Chapter Twenty-Four
The scream comes from Lupa’s corner. She thrashes, grappling with a dark, hooded figure. They careen into the storage cupboards. Pigments and brushes rain to the floor.
She screams again. This one has an unearthly deep note underneath it that rings my head like a bell.
Leonardo claps his hands over his ears and sinks to his knees.
The scream fills up my skull, throbs in the spaces between my bones.
An agonized moan slides past my lips, then I’m slipping to the floor myself.
One by one, Verrocchio’s statues shatter.
The magicked ones turn to me with silent screams in stone mouths before their faces explode.
The figure quails away from Lupa. It looks human, but the arms and legs are cloaked in shadow, nothing but swirling darkness where the head should be. Madonna santa, what is it?
The scream stops. Suddenly I can move again. I grab a splintered marble forearm from the floor and rush Lupa’s attacker.
Its legs bend, then snap. It lands in the second-floor gallery. I blink, and it’s out the open window.
There’s nothing left but the wreckage of the statues, the bellow of my frantic breath.
“Are you all right?” Leonardo helps Lupa up. A cut weeps scarlet down his cheek.
The demon’s chest heaves. “What was that?”
“You don’t know?” I look at the ruined marble, the open window. No human could jump like that. No human could attack Lupa and be her equal in strength.
She shakes her head, face crumpling with rage-induced tears. “No! The magic felt like mine, but it was wrong.”
Voices pour from the courtyard, followed by pounding footsteps. The commotion must’ve woken up the house. The workshop door slams open to reveal Verrocchio in a nightdress, a sword in his hand. His mouth drops open.
“My statues!”
A layer of dust velvets every surface, a haze of gray still caught in the air. I pull the collar of my shirt over my mouth and nose. The back of my throat already tastes of stone. A fortune of marble and commissioned work, lost in an instant.
“Something attacked Lupa,” I explain quickly, as if saying it can undo any of the damage. “She defended herself.”
Verrocchio surveys the destruction. The tip of his sword plinks to the floor. “At what cost?”
The other artists swarm inside, until the workshop is filled with anxious murmurs and weeping.
Some of the sculptures were already done, months of work gone.
Verrocchio might have insurance for the marble, but the hours of time and craft that went into shaping it?
Gold can’t replace that. I turn away from the destruction, a horrible darkness pulling at the edges of my vision, clawing the bottom of my stomach.
Leonardo grabs my sleeve, his whisper hot against my ear. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
Someone—or something—is onto us.
The next morning delivers a barrage of questions from the city guard and Verrocchio, none of which I can answer in a satisfying way.
Yes, I saw someone with the workshop’s angel. No, I couldn’t see their face.
Yes, the door was locked. Yes, they came through the window.
I don’t tell them what Lupa told me. That her attacker felt like they had her magic, but wrong. If they cared to know her side of things, if they cared about her wellness at all, they could ask her themselves.
At the day’s end, Verrocchio looks a decade older. He crooks his finger. “Can I have a final word with you?”
A feeling of dread settles in my stomach. “Of course.”
He closes the door to his office and slowly sits down, as if delaying the moment he has to speak for as long as possible. “Don’t throw away your future, Virgil.”
I rock backward, surprised. “I’m… not?”
But the painting master has found his stride and talks right over me. “You need to remember that angels aren’t people. It’s impacting your work.”
He thinks Lupa is the reason why I’ve been furtive and weird, unable to focus?
“She’s not distracting me, Master.”
His bushy eyebrows lift. “Then why are you missing your deadlines? Why are you always gone when I need you? Why is the angel with you and not in the workshop for artists to make their bargains?” He smacks the desktop.
I jump. “No matter how much this creature looks and acts like a human, she’s not one.
You’re letting your affection for her blind you to what she really is. ”
I think of the crimson trickle down her chin, those too-sharp teeth and too-bright eyes.
Do you know what she really is, Master?
A hot rush races through me. I don’t like Verrocchio’s implication that Lupa is somehow less than any of us.
“She’s a part of our workshop, is she not?
The most valuable member, given her magic.
Perhaps someone was trying to steal her for themselves.
” It’s the only explanation that makes sense.
The man Piero killed wanted an angel of his own.
The people at the golden fountain would’ve hurt me to take Lupa.
Verrocchio watches me carefully; his stare is a palette knife, scraping through all my layers to the bare canvas beneath. “She has value,” he agrees. “Much like the horses that bring the marble to the workshop, or the cats that keep mice from the kitchens.”
“She’s no animal!”
“No, she’s even more dangerous. See that you don’t forget it.”
What does he mean by that? My fingers tighten over the armrests of my chair. Does he know the angels are demons? If anyone else in Florence did, it would be the workshop masters. For the first time, I find myself edging away from my mentor, doubting him.
Verrocchio’s mouth twists. “I’d like your key to the workshop, please.”
My hand darts to the slender silver length. “My key?”
He gave it to me over a year ago, the day after Christmas.
It wasn’t a gift, but it felt like one. After months of putting my head down and working when Niccolo disappeared, Verrocchio giving me the key felt like a sign that my sacrifices were paying off.
Like the future might finally work out for me.
“I’ll lead the morning exercises myself from now on.” He holds out his hand. “If Lupa leaves the workshop again, you’ll be leaving too. Do you understand?”
My fingers are fat, clumsy salumi. It takes a few tries to untie the key and drop it into Verrocchio’s palm. “Yes, Master.”
Watching his fingers fold over it feels like bargaining away the last bit of my soul.