A Hidden Fire

by Elizabeth Hunter

  “Your drinks, Dr. Vecchio.” The server placed the two glasses of amber whisky on the coffee table in front of them.

  “Well,” Gavin said, “we’ll let you enjoy your drinks. Excellent choices for both of you. You must have very discerning palates.” He winked at Beatrice behind Lorenzo’s back and mouthed ‘call me’ to Giovanni with a slight frown.

  “Goodbye for now,” Lorenzo said. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

  “Looking forward to catching up.”

  They walked away, and Giovanni and Beatrice both lifted their drinks.

  “Cheers,” she muttered and clinked the edge of her glass with his before she took a sip. “Here’s to fooling no one.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Houston, Texas

  June 2004

  “What’s that?”

  He turned, embarrassed when she walked into the kitchen. Carl waved to him from the door then walked outside to make his rounds around the house.

  “This is…a cake.”

  “You like cake?”

  He frowned. “I was told you do.”

  Beatrice’s mouth dropped open in shock. “You got me a cake?”

  “You’ve just graduated, and your grandmother isn’t here.” He cleared his throat. “I called Caspar. He suggested a cake. I’m sorry if it’s—”

  “I love it.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted. He was pleased she was happy with the gesture, even if she hadn’t tried the cake yet. “Your grandmother informed Caspar that your favorite flavor was lemon cake. I’ll confess, I ordered it. I can’t imagine you want me baking anything.”

  Beatrice grinned and set her school bag down before she walked over to join him at the counter.

  “It’d be kind of cool to see you try to cook something with your hands, though.”

  He snorted and turned to take the small lemon cake out of the pink box.

  “Have you ever done that? Cooked something with your fire?”

  He shook his head and chuckled. “Not anything you’d want to eat, Beatrice.”

  “What? Why—oh ew! You’ve killed things that way, haven’t you?”

  He shrugged. “What did you think when Carwyn said I liked my enemies ‘extra crispy?’”

  “I’ll admit. I chose not to think about that too closely.”

  “Stick around for five hundred years or so, and you’re bound to make a few enemies.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” She peeked over his shoulder and smiled.

  Giovanni winked as he cut a piece of cake. He placed it on a small plate, and handed it to her. “Now, wait just a moment…”

  He walked to the refrigerator and retrieved a bottle of champagne, which he twisted open before he grabbed two flutes from the butler’s pantry.

  “Come now. Dining room. You can’t have your graduation cake standing in the kitchen.”

  She followed him to the dining room table, and Giovanni quickly flicked small flames toward the white tapers Caspar kept out. He poured the wine for them both and sat down next to her.

  Lifting a glass, he toasted. “To you, Beatrice De Novo. Congratulations on your college graduation.”

  “Thanks!” She blushed with pleasure as she sipped the champagne and took a bite of cake. “It’s delicious.”

  He nodded in satisfaction as he sipped the champagne. “Excellent.”

  “Do you want a bite?”

  “Probably not. Most things with refined sugar are far too sweet for my taste.”

  “Really?” She cocked her head to the side in an adorable gesture.

  “Yes, they didn’t have anything that sweet when I was human. Not that I remember. Well…honey maybe. That’s very sweet. Or fruit. I still eat that occasionally. I like some fruits.”

  She smiled and leaned forward, propping her chin in her hand. “Really? Like what?”

  Giovanni frowned as he tried to think of the last person who had asked him personal questions. For some reason, he liked the feeling of sharing his likes and dislikes with her. “I like figs, fresh ones. And…apricots.”

  She smiled. “I like apricots, too.”

  “What are your favorite foods?”

  She took another sip of champagne, and he watched the glass rise to her lips. He wondered if they were sweet from eating the cake.

  “I like spicy things. Anything with chiles, especially my grandmother’s food. And chocolate, but just dark chocolate.”

  He smiled. “I never tasted chocolate as a human. The new world had just been discovered, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Wow, I guess not. So no tomatoes for you, either.”

  He shook his head. “No tomatoes or corn…or potatoes, for that matter.”

  “It’s so funny because we think of tomatoes as an Italian food now.”

  “Oh,” he chuckled a little. “The food I ate as a child is very different from what is common in Italy now.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Things were cooked more heavily. Lots of stews. I like modern food more. There are more ingredients and spices, and things to choose from.”

  “Yeah,” she smiled sweetly. “I guess we’re pretty lucky.”

  “Very lucky, Beatrice.”

  She sipped her champagne. “This is really good, by the way. What kind of champagne is it?”

  He twisted the bottle so she could see the label. “This is Dom Pérignon.”

  She snorted a little, catching the wine that wanted to escape her mouth before she carefully swallowed. “Isn’t that, like, super expensive?”

  “This one was quite reasonable. I got it from the cellar. One of Caspar’s, a 1985 vintage. I think he acquired it for around four hundred or so.”

  “A bottle?” she squeaked.

  He shrugged. “Drink up. I have plenty of money. I might as well spend it on people and things I enjoy.”

  She was still eyeing the bubbling glass with trepidation. He rolled his eyes.

  “Beatrice, just drink the champagne. I’ll never be able to finish all of it myself, and it’s your graduation.”

  Smiling a little, she took a tentative sip.

  “Still good?”

  She nodded and took another bite of her cake.

  “Did you always have a lot?” she asked.

  “Of money? Except for a brief period of my life, yes. I’ve had a very long time to acquire it, as you can imagine. I have extensive investments and property, as well as what money I make working for clients, which isn’t insignificant.”

  “Investments? Cool. I know all about the stock market. My grandfather and I always used to play with it.”

  He laughed. “Really? That’s a rather unusual past time. No fishing? Dollhouses?”

  “No,” she laughed along with him. “I think he did it instead of gambling, to be honest. If it wasn’t the stock market, it would have been the race track. I got to be better at it than him, though.”

  “Were you?”

  “Oh yeah, I’m pretty good. Ask my grandma. I invest all her money for her.”

  “And do you have money of your own invested?”

  She nodded. “That’s why I don’t have any student loans. My grandpa and I invested all the money from my father’s estate. There wasn’t much, but it was years ago, and once online trading became more common, it was easy to play around with it. Online markets are great, and I pay a lot less in broker fees now.”

  He smiled in delight. “I should probably let you take a look at my financial portfolio.”

  “You should,” she muttered as she took another bite of cake. “I could probably shift some of your stuff around and have you making double what you are now. Unless you’ve got a really good broker. Are you diversified into foreign markets or currencies?”

  “I…don’t know.” He honestly had very little idea where most of his money was, other than the cache of gold he kept with him.

  “You really need to be taking advantage of all the online trading
there is now. I could show Caspar how to do it.”

  “I’ll let him know.”

  “Cool.” She smiled a little and took another drink of champagne. “It’s pretty fun.”

  “And you do all of it on the computer now?”

  “Yep.”

  He cocked his head and watched her, intrigued by the facets of her mind. “How did you learn so much about computers?”

  Her smile fell, and she shrugged. “Antisocial teenager. I got one for my room, and my grandparents…well, they knew I liked being by myself, so they just left me to it.” She cleared her throat and looked down at the table. “It was the place I felt most comfortable. On my computer. Or in my books.”

  “I’m sure your grandparents were happy you had it,” he said, suddenly wishing he could ease the memory of the lonely child he saw behind her eyes.

  “Good thing for you I did, right? You needed a computer whiz on staff.”

  “I most certainly did,” he said with a smile and a nod.

  They were quiet for a few minutes as Beatrice finished her cake. Giovanni poured another glass of champagne for them both.

  “Gio?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why does Lorenzo want my father?”

  He frowned, wishing she hadn’t brought the topic up. “I’m sure he wants him back purely because he got away, to begin with. And I suspect he took something. Possibly something from the collection.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  It was an excellent question; one Giovanni has asked himself many times.

  “I don’t know.”

  “And why would Lorenzo have killed him?”

  The memory ambushed him; he could almost hear his father’s voice.

  “What do you hold in your hands?”

  “A book.”

  “No, you hold knowledge…and knowledge is power. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  He shook his head.

  “I…it could have been as simple as your father asking the wrong question to the wrong person, Beatrice. If Lorenzo considered him a threat, your father had no chance. It’s more curious why he turned him, to be honest. For that, I think he must have had some use, though I don’t know what it might be. Otherwise, he would have just killed him.”

  He saw a tear shining in her eye, but she brushed it away.

  “It probably would have been better if he had, right? If Lorenzo had just killed him?”

  “Don’t say that,” he murmured with a frown. “I’m not going to say that your father has had an easy start, but if this current problem can be solved, he can go on to live a wonderful, long life.”

  “If we can even find him.”

  He took a breath and put on a smile. “I’ll find him. I’m waiting to hear from someone very knowledgeable right now. Someone in Rome.”

  “Would your friend Tenzin know anything about him?

  “Tenzin?” he chuckled. “Why would Tenzin know? She lives in the middle of the Himalayas most of the time.”

  Beatrice blushed a little. “I don’t know. You and Carwyn always talk about her like she’s some all-knowing seer or something.”

  “And you thought—”

  “I just thought she might have seen my dad.” She looked embarrassed, so Giovanni was quick to reassure her.

  “We do talk about Tenzin like that. She says she only sees people or vampires in our circle of friends. People she knows.”

  “But Carwyn said she’d probably had a dream or two about me?”

  Damn sentimental Welshman. He paused, unsure of what to say and strangely uncomfortable with Beatrice’s uncanny memory. “It’s…possible, I suppose.”

  Her eyes darted around the room. “Oh, Carwyn was probably just teasing me. She’s Chinese?”

  “Who? Tenzin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tenzin is…old.”

  “What, so she’s from way back when in China, huh?”

  “Not exactly,” he frowned. He wasn’t sure where exactly Tenzin was from on today’s maps. He wasn’t sure his ancient friend knew herself.

  Beatrice waved a hand in front of her face. “You know what, forget it. It’s her story, right? I mean, I doubt I’ll ever meet her, but if I do, it’s her story to tell. I got it.”

  He smiled. “If you do ever meet Tenzin, that’s the most important thing to remember. She’s very, very old.”

  “Older than you? Than Carwyn?” She frowned.

  Giovanni smiled. “Carwyn and I are children compared to Tenzin.”

  Beatrice paused, speechless as she stared at him, open mouthed. “How old do you have to be to make a thousand year old vampire look young?”

  “Very old, Beatrice. Tenzin doesn’t operate very comfortably in the modern world. That’s part of the reason she’s in Tibet.”

  “Wow.”

  “‘Wow’ is usually a good word to describe her, yes.”

  “I can’t even imagine having that kind of life.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not something you can imagine. When you are immortal, you see your life in years instead of days, and centuries instead of years.”

  She looked at him, searching his face for something he couldn’t comprehend.

  “Are you happy? Being a vampire?”

  He blinked. “Am I happy?” He tried to remember if anyone had ever asked him that before.

  She nodded.

  Giovanni’s mind raced as he thought of the challenge of keeping a constant, iron control over his instincts. He thought about how much he still missed the sun, and of all the human friends he had seen grow old and die over the years.

  He also thought about the people he had met, and the places he had been. He thought about rescuing Caspar. And of an unmarked grave in the Tuscan countryside where his life would have ended had he never met his sire. He watched the curious girl who sat next to him, sharing a piece of cake and a glass of champagne. He nodded.

  “Yes, I’m happy with my life.”

  “And I’m glad I met you.”

  They both smiled as they sipped the sweet wine. He reached across and touched the edge of his glass to hers.

  “Congratulations, Beatrice. Happy graduation.”

  When Giovanni went to the library the following Wednesday, he had a smile on his face. It was Beatrice’s final week of work, so she would no longer be dividing her time between the university library and his own.

  Caspar and Isadora were doing well, and had so far garnered no attention in the mountains. And when he spoke to Caspar that evening, his butler had finally heard back from one of Livia’s people in Rome.

  According to her secretary, Giovanni could expect a letter from Livia sometime in the next three months. While it may have seemed slow for some, for the two thousand-year-old Roman noblewoman, three months was as good as overnight mail.

  He was so cheerful, he almost skipped up to the fifth floor, only to halt in the stairwell as he caught the whisper of unfamiliar voices coming from above. He didn’t sense any danger, but there were far more voices than normal. He tensed until he heard Beatrice; she sounded worried, but not panicked in any way.

  Giovanni stepped into the hallway and listened, but the voices were too jumbled to sort through from a distance. He pushed open the door to see the director of Special Collections standing in the reading room with Beatrice and the librarian, Charlotte Martin. The president of the university was also present, along with the head of security, and two Houston Police detectives.

  Charlotte spotted him immediately. “Oh, Dr. Vecchio, what a mess! Thank goodness your manuscript wasn’t damaged.”

  “What is the problem?” He shot a look toward Beatrice, but she was giving a statement to one of the police detectives and only gave him a small shake of her head.

  “The Pico letters, Dr. Vecchio. They’re gone!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Houston, Texas

  June 2004

  “And what time did you get here?”

 
Beatrice sighed. “I already told the other officer, I was running late, so I probably got here around five fifteen, or so. I didn’t look at the clock because Dr. Christiansen and Charlotte were running around and there was security everywhere.”

  Detective Rose narrowed his gaze, and his tight smile failed to reach his eyes. “How long have you worked at the library?”

  “A couple of years. I don’t remember exactly what month I started working. It was my sophomore year.”

  “You’re a senior now?”

  “I just graduated. This is supposed to me my last week working.”

  “Isn’t that nice? Congratulations.”

  Beatrice frowned. “Am I under suspicion or something? I would never steal anything from the library.” She could see Giovanni lingering by the door, talking to Charlotte, but she could tell he was listening to her conversation with the detective.

  “How many people have the combination to the document room, Miss De Novo? Or should I call you B?”

  Her chin jutted out. “You can call me Miss De Novo.” She saw Giovanni smirk over the detective’s shoulder. “I do, as well as Charlotte Martin, and Dr. Christiansen, obviously. Mrs. Ryan, on the first floor, would have it, as well as Karen Williams, who also works here sometimes. She’s in Circulation, but she fills in when we’re busy.”

  “That’s a small staff.”

  “Well,” she shrugged, “our hours are limited. It’s not a very busy department.”

  “That makes a small suspect list.”

  “I suppose, unless you’re counting anyone who knows anything about picking locks. This library doesn’t exactly have cutting-edge technology.”

  “Do you know anything about picking locks?”

  Her jaw dropped. “Are you joking?” He didn’t look like he was joking. “I know nothing about picking locks. I know nothing about missing letters. I wouldn’t even know what to do with them if I did steal them.”

  Immediately after saying this, Beatrice realized it wasn’t exactly true. She was a fast learner, and had a feeling from talking with some of Giovanni’s contacts over the past few months that more than one of them skirted the edges of legality. If she wanted to sell some stolen letters, she could probably figure out how.