Chapter 31
Frederica loved that the library ceiling had been painted with stars.
The astrological symbols were rendered in dark blue and silver, delicate and intricate, the kind of work that took a steady hand, and the belief that the arrangement of the heavens above mattered enough to preserve it on a ceiling.
Frederica stared at it now while Serapis set up his laptop on the mahogany desk. She wondered if Niccolò knew that one day a very old man would stand beneath it and explain exactly how the sky was about to kill them all.
Serapis had arrived unannounced after breakfast, bringing bad news and storm clouds with him.
As if he turns up any other way, she thought glumly.
The fire in the library grate was doing its best against the cold damp that permeated everything in a Venetian winter.
Rodrigo and Giana snuggled up on the reading sofa.
Kon was on the window seat with Athena beside him, and Dario was standing with his shoulder against the bookcase nearest the door.
She had taken the chair across from the polished table with the laptop because it gave her the clearest sightline to Serapis and the screen behind him, and because she needed something solid at her back. Nothing was more solid than Dario.
"I'll try to explain what the problem is and keep the magical jargon to a minimum," Serapis said, turning the laptop to face them.
"You know how I mentioned that I suspected Agrippa would try something now because of a certain cosmic alignment?
Well, it's happening and is going to be a bigger problem than I first suspected. "
The screen showed an astronomical chart with two overlapping projections. One was a map of the night sky, dense with coordinates. The other was a slow-moving diagram of orbital paths drawn in concentric rings. At the center of both, marked in red, was a specific point in time.
"To give you all context, in 1535, Agrippa attempted his apotheosis during a total lunar eclipse.
" Serapis began, like a professor readying for a lecture.
"It was a blood moon, that is, the moon turning red as the Earth's shadow consumes it.
Agrippa believed the eclipse would amplify the ritual because of the energy it generates and the symbolic darkening of one celestial body, feeding power into another.
He was right, as far as it went. What he didn't have, and what I was counting on him not having this time around, was a secondary layer of power to fuel his spell. "
He touched a key on the laptop, and the orbital diagram shifted, the planetary positions adjusting until they resolved into a shape that had no business existing in a chart of the solar system.
Frederica saw it a second before Serapis named it.
Five planets—Saturn, Uranus, Jupiter, Earth, Venus—were arranged in a configuration that her brain processed as a human figure: arms outstretched, head tilted.
Saturn sat at the top, its rings spread like a crown.
Uranus and Jupiter flanked either side, forming the arms. Earth and Venus rested close together at the base, forming the feet.
"This is called The Crucifixion Configuration," Serapis explained, tracing the figure. "Saturn as the crown of thorns. This specific planetary alignment has occurred only six times since the year zero. On April 3rd, 33 AD, it coincided with a total blood moon eclipse."
Nobody spoke, struggling to see the point that Serapis was trying to make.
"The blood moon alone was not sufficient in 1535.
The cosmic conditions were incomplete, and that is one of the only reasons Agrippa failed, and my sleep binding held at all.
" He looked up from the screen. "The blood moon and the configuration have not converged like this since Golgotha, during Christ's Crucifixion. They are converging now."
Rodrigo was the first to break the silence, "When?"
"Three days," Serapis replied and folded his arms. "I have been watching the projections since I understood what Agrippa was building toward.
I knew it would happen soon, but you can't predict this kind of magical configuration.
The astronomy data said it was close. I can only predict the presence of the actual magical energy within days of the event when the atmosphere changes.
I hoped I was wrong and that even if we got the alignment, the additional magical energy wouldn't be there.
I know how Agrippa thinks. If he completes the ritual under this convergence, with his mirror recovered and his disciples prepared, nothing we try to do will contain him. He will ascend, and it will be over."
"Ascend meaning what, exactly?" Athena asked. "Be an actual god?"
"Meaning that the man I entombed at San Michele will become something I can't fight.
Something none of us can fight. I don't know if it will be a god exactly, but that is what he's aiming for.
" Serapis looked at each of them in turn.
"We have to find him before this convergence, get inside wherever he has prepared his ritual space, and destroy his ability to complete it, before the sky arranges itself to fit his purposes. "
"I'll get Leo onto it now," Rodrigo said, pulling out his phone. "Athena, message Iz. Any lead we have from Vienna, we have to follow up, no matter how slim."
Outside the library's tall windows, Venice went about its afternoon business, water moving in the canals, a church bell somewhere marking the hour.
Frederica glanced toward a closed laptop on the desk and thought about five hundred years of one man waiting for the right arrangement of planets and the patience that required. The cold patience of something that had already died once and was simply waiting for the conditions to be correct again.
She had never been afraid of anything that bled.
After Vienna, she knew that Agrippa was a different kind of monster.
This had just made it worse. What could they do against someone like that?
Magic had to be fought with magic. All she had was bullets and a bad attitude.
It had always been enough, and now it wasn't, so she did what she always did when she was stuck and called her mother.
The rooftop garden was bare and depressing in winter, but Frederica wanted the air and to get away from all the voices arguing.
She would let them talk it out and then give her two cents' worth of input if they really needed it.
She doubted they would. Athena and Kon were used to fighting people like Agrippa, so she would follow their lead.
The roof terrace ran the length of the building, with planters that would look great in summer and were now just dark earth and the cut-back stubs of whatever had grown there.
There was a hot tub at the far end, under a fitted cover that she hoped had been maintained so she could try to get Dario in it.
Frederica sat on the edge of one of the planters, pulled her jacket tighter, and dialed her mother's number.
Despina answered on the second ring, as if she had been expecting her. "Frederica, are you all right?"
"I'm fine." She gave her a short version of the afternoon's meeting. The blood moon. The planetary alignment. The timeline compressed from something abstract to something with a date attached.
Despina's silences shifted as she listened, her attention changing when Frederica got to the part about the Crucifixion Configuration and what it meant for Agrippa's ritual.
"You need to find where he is hiding and take him out within three days," Despina said, matter-of-factly.
"We are going to try to. We need to find him first. Can you get Baba to look through any shipping manifestos he might still have when he was delivering things to Agrippa or his people?"
"I will, but you know your father is going to want to come with you."
"Baba is not coming because if he does, you will come too. I'm not dragging you into this. He is staying in Rhodes with you and not moving until it's over."
There was a pause that meant Despina considered this a problem, and Frederica could negotiate with them later. She would do better than that and refuse to tell them at all.
"How is the Colleoni boy?" her mother asked instead, throwing her off balance.
Frederica blinked. "Which one?"
"Don't start," Despina said pleasantly.
She looked out over the rooftops and bought herself a second by watching a gull make its way across the gray sky.
"He's fine. He had a difficult night reading his father's journal, but he's better this morning."
"Mm."
Jesus Christ, things her mother had learned to do with that one sound.
"And you? How are you?" Despina prompted.
"I just told you. I'm fine."
"Frederica."
"What do you want me to say, Mama?"
"Whatever is true." Despina's voice was easy, as it always was when she refused to let Frederica redirect her.
"You've been around this man for weeks, in very close proximity, in high-stakes situations, which is how you were always going to fall for someone, because that is exactly your father's pattern too.
So I am asking how you are. Not how the job is. "
Frederica pressed her fingers to her temple where the cold had started to settle. "I like him. That's all."
"That's not all."
"I don't think it's going to be anything more than that, Mama. Even if he—" she stopped and tried again. "Even if what I feel is mutual. I'm not good at this. I never have been. I go into relationship-type things, and eventually I do something I can't take back, and it falls apart."
Despina made an annoyed sound. "That is a story you like to tell yourself so you can leave first."
"It's happened more than once."
"Yes, with men who wanted you to be smaller than you are.
" Her mother's voice hadn't risen or sharpened, and Frederica knew a gentle lecture was on its way.
"When I met your father, I was certain I would destroy anything good I touched.
I had trained to be violent and intense.
Always a weapon, never a woman. I told him this, very sternly, and your father looked at me and said, 'Good.
I need a woman who can keep up with me.'"
Frederica tried not to smile. "He didn't say that."
"He did. It was in the kitchen of a safehouse in Bari, with a bruise under his eye that I had put there." Despina sounded perfectly serene. "He has never been afraid of anything that could hurt him. He just needed me to be honest about the fact that I could."
Frederica said nothing. Her father did love to flirt with danger, and her mother was always dangerous.
"The Colleoni boy," Despina continued. "Does he know what he's getting when it comes to you?"
"He knows exactly what he's getting. He grew up around it. Nothing about me seems to worry him. It's annoying, actually."
"If he knows what he's getting, then stop deciding for him what he can handle. It will either work or it won't, chrysi mou. Only you two can decide whether it will be worth fighting for."
The call ended the way Despina's calls always ended, on her terms, as if the conversation was simply complete.
Frederica sat with the phone in her hand, the Venice sky overhead, flat and gray. Her mother had walked into a safehouse in Bari with orders to kill a thief and had ended up telling him her worst truth over a bruised eye, and Tore Alesci had looked at it and said, "Good."
Forty years later, Tore still called her Spina. His thorn. He always looked at her the way he had presumably done when she said the word weapon and decided that was exactly the kind of woman worth keeping.
Frederica let herself picture it, just for a moment, and all she saw was Dario's robe this morning dropped over her shoulders.
What would it be like to have that person to go home to at the end of a hard day? Probably as easy as it had been that morning. They knew each other in a way that cut through bullshit and came back for more.
Frederica let herself feel it, and suddenly, she understood just how much she wanted it. The only problem was convincing Dario to give it a shot with her. She didn't beg. Wouldn't beg. It had to be yes or no.
She ran a hand over her face and pulled herself together. First things first, they had a sorcerer to kill. If they survived that, she would tell Dario how she felt. It wasn't much of a plan, but she could figure out the details later when Agrippa was in the ground permanently.