.”

“I
hadn’t done anything
to your friend Trevini, either, but all the same he wasn’t particularly nice to me.”

“I just got back from seeing Trevini. He won’t be hurting anyone again.”

“And how long did it take you to decide to let me go? Two days? Three? Why not right away, Rosa?” Valerie’s voice was sharper now. “What was so hard about telling him to let me go?”

Rosa held her gaze, but still didn’t move. “Because you deserved it, Val. Every damn minute in Trevini’s dungeon cell. Because you stabbed me in the back not just once, there in New York, but again here. What do you expect? You think that if you shoot Iole everything will get better? That you’ll be better off yourself?”

“I’m just fine. Michele is here. Everything will be all right.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

Valerie’s eyes flashed. The pistol stayed where it was against Iole’s head. “We know so much about each other, Rosa. All kinds of embarrassing little secrets. Stuff you say in the club at night when you’re drunk. Or outside waiting in line to get in. We were good friends once.”

“We were never real friends,” Rosa contradicted her. “You didn’t want a friend; you wanted someone who’d look up to you. Admire you.”

“Well—and didn’t you admire me?” Valerie laughed a soft, mirthless laugh. “Why do insecure, vulnerable girls like you always need someone to cling to? Someone to keep showing them what they aren’t and never will be?”

“Because they still hope to change. To learn how to change. And not go crawling someday to an asshole like Michele Carnevare, begging him to pat them on the head and act as if they meant something to him.”

“Michele loves me!” Valerie snapped.

“Nobody loves you, Val. Nobody ever did. That’s your problem, right? That was it even with the Suicide Queens. And now you’re trying to buy his love by killing Iole? Great plan!”

Iole frowned. “Pretty damn stupid, if you ask me.”

Val pushed the gun hard against her skull. “Shut up! This has nothing to do with you!”

“It’s
my
head,” said Iole.

“Leave her alone,” Rosa said again. “This is between you and me. Why are you dragging her into it?”

“And suppose I do let her go? You’ll turn into a snake, and I’ll be dead before I can fire this gun.”

“No one has to die, Val.”

But Valerie wasn’t buying it. “Take that stuff off the desk and inject it into yourself.”

“And then what?”

“Michele will be back any minute. You’ll stay in human form if you inject the serum. That’s what he wants.”

“And what do
you
want?”

“I want you to get on with it and do as I say!”

Rosa knew she’d be dead if Michele got his claws into her in her human form. Her chances as a snake weren’t much better, but if she didn’t change, Michele would tear her to pieces before Alessandro’s eyes.

That was assuming that Alessandro was nearby.

Valerie cursed because Rosa still didn’t move. Then she fired the pistol.

The shot echoed deafeningly back from the paneling. It must have been audible all over the palazzo. Somewhere in the endless corridor, Michele would now be making his way straight back to the study.

Valerie had lowered the gun. The bullet hadn’t been for Iole’s head. For a moment Rosa thought it had shattered Iole’s knee.

The girl was white as a sheet, her eyes reddened, but she was still sitting there, rigid with fright. Smoke, or maybe dust as well, was billowing out of a bullet hole in the sofa right next to her leg.

“The syringe!” Valerie demanded again.

Rosa went over to the desk. She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder and through the archway. If she were to see the huge leopard racing toward her out of the dim light in the corridor, it would only paralyze her.

She put out her hand and moved the syringe out of the circle of light cast by the lamp on the desk. The serum shone gold inside it.

“Hurry up,” said Valerie.

Rosa reached out her left arm. “You have more experience with this kind of thing than me. Maybe you’d better help me.”

“Maybe, because I’m also dumb as a post. You can do it yourself.”

Iole let out a cry of pain as Valerie jammed the pistol into her ribs.

Rosa put the syringe to her arm, took a deep breath, and thrust it in. It hurt ten times more than at the doctor’s.

“All of it,” Valerie ordered. “Down to the very last drop.”

The serum was streaming into Rosa’s arm. She knew that doctors usually injected directly into a vein. Although she could see her own veins clearly beneath her fair skin, she had deliberately aimed to one side. If she injected the serum under her skin instead of into her bloodstream, it might be longer before it took effect. A swelling was already forming around the place where the needle had gone in because the fluid wasn’t dispersing quickly enough.

Still, she emptied the entire contents into her arm, tore it out again and flung it over to Valerie on the sofa. Valerie jumped, then looked at the empty syringe, and nodded. “Okay,” she
said. “Michele will be here soon.”

Rosa put her hand over the swelling and pretended to be massaging the place. Whether she was really managing to delay the effect she didn’t know, or how long it would be for. She had to shift shape as quickly as possible.

But the pistol was still aimed at Iole. Valerie seemed capable of anything to prove her love to Michele.

“And what about Mattia?” asked Rosa. “Was that all a show? Don’t you care about his death?” She tried to read the meaning of the slight tremor in Valerie’s features. “Or that it was Michele who killed him?”

“That’s a lie!” cried Val. “Michele never touched him. Mattia is dead because Alessandro had him murdered. Like all the rest of them.”

“The moment Michele opens his mouth he tells lies.”

A big cat roared somewhere close.

Valerie smiled maliciously. “Tell him that to his face.”

Iole was shifting back and forth on the sofa. “My back itches.”

The roar came again.

The swelling was going down beneath Rosa’s hand. The serum was dispersing faster than she had expected.

Another roar, but it sounded different. As if it didn’t come from the same big cat, but from another.

At the same moment, several Hundinga howled. Valerie jumped up, looking anxious, and hauled Iole to her feet.

A muted cracking sound was heard. Wood breaking, very far away. Maybe a door being forced open. At the other end of
the house, probably two stories down on the first floor.

“Can you smell that?” Iole’s voice was almost drowned out by animal roars, which were louder now. “Something’s burning.”

For a moment Rosa forgot Valerie and the pistol. “They’re trying to smoke us out. They’ve started a fire.”

An expression of satisfaction came over Valerie’s face. “Looks like your fairy-tale castle will go up in flames. What a shame.”

Rosa could have told her how little she cared about that. How she had toyed with the idea of burning the place down herself. And that she had enough money to buy a new property somewhere else—not to mention all the apartment buildings owned by the Alcantaras.

At the same time, she realized that she did mind what happened to the house. These walls were part of her inheritance. She had grown fond of this cold, dark, damp palazzo, she suddenly realized, and she wondered how that had happened. Had she become more of an Alcantara than she thought?

You have so much of your grandmother in you
, Trevini had said.
It’s you here in front of me, but Costanza looks out of your eyes
.

“Stay where you are!”

Valerie’s voice made her spin around. Without knowing it, Rosa had taken several steps toward the balcony. She had to see exactly where the building was on fire.

“You won’t shoot again,” she said furiously.

Iole anxiously bowed her head. “Maybe she will, though.”

“You bet your life I will,” said Valerie.

Rosa’s hand still lay on the place where the needle had gone in. She tried to concentrate on shifting. But the serum was in her blood by now. She’d missed her chance.

From her standing position, she ran toward Valerie.

Valerie tore the pistol away from her hostage, aimed in Rosa’s direction, and pulled the trigger. Whether on purpose or by accident, the bullet hit the ground right in front of Rosa, tearing up part of the wooden flooring.

“Don’t move!” shouted Valerie.

Rosa stopped.

“One more step and you’re both dead.” There was about fifteen feet between them. Not much. But enough to give Valerie the chance to fire again.

“Michele won’t come now,” Rosa warned her. “He and Alessandro…they’re fighting. Damn it, Val, you can hear them, too!”

“Desperation doesn’t suit you.”

“Are you really that dumb? He’s been using you! And now he has what he wanted. He and Alessandro met somewhere in the house. And the Hundinga have set fire to the whole place under our feet. Are you planning to wait until it’s too late to get out of here? Do you really hate me so much that you’d rather burn to death with me than stay alive?”

“I’m not going anywhere without Michele.”

“Then you’ll have to go to him. Even Michele isn’t crazy enough to run up to the third floor of a burning building just to…” She hesitated. “Just because he promised to.”

A vague gleam came into Valerie’s eyes.

At that moment Iole dropped to the ground, collapsing as if she had fainted. Except that she was fully conscious. And once again she turned out to be smarter than anyone would have expected.

For a moment Valerie’s attention was distracted. She couldn’t make up her mind whether to grab hold of Iole again, shoot her, or simply ignore her.

Rosa lunged forward.

The muzzle of the pistol swung in her direction again.

Iole kicked Valerie in the backs of her knees with all her might. Valerie cried out and lost her balance, pulling the trigger of the gun, but the bullet missed Rosa by several feet and hit the ceiling. Stucco exploded in a white cloud.

Furious, and helpless in her rage, Valerie spent a fraction of a second too long wondering whether to fire at Rosa or at Iole.

At the same moment, Rosa was rushing at her. They were both roaring like the big cats and the Hundinga down in the house. Iole rolled over onto her side, was kicked in the stomach, and doubled up in pain. Rosa dropped on top of Valerie, who felt as thin as a pile of twigs below her. Screeching, the weakened Valerie fought back, hitting and kicking and scratching like a madwoman. Rosa had to protect her eyes, but at the same time she rammed one knee into Valerie’s lower body; then she rolled aside, taking Valerie with her, and got on top of her again.

By now the pistol had dropped from Valerie’s fingers. Rosa didn’t know where it had fallen, and she had no time to look
around. She had her work cut out for her, avoiding Val’s fingers and fists and at the same time trying to get control of her and force her to the floor with her knees and hands.