The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist #3)(82)

“Don’t you like it? I think it makes me look distinguished. Veronica, this is Will Henry, James’s son, and my latest acquisizione.”

“Acquisizione!” Her brown eyes danced with delight. “Ciao, Will Henry, come sta? I knew your father well. E ‘molto triste. Molto triste! But, Pellinore, perché sei qui a Venezia? Lavoro o piacere?” she asked, sliding into the chair beside him. At that moment our waiter came back with the doctor’s spritz. Veronica snapped her fingers at him, and he left, returning a moment later with a glass of wine.

“It is always a pleasure to be in Venice,” the monstrumologist answered. He lifted his glass to salute her but did not take a sip.

She turned those laughing eyes back to me and said, “The looks of a farabutto, the words of a politico!”

“Veronica is saying she likes my new whiskers,” the doctor said in response to my baffled expression.

“They make you look old and tired,” she opined with a sniff.

“Perhaps it isn’t the beard,” Warthrop returned. “Perhaps I “Tired, sì. Old, never! You have not aged a day, not an hour since I saw you last. How long has it been? Three years?”

“Six,” he answered.

“No! As long as that? It is no wonder, then, why I have been so lonely!” She turned to me. “You will tell me, yes? What brings the great Pellinore Warthrop all the way to Venice? He is in trouble, isn’t he?” And then to the doctor: “Who is it this time, Pellinore? The Germans?”

“Actually, it’s the Russians.”

She stared at him for a moment before dissolving into laughter.

“And the British,” Warthrop added, raising his voice slightly. “Though I’ve managed to put them off, for a while at least.”

“Sidorov?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Probably somewhere in the mix.”

“So it is business, then. You did not come to see me.”

“Signorina Soranzo, how could I come all this way and not see you? To me, you are Venice.”

Her eyes narrowed; the compliment did not sit well.

“I suppose you could say I am in a bit of trouble,” he hurriedly continued. “The problem being twofold. The first part is very large, heavily armed, and loitering outside on the Calle de Canonica. The second, I think, is in the alleyway behind us. He is not so large but carries a knife that is. My problem is compounded by the fact that my train is scheduled to depart in an hour.”

“So?” she asked. “Perché pensi di avere un problema? Kill them.” She said it casually, like she was advising him on how to treat a headache.

“I’m afraid that would further compound my problem. My business is difficult enough without becoming a fugitive on top of everything else.”

She slapped him across the cheek. He kept himself very still; he took care not to look away.

“Bastardo,” she said. “When I walk out and see you sitting there, my heart, it…Sono stupido, I should have known. For six years I do not see you. I do not receive a single letter. Until I think you must be dead. Why else would you not come? Why else would you not write? You are in the business of death, I think; you must be dead!”

“I never pretended to be something that I am not,” the monstrumologist replied stiffly. “I was very honest with you, Veronica.”

“You sneak out of Venice without even saying good-bye, no note, no nothing, like a thief in the night. You call this honest?” She tilted her chin in his direction. “Sei un cardardo, Pellinore Warthrop. You are a not a man; you are a coward.”

>“Ask Will Henry. It is how I say all my good-byes,” he said.

“I am married,” she announced suddenly. “To Bartolomeo.”

“Who is Bartolomeo?”

“The piano player.”

The doctor couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or hurt. “Really? Well, he seems very… energetic.”

“He is here,” she snapped.

“As am I. Which brings us back to my problem.”

“Exactly! Il problema. I wish the Russian with the knife luck to find your heart!”

She spun from the chair in a dramatic flourish, allowing him to catch her by the wrist before she could escape. He pulled her close and whispered urgently into her ear. She listened with head bowed, her eyes fixed upon the floor. Her heart was clearly torn. Once drawn into the Warthropian orbit, even the strongest of hearts—and women possess the strongest of any—find it hard to break free. She hated him and loved him, longed for him and loathed him, and cursed herself for feeling anything at all. Her love demanded she save him, her hate that she destroy him.

The cruelest aspect of love, the monstrumologist had said, is its inviolable integrity.

Veronica and Bartolomeo lived directly above the nightclub, in a cramped, sparsely furnished apartment that she had labored to brighten with fresh flowers and colorful throws and art poster prints. There was a small balcony in the front that overlooked the Calle de Canonica. The balcony doors were open when we came in; the white curtains undulated in the balmy wind, and I could hear the sound of the Venetian street life below.

Bartolomeo joined us, his shirtfront saturated in sweat, his eyes possessing that distracted, otherworldly stare universal to artists—and to madmen. He embraced Warthrop as if he were a long-lost friend and asked him how he liked his playing. The doctor replied that a musician of his caliber deserved a better instrument, and Bartolomeo threw his arms around him and kissed him sloppily on the cheek.