Starling (48 page)

Rose having working elixir. Once they had perfected their formula,
they would undoubtedly want to produce massive quantities. They
would capture or kill whomever they needed to make more. With it,
they would be able to bribe citizens, senators, leaders of the Church.
No one would be able to resist the lure of immortality, would they?
The Order would be omnipotent. Cass had to find a way to stop
them, and quickly.
“Once our shipment arrives, we’ll begin testing blood again,”
Belladonna said. “But as you know, some blood works better than
others.”
“Ah, yes,” Dubois said. “I might be able to help you with that.”
His voice sounded clearer, like he had turned and was heading
toward the doorway.
Cass crept back across the hall to the portego and slipped quickly
into the dancing, hoping that no one had noticed her sneak back into
the room.
Some blood works better than others . . .
She thought of the page of equations she had hidden under her
pillow at Palazzo Dolce. Belladonna was talking about her. Cass’s
heart beat violently in her chest, a bird battering itself against the
bars of a cage. Stepping away from the dancing, she blotted her
clammy skin with one of her gloves as she took slow, deep breaths to
compose herself.
A man dressed in a blue silk tunic with a large hat pulled low
signaled her from across the room. Cass squinted. She felt certain she
had never met him before. He gestured again and she glanced over
her shoulder, but there was no one there. The man clearly thought he
knew her.
Panic thrummed in her chest. What if he worked for Dubois? Or
he recognized her from one of the handbills? According to Narissa,
her face had been posted all over the city last week. Cass turned
away, toward the doorway that led to the stairs. She would leave.
Find a boat, go back to Palazzo Dolce, and explain to the girls later
that she had simply panicked.
But then something about the man struck her as familiar. He had
been rubbing at a spot beneath his right eye. Could it possibly be?
She paused, just as a hand touched the place where her neck met
her shoulder. “Back from the dead,” the man murmured. Then, before she could even utter a single syllable, he spun her around to face
him, took her in his arms, and pressed his lips to hers.
Cass’s brain registered three things all at once: Someone was kissing her. Someone was kissing her in a way that made her knees quiver
and insides turn to liquid. This particular someone smelled like
mint . . . and paint.