The Chamber of Ten

XVII

GEENA DESPERATELY wanted to go to him. I’ll guide you in, Nico had whispered into her mind, and every part of her wanted to surrender to that guidance. In his thoughts she felt pain and sorrow, and she wished that she could be in his arms, taking and giving the comfort their intimacy would provide.

If they were very lucky, and her courage did not fail her, perhaps they would know that comfort again. But now was not the time. Enemies still lurked all around them, working in shadows to wreak havoc upon their lives. But even that was selfish thinking; more hung in the balance than just the lives of two lovers. Plague and ancient hatreds had come to Venice on wings of greed.

All of it needed to be expunged and, somehow, the fates had conspired to make Geena Hodge the only one able to do that. If she acted now, and swiftly, and as mercilessly as her enemies.

She felt Nico’s psychic touch, the flutter of his thoughts caressing hers, and she wanted to melt into him. She chose ice instead, freezing emotion out in order to preserve it.

Geena? Nico whispered in her mind.

I’m here, but I can’t come to you. They set me free but only to find you. The contagion is in Foscari and Aretino, just as it was in Caravello. And they have more, secreted away in chambers even Volpe doesn’t know about. If they can’t have Venice, no one will. If we don’t do as they demand, they’ll scour the place of life and start over.

She felt his thoughts recoil.

They’ve given us a choice, she continued. I bring them Volpe by dawn or everyone in the city dies. So you have to come to me, Nico. You and Volpe have to meet me in the Chamber of Ten an hour before dawn.

But Volpe—

He loves this city. He’ll come, and he’ll try to kill them. But if all three of them are dead, the plague in those chambers will be released, so he’s got to come up with some other way to stop them.

Geena felt his confusion. But what are you going to do between now and then? he asked.

Prepare, she replied. Whatever you do, don’t trust him. When this is over—

She did not finish the thought, but she knew that Nico would feel it and understand her fear. Perhaps Volpe would sense it as well, but perhaps not. She was not sure how much of their communication he could understand, if it had to be concrete thoughts or if just feelings were enough. But Nico would know, he would feel her suspicion and mistrust of Volpe. The magician had promised to leave them alone, to depart Nico’s body when all of this was over, but Geena no longer believed him, if she ever had. His hubris had made him preserve his heart and his spirit for centuries so that he could remain the Oracle of Venice long past the time someone else ought to have inherited the role. He saw himself as the only one capable of protecting his city, and would not surrender that responsibility for anything.

To be the Oracle, he needed a body.

I’ll be all right, Nico thought, the words a salve to her troubled soul. But words were not enough.

Geena could not risk letting him see more of what was in her mind. I’ll see you an hour before dawn. Until then, don’t search for me. Don’t reach out. We’ll make it through this, honey, and we’ll be together again, just the two of us.

She felt his concern and his love and his fear for her, but just before the connection between them was severed, what Geena felt more than anything was his trust, and that gave her the strength to go on.

Nico sagged back against the stone wall of the catacombs beneath the Volpe family crypt, feeling the absence of Geena in his mind like the urgent nothingness of a missing limb. The shadows were fluttering moths in the dim, jittery candlelight. More than anything, the place felt dry, all of the moisture drawn from the bones of the dead long ago.

As though stepping out from the dark recesses of his mind, Volpe slunk forward. What do you suppose she’s up to?

“You were listening in,” Nico said. “You know as much as I do.”

Or did he? He knew that Volpe had heard the thoughts he and Geena had exchanged, but how much more had he been able to understand?

You are her first priority—

“I was. But if your old friends are telling the truth—”

Caravello carried the plague in his blood, under his control, like a weapon. We must assume they are telling the truth.

Nico winced, both from the lingering ache of his healed-over wound and from the strange glee he felt coming from Volpe.

“You’re happy about this?”

We were going to have to face the two prodigals regardless, but I could not have chosen a better location. It was the locus of my power and influence for all these many years.

“But they must know that, and they still plan to attack you there.”

They want access to the well.

Nico froze. “The well? You mean where Akylis’ tomb is buried?”

The Old Magician’s remains were never buried, Volpe said, the tone—even in Nico’s mind—like that of an adult correcting an errant child. The well was dug, the dolmen erected around the corpse, and then the well was capped. There is no awareness there, nothing lingering of Akylis’ mind. But as his body liquefied, the magic and evil remained. All that power, down there at the bottom of the well. Though it had been capped, when I built the Chamber of Ten, I sealed it with magic of my own and a new stone cap.

An image flashed across Nico’s mind and he realized he had seen the well cap. He had been too distracted when they had first entered the Chamber, too absorbed with the power emanating from the urn where Volpe had preserved his heart. But when he and Geena and the rest of the team had watched the footage Sabrina had shot, he had seen the granite disk set into the floor of the Chamber.

“Why do they need to open it?” Nico asked. “You said they’re already leaching Akylis’ power.”

Don’t you see? They want to bathe in it, to absorb it all at once. It would probably kill them, but I can’t risk the possibility that it won’t, never mind the potential that Akylis’ evil, unleashed from the well, could taint the hearts and spirits of all of the people of Venice. I can’t allow it.

“But we’re still going to meet them there?”

Are you suggesting we ignore this summons? That we leave your woman and all of the people of my city to die?

“Of course not! But it’s obvious they’re not afraid of you.”

They will be. They’ll never unseal the well. I won’t allow it. Besides, they don’t know what awaits them in the Chamber of Ten.

“And what’s that?”

The past.

Nico felt Volpe shifting inside of him and he felt himself expanding the way he did when he drew a deep breath, lungs filling with air. But this wasn’t air—the empty spaces in his body and mind were being filled up with the spirit of Zanco Volpe. A flash of panic sparked inside of him and he thought of the impressions he had gotten from Geena, her certainty that Volpe intended to betray him and take over his body …

“What are you doing?” Nico asked.

Making myself comfortable, Volpe replied. We will have to work together as never before if we are to survive to see the dawn.

“We?” Had Volpe not heard his thoughts and doubts?

How could I not know of your suspicions? I would fear the same if our situations were reversed.

“All right. So how do I know I can trust you?”

You have no choice.

Nico felt a chill that had nothing to do with the bones around him. Or perhaps it did … were these not the remains of generations of those foolish enough to make enemies of the Volpe clan?

We are in swift waters now, Nico, and we have little influence over where they will finally cast us ashore. The magician’s presence and even his inner voice diminished. We have several hours before we must depart for this rendezvous and the best use of that time for both of us is to rest and heal. Sleep now. Soon you and your love will be reunited.

Even as Volpe’s magic clouded his mind and dragged him down into a healing slumber, his suspicions were at work.

“For how long?” he whispered.

But the magician’s only reply was oblivion.

Geena stood again in the courtyard of the church of San Rocco, paranoia creeping like spiders along her arms and up the back of her neck. The taverna where she and Volpe had burned the corpse of the Doge Caravello remained dark and undisturbed.

The façade of the church had an appealing plainness to it, and its windows were just as dark as the shops. It seemed to be waiting for her, offering a sanctuary she only wished she could claim.

The shops were dark, only a rare light visible in the windows of the apartments above them. Surely no one would be awake now, and yet she could not dispel the fear that even now she was observed. It was not the feeling that prickled her skin, not the certainty she had felt when Caravello had been stalking her.

She took a deep breath and began walking again, not across the courtyard—that would have been foolish—but retracing the same roundabout route that she and Volpe had used to depart the taverna earlier in the day. If things went as she hoped, being observed approaching the church would not be a problem. But if she had to improvise, if there was damage done, she did not want anyone to be able to say that they saw her there.

Is this my life now? I’m a criminal?

The thought upset her, but only for a moment. The old rules no longer applied—if they ever really had.

Geena worked her way around to the side of the church. Even the moonlight did not reach into that narrow alley between buildings. At the back of the building, another structure was attached. An arched doorway recessed into the stone marked the entrance to the rectory. She raised her fist and hammered on the door to the priest’s residence.

The noise echoed off the walls, amplified in that enclosed space, and she left off seconds after she began, waiting to see if her pounding would bring anyone to the door. Again she pounded on the door and this time she kept it up, hammering away for ten or twenty seconds, pausing, then starting up again. The second time she paused she heard the scrape of metal on metal from inside, followed by the clank of a deadbolt being thrown back.

She froze, swallowing hard, as the heavy wooden door swung inward and a thin, white-haired priest peered out at her.

“What are you doing, coming here at this hour? Who are you?” the priest demanded, anger crackling in his imperious tone.

But Geena would not be intimidated.

“Do you believe in magic, Father?” she asked.

The priest practically sneered, about to slam the door in her face.

“Please, Father. The whole city is in danger,” she said, and when he hesitated she forged ahead. “Someone broke into the church earlier today. You won’t have noticed yet, but I swear to you, you’ve been vandalized. Something’s been hidden here, and if you don’t let me in, people are going to die.”

Uncertainty rippled across his face. “Come in, then, and we’ll call the police together.”

Geena did not move. “There’s nothing they can do. Look in my eyes, Father, and decide what you see. But if you don’t help me, when the sun comes up tomorrow every man, woman, and child in Venice will begin to cough and choke and bleed, and they’ll die in the thousands. Maybe I asked you the wrong question. Maybe ‘magic’ is too fanciful a word for you. So tell me, Father, do you believe in evil?”

The confusion in his eyes gave her hope. He studied her, searching her face for some fragment of truth, and his anger gave way to fear and concern.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Dr. Geena Hodge. I’m an archaeologist in the employ of Ca’Foscari University.”

“And does your employer know what you’re up to tonight, in the small hours of the morning?”

She shook her head. “No one knows.”

The priest stared a moment, eyes narrowed, and then he stepped back, swinging the door wide.

“Come in, Dr. Hodge. It seems you have little time. We’d best not keep evil waiting.”

He let her in and closed the door behind her, sliding the deadbolt. A small statue of the Virgin Mary stood upon a pedestal against the wall opposite the door, but otherwise the entryway was as utilitarian as the exterior of the building. In the dim gray light, which filtered down to them from a room farther along the hall, she studied the face of the priest as he turned to her. His eyes were alight with interest instead of anger now, and he seemed years younger than he had when he’d first opened the door.

“Come along,” he said, and led her toward a door she realized must lead from the rectory into the church.

Geena followed him through the door into a back room of the church, which was lined with wooden cabinets. A big desk sat in one corner, and she was surprised by the clutter—microphone and music stands, two chairs in need of repair, stacks of old missals, the priest’s vestments hanging in an open closet. This disarray humanized him, and that troubled her. She wanted faith and strength, and a certain mysticism.

He gestured to a chair, as if they had all the time in the world. Geena glanced at a clock on the wall—1:17 a.m.

“Go on,” the priest said. “Tell me your story. Dawn is a long way off yet.”

Geena shook her head. “I’m sorry, Father—”

“Father Alberto.”

“I can’t afford for you to simply humor me.” She glanced around the room. “If you let me show you where the vandalism took place, you’ll see soon enough that there are powers at work here you’ve yet to consider.”

The old priest hesitated, and then sighed.

“Lead the way.”

“Wait,” she said. “Do you have a lantern or a candle or something?”

He gave her an odd look, then walked over to open one of the cabinets. Reaching in, he produced a heavy-duty flashlight.

“I know you must spend a lot of time living in the past, Dr. Hodge, but it’s the 21st century.”

“So it is,” Geena said sheepishly as he handed it to her. “I’ve been losing track lately.”

Father Alberto led her out into the vast hall of the church and past the altar. From there, Geena saw the door to the small royal chapel, and she started toward it. The priest turned on a single light switch, a few bulbs providing only wan illumination in the vastness of the church. Her own footfalls seemed too loud on the flagstones as they passed the Tintoretto paintings for which the church’s nave was famous, and then she led him through the door into the royal chapel.

Although she knew the damage had been done, it still took her a few seconds of concentration, staring at the bookshelf under the stairs, before she could see through the spell of concealment that Volpe had cast. The spell could not withstand the scrutiny of someone who expected something other than the illusion. Books had been stacked and scattered on the floor near the wreckage of what had once been an ornate bookshelf. Broken boards leaned against the stone wall.

“How did I not see this before?” the priest asked.

Geena turned and looked at him in surprise. “You can see it now?”

“What do you mean? Of course I can see it.”

Now that she had drawn his attention to it, the spell of concealment could not hide the vandalism from the priest. She narrowed her eyes, stepping right up to the ruined bookshelf.

“Is there a hole in the wall back there?” Father Alberto asked. “It’s too dark for me to make out, but … there is, isn’t there?”

“There is,” she agreed, reaching out to touch the rough, broken edge of the stones that had been pulled out of the wall.

Inside of that opening, a small door hung partially open, and she pushed it inward.

“I’ll be damned,” the old priest muttered.

Geena could not help smiling at him. “I certainly hope not, Father,” she said, and then she clambered through the opening. “Now I think it’s your turn to follow me.”

She clicked on the flashlight and they descended together into a small square chamber Geena had seen before only through the dreamlike lens provided by Nico’s touch. The braziers in the corners were dark and cold and the room’s shadows seemed to resist being dispelled by the flashlight’s wide beam, but soon enough she located bloody sigils inscribed upon the flagstone floor and a cloth bag that she recognized as belonging to Nico.

Father Alberto could not tear his gaze from the markings on the floor, even when she set the flashlight down and knelt to open the bag.

“The Devil’s work,” he said.

“Not the Devil, but a devil, most certainly.”

Geena shone the light into the bag. She thought about how much to reveal to the priest, but she knew that if she wanted his help she would need to shock him. So she took out the ivory seal once used on the city’s official documents and set it on the floor. Then she withdrew the dry and dessicated hand of a dead man and set that down as well.

Father Alberto whispered a blessing as he crossed himself.

“Explain this to me, Dr. Hodge. What it means and how you knew it was here.”

“It will have to be quick, Father.”

“All the better,” he said.

She sat back on the flagstones, the flashlight in her hands, and the tale spilled from her like a ghost story told late at night at summer camp. The flashlight must have contributed to that impression for her, but there was more to it than that. Those stories always felt to her both real and unreal at the same time, and so did the turns her life had taken these past days.

When she had finished, she did not wait for him to reply, afraid that in spite of the evidence she had just shown him and his belief in powers beyond the understanding of humanity, he would think that she had somehow staged it all. Before he could say a word, she reached into the bag again and withdrew the grimoire that Volpe had so coveted. He had left it here for safekeeping, hidden behind a glamour until he could retrieve it, but he had not counted on her having seen it all.

Seen the book. Seen the ritual.

The cover felt unnaturally warm and damp under her touch and the book weighed more than it seemed it should.

“This is Le Livre de l’Inconnu—The Book of the Nameless—and though its name is French, I’ve seen for myself that the incantations and other writings inside are not in that language, or at least not all of them are. It contains a great many impossible things that are nevertheless true.”

She held the book in her palm and let it fall open where it would. Geena had seen it with textbooks and cookbooks and even well-read hardcover novels … after a certain amount of use, a book will fall open to its most frequently used pages. But when Le Livre de l’Inconnu spread its pages, she did not recognize the words and symbols there.

Geena closed her eyes. Time was wasting. Fortune had been with her thus far tonight and she had thought her luck would continue. She opened her eyes and began to turn the pages, but nothing looked familiar. How far had he been into the book? She tried to remember and realized that the ritual Volpe had used had been from little more than a third of the way through its thickness. She paged backward in the book, training the flashlight beam on the hideous things uncovered there—images and words she only half understood and did not want fully revealed to her.

Father Alberto had come around behind her now, reading over her shoulder, and several times she heard him mutter in revulsion or horror.

“This is real?” he whispered at one point. “You’re certain?”

“Are you asking about the authenticity of the book or the magic in it?”

“Both, I suppose.”

Geena glanced over her shoulder at him. “I’m sorry, Father. But both are very real.”

He reached into his pants pocket and withdrew a rosary, which he wrapped around his fingers and then brought up to his lips, kissing the beads once before clutching them against his chest.

And then she found the pages.

“Here,” she said, pointing. “Most of this looks like an antiquated Latin to me—”

“You can’t read Latin? I thought you were an archaeologist.”

“I can make out some of it, but only some. I’m not a linguist, and the one I’d normally bring onto a project—”

“All right, all right,” Father Alberto said, waving her argument away. “You’re right. It’s an archaic Latin … or some of it is. Part of it is in Greek.”

She caught her breath. “Then you can read it?”

“I can translate it, if that’s what you’re asking. I can tell you what it says.”

Geena shook her head, staring down at the pages.

“No. I don’t care what it says. I don’t want you to translate it.” She looked up at the old priest. “It’s an incantation, Father. I want you to teach me how to speak the words.”

In the hour before dawn, the night was blue.

Nico wanted to run through St. Mark’s Square beneath the indigo sky, but Volpe held him back as if he were on a leash. He slipped through the deeper shadows of the arcade at the western end of the square and then in the lee of the buildings on the south side. Volpe had taken control for a minute, just long enough to cast a spell that gathered the darkness around him like a cloak, and then retreated.

The magician wanted to conserve his strength. There were attacks and betrayals to come, and they both knew it.

The humid air clung to him along with the dark. No breeze stirred the errant bits of rubbish strewn around the square. The basilica loomed against the sky, the stars fading with the oncoming dawn, and Nico’s heart pounded fiercely in his chest as though trying to escape the cage of his bones and flesh. He longed to reach out with his mind and touch Geena’s thoughts, but she had warned him against doing so.

The temptation to turn and run was great. He would never have done so—it would have doomed Geena and all of Venice—but even if he’d tried, his puppeteer would have yanked the strings and put him right back on course.

Watch for them, Volpe snapped.

“I’m watching,” Nico whispered.

He spotted the first of the Doges’ thugs on the steps of the basilica—a slim man in a gray suit who made no attempt to hide himself. He stood with the confidence of a Western gunfighter but, cloaked in shadow, Nico passed by without notice. There were others as well, in front of the Doge’s Palace and the Biblioteca itself. Two men leaned against the striped poles at the edge of the canal, where gondolas bobbed in the water, tied up for the night. As Nico approached the door of the library he saw a lovely blond woman standing in the trees at the beginning of the small park that separated the Biblioteca from the canal.

“They’re already here,” Nico whispered. “They must be waiting for us inside.”

No. These are their eyes. If they were already here, I would feel them.

“Like you felt them before, when they fucking shot me?”

Spellcraft marks the soul like bloodstained hands, and each mark is different. I have always been sensitive to such things. Now that I have encountered their magic, they could not hide themselves from me … not this nearby.

Nico no longer knew what to believe and what not to believe. But even if Volpe was telling the truth, he had to wonder if one or both of the Doges might be just as sensitive—if they would know when Volpe was near.

They are fools, always more concerned with the tactile than the spiritual.

“They’ve managed to survive hundreds of years and become much more than arcane dabblers, enough to get you hiding in crypts and nursing bullet wounds. Not bad for fools.”

You’re wasting time.

Nico flashed on Geena, got a momentary touch of her mind. Though she had told him to keep his thoughts to himself, this close it was impossible not to feel her. Like Volpe and the Doges, he thought.

He could feel Volpe’s amusement at the idea, and a fresh wave of determination filled him.

Fueled by frustration and anger, wanting morning to come and put an end to all of his uncertainty, he glanced around again at the killers Foscari and Aretino had put in place as sentries. The Doges weren’t here now, but there was less than an hour before dawn and they would arrive soon enough. Perhaps the moment Nico opened the door to the Biblioteca—surely one of the thugs would witness it—the lunatic wizards would rush to take them like hunters hearing the trap closing around their prey.

So be it.

As project manager, Geena had a key to the Biblioteca. Volpe could have unlocked it with a wave of his hand, but that was unnecessary. Nico grabbed the door handle and it swung open easily. He stepped inside and closed it swiftly behind him, moving immediately across the foyer. Exit signs glowed red along corridors to either side, and dim, subtle lighting kept the library from darkness even overnight.

Had the killers seen him? Almost certainly, and he doubted the Doges would wait for dawn. He rushed along the long hall that led into the back room where they had found the hidden doorway down to Petrarch’s library. The lights should have been off there, but Geena had turned them on. Long black tubes snaked up through the open door, humming softly. They must have pumped the millions of gallons of water out of the flooded chambers, right out the door, across the small park, and into the canal. But they had left the pumps in place, still working, constantly draining the water that continued to seep in.

He went through the yawing stone door and started down the steps into the ancient librarian’s hiding place. Those long, fat tubes were tucked against the wall and he was careful not to stumble over them. The lights that Nico and the other members of the team had strung flickered brighter and then brighter still when he reached the bottom step, as though new power surged into them. The place smelled of damp and rot, but the stones were dry.

Debris had been scraped against one wall, the wreckage left by the flood.

The pumps were huge, humming things, their tubes snaking in both directions—up the stairs to the Biblioteca and through the door that led down into the Chamber of Ten. When Geena had told him they were to meet here, Nico had wondered how the university had arranged for the wall of the canal to be shored up and the Chamber pumped out so quickly. But now that he knew what the Doges wanted with the Chamber—that they needed to get to the well of Akylis—he knew it had not been Tonio Schiavo’s influence that had inspired such Herculean efforts.

The memory of discovering this door and the chamber below remained fresh in Nico’s mind. He could still feel the strange chill he had felt when descending with Geena and the rest of the team, and his mesmerized fascination with the urn at the center of the room. The power of the spell Volpe had used to keep the Chamber safe and keep the Doges out of Venice had made him feel almost drunk. And the lure … Volpe’s consciousness might have been shut down, but his essence had somehow woken at Nico’s arrival.

I woke him, Nico thought.

And you dropped the urn, Volpe replied. You finally understand. All of this is happening because of you.

“Bullshit,” Nico said. He had not used deceit and intrigue and threats to control Venice, murdered members of the Council just to keep his power, and banished the Doges.

No. I’m more convinced than ever that you and Geena were meant to be there. The city called you. I have been the Oracle of Venice for half a millennium. I would serve her forever if I could, but I think she has chosen the both of you.

“We don’t want the job,” Nico said. “We just want to be done with this. I want my body back.”

Volpe did not reply, and yet again Nico had the impression the magician was shielding his thoughts, hiding something.

He went through the door that led down to the Chamber of Ten. The light from Petrarch’s library reached half a dozen steps into his descent and, below, electric lantern light shone through the place where there had been a stone door engraved with the Roman numeral X, but there was a stretch of darkness in between and he put his fingers on the cold, damp walls to guide him as he continued downward.

Whispers drifted up to him. He could not make out the words.

Volpe did.

The idiot. What is she doing? Turn around, damn you! Go back up!

“Who? I thought you said they weren’t here yet?”

It’s not the Doges. It’s your damned woman, meddling with dark rites she hasn’t the power to—

“Geena?” Nico called, continuing toward the light at the bottom of the stairs.

Turn around! Volpe shouted in his mind.

Nico felt the magician surging forward within him, taking control of his limbs. His arms were tugged, his body twisted, and the puppeteer inside of him began to turn on the stairs.

No! Nico fought him, thinking only of Geena, trusting her, knowing that whatever she had planned it meant he had to bring Volpe to the Chamber of Ten as she’d asked.

For just a second, he wrested control of his body back. Then Volpe shunted him out again, but now he was off balance. His foot slipped on a step and he fell in a tangle of arms and legs, spilling down the stone stairs and then sprawling through the vacant doorway into the inch or so of water that covered the floor.

He’d struck his head. Disoriented, Volpe tried to get Nico’s body off the ground, drawing his knees up beneath him. The whispers had risen to a determined incantation and Volpe looked over to see Geena kneeling nearby, using a chunk of the broken wall as a table. A lantern stood upon it, illuminating the sigils she had scrawled on the rock, and other things as well. Nico saw them now and understood—the hand of a soldier, the seal of the master of the city, The Book of the Nameless, and a long knife.

Her eyes were wide, her hair wild, beads of sweat on her forehead. She launched herself toward him like a madwoman, the blade glittering in the lantern light. Fear crashed over Nico, but it was not his own.

“No, you stupid bitch, you—”

Geena kicked him onto his side. He tried to raise his hands to defend himself, tried to scramble away, but she was too fast, too savage. The blade hacked into the meat of his forearm, blood spattering the thin layer of water.

Instantly she retreated, racing to the book and lantern and the ritual symbols she had drawn on the broken stone. She looked at the open pages and started in with the incantation again. Nico struggled within Volpe—he had wrested control once and knew he must be able to do it again—but the bastard was too strong.

You fool! Volpe thought. You let her see the entire ritual through your eyes.

You’d never have given me back my body. You’d never have left us alone.

That remains to be seen, Volpe replied.

Trapped within his own body, Nico could not even cry out as Geena used the knife on her own palm. Seconds later she began to flick her wrist, spattering blood off of the knife in a complex pattern around the Chamber. The lantern light flickered.

Volpe began to laugh, rising slowly to his feet.

Geena looked up in panic.

What are you going to do? Nico thought.

Volpe let the pain of the knife wound through and Nico groaned, but the bastard did not give up control of the flesh.

“Dear Geena,” Volpe said. “You’re adorable, really. You had me worried for a moment. I thought you might actually know what you’re doing.”

Geena glared at him, fearless and full of venom. “You think I don’t know what you’re talking about? The Repulsion and Expulsion ritual only works if the banished is already outside the city. You’ve got to be out before I can keep you out. But guess what, Zanco? You are outside the city. Last night, I had my friend Domenic scrape what was left of your black heart—all that’s left of your dead husk—off the floor. He’s removed it from Venice.”

Defiantly she stood and flicked the knife three times more, thrice repeating the last words of the incantation.

Volpe let his shoulders slump, let his eyelids flutter.

“Nico?” Geena asked, and the hope in her voice broke his heart. She dropped the knife and rushed toward him.

No. No, stop! Nico shouted. He raged against Volpe, clawed at the magician’s very soul, forced himself upward, and took control just long enough to work his own lips, his own tongue.

“… didn’t … work … still here …” he slurred.

Geena staggered to a halt, confusion in her eyes. Volpe dropped the act and reached out to grab her by the throat. He slapped her hard enough that the sound echoed off the walls of the Chamber of Ten, off the three stone columns in the center of the room, off those ten obelisks that housed the remains of the men who had been loyal to Volpe and who had murdered him at his own behest.

“My heart may no longer be in Venice, but I am still here,” Volpe snarled. “I’m right here in front of you. If you understood the first thing about spellcraft, you might have managed to bind my soul to my heart and then your foolish gambit would have worked. Why the Spirit of Venezia chose the two of you to be its next Oracles is baffling to me.”

Oracles. The two of us?

Geena tried to speak, tried to claw at the fingers cutting off her air, but she couldn’t get the words out.

Nico was the one who answered: Volpe thinks the city has chosen us both, that we’re both Oracles.

You will be one day, but only if you live, Volpe replied. Now listen to me, young fools. You were never in any danger from me. He shoved Geena away and she splashed to the floor, gasping.

“I hope you have a better plan for dealing with Foscari and Aretino, Dr. Hodge, because they’re nearly here.”

A soft, chuffing laughter filled the Chamber and the lantern light flickered in time with it. Volpe and Geena both spun around and Nico saw the Doges and their hired killers stepping into the Chamber.

“‘Nearly’?” Aretino asked. “You’re slipping, Volpe.”

Foscari licked his lips, glancing from Geena to Nico and back. “A lovers’ quarrel. And we’re just in time. Please don’t let us interrupt. We’ll happily watch you murder each other.”

Wearing Nico’s body, Volpe glanced at Geena. Something passed between them—among them, all three.

Geena smiled. “It can wait until the two of you are as dead as Caravello.”

“You’d betray us?” Foscari asked, feigning insult.

“I kept my part of the bargain,” she said. “I brought you Volpe.”

“Yes, thank you,” Aretino said, nodding to her in gratitude. Then he glanced at his hired killers—the slim man in his gray suit and the blond woman were in front—and gestured at her with a flourish of his hand.

“My friends, if you’d be so kind. Kill her.”