Chapter 25
Dario's phone rang at seven a.m. He cursed, fumbled for his pants where he had left them, and answered on the second ring.
"What?" he answered drowsily.
"I need to tell you something I should have thought of sooner, but I got distracted and forgot about it," Serapis said without preamble. He sounded buzzed, like he had been awake for hours.
"That's a promising start," Dario replied with a yawn.
"Your father was keeping something for me," Serapis continued, ignoring the sarcasm.
"It was an artifact. Something with enough protective power to be used against Agrippa or another sorcerer directly, or at a minimum, to slow them down.
Niccolò offered to hold it for me after he became my apprentice.
He understood why I couldn't keep it myself. "
"Why couldn't you?" Dario asked, rubbing at his face. He wasn't awake enough for riddles.
"Because if Agrippa were ever to capture me, I couldn't be trusted not to give up the location under sufficient pressure.
Even under magical compulsion or things worse than magic.
So Niccolò took it, and he hid it somewhere in the Foscari house, and he told me only that it was safe," Serapis replied.
Dario moved out of the bedroom and shut the door gently behind him. Frederica was still snoring softly, and he didn't want to wake her.
"You're telling me there has been a weapon against Agrippa sitting in my family home for years?" he asked, putting the kettle on to boil.
"Yes."
"And you didn't think of this earlier because?"
"Because I didn't know if it was still there.
When your father died, I had no way to search the house without revealing myself to Gabriella, and Gabriella would have used it against me," Serapis replied, getting huffy.
"I also didn't know if she had found it herself and destroyed it.
She was thorough in her grief, and she left little of Niccolò's private life intact.
I can only hope she didn't find it and sell it off.
Leo says he never saw her with it, and he didn't see it lying around either. "
Dario filed that away. Leo and Serapis were talking and comparing notes. He supposed it was better than Leo trying to shoot him every five minutes.
"What is it, and what does it look like?" Dario asked, yawning again.
"It's a relic that grants true sight. Agrippa's greatest advantage has always been his ability to obscure himself, to wear other faces, to place compulsions and work in ways that are invisible until they've already taken hold," his uncle explained.
"What we're looking for would let us and his followers see through all of that clearly. "
"So it strips any magical glamor?" Dario guessed.
"Precisely. He wouldn't be able to trick or beguile any of us with magic when we confront him."
Dario turned and spotted Frederica in the doorway of the bedroom, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed, and wearing Dario's shirt. She raised an eyebrow. He held up a finger and put the call on speaker.
"You need us to go to Venice and find it, I take it," Dario said.
"Yes, I need someone who knows that house inside and out," Serapis replied.
"Rodrigo would be the logical choice because he is closest, but he's been running point on coordination with Altun and Julian, and I can't pull him away from that right now without creating a gap we can't afford.
Leo knows the house, but he has already said he hasn't seen it. "
"And it's up to me to find his secret stash."
"You knew your father. You know that house the way children know houses, which is different from the way adults know them.
Every room, every corner, every little place a man might think to hide something he loved," he said, and his voice went soft.
"I think you'll find it where Niccolò thought you'd enjoy looking.
He always said you were the only one who figured out the secret compartments in his desk, even though no one else did. Maybe start there."
The memory of climbing under his father's heavily carved desk as a kid landed somewhere in Dario's chest with a weight he hadn't expected.
Frederica looked at him across the room, and whatever she found in his face made her give a single nod. No ceremony about it.
"I'm coming to Venice too," she said loudly.
Serapis was quiet for a moment. "Yes, I think that would be a good idea. You are a stranger to the house and will be a different set of eyes. That can't hurt."
Dario dug out the bag of coffee from the pantry. "I'll organize some transport and update Rodrigo."
"Already done. Two first-class train tickets are already booked under your name," Serapis replied quickly. "Rodrigo knows, and he'll call you if Leo finds anything on Agrippa's location."
"Fine, what time is the train?" Dario said, feeling like he had been outmaneuvered.
"Eleven. Don't dawdle. What you are looking for is small, the size of your thumb. It looks like a bee carved from amber, ancient Minoan in design," Serapis explained. "Your father could have hidden it literally anywhere."
"Great. That will make it so much easier to find." Dario hung up and stood with the phone in his hand.
Frederica crossed to the kitchen and took out two mugs. "When were you last at the house?"
He was meant to go a week after Gabriella died, before the estate was sorted. Rodrigo had gone to Venice to sign the deed, transferring it into Leo's name. Dario had opted out and stayed home to finish organizing her funeral.
"Years. It's Leo's, but he hasn't asked me to come clear out my shit yet," he replied with a shrug.
She took the coffee packet from him and made him a cup without asking how he took it, because she already knew.
"What was it like? When your father was alive, and you were small?"
"Loud," he said after a moment. "We were loud kids, and he didn't mind.
There were always people coming through.
His colleagues, Gabriella's people, and family friends.
He kept the good booze in a cabinet in the study with a lock that I figured out how to pick when I was nine.
He caught me eventually and didn't tell my mother. Just got better locks."
Frederica made a sound that was almost a laugh. "I can't imagine how you three would have been as kids. Terrifying, I suspect."
"The time we had at the house was the last good version of my family," he admitted. "It was before Gabriella changed after my father's death, and she could still at least pretend to be a mother."
Frederica didn't fill the silence with the things people usually filled it with. No, 'I'm sorry your father died' or 'your mother was a monster.' She just drank her coffee and stayed present, and that was all he needed.