The Red Winter

Foreword

I decided to write this all down while on a business trip to my European o?ces in Florence.

It was one of those romantically black and violent autumn days when the rain does not fall so much as dash itself against the city.

The majority of the tourists were in their hotel rooms, trying like so many before them to come to grips with Italian television.

I should have been working, drawing up contracts for a very large acquisition on behalf of a very old client.

But the intimate, empty streets beckoned, so instead I went wandering.

I visited my most beloved friends—the wise ghosts of the Duomo; the Boboli Gardens; Laocoon and his sons in their ecstasy of fear—but I found them all cold and listless.

It was on my way back along the Ponte Vecchio, in the fairy-tale light of the goldsmiths, that I chanced on an exquisite brooch.

I recognized it immediately—an antique cameo in amber and ivory, depicting a young woman.

It was badly damaged and the setting had been stripped of its gemstones, but I paid the dizzying sum on the ticket and tucked it into my coat.

In my head, I was already repairing the jewel.

I knew somewhere in my archives there was a pouch of tumbled Persian sapphires that would fit perfectly in the antique setting.

Manic with inspiration, I rushed immediately back to my o?ces, a sturdy stone manse in the old artists’ quarter.

I told Livia to handle my client appointments for the coming week—she’s at least as good a lawyer as I am anyway—and headed for the attic.

It’s one of the things I love most about returning to the Old World: I always come across something unexpected, something I’ve forgotten.

The French Revolution. The peasant’s dream that toppled kings and ignited decades of war across Europe—across the world. The faces carved into the wood were righteous and proud, an army of the downtrodden throwing off their shackles for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

I knew better.

The troubled young woman whose likeness was engraved into the cameo—she had known better, too.

A few phrases of eighteenth-century Occitan dissolved the Wards on the chest (still airtight after two hundred years, if you don’t mind) and I knew that my gem-cutting plans had been postponed indefinitely.

I spent the rest of the day turning through volumes of notes and evidence from one of my most infamous and fascinating commissions.

My indwelling Spirit, Sarmodel, had been silent for days, but I invited him to enjoy the rediscovered treasure with me—they’re his memories too, after all.

2 After a little petulance, Sarmodel came forward in my mind, rousing himself like a drowsy cat, and joined me in reliving what was in retrospect quite a landmark case.

We went through the old journals and specimen canisters with a sweet melancholy.

A switch of Bombay thorn apple, jars of snowmelt, a pouch of wolf fur, a box of lavender-scented talc—each time I reached into the chest I retrieved another wonder.

I’d forgotten how much I loved that part of my life—the 1700s were a glorious time to be in Europe, until they weren’t.

And I felt truly close to Sarmodel, for the first time since we averted the End of Days the previous year.

3 I have so few friends left and it was reassuring just to have him with me as my companion again, and to remember how well we can work together.

But the reason I decided to write this case down properly was right at the bottom of the chest, buried under a bushel of faded letters.

It was a lambskin riding glove, shredded beyond repair and still spotted with bloodstains.

Sarmodel and I had been trading happy remarks for hours, but now we both stopped.

I felt a longing that my demonic Guest understood completely, and for once he didn’t mock my human frailty as my eyes filled with tears.

Still, Sebastian? he asked quietly in my thoughts.

“Yes. Still,” I replied. “How did I forget?”

Antoine’s, the glove and the blood both.

I was hundreds of years old before I ever met him, but that day we were both young.

Danger was nothing to him and his sense of abandon was contagious.

It was inevitable that we would end up broken and bleeding in a midden somewhere, given the situation, but it was spectacular fun just the same.

I didn’t realize how long it had been since I’d remembered Antoine.

His innocence. His wild blond hair and ridiculous inability to light a campfire.

I had the thought, for the first time in months, that life without death is a miserable gift.

So these pages are for him, one of my dearest ghosts.

For Antoine Avenel d’Ocerne.

Sebastian Grave

Florence

2013

P.S. I take no responsibility for Livia’s contribution.

1. I love my European staff, but they are avid little thieves.

2. Not that he would be able to read any of my notes—Sarmodel holds the written word as the pinnacle of human vanity, a position it shares with matrimony.

Where I have endeavored to learn the myriad languages of humans, demons and angels, my indwelling Spirit wears eight thousand years of illiteracy like a medal.

3. About which I will not go into detail here—we got it done and you can go back to your online shopping. Su?ce it to say the Mayan calendar’s pinpoint accuracy had nothing to do with astronomy.