Chapter 32
Apartment four was on the second floor.
Bastian stared at the door, with its chipped black paint and rusted number plate, and struggled to contain a shudder.
“Would you consider me a coward for not looking forward to going in there?”
Whitby harrumphed. “There can’t be anything worse in there than what we’ve seen in the past few days.”
Bastian wasn’t so sure. He imagined a stinking nest. Unwashed sheets and molding food. After the day they’d had, he would prefer a few hours in a spa. Cucumber for his eyes. Clay for his skin.
He wished Salvador were alive, but only because if he were, Bastian would need an invitation to enter his apartment.
A dead man’s home, however, was fair game.
“Apertus,” Whitby said, and Bastian heard a click from the door, which creaked open.
“Did you just…?” he asked.
“How fortunate that the place is unlocked,” Whitby said, nosing through the gap and vanishing into the apartment.
“A cat who can open doors without the need for thumbs,” Bastian murmured. “The end is nigh.”
He gave himself a you-can-do-this thump on the hip and followed.
The living room was large, dark, and overflowing with furniture, but it was far cleaner than Bastian had expected.
His night sight picked out plants that ambled up and over bookcases, their tendrils creeping through shelves cluttered with crystals, animal skulls, old jewelry, and a framed picture of Sofia di Vernazza.
Trinkets and keepsakes filled every surface.
Little bowls of shells. Pebbles in glass jars. A spice rack stocked with dried herbs.
“Where are you?” Bastian asked before spotting Whitby chasing a spider into the corner. She almost knocked over a stack of books in the process.
“There are so many books…” Bastian saw piles everywhere. Some spines gleamed with silver lettering, while others were bound in soft leather.
The air smelled damp but that was just one of a thousand scents tickling his nostrils. Among them was something musky, an herb perhaps, so close to the aftershave De Luca wore that Bastian’s heart became rocklike.
“What do you think the inspector is doing right now?” he asked, taking a bottle from a well-stocked drinks trolley and sniffing. Whiskey.
“Sleeping, if he has any sense,” Whitby said.
“The council will have arrived to inspect Salvador’s body by now.”
“Bastian—”
He cut her off. “I know, I know. Less lovesick contemplation, more hard-nosed investigation.”
“Lovesick. You’ve barely known him five minutes.”
Bastian shook his head. “Feelings shouldn’t be measured by time but by intensity. Not that I’m saying I’m in love with the inspector. His ears, maybe. I never realized I had a thing for ears until—oh look, tarot.”
Salvador had completed a reading recently. Four cards formed a cross on the circular table.
“What does it mean?” Bastian asked.
Whitby hopped up to cast her eye over the cards. “You’d have to ask Salvador. A reading is completely personal and open to interpretation.”
Bastian rested a finger on a card depicting an angel. “This one looks promising.”
“Looks can be deceiving.”
“Yes.” Bastian looked around the apartment. “I fear we may have misjudged il signor Silvestri.”
“Speak for yourself.” Whitby was on the windowsill now inspecting a row of jars. It took Bastian a moment to realize they contained pickled creatures. A rat. A hedgehog. A snake.
“The collection is unique, I’ll give you that,” he said. “But none of this says murder me. I should have listened to him when he—”
No. Bastian brought himself up. No point in regret.
“I need my bag of ointments and charms,” Whitby said. “I could cast a spell to help us trace the killer’s footsteps.”
“Returning to our apartment is too risky.”
Bastian went to an archway, through which he found an ordered bedroom. Small. A bed against the wall, black curtains drawn, an assortment of dark and disturbing pictures on the wall.
The nightstand held a black-and-white photograph of two men embracing.
The gaunt, black-haired youngster had to be Salvador in his twenties.
His arms looped around a strikingly handsome Black man, and the way their heads rested together told Bastian everything he needed to know about their relationship. They were lovers.
Salvador had a partner? The apartment felt like the home of a lonely scholar, and Bastian got the feeling the other man had never been there. The fact that Salvador kept the picture by his bed seemed to confirm that, wherever the other man was, Salvador hadn’t forgotten him. Hadn’t wanted to.
“Salvador was in love,” Bastian murmured. He resumed searching. He looked under the bed, then slipped his hand under the pillow, his fingers meeting something solid.
“Ah,” he said, tugging free a notebook. It was pocket-sized and battered from use. Inside, he found pages filled with scratchy black ink.
“Salvador kept a journal,” Bastian said, returning to the living room. Whitby sat on a piano, her head adorned with a crown of cobwebs. Bastian tutted and plucked them free.
“He was keeping note of his readings,” he said, leaning against the piano, “but it’s all in Italian, and the handwriting is dreadful.” He picked out certain words. “Eternità, vivere per sempre. Eternity…live forever…It sounds like vampire stuff.”
“Why would Salvador be making notes about vampires?”
Bastian raised his gaze from the book. “Plenty of people find us completely fascinating.”
“Modest, too.”
“There’s all sorts of stuff in here,” Bastian said, turning pages, attempting to translate it in pieces.
“He talks about caves and snakes and there’s something about a price?
I can’t tell what that means but—oh!” Bastian stopped on a page filled with looping symbols—infinity symbols. He showed the cat.
Whitby squinted in thought. “You think Salvador was in the League?”
“I suppose it’s possible. Though I’m having trouble picturing him in a room with Emilio and Mayor Moretti.”
“It could explain why he’s dead. Perhaps the killer really is targeting members of L.O.V.E., just like we first thought.”
“But Luna wasn’t a member,” Bastian reminded her.
“Maybe the killer didn’t know that. Maybe they assumed she was part of the League because they meet in the Micio Micio basement.”
Bastian tapped his top lip with his thumb.
“So we’re back at the ally-hating angle.
It doesn’t quite fit, though. It requires too many jumps in logic.
” His hand stilled, finger pressed to his chin.
“You know what I keep thinking about? Enzo’s blood condition.
What if you were right and it’s driving him to drink human blood? ”
The cat’s whiskers bristled in thought. “You think he’s a vampire?”
“No, he’s human. I saw him breathing. But what if his condition is causing him to behave like a vampire?”
“Don’t forget he’s bedridden.”
Bastian wagged a finger in the air. “Except he wasn’t in his bed last night. Maybe he’s more mobile than De Luca thinks. Maybe Enzo has been quietly slipping out of the house when nobody is looking and he’s drinking healthy people’s blood in order to replenish his own.”
“Sometimes the craziest theory is the correct one,” Whitby said. She tutted. “If I had my bag, I could attempt a divination, at the very least.”
Bastian’s mind was a vortex of conflicting theories. He felt exhausted. The answer had to be right in front of them, so why weren’t they seeing it? He noticed a thin beam of light pushing through a crack in the curtains.
“What is that?”
“It’s morning,” Whitby said.
“Bloody hell.” Bastian hadn’t realized it was so late. Or early. They had been up all night.
“We’re almost out of time,” he said. “Maybe we really could use a magical assist. It’s dangerous, but we might as well attempt to fetch your bag from the apartment. Then we’re going back to Micio Micio.”
“Micio Micio? Why?”
“Because I’m still not convinced this isn’t all about that café, in one way or another.”