Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
JESSE
Travel from Heathrow was as irritating as usual, the bustle and heat of humanity setting my wolf on edge. But we encountered no delays or mixups. Our excellent fake IDs did exactly what I’d paid for, and the bored officer at the gate waved us through without lifting his eyes from his screen.
On the plane, Caleb stole three of my crackers and the small square of dark chocolate that came with my coffee.
Five minutes later, he drained my coffee, too.
After that, he spent an hour on his phone with his AirPods in, occasionally huffing a quiet laugh at something on his screen.
He fell asleep somewhere over the Alps with his cheek on my shoulder and his mouth slightly open, his blond hair stirred by the overhead vent.
By the time we landed, my wolf was settled and content again.
Rome greeted us the way London had, with gray skies and a chill that whipped down the jetway and under our collars. Caleb cursed and hitched his backpack higher on his shoulders.
“You okay?” I asked, fighting a smile at the sight of the fabric crease on his cheek.
He scrubbed the heel of his hand over his eyes as we entered Fiumicino. “I’ll be better when we find coffee that doesn’t taste like it was filtered through a sock.”
“You seemed to like mine just fine.”
“That was a mercy killing,” he said. “Consider yourself spared.”
We collected our suitcases from baggage claim and joined the stream of businesspeople and tourists heading toward customs. A woman on the loudspeaker announced delayed flights in brisk Italian, her voice bouncing off the high terminal ceilings and dissolving into the noise of arrivals.
Monitors overhead confirmed what she was saying: storms were on their way, leading to a cascade of delays.
Around us, travelers consulted phones and flocked to ticket counters.
Caleb and I cleared customs and kept moving.
His eyes were half-mast, and the fabric crease hadn’t budged.
Golden stubble dusted his jaw. With his gray sweatpants, long-sleeve athletic shirt, and size 14 Nikes, he looked like a college student slouching his way toward an early spring break.
Eyes followed him, women and more than a few men casting him a mix of curious and appreciative glances.
Abruptly, he stopped walking, his attention fixed on a cluster of food stalls blazing with light. Espresso machines hissed, and pastry cases glowed. A dozen conversations mingled with the scent of baked goods and cappuccino.
Humans occupied every available surface. A few had laptops open, screens bright in the gray morning filtering through the terminal’s high windows.
Caleb looked at the nearest espresso bar like he’d just discovered water in the desert.
“Coffee,” he breathed.
I took his arm. “I know a better place. And we need to get out of this crowd.”
He darted a look around. “Is something wrong?”
“No, but you’re very American.”
“So are you.”
I pitched my voice low as I steered him past a rental car desk. “I’ve had a century to work on it.”
Outside, I found a cab and gave the driver an address in Trieste-Salario in my passable Italian.
Caleb and I settled into the backseat, and he sat with his elbow on the door and his chin in his hand, his eyes on the city through the rain-spotted window.
Sleep still clung to him, and he rocked gently with the car’s movement as the driver weaved in and out of commuter traffic.
The Autostrada gave way to surface streets in stages—concrete barriers first, then billboards, then apartment blocks stacked close enough to block the sky.
Moments later, the tangle of Rome pressed us from every side.
Caleb roused quickly when the first ruins came into view.
Trieste-Salario was a quieter residential neighborhood northeast of the most touristy parts of the city.
The streets were wide enough to let the buildings breathe, and a mix of bakeries and wine bars elbowed space between apartment blocks with laundry on the balconies.
But we were still in Rome, and the ancient world marched alongside the modern.
The cab passed marble blocks and white columns chewed by time. The remains of a Roman bath nestled next to a shop with a sign that advertised pizza by the slice.
A section of the Aurelian Wall bordered the road, its weathered brick the color of rust. Umbrella pines stood behind it, flat canopies spread wide against the overcast sky like hands surrendering to the wind.
Vines threaded through the mortar. Patches of newer brick marked where successive centuries had made their repairs, each generation’s work a slightly different shade so that the whole thing read like a geological cross-section of time.
Caleb sat up straight. “What is that?”
I couldn’t hold back my smile. “Part of the Aurelian Wall. Emperor Aurelian ordered its construction in the third century. In its original form, it ran about twelve miles around the city.”
The driver slowed for a light, and we idled alongside a section where the wall was a layer cake of medieval and Renaissance stone.
Caleb pressed closer to the glass. “It’s just sitting there, stuck between apartments and…” He squinted. “Is that a tattoo shop?”
I nodded even though he wasn’t looking at me. “The city does that. You turn a corner and stumble over fifteen hundred years of history. People like to say Rome fell, but it never really did. It just changed, expanding and contracting from one empire to another.”
He turned to me, the sleep in his eyes replaced with something boyish and unguarded. “Can we go see all this? For real, I mean. Not just drive past it.”
My heart flipped over. We’d done a little exploring in London, but not as much as I would have liked. And our time in France had been all about hiding. He’d never had a chance to sightsee like a proper tourist, his face sunburnt and his backpack loaded with kitschy souvenirs and crumpled maps.
He’d never wandered the Pantheon with a melting cup of gelato in his hand. Never gotten lost in Prati on a Sunday morning with the sound of church bells echoing off the buildings’ pale facades. Never seen the Tiber at dusk when the sky turned gold and made the city look like a painting.
“Of course,” I said, my voice gone soft.
Caleb smiled. He turned back to the window, and my heart did another flip as he pressed his fingertips to the glass.
The cab driver dropped us a half mile from the rental.
Caleb stood next to our bags and looked around, taking in the quiet street.
It was still too early for lunch, although plenty of humans moved about.
A woman arranged flowers in the doorway of a florist’s shop.
Two elderly men played chess in front of a tabacchi, their game punctuated by a good-natured argument in rapid-fire Italian.
A third man swept the steps and periodically paused his broom to offer commentary.
A crow dropped from the gray sky and landed on the terracotta ridge of a rooftop ahead of us. It settled and cocked its head, one eye trained on the departing cab. After a second, it shifted its beady black stare to us.
“We’re walking the rest of the way?” Caleb asked.
I looked at him. “Yes. I don’t want anyone connecting us to the house. And I like—”
“To check for ambushes,” he finished with a wink. “I remember, Jesse.” He pulled out his phone and swiped his thumb over the screen.
My name on his lips did its usual thing. Across the street, the men continued arguing. The rhythmic sweep of the broom scraped the steps. When I turned back to the crow, it was gone.
Caleb made a disgusted sound, drawing my attention again. “The weather is supposed to be shit the rest of the week.” He tilted the screen toward me, where tiny thunderbolts pierced a parade of clouds.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. With a look at the chess players, I motioned for Caleb to follow me. We moved down the street, our suitcases clattering over the cobblestones, and I pressed the phone to my ear.
“Van der Meer.” Not that the caller needed identification. Only one person knew of the phone’s existence.
“I hope your flight was uneventful,” Stefanos said smoothly.
Beside me, Caleb scowled, clearly picking up every word with a werewolf’s superior hearing.
Stopping, I scanned the street. An older woman walked a small dog toward us, the animal’s white fur styled with the same care and flourish as her snowy bob. Men carried a sofa from a delivery van parked on the corner in the distance.
“It was,” I told Stefanos, although he already knew. Undoubtedly, he’d tracked our flight.
“I received your report on Moray,” Stefanos said. “I want you to visit Carlo Gesualdo as soon as possible. I’ll make the arrangements.”
“All right.”
Silence crossed the line. “Caleb needs to dispose of his mobile,” he said finally. “The vampires are almost certainly aware of your presence, but we don’t need to broadcast your location.”
Caleb’s scowl darkened several shades. He clutched his phone to his chest like he expected Stefanos to materialize in front of us and snatch it from his hand. “I just got it!”
“You can purchase another at the conclusion of this mission,” Stefanos said, his tone pleasant and inflexible.
Caleb shoved the phone into the pocket of his sweats. “Or you can buy one,” he said not quietly enough.
I gave him a warning look.
“Add it to your expense report,” Stefanos said. Something shifted in his voice—not quite amusement, but in the vicinity of it, as if he’d allowed himself to be genuinely entertained. “I expect compliance.”
Caleb gripped his backpack straps, his expression mulish. “I heard you.”
Another pause, then Stefanos said, “I’m curious, Caleb. Did you find Sterling Moray trustworthy?”
Caleb’s jaw set. “I don’t think anyone should trust that bitch.”
More silence on the line. I glared at Caleb even as laughter rose in my throat. He had the grace to look chastised.
“I think,” Stefanos said carefully, “you mean witch.”
Distaste twisted Caleb’s mouth. “Trust me, I meant bitch.”
I was absolutely not going to laugh. No one spoke to Stefanos that way, certainly not brand-new werewolves who’d barely survived a Council trial.
“Get settled, Jesse,” Stefanos said in his usual dry register. “I’ll work on arranging the meeting with Carlo.”
“I’ll wait for your instructions,” I said.
The call ended.
Caleb watched me pocket the phone. “Am I going to get spanked for that?”
“You deserve it.”
We started walking, and he slanted me a look that was anything but contrite. Then he sobered. “I probably pissed him off, huh?”
“Actually,” I said, “I think he likes you.”
Caleb blinked. “Are we talking about the same Stefanos?”
The smile I’d been fighting broke free of my restraint. “Yes. You surprise him, which is hard to do to someone his age. And before you ask, I don’t know how old he is. Based on stories I’ve heard and some things he’s said, I suspect it’s well over two thousand years.”
Caleb absorbed this. The shops we passed gave way to multi-story houses covered in ivy. After a moment, he shot me another look. “Do I really have to ditch the phone?”
“Yes.”
“It has all my playlists on it.”
“I’ll get you a new one.”
“My playlists are specifically curated.”
“Caleb.”
Cursing softly, he pulled out the phone and handed it over. “I was in the middle of a really good Pardon My Take episode.”
I must have looked as clueless as I felt.
“It’s a sports podcast.”
Stopping, I swung my backpack off my shoulders and slipped the phone into it.
“I’m sorry, baby. I should have thought of it before we left London.
” Except I hadn’t been thinking about phones.
I’d been thinking about him, warm and heavy in my arms while the storm lashed the windows.
“We can’t make ourselves invisible, but we don’t have to make anyone’s job easier.
I can ward us if we need to disappear quickly. I can’t ward us and a phone.”
He exhaled noisily. “Well, there go my Netflix and chill plans.” He raised his eyebrows. “Guess we’ll just have to chill.”
Heat streaked to inconvenient places. “You won’t hear any complaints from me.”
A grin stole over his features. “You’ve been on the internet again.”
Maybe one day I’d get sick of him pretending I was too old and decrepit to understand technology or modern slang. But he enjoyed the forbidden nature of our age gap as much as I did so, yeah, probably not.
I palmed his shoulder and turned him firmly in the direction of the house. “Come on, smartass.”
His smile lingered as he matched my pace, one big hand steering his bag over the cobblestones. “You still owe me coffee.”
Damn. I’d forgotten it in the hassle of speaking to Stefanos. And the shop I remembered was several streets away. “I said I knew a better place. I didn’t specify when I’d take you there.”
He slowed, displeasure rolling off him. “Jesse.”
“Caleb.”
“I don’t think you realize how much of a menace I can be when I’m deprived of caffeine.”
Amusement and desire tangled in my chest—a combination of emotions I’d grown used to since we mated. I leaned into him. “When we get to the house, I’ll make you forget all about coffee.”
His eyes lightened several shades. “Promise?” he asked, his voice as husky as it ever got.
“It’s a guaran—” I froze as a scent hit my lungs. It was so faint that I might have missed it if I hadn’t been scanning habitually, my wolfseeker’s instincts humming in my head like bass beneath a melody.
But it was there, the stench of fruit left in the summer heat until it fermented past wine and into something mad and cloying.
And I knew the smell. I’d tracked it to New York, where Ulfrik had carried it. I’d burned and scattered it.
Now it was in Rome.
“Jesse?” Caleb prompted, his blue eyes suddenly serious. “What is it?”
I turned in a slow circle, searching for a lead. The white-haired woman and her dog had rounded a corner. The delivery van was gone. A cat watched us from a doorstep with typical feline indifference. The men in front of the tabacchi continued arguing across their chessboard.
The street was otherwise still.
Suddenly, the scent strengthened. Deep in my mind, my wolf bared its teeth. I surged forward.
“Rogue.”