Chapter 28
My heart sinks. Apparently I already visited and burned this bridge. For a moment, I consider pretending to recall the incident…but no, it would only take a few simple questions to find me out.
“I don’t remember,” I reply, letting the defeat show on my features. “Something happened to me—I’ve lost my recollection of the last year.”
“Adrian Evans.” Adrian tips his hat to her. “Investigator for the Grayson and Bell Insurance Company. We’re trying to piece together what happened to Sterling, as it appears to have some bearing on the theft of Bianca Giuliani’s The Wheel of Aion.”
Her eyes widen and she stops lounging against the doorframe and stands straight. “It’s been stolen?”
“Recovered. We’re still looking for the thieves, though, since it seems they absconded with some other items over time.”
It’s true as far as it goes. I try to look meek and say, “Miss Lovejoy, I’m so sorry to have offended you in some way. I don’t remember my actions, but please allow me to apologize for them.”
Her expression goes guarded. “Wait here,” she says, and shuts the door.
We exchange looks. “What did I do?” I wonder unhappily.
“Hopefully nothing worth calling the police over,” Adrian says. He doesn’t add this time but I hear it anyway.
I couldn’t have murdered a man to get my hands on the Key of Mithras. It’s not possible.
Is it?
The door opens, revealing Lovejoy again. She’s exchanged her cigarette for a briarwood pipe with symbols carved into the polished bowl. Before either of us can say anything, she mutters something under her breath, takes a deep pull on the pipe, and blows the smoke in our faces.
It has a pleasant scent—violets, I think?—but I jerk back and cough. Adrian waves the smoke away with a hand, looking irritated.
“Hmm,” she says, eyeing us. “It seems you’re not outright lying, anyway.”
Something clicks in my mind. “Did you just cast a spell on us?”
“A witch living in Salem?” she asks with a wicked grin. “Just a few feet from where her forebears were hanged, their bodies thrown into a crevice? Perish the thought.” She steps back and swings the door wider. “Come inside.”
Her house befits an artist: the floors covered in Persian rugs, the furniture mismatched but clearly chosen with an eye toward shape and color, the walls thick with paintings that might be her own work.
Sculptures are scattered all about, from busts on bookshelves to bronze casts acting as bookends.
She leads us to a sitting room, its windows overlooking a stand of trees and a rocky outcropping. Dropping into an overstuffed chair, she snags a bottle off a low table inlaid with mother-of-pearl and tops off a glass with champagne. She doesn’t offer us any.
“What do you want?” she asks as we sit in two of the other chairs. Mine is upholstered in stiff brocade and much less comfortable than it looks.
“We need to know more about The Wheel of Aion,” Adrian says. “Sterling remembered you collect rare books on Italian Renaissance art, and we hoped you might have some texts on it, or some insight of your own.”
She puts out the pipe and relights her cigarette. “Interesting.”
“Is that what I came here for before?” I ask.
“Actually, you wanted the Lettere Segrete.”
I cast my mind back and come up with the pertinent information.
“Oh—you bought that from us in 1924, yes? It’s a collection of private letters from different artists, printed in Italian in 1595.
First edition but with a modern binding.
Some foxing, as is to be expected in a book of that age, and annotations from a previous owner. ”
“And you looked through it closely before you sold it, I presume?” she asks.
It seems an odd question. “I wouldn’t say either of us looked at it page-by-page.
” The memory of James threatens to choke me, so I push it away.
“We don’t speak Italian, after all, and certainly don’t have time to read every book that comes through, even those in English.
We assessed the condition, nothing more. ”
“Are some of the letters from Bianca Giuliani?” Adrian guesses.
Lovejoy tips her chin up slightly, her gaze wary but curious as she fixes it on me. “First, tell me about your amnesia. What’s happened to you since you lost your memories?”
I wish I knew whether to trust her. I hold back the names of anyone but ourselves, just in case, and refer to Cleo and Dr. Werner as “acquaintances,” giving no details about where they live or work.
But it seems she knows about magic, so I talk about waking up in Widdershins, the Timekeepers, and the man who turned into a horrible monster in front of our eyes.
When I finish, she rises to her feet and goes to look out the window, smoke trailing lazily after her. Is it twisting more than it should, or is there a draught in that part of the room I can’t feel from my uncomfortable chair?
“Did you know, a man who fled the witch hunts in Salem went on to found the town of Widdershins?” she asks. “Theron Blackbyrne. They say his dark magic still infects the place. I doubt that’s true, but it’s not somewhere to step lightly. I wonder why you went there?”
“I wonder the same.”
She turns back to us. “I haven’t heard of this Timekeeper cult, but that means nothing.
There are a hundred little cults up and down the East Coast, from the deep swamps of Florida to the mountains of Appalachia, from the forests of Maine to the streets of New York City.
All of them fragmented, worshipping their own little gods. ”
“But why?” I ask, bewildered. “What does it get them?”
“What does anyone get from worship? Comfort. The promise of a better life, either here or in the next world. A chance to feel there’s some order in this chaotic universe, and that if they say the right prayers they might be able to control things otherwise out of their hands.
” She shrugs. “I’m an artist. Ask one of your acquaintances if you want to understand more. ”
The war had crushed any lingering belief I’d had in a merciful God, but what if the army chaplains had been casting spells and performing apparent miracles before my eyes? Surely it would have made a difference.
Adrian clears his throat. “That’s very insightful,” he says tactfully, “but is there anything you can tell us about the painting? Or Bianca Giuliani. Was she a, er, witch?”
“Sorceress is the more proper term, and not that I’m aware.” Lovejoy sits down, drains her champagne glass, and pours some more. “Though doesn’t mean she wasn’t. I can’t read her letters either, since I don’t know Italian.”
Many collectors bought books merely to have them on their shelves. Still… “You never had them translated?”
She shrugs, her silk robe slipping off one shoulder and revealing more of her pajamas. “I’ll get around to it some day. I can tell you some things about the painting, though.”
We both lean forward eagerly. “Such as?” Adrian asks.
“Bianca Giuliani was born in Florence, tutored in painting by her father, who was a minor artist himself. She married and had a child with a fellow painter, but about three years into the marriage she had what we would call a nervous breakdown. She left her husband and the child behind and moved to Rome. Unusual, but for whatever reason the husband seemed to be glad to let her do as she wished. Two years later, she was back, begging him to let her resume the life she’d abandoned, but he claimed she was a madwoman and refused.
In the end, she returned to her father’s house in shame and disgrace.
As far as I know, she never saw her child again.
” Lovejoy looks sad for a moment, then drinks some more champagne.
“The Wheel of Aion is the only thing she’s known to have painted after her sojourn in Rome, though she sketched many versions of it before and after. ”
Unease creeps over my nerves. A woman leaving her old life behind to pursue some unknown goal in another city, then trying to return to it to find everything changed…
It’s not the same—I’m just trying to plot her story onto my own life. Having been accused of madness myself, it’s only natural to try and make a connection. “So what’s special about the painting?”
“It’s a wonderful work of art,” Lovejoy says. “I’d pay good money to see it with my own eyes. Otherwise, nothing particular, aside from its unusual subject matter. Aion in his zodiac wheel, always with the sign of Libra at the top of the wheel and the constellation of Virgo in the sky above.”
“Why is that important?” I ask when she pauses.
“Do you know how the zodiac first began?”
I’m not one for astrology, but I know the basics. “The sun appears to move through twelve constellations over the course of the year, yes? So whatever constellation it’s in when you’re born, that’s your sign.”
“In essence, yes. Or it was.”
Adrian frowns. “What do you mean?”
“Over millennia, the stars and earth move. Originally, during the period of the year demarcated as the sign of Libra, the sun did indeed seem to cross that constellation. In fact, it still did so when Bianca Giuliani lived. But at this point in history, the cosmic bodies have progressed to the point it’s in Virgo. ”
“I don’t understand,” I say after a long moment.
She shrugs. “Neither do I. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe she meant to indicate the painting was set in a time long after she died.”
Time. Everything seemed to come back to it.
Adrian leans forward slightly. “When Sterling was here before, how did he act? Did he want anything other than the collection of letters?”
“No, he seemed very focused on it alone.” She blows out a long stream of smoke that lazily loops around her neck like a snake. “As for how he acted: supercilious. Demanding. Spoke to me as if I was a dog expected to perform a trick.”
My face grows hot from embarrassment. “I’m so sorry.”
“You seem it.” She watches me curiously. “You claimed there was some issue with the ownership—that you’d just discovered the book was stolen goods, and needed to return it to its true owner immediately. In exchange for what I’d paid for it, of course.”
“It wasn’t stolen!” I protest immediately, lest Adrian take it as proof of wrongdoing at Forgotten Folios. “It had been in the same family for a century.”
“I didn’t believe your claim at the time. And even if I did, I’d want better proof and a court order.” The ember on the end of her cigarette flares red as she takes another draw. “I ordered you off my doorstep, and a few days later some rather unsavory characters came to visit.”
My heart sinks even as my pulse speeds. I’ve tried to believe that the death of the previous owner of the Key of Mithras was a coincidence. But her words strip away that assurance.
Am I a cold-blooded murderer? After everything I did, everything I saw, in the war, after my vow never to kill a fellow human again…
A vow I might have broken back at Cleo’s Clam House, even though the man had turned into a monster. That I could forgive myself for—there had been no choice, and it wasn’t just my life on the line. But this…?
Something is deeply, terribly wrong with me. Even if I’d been under the influence of whatever drug Hart and Myers injected me with, the fact remained some part of me must be capable of sending hoodlums to terrorize a woman and kill a man.
“What happened to them?” Adrian asks.
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” Lovejoy replies with a smile.
The smoke brushes over her hair, and for a moment it almost looks like skeletal fingers.
“After, I got curious. I can’t read Italian, as I said, but I did look through the book closely, in hopes there might be some clue as to what you wanted so badly. Would you like to see what I found?”
“Please,” Adrian says. I’m too weighed down by my past actions to answer.
“Stay here.” She puts her cigarette in a nearby ash tray, careful not to extinguish it, then swishes out of the room. I watch the smoke rise and start to drift in our direction.
“I don’t want to think you’d be capable of killing Mr. Pearce,” Adrian says in a low voice, naming the man who had outbid me for the Key of Mithras. “I did at first, of course, but after getting to know you, I’d started to doubt.”
His use of the past tense doesn’t escape me. “Once we’re certain we know what’s going on, I’ll turn myself in to the police. Along with the rest of the matter.”
He sighs. “I don’t want that. I’m not sure…”
Lovejoy returns, holding the book in her hands. I recall the brown calf binding and blind stamped ornaments from when I cataloged it years ago. She seats herself again, flips through it, then turns it toward us so we can read the page she’s pointing at.
“What do you see?” she asks.
It jumps out at me immediately. Among line after line of Italian, there are two words so familiar they instantly draw my eye.
Sterling Caine.