by Noelle Mack
“But everything can be had for a price, of course. I will procure a copy somewhere. Might I have your name and address? I will have a boy bring it round.”
A smile that wasn’t at all friendly stretched across his old face, and Sarah thought instantly of the bocca di leone. The bookseller was an informer, she somehow just knew it. The shop was a trap, and the books on its shelves no more than bait for the unwary. Marco, by asking for a book of spells, was asking for trouble.
To his credit, he listened to her. “Ah, I can see why you were nervous. But he is not an informer. Only a would-be mage who peddles odd books and whatever else will get people into his out-of-the-way store.”
“I got the feeling he hated you.”
“Shopkeepers never like customers who take up their time and don’t buy anything.”
Sarah looked at him narrowly. “So I was wrong. My hunch didn’t mean anything.”
“I hope you are wrong.” His tone was mocking. “You certainly are observant.”
Nettled, she shot back, “That’s because I wasn’t checking out the skirts.”
“Do you mean those women who walked by the shop window?”
“I do.”
“I was only looking. Is that a sin?”
She scowled at him. “It almost got you thrown in prison.”
“Hmm. I suppose I have you to thank for protecting me from such a fate.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Oh, Sarah—” he leaned back against the gondola seat—“The Council of Ten protects Venice from its enemies. Their agents hunt for spies and murderers, not people like us. That old man sells magic books and erotica and scandal sheets—amusements, in short. We are safe enough.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“What would they want with us?” His tone was too casual to convince her. “It would take two informers anyway. The proprietor of Arcana was by himself in his shop and his word alone would not do.”
“I don’t find that reassuring.”
“Because you think like an American. Here, the riffraff is afraid of the government and that is as it should be. Venice is serene. Our people have food and wine and pleasure to spare. Speaking of that, may I have a kiss?”
“You’re impossible.” But she gave him a kiss for good luck, and settled against his side, wishing gallstones and worse on the Council of Ten and the doge.
“You think too much, Sarah.”
“One of us has to. I am not staying in the eighteenth century.”
They hadn’t found the book that would get them back to their own time and they were in exactly the same place: stuck.
“Kiss me again,” he said.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You know where we’ll end up.”
He swept her into an embrace that had their gondolier stepping fast to balance the boat. “Yes. Look, we are almost home.”
She pushed him away. “I—I just don’t want to go back yet.” Sarah could not shake the feeling that the creepy old man in the bookstore might have had them followed. No, she hadn’t seen anyone, but it was hard to tell one gondola from another when the boats were all black.
“Why not?”
“Let’s go somewhere else,” she begged. “Out of the city.”
“Where?”
“To—to the Lido. I haven’t been there.”
Marco’s voice was soothing, but not quite soothing enough. She looked back the way they had come, seeing the first stealthy wisps of fog begin to enter the canals.
“We should have a party, invite my friends from the Ridotto and musicians from the scuola. Spend all the money you want. Here.”
He leaned to the side rather awkwardly and brought out the little bag of money.
Sarah brightened. Now there was something she could use. “Thanks,” she said, taking it and stuffing it down her bodice. “OK. Let’s have a party.”
Sarah went upstairs to the drawing room where she’d been fitted for the black satin gown. She wore a loose robe of plain, light-colored silk and let her hair flow free.
Trying to keep the door from creaking, she opened it slowly, glad to see that no servant had retreated to this quiet room for a nap. She would be quite alone.
Sarah unfolded the lid of a desk and looked at the writing implements and paper: everything she needed.
Pulling up a chair, she investigated a crystal bottle of ink. Still liquid. She was in business. She dipped a quill into the crystal bottle and began to write down what she missed most: terrible American food. Cheeseburgers. Macaroni and cheese. Cheddar cheese party ball with slivered almonds in a parsley nest. When unhappy, she tended to crave cheese. It had a calming effect.
Of course, they would be serving Venetian delicacies, such as squid. She didn’t care. So long as it was cheap and she could keep back enough money to hire a detective, or whatever they were called in this day and age, to help her find the book.
Sarah pondered that issue for a moment. It might be easier to slip Federico a couple of ducats and have him take her around to bookstores. But, he was loyal to Marco and might tell him what she was up to.
That was another problem—he seemed entirely too comfortable in this time. Of course, to him the city didn’t look all that different, so he felt right at home. He probably liked the fact that nine million tourists hadn’t arrived yet, and the pigeons minded their manners, and he got to live like a lord.
Would he even want to come back? The second she raised the question, he did his best to soothe and comfort her and blow her mind with amazing sex. The technique worked, but only while they were actually having the sex. She wanted to go back, she was going to go back—with or without Marco—the second she got her hands on that book of spells.
Alone on the uppermost floor of the palazzo, left to her own devices by the busy servants, who never talked to her anyway, Sarah kept on thinking about what to do next.
Marco’s suggestion was going to work out fine. When life got you down, it was a good idea to throw a party. Or go to a party. That’s what she’d done in college, when everybody dropped by her dorm room to see where the music was coming from and helped themselves to chips and dip. She had been elected the Guacamole Queen of her undergraduate residence hall three years in a row—a dubious honor, but she’d made a lot of scruffy friends. If they could see me now, she thought. Sarah looked down at her robe. For the party, she would change into a gorgeous taffeta confection she’d tried on with the assistance of the Turkish maid. The thing required several stiff petticoats that made a faint crunching sound when she sat down in the whole rig. Another treasure from the depths of the armadio.
She would love to show it off. There would be one problem: she wouldn’t understand the compliments or the sexual innuendoes or the jokes…or anything at all. The people who would be coming were Marco’s friends, not hers. The language barrier and the sheer weirdness of being from a whole other time and place was getting to her.
Brooklyn as she knew it was far in the future and so was her blank-walled sublet. Was it possible to be homesick for a place you didn’t actually think of as home?
She wondered where her friends actually were. They’d scattered around the country in the year or so after graduation; the competition for arty jobs in New York was fierce. The losers tended to end up pulling espressos in grim little cafés for five bucks an hour with pathetically clever signs on the tip jars. Feed An Artist, Starve A Capitalist. If enough change slid off guilty capitalist palms and into the jar by the end of the day, the help split the take five ways. She’d considered herself lucky to land the gig at WetPaint—a job she no longer had.
Sarah pulled the bag of ducats out of a hidden pocket in her robe. They were reassuringly heavy in her lap, and they clinked in a golden way inside the bag. But how much would they be worth in the real world, and would she have the nerve to walk into a Lexington Avenue coin dealer and ask?
Hmph. After this adventure, she had the nerve to do anything. May
be the ducats were worth a fortune. She could handle being rich. Her friends would be amazed. Bah. No use thinking about impressing people who didn’t care about her. She hadn’t been that close to any of them.
As far as her parents…well, they were out of the picture. They’d dumped her on their own parents and joined a religious cult in upstate New York. Sarah got postcards on holidays she’d never heard of, with a many-armed god on one side and the words Infinite Wisdom on the other.
She’d loved her grandparents but they had died within months of each other several years ago. Given her ability to keep on going no matter what life brought, she’d been able to get on a plane and fly to Venice without worrying about anybody but herself.
That was not necessarily a good thing.
And what had Marco said in the bookstore, that he loved her? Oh, right. In his way. He’d had to add that. He wouldn’t miss her all that much. But she would miss his raffish charm, and the great sex, and whatever future they might have once they got back to their own century. If she left him behind in this one, she would never see him again.
You can’t miss what you haven’t had yet, she told herself fiercely.
Tears welled in her eyes. A big one dropped on the light-colored silk. With the flat of her hand, she rubbed away the others before they could fall too. Sarah was on the verge of dissolving in her own loneliness but she knew that crying was a waste of time.
Ombra jumped in her lap and stared up at her with chartreuse sympathy. How had the little cat opened the door? Sarah looked and saw that it was still closed. Ombra put a paw on the bag, and the gold coins clinked.
“Were you already in the room? You are a little sneak, Ombra,” she said softly. She stroked the cat’s gray fur, indulging herself in a long, sad sigh. “But I guess that makes two of us. Maybe I shouldn’t steal his money.”
The guests were still coming in—Sarah had a feeling Marco had invited half of Venice. She could hear gondolas bonking despite the best efforts of the gondoliers, who were cursing loudly at each other. Sarah looked out an upstairs window.
The older guests and assorted relatives had arrived first and were exchanging stern looks. She’d peeked in on them and told Federico to open the champagne before they started discussing their aches and pains.
Then a flotilla of gondolas, now departed, had arrived with all the cousins, who were inside, chatting. She was looking at the entertainment. Several pretty young women, the singers from the scuola, tried to keep their balance in the gondolas until they could get onto the marble steps of the palazzo. The tide was well out, and that meant they had to be lifted over the slimy steps that were usually below the level of the water.
Marco and a friend of his were doing the honors and checking out cleavage at the same time. She couldn’t really blame them when the women were showing so much bosom. But Marco earned himself a rap on the head from the scuola’s concertmaster.
“He didn’t deserve that, Foscari! Do you want to carry them? What do you feed those girls? They are nice and plump,” Marco’s pal called after the concertmaster.
Young men jostled to be next on the steps, bounding out of the boats, refusing assistance. One slipped, saved from a dunking by Marco’s swift grab at his collar. “Grazie,” he muttered, looking embarrassed.
Somehow or other they all got inside, crowding into the first-floor salon. The hubbub stopped when Sarah entered—wearing, or being worn by, the taffeta confection—and started right up again when the food was brought in.
Federico had helped her with the shopping, and the cook and her helpers had done the rest. Platters of delicacies were laid waste in seconds. The level in the wine bottles was dropping fast. So much for the sophisticated eighteenth century. Sarah had never been at such a noisy party, not even in college. Hungry art students didn’t eat and drink that fast.
However, unlike the stiff, tight-lipped aristocrats at the duke’s ball, these people were friendly and warm. She smiled and nodded, bowed and even danced a little, getting through a butt-bumping minuet when it seemed to be required. She wanted to be more sociable but the hours dragged on and the guests got raucous. Marco got her to one side.
“This was not a good idea. I am sorry, Sarah,” he whispered. “I only wanted to cheer you up.”
She smiled, promising herself that it would be the last smile of the evening. Her mouth was about to fall off from smiling. “It’s all right. They’re having a good time. You gave me plenty of money for the food and everything.” She still felt a little guilty about those ducats. There had been quite a few left over.
“I was expecting someone to come tonight, someone who might help us, get back to the future.” he said. “If you still want to go—ah, I didn’t want to tell you.”
She looked at him narrowly. “Of course not. Don’t get my hopes up.”
Marco turned his head at the sound of a squeal. The concertmaster had detached the last of the girls from the clutches of a male guest, and lined them up in a row.
“They are going to sing. This is something you will like.”
She wasn’t expecting much. The old man warmed them up with a few tra-la’s as the string quartet tuned their instruments and muttered a few complaints about the quality of catgut these days. Sarah hoped Ombra wasn’t listening. Little by little, fixed with a basilisk stare from the concertmaster, everyone got quiet. He raised his hand, and the young women began to sing…like angels. Not fallen ones. Real angels.
The melody soared, filled with emotion that brought all of Sarah’s hidden feelings to the surface. The musicians joined in, sure of their notes, supporting a golden harmony of voices, a sound that seemed to come from the girls’ souls. Everything that was beautiful in Venice was in the music: the changeable skies, the warm colors of the old buildings, the shimmering water everywhere. The words were about love, Sarah was pretty sure of that. She burst into tears and left the room. No one saw but Marco, who followed her out.
“Cara mia, what is the matter?”
“I don’t know, Marco. Just let me be.” She fled upstairs.
He came to her much later. Moonlight spilled across the bed where she lay sleeping in a chemise and nothing else. He undressed and curled his long body around hers.
Sarah stirred. He stroked her shoulder and kissed her hair. She could feel his soft penis pressing against her behind, the strong muscles of his thighs pleasingly hard. She wriggled back against him so they were skin to skin. There was something so honest about his nakedness—he was giving her himself because he had no idea of what else he could do.
“They all went home.”
“I know.” She had registered the affectionate good-byes in her sleep, heard the soft chop of the oars in the water, and then nothing.
“What happened? Why did you cry?”
He touched her cheek with two fingers, as if he wanted to find out whether she was crying now.
Sarah smiled. “I’m all right. It’s Venice—it just got to me—the music, I mean.”
“Of course.”
Nice of him to say that. She wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. She struggled to compose her thoughts and say something intelligent.
“It’s like the city was telling me to stay…the way those girls sang, it was so beautiful…oh, hell, I can’t explain it. I’m not even going to try.”
“I think I understand,” he said softly. “But then I have lived in Venice all my life.”
She turned around to face him, loving the way the moonlight shadowed his eyes and his mouth.
“Is there no way I can persuade you to stay?” he said at last.
“Not in this century. Why did you bring me here? To make it hard for me to get away?”
He brushed her lips with a kiss. “No, Sarah. You were the one who pronounced the spell. I was as surprised as you were.”
“One last question. Are you now, or have you ever been, a sorcerer?”
“No.” His voice was quite firm. “But I cannot deny that I am descended from many gen
erations of them. Something about you does seem to awaken their influence.”
She thought that over. She was really attracted to that dark edge of his—and his willingness to be as wild as she wanted to be.
“Wait a minute. I forgot something. You said someone was coming tonight who could help us. Did he ever show up?”
“She. Veronica Suona.”
Sarah should have known it would be a she. A former mistress, probably. With the bewitching charm of every Venetian beauty.
“And yes, Veronica did come at the last minute. She brought a copy of the book.”
‘Where is it?” Sarah said, not whispering any more. “Why didn’t you wake me up sooner?”
“She didn’t give it to me. I suspect she doesn’t trust me. She is a former mis—”
She thumped his chest. “Shut up.”
“What is the matter with you? I thought you would be happy to hear of this.”
“I am, I am.”
“Well, then. We are to meet her on the Lido tomorrow. Federico will bring us there so that we are ready. She said that the jumping point into the future is where the sun meets the water. At dawn. So we will spend the night there.”
The cook and the housekeeper set a heavy basket filled with food and wine in the gondola and another, larger but lighter, that was filled with blankets. Federico pushed off.
“This is turning into quite an expedition.” She tucked her skirts under her. She’d had a hell of a time figuring out what to wear and settled for the plainest dress she could find, a shawl, and a straw hat, figuring she would swim naked when his former mistress wasn’t looking.
“I told you, there is nothing there. It is a beautiful spot, though, in its lonely way. A few fishermen might be out. We shall buy fish and cook it over a fire and play at being rustics.”
“Mmm, flounder on a stick, my favorite.”
She looked around at the early morning sun lighting up the facades of the old palazzos and plainer houses that were even older. She wanted to memorize each one and find them again in her own time.