The Medusa Amulet

Chapter 34

When David woke up, he didn’t know which was more disorienting-finding himself in a canopied bed in the Marquis di Sant’Angelo’s house… or finding Olivia asleep in his arms.

Their clothing, dry and laundered, was neatly set out for them on a wooden rack, along with several new items-shoes and coats, most notably.

And someone was knocking, again, on the door.

David pulled the sheet up over Olivia’s shoulders, and said, “Come in.”

A maid, carrying a breakfast tray, entered and without even a glance in their direction, left it on a table by the window. Opening the curtains, she revealed a lovely view of the park… and its now-placid boating pond. “Monsieur Sant’Angelo,” she said, before closing the door on her way out, “will see you in the salon when you’re done.”

When the door closed, Olivia opened her eyes. “So this is real?”

David could hardly believe it himself. “I think so.” But Olivia’s naked body, her head nestled against his chest, was definitely real. The bed was big and soft, and their two bodies had made a deep, warm indentation in the mattress. He felt her slender fingers graze his shoulder, his arm… and much as he hated to interrupt, he knew that he had to.

“Can I take a rain check?” he said.

“What is that?”

“It means, hold that thought. I need to find a phone.”

Grabbing his robe off the back of a chair and a cup of coffee from the table, he went out into the hall-he had hardly seen anything of the upstairs the night before-and bumped into the maid again. “Is there a phone?” he asked, and she pointed him into a sitting room filled, as was much of the house, with antique statuary. David felt sure he recognized one bust as being that of Cosimo de’Medici, and another, judging from its skullcap and regalia, as a Renaissance pope.

His first call was to the Hotel Crillon, where Gary had indeed left a message. “Call me, anytime, as soon as you get this.” It was the middle of the night in Chicago now, but David wasn’t about to wait. He called Gary’s cell and Gary picked up on the second ring.

“Sorry if I woke you,” David said, “but your message at the hotel said to call.”

“You’re not checking your cell?”

“I lost it,” David said. “What’s going on?”

He could hear Gary stirring in his bed, gradually waking up. But David was already calculating. How bad could it be if Gary hadn’t said anything yet?

And then he did speak.

“David, you need to come home.”

His heart stopped in his chest. “Why? What’s happened? I thought Sarah was responding so well to that new therapy.”

“Not anymore,” Gary said, his words coming slowly, and with great deliberation. “She had a bad relapse, and they’ve stopped it altogether.”

David waited for word on what they were going to try next… but it didn’t come.

“Sarah’s been back at the hospital,” Gary said, “but she’s been moved.”

“Where?” David asked, dreading the answer.

“The hospice unit,” Gary said, as if he didn’t want to say it any more than David wanted to hear it. “But it’s really not a bad place. They’re making her as comfortable as they can, and Emme was able to come by for a pretty decent visit. Sarah’s got her own room, with a view of a little rock garden with a pond, and the staff has been great.”

David was still waiting for it all to sink in.

“But I’m afraid that Dr. Ross doesn’t think that she’ll be there for very long.”

“How long does he say?” David asked.

They both knew what they were really talking about.

“A few days, at the outside. That’s why you need to get back home as fast as you can. Sarah said she would wait for you-and you know how it is when she makes up her mind to do something,” Gary said, starting to break down. “But this is just too much for her-she’s not going to be able to hold on much longer.”

When they hung up, David sat on the sofa, staring blankly at another bust, this one in the center of the mantel. It was a woman with a haughty expression, her face turned to one side and a mane of luxuriant curls falling onto her bare shoulders.

His immediate thought was to call the airport right away and book the first flight back to the States. With luck, he could be back in Chicago in eight or nine hours.

But to do what? Kiss his dying sister good-bye? To tell her that he had failed in his mission to save her-and right when the answer was nearly in his grasp? If the journey he had been on had taught him anything, it was that the world was a far stranger place than he had ever imagined. His eyes strayed again to the bust on the mantel, and for some reason, even now it captured his attention. He found himself rising from the sofa to inspect it more closely.

And that was when it struck him, just as it had when he’d come across the sketch of Athena in the pages of The Key to Life Eternal. There was a real-life model for this antique bust, and he had met her.

“I carved that myself,” came a voice from the doorway. It was Sant’Angelo, in a silk smoking jacket worn over a pair of dark slacks and a crisp white shirt with billowing sleeves. “Ascanio bought the marble from Michelangelo himself.” He came into the room, studying David for his reaction. “Does she remind you of someone?”

“She does.”

“She should. I first met her at the court of the French king, and she was my muse from that day on. Her name was Caterina.” He touched the stone. “What does she call herself now?”

“Kathryn.” What was the use of concealment any longer?

Sant’Angelo, the tip of his cane grazing the floor, nodded. “It’s just like her to have kept her name like that all these years. She was always stubborn.”

“And you?” David said, hardly believing that he had entered into this conversation at all. Could he actually be speaking to his boyhood idol, the legendary Benvenuto Cellini? “Weren’t you famously hard-headed, too?”

The marquis tipped his head to one side in agreement. “We were alike in that. I’m no more likely to give up the name Sant’Angelo. It’s the prison from which I was reborn, and I will never forget, or deny, that.” Taking a seat in a chintz-covered armchair, he waved at David to sit opposite. “May I say what a relief it is, after all these years, to have encountered someone who so readily… understands.”

David did not reply. He would not have known what words to use. But he noticed that Olivia, still in her robe, was standing silently in the doorway. How long had she been there? he wondered. What had she overheard? The marquis glanced her way, and said, “You may as well join us.”

She sat beside David and reached out to clutch his hand.

“May I assume that there are no secrets here?” the marquis asked.

“You may,” she answered, and David nodded his confirmation. Sant’Angelo’s shoulders relaxed and he settled more deeply into the chair.

“That call you just made-it was to your sister?” Sant’Angelo remarked to David, as if resuming a perfectly ordinary conversation.

“Her husband,” David answered.

“And?”

“She has only a day or two left.”

“Oh, David,” Olivia lamented, and squeezed his hand in sympathy. “I am so sorry. You must go to her, right away.”

Sant’Angelo nodded thoughtfully, then lifted his head and said, “You could do that. By all means. You could return to her as quickly as you can, only to stand at her bedside helplessly and watch her succumb to the inevitable.” He let that dreadful option sink in for a few seconds, before gripping the head of his cane with both hands, and saying, “Or you could fight!”

The words hung suspended in the air. David knew what a sensible librarian at a well-respected institution like the Newberry would do.

And he knew what the fearsome Cellini would have done. The choice was as clear as day, and he made it.

Before he could even speak, he noted his host’s lips curving into a subtle smile of victory. “I knew you had it in you,” the artisan declared, his dark eyes flashing. “And now, it’s time you knew the rest,” he said, removing a silver garland from the pocket of his smoking jacket.