“A”—he lowered his voice—“unicorn attack?”
I nodded miserably, and shut my burning eyes.
Next thing I knew, Giovanni and the shopkeeper were engaged in a fast-paced debate. Giovanni’s Italian had certainly improved over the summer.
“He thinks we should take you to the hospital,” Giovanni translated for me at one point, and then, a bit later, “I’m trying to convince him this isn’t gang related.” Finally, he interrupted the shopkeeper’s tirade with an upraised hand, turned to me, and said, “Do the people at the convent know where you are?”
I thought of the karkadann’s plea as I said, “Why do you think I called you?”
Giovanni seemed no more sympathetic than I had been to Bucephalus when he replied, “I’m trying not to ask myself that question right now.”
It was no more than I deserved. I held out my arms again. “Giovanni, look at me. You have no idea what happened to me today. I should be dead. I can’t go back to the Cloisters. Please, please, just—”
The shopkeeper watched all this, then said something else. He rummaged in a drawer, and emerged with a set of keys.
Giovanni’s translation was delivered in a flat voice, and he refused to meet my eyes. “He says there’s a room upstairs he rents to students in the winter months. He wants us to go up there, so you can wash off. He says you are scaring the customers.”
Because I looked like I’d walked off a horror movie set. “Oh. Okay.” I stood up. I followed the shopkeeper up the stairs, stumbling only twice, and he led us into a plain, modestly furnished studio. The bathroom didn’t even have a real door on it, just a cornered-off partition with a toilet and a showerhead over a drain in the sloped floor. The kitchen consisted of a sink, a cabinet, and a single-burner stove. There was a bed in the middle of the room and a single chair by the door.
The shopkeeper whispered something else to Giovanni and left. “He says he’s got some spare clothes downstairs you can wear. And some linens and soap for…your shower.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Grazie!” I called after the man.
Giovanni looked around the room, then parked himself in the chair. I went over to the sink and started running the water, plunging my hands beneath the faucet and marveling at how the stream turned black, then red.
The shopkeeper returned with a stack of towels and sheets, soap and shampoo, a shirt and a pair of drawstring pants, a brush, a packet of tea, and a can of what looked like soup.
“Grazie,” I said again, taking the supplies from him, humbled immensely by his generosity. “Grazie mille. Come si chiama? Mi chiamo Astrid Llewelyn.”
“Salvatore Basso.”
Salvatore. Savior. Well, he’d certainly saved me. “Signor Basso, molto, molto—”
“Dio la benedica, signorina.” He said, patted my mildly cleaner hand, and left.
Giovanni still wouldn’t meet my eyes, so I dropped the linens and clothes on the bed, then took the soap and towels with me into the bathroom stall. I stripped off my disgusting clothes and threw them out into the main room, then turned on the water to the shower before using the toilet. That experience was astoundingly gross, and even knowing from my hospital volunteering that stuff like—ick, this—was pretty common after major incisions hadn’t prepared me for the shock of it. I bit back a cry.
“Astrid?” Giovanni’s voice from the other side of the partition. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I gasped. I touched my back again, feeling the tender, new skin there. How would I be able to wash it? Did I dare ask Giovanni to help?
“I’m putting some water on for tea,” he said. “Is there anything else you need right now?”
Yes. I thought. I need you to come sponge off my back. I stepped into the spray and undid the rubber band securing my braid. I let the hair unwind, there, under the shower, careful to keep the length falling forward on my shoulders. Rivulets of water poured down my thighs and calves, stained scarlet.
“Like money?” he said. “Or a ride back to…wherever you’re going?”
Standing underneath the shower, I choked, and almost vomited up the soda that Signore Basso had been good enough to give me. “You’re…leaving?”
Silence.
“Giovanni?” I strained to listen above the sound of the shower, the sting of the water on my raw back, the swirling suckle of the drain beneath my toes. “Are you still here?”
“Yeah,” came the whispered reply from the other side of the partition. He was a few inches away. “Right here.” There was a soft thump against the wall. I put my hand up, picturing him on the other side, resting his forehead against the plywood.
“Don’t leave me,” I begged. I pressed hard against the wood, as if I could push right through it and touch him.
Eons passed in silence. And then, “I won’t.”
I scrubbed my face, then my arms and legs, bending over carefully so as not to stretch the skin of my back. I washed my neck, belly, chest, and between my legs. There was a small, shiny pink mark, shaped a bit like a double helix, where the unicorn’s horn had burst through my front, right below my bottom right rib. I marveled again that I’d survived.
Okay, enough stalling. I clenched my jaw and reached behind me. A new rush of red-stained water pooled at my feet, and I bit my lip. Flakes of dried blood bigger than euro coins broke off in my hands, but if I tried to run my fingers over the skin, I—
“Ow!” I spat out, and my legs began to shake. I pushed out into the walls with both hands to remain upright.
“Astrid? Are you all right?”
I took several deep, shuddering breaths, then turned off the shower. “Yes. I just—” I groped for a towel, then wrapped it carefully around my midsection. “I’m coming out now.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
By the time I got around the corner of the partition. Giovanni had returned to the stove area, where he was pouring out two mugs of tea, his back turned, his head tilted resolutely toward the teacups.
I sat on the edge of the bed and let the water from my hair drain into my lap. “I, um…” Another deep breath. “I can’t wash my back.”
He straightened, but didn’t turn around. “Why not?”
I swiveled away from him, then let the towel slide down to my waist. “Look.”
I don’t know when he turned. I didn’t want to know. But then, suddenly, there was a sharp intake of breath from across the room.
“What does it look like?” I asked, and there was a terrible catch in my voice. I dared not turn around to see the horror I felt reflected on his face.
And then, his hand touched my back, warm, and solid, and impossibly gentle. He traced a strange, jagged shape between the bottom tips of my shoulder blades. “Don’t tear my arms off, now,” he said, in a tone so low I could hardly hear it.
That’s right. I’d once threatened to do so if he ever touched me again. “I couldn’t if I wanted to.” My voice shook with every syllable. “What does it look like?”
“Like a star. Like a giant, twisted, many-fingered star.” He hesitated. “What happened?”
“I was gored,” I said. “Straight through.”
“But…” I knew every question in his mind. Knew it because I had them, too. How did you survive? How can you walk at all? How did it close up in such a short time? “It’s almost healed.”
“I heal quick, if it’s a unicorn-inflicted wound.”
He lowered his hand. “Are you saying you’re a superhero? You’re like Wolverine or something?”
I swallowed. “If there’s a unicorn around, then, yes.”
I felt the bed shift as he rose. “I’m going to clean off your back.” His tone gave no indication whether or not he believed me. “Is that okay?”
“Please.” I heard him rummaging around in a cabinet, and then running the sink. He returned to the bed and I felt his hand on my shoulder, and a soft, warm cloth on my back, dabbing away at the edges of the wound. We sat in silence for several minutes
as he washed my back. Outside, the sun set, and the room grew dark around us.
“Do you want to turn on the light?” I asked at last. “Make it easier to see?”
“It’s actually easier like this,” he said. “Easier not to…see.”
I balled my hands in my lap and hunched my shoulders as much as I dared. “It’s that bad, huh?”
“Astrid,” he said, and sounded as if he was fighting for breath. “You’re naked.”
I laughed then. I couldn’t help it. All this time, I thought he’d been appalled, and really, he’d been trying his best to be a gentleman. I turned to face him, with my damp hair spilling down over my shoulders and veiling my breasts. He stared at me, his expression a mixture of awe and concern, and I stared back, completely unmindful of everything but this boy, this moment. Last night, I died. Today, I’d been reborn. Who was I now? Astrid the Warrior, as Giovanni liked to say, or Astrid the woman, whom Giovanni could actually have?
I took a deep breath. “You need to know…”
A split second of hesitation, then he breathed out, “What?”
“The way I feel about you—it never changed. I tried to hate you, but…I couldn’t. I can’t. And I don’t want to.”
He sighed in relief, leaned forward, and kissed me hard— nothing more than his mouth against mine, but it felt like a full body embrace. He cupped my face in his hands, and though I wished for all the world for him to crush me in his arms, I knew my back could never take it.
He drew away at last, panting a bit, and buried his face against my neck. “This week was hell. I deserved everything you said to me at the convent that day. I was so awful. And when you walked away from me, I knew how badly I’d messed up. Again. It made everything that happened at school seem like nothing more than bombing a problem set. I’d been trying so hard to be good again, and I was worse than ever.”
I threaded my hands through his curls, caressing his scalp.
“When you called today, I didn’t care why or how, I just knew I needed to get to you. I stole that van from the school. They’ll kick me out for sure, now. First Seth disappearing, then me…but I didn’t care, as long as I saw you again. Even if you hated me. Even if the only thing I could be for you was the guy who translated the Italian and made the tea. Even if I had to stand there on the other side of the shower wall, not knowing if you were bleeding to death in there. Just knowing that you had no clothes on, and we were in a room with nothing but a bed, and I could never, ever touch you again.”
“You can,” I said, “if you want to.” And for a second I thought he would—that we both would. Then I winced, as an arrow of pain shot through my torso. “Just not right this minute, maybe.”
He nodded and pulled away. It didn’t matter, though. I was dead now. I had all the time in the world to be with Giovanni. “You get dressed,” he said. “I’ll make fresh tea.”
He flipped on a light as he went, and I changed into the pants and loose shirt while his back was turned. The combination of lamplight and nighttime transformed the apartment’s window into a mirror, and I lifted my shirt and peeked over my shoulder to look at my back. It was as Giovanni had said. A starburst of fresh scars more than a hand spread wide radiated from the center of my back. Each ray coiled in on itself, crossing and recrossing, like a braid or a dozen figure eights laid end to end. I remembered Kaitlyn’s description of the mark on Brandt’s leg. Why hadn’t I seen this before, on Ursula, or on Zelda, who’d also gotten an alicorn injury? But they’d also both gotten stitches. When the kirin in the courtyard had scraped my arm, I’d closed it up with bandages. Today, I’d healed naturally, Brandt through the Remedy. Was it connected?
Giovanni cleared his throat, and I whipped my shirt back down. “Have pity on me, at least,” he said.
But he wasn’t asking me to do anything. It wasn’t at all like Kaitlyn had once told me, about what guys expected and what you owed them. Giovanni broke every rule I’d understood about girls and boys. He defied every expectation I’d ever put in place.
We sat on the bed and he handed me a mug, and in between sips, I told him everything. I told him about Alexander the Great and his warhorse, about the goddess Diana, about the temple fire and the vestals and the Cloisters and the Jutland Campaign. I told him about my mother, about Brandt, about Bonegrinder and Cory and Neil and Gordian. I told him about killing the re’em and getting attacked by the kirin. I told him about Bucephalus and what the karkadann had said about Clothilde, what he’d said about me.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” I asked, when I was done and the tea had gone cold again.
He shook his head. “We’re in Rome, Astrid. Between the ancients and the Church, what you’re saying sounds like a comparatively minor miracle. Talking unicorns and wounds that close on their own? I can point to half a dozen places in the Bible—”
“Forget the Bible for a second,” I said. “Do you believe me?”
“I believe my own eyes.” He gestured to my back. “So, yeah. Man, I wish I could watch you shoot sometime. When you were describing it just now—I’ve never seen you look so alive.”
I drew back, aghast. “That’s not true!”
He held up his hands. “Whoa, what did I say? It was just an observation.”
“Don’t say that. Hunting was awful. I’m so relieved to be free of it.” I lay down on the bed, resting on my side so as not to put pressure on my back, and tried to forget his words. He was wrong. Plain wrong.
Yet bowstrings twanged and swords clashed inside my mind.
Giovanni scooted up next to me. “Why do you think you’re free?”
“Because all the other hunters think I’m dead.”
“Your family.”
I was quiet for a moment, imagining what it would be like not to see Phil again. Or even my mom. “It will be okay.”
“Hmmm.” He curled his body to match mine, leaving a few inches between my back and his front, and caressed my arm. “I’m not sure. That doesn’t sound like you, leaving those girls to fend for themselves. Didn’t you say some of them were twelve or even younger? Remember the night we met? You wouldn’t even let me thrash that gypsy kid who stole your purse.”
“That was different.” In my head, I pictured Ilesha, falling as the kirin charged. I didn’t even know if she was okay. Bucephalus had said none of the hunters had died, but the karkadann wasn’t omniscient. I wondered if anyone else had been seriously injured.
The information the karkadann had given me—would it help them? Would it protect them the next time they went on a hunt, save them from another kirin ambush? Did they even understand that it had been an ambush?
“What are you thinking, Astrid?” His hand traveled up and down my arm, but no farther.
“How nice it is to lie here with you.”
He made that unconvinced little harrumph again.
“Why?” I asked. “What are you thinking?” Sex, probably. We were lying on a bed, after all. And I’d taken my clothes off in front of him. And he was a teenage boy.
But Giovanni surprised me again. “I’m thinking about how you’re not really free. From everything you told me, it sounds like you draw unicorns to you, just by dint of who you are. That’s dangerous, isn’t it?”
“It stops when I’m…not a virgin.”
“Really tempting request,” he whispered into my hair. My entire body seemed to tingle, and the scars on my back burned like a brand. He exhaled hard against my skin. “Really.”
I rose on my elbow and looked down at him, his head making a dent on the beat-up pillow, his skin, dark against the sheets, his big brown eyes and the little hollow beneath his Adam’s apple where his pulse fluttered so fast I could hardly tell one beat from the next. I twisted and lowered myself until I was lying across his chest, and we started kissing. Our bodies meshed together, mine damp and raw and sensitive to every touch, his warm and solid and human and wonderful. I grabbed handfuls of his shirt, clinging to him as my heartbeat raced to catch up to his, as ou
r lips and tongues touched and everything seemed so perfect I wanted to cry out in triumph. I slid over, just a few inches, until I was lying more completely on top of him. He reached up to pull me in close, and I whimpered in pain. His hands dropped to the side.
No! Stupid wound.
“If you could do it now,” he said softly, lying utterly still beneath me, as if he was terrified of hurting me again. “Tonight. Would you?”
“I don’t know. I would want to.”
“And if it wasn’t me, would you want to still?”
I knew what he was asking, really. Was it freedom, or was it him? I kissed his chest through his T-shirt, breathed him in—the fresh, living scent of Giovanni, untainted by any touch of unicorn, any whiff of fire or flood. “No. It’s you.”
“It’s you, too, Astrid the Warrior.”
I pulled away. “Stop calling me that.”
“Why? It’s true, isn’t it? It’s what you are.”
I slid off the bed, crossed the room to the window, and stared out at the night. Even Rome was far vaster than what I knew of my little neighborhood near the Cloisters. How could he expect me to return there, knowing how isolated it was? Knowing how dangerous?
“That unicorn, the one that talked to you—”
“Bucephalus.”
“He said that it was especially bad for the other girls now. For anyone with your…abilities. That those other unicorns were trying to hunt you down and would go after the other girls when you were gone. He said you could stop that. Make it safe again. And then you could do whatever you wanted.”
I looked over my shoulder at him. He was sitting on the bed, looking amazing and warm and oh, so out of reach! “Like you?”
“You think I do what I want?”
“No. I think what I want to do is you.”
He laughed, but then got serious again right away. “Astrid, look at your back. You could have died. Should have died. That you didn’t is a miracle. Do you want to mess with that? Considering there are man-eating monsters out there?”
I looked out the window again. Somewhere in the dark, the karkadann waited. I couldn’t hear him anymore, but I could still tell. It was such a part of me now, this unicorn sense. To lose it would be like going blind.
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