The Angel's Bargain

Chapter One

The morning light’s gone from pink to lemon before Leonardo finally decides to grace us with his presence.

I always notice him first. It’s the barely there squeal of the door hinges, a pause as long as a heartbeat, then the shift of a familiar shadow in the corridor, followed by his too-long legs and shameless smile when he strolls into the workshop.

The other apprentices’ heads snap to Leonardo.

But their eyes slide toward me.

Cristo santo, why does he even bother showing up this late?

We’ll be done in ten minutes. Leonardo’s looking at me too, a sideways glance from beneath his eyelashes that makes me bite the inside of my cheek.

At this point, the only person not looking at me is the workshop angel, his ancient eyes open and staring at nothing.

Occasionally an awful wheeze squeezes from his chest, the only sign he’s different from the half-finished statues surrounding him.

I drop my charcoal and rub my temples. “Third time this week, da Vinci.” The vivid purple mark on his pale neck tells me why he was late without me having to ask, but I do anyway, just to see what he says. “Is someone… distracting you?”

Leonardo winks. “I did find something better to do than drawing old, moldy fruit this morning, yes.”

That cursed wink feels like catching my toe in a dip on the floor. I glare to hide how something inside me stumbles. “If you won’t practice, then you can do chores today. You know Verrocchio’s rules.”

Unlike every other master artist in Florence, Verrocchio forces his apprentices to sketch together each morning.

He claims it’s good for us, but I think all it’s good for is wasting work time and sowing resentment between co-workers.

Enduring the exercises used to feel like going to mass: necessary to keep the peace and good for me in some cloudy way I’m too unlettered to entirely appreciate.

But now that Verrocchio’s ordered me to lead the morning exercises, they’ve become downright torturous.

Leonardo bows, red-gold hair tumbling over his shoulders to hide the love mark. “Whatever you say, Virgil. I’m yours to command.” He winks again, doubtlessly because he’s noticed it irritates me. My eye gives a traitorous twitch.

Who was it this time? What boy was worth the drudgery of grinding pigments all day?

It better not be an apprentice from another workshop.

I want to goad him into revealing more—anything to wipe that pleased smirk from his face—but the other boys’ stares feel like a ring of torches, too hot for me to tease him about anything without getting burned myself.

Leonardo cups a hand around his ear. “Were you going to speak? I heard the gears grinding away in your empty chest.”

A machine joke, how original! I scoff and return to my work.

If Leonardo wants to squander his time and shove his tongue down someone’s else mouth all night, fine.

Someone has to make sure these exercises get done, and sadly, that someone is me.

What an appalling workplace—I really deserve a raise for all that I endure.

The blessed quiet lasts five minutes before a giggle breaks it.

My charcoal stick snaps when I throw it down this time. “What now?”

The other apprentices blink, eyes far too wide and innocent for me to believe it. All of them except Leonardo, that is, who stares at the lofted ceiling like he’s being paid to do it. His shoulders shake with silent heaves of laughter.

“Are you capable of not being a nuisance for a single second?” I snap.

He thumbs a tear from his cheek, voice cracking. “It’s not me this time, I swear it!”

Only then do I notice the huge, diabolical grin taking over the face of the apprentice sitting beside him.

Giorgio, my second most annoying co-worker.

An absolute menace who’s done nothing but terrorize me from the moment he joined us last fall.

Curious, the apprentice on Giorgio’s other side leans in for a look.

He slaps a hand over his mouth at the sight of Giorgio’s sketch and dissolves into helpless giggles.

Glaring, I rise from my seat. “What’s so amusing?”

“Nothing you’d like!” Leonardo sniggers.

I storm across the room, snatching the sketch from Giorgio before he can crumple it up. “Penises! How original.”

The apples we’re drawing today are there. Except great, quivering phalluses jut from each pair. Giorgio wriggles his fingers, and they swell.

I suck in a scandalized breath. “You made a bargain for this?”

Giorgio smiles, admiring his obscene artwork like a beloved pet has done a marvelous trick. “Aye. Gave up the memory of my nonna’s house for it.”

This is one of the worst bargains I’ve ever heard of. “Don’t you spend feast days with your nonna? What happens next time you try to visit her?”

He lifts a finger to me, and then taps his chin with it instead, frowning. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

I choke back a frustrated scream. This is why apprentices should be barred from making bargains until they’re at least sixteen! Otherwise, the magic they ask for is ridiculous, and the things they give up for it absurd.

This has, unfortunately, become a teachable moment, and our master has made the grave mistake of making me a teacher.

I stride to the massive in-progress painting of the Last Supper and slap the sketch just beneath Jesus’s face.

He looks at the phallic fruits with a saintly, patient expression I’ve painted a hundred times over.

“Does this look like the sort of art that belongs here?”

“Sometimes.” Giorgio keeps a straight face and points to a half-finished statue that—oh no—is male, naked from the waist down, and completely undermining the point I’m trying to make.

The other boys make an oooo sound before breaking out into hysterics.

Their laughter bounces off me like hailstones. I close my eyes, the pain in my temple blooming into a proper headache.

If Niccolo were here, my brother would say not to let them bother me. He’d listen when I’d confess I’ve allowed every worry to trouble me my entire life, and I don’t know how to stop now. He’d help me find a way to deal with the hot, swirling feelings that fill my chest like smoke.

But my brother disappeared two years ago and took the best parts of me with him.

And if I hear them laughing at me any longer, I might burst into flames.

Stone-faced, I crumple up the sketch and stomp toward the workshop door.

“Wait!” Giorgio cries. “Where are you going?”

“To Master Verrocchio.”

Giorgio gasps. “You can’t! He said if I mucked around again, he’d kick me out.”

“Should’ve thought of that beforehand.”

The laughter dies, but it doesn’t make me feel better.

Giorgio sniffles, his face white now. “Please don’t tell him. I’ll do your chores for the rest of the month!”

The other apprentices glance around nervously, as if they’ll be next.

Everyone knows if someone displeases Verrocchio, they’re gone the next day.

There’s always another apprentice to take his place.

I want to tell them that they’re fine, that I’m only bluffing with Giorgio to teach him a lesson, but the words get stuck.

How can I back down now without them laughing at me again?

“If you jest like this, you’ll never amount to anything.” Oh hell, that’s not great. I clear my throat and try again. “Don’t you want to be the best artist you could be?”

“Maybe he doesn’t.” Leonardo levels me with a judgmental glare. “Not everyone wants the same things.”

I don’t think we’re talking about Giorgio anymore.

My gut twists, like when the Santa Croce priest’s stare lingers on me after a particularly soul-withering sermon, but worse, because Leonardo has no sway over my stupid soul, so why do I care at all what he thinks of me?

“Actions have consequences,” I say sullenly.

Leonardo throws his arms wide, exasperated. “Does it really matter if we paint apples for the third sodding time this week?”

It doesn’t. But I’d rather pour hot oil into my eyes than say so in front of everyone else. “It’s what Verrocchio asked—”

A chilling, bone-grating noise cuts me off.

The angel is wheezing again, his bony shoulders shaking. The boy closest to him shoots up from his stool so fast, it falls over.

“It’s all right!” I call, even as my skin prickles uneasily.

The angel doubles over with a vicious cough. A wet, gleaming stickiness drips from his mouth to the floor.

“Summon the physician!” Giorgio cries.

“Idiota!” another boy shouts. “Angels aren’t people!”

The angel jerks up. Suddenly alert eyes latch onto Giorgio.

I step forward, a hideous feeling bursting through me—

Too late.

The angel crashes across the room, his hands already around Giorgio’s neck.

“Give me a taste of your life, ragazzo. You have so much of it!”

Giorgio screams, flopping like a rag doll. Blood wells on the skin of his neck where the angel’s sharp nails dig in. The other apprentices swarm, sobbing and yelling, pulling and tugging on the angel to no avail. The angel looks like an old man, but he isn’t one. He’s stronger than all of us.

A sour taste surges into my mouth. I need to move. I need to distract the angel with blood. I’m the one in charge this morning. It’s my job to do something.

But I can’t.

I’m paralyzed by a swirl of red against white, the last time I failed someone who needed me.

A guttural roar rips me from the memory. Leonardo has stabbed a palette knife deep into his own arm. Blood flecks his freckled cheeks.

The angel drops Giorgio with a sickening thud. His eyes—too bright, like candles at the end of their tallow—take up his entire face. “At last. A taste of you.”

Leonardo lifts his arm, teeth gritted. “I’ve been told I’m delicious.”

The angel leaps forward, pointed teeth bared.

But mid-stride, his body spasms.

Then falls.

Master Verrocchio stands behind the angel, his brown skin gleaming with wetness. A slick sword trembles in his hand.

The angel splays on his back, his fingers twitching like insect legs. I finally snap into action and skid to his side, take the head into my lap.

The angel’s rheumy, bloodshot eyes latch onto mine. He brushes the scars inked into my skin with something like tenderness. “Such a lovely life!” His jagged nails stroke me too hard, leaving behind angry pink lines. “So lovely.”

He twitches one final time. Goes still.

Noise and movement erupt. Hands surround me, one bigger and more freckled than all the rest.

But I don’t take it. I can barely see it.

All I can see is the blood on the dead angel’s chin.

His blood isn’t red, but a deep, dark gold.