by Noelle Mack
Veronica set down the book of spells in front of her on the rug and produced a rolled piece of parchment from another pocket. She picked apart the knot in the ribbon that held it and let it unroll. There was a diagram painted on it.
“We must use this—the pentagram in a circle. It will protect your hearts as you fly forward in time.”
It was the diagram Sarah had seen in Arcana—the bookstore with the strange proprietor. But Marco had been so casual about it. She’d had no idea it was something so powerful.
Sarah looked his way. He had picked up the book of spells without asking Veronica’s permission and pressed the page open when he came across the spell she’d read, the one that dissolved the boundaries of time.
Marco studied it without saying it. “She ought to try it, Veronica. She must return, even if I remain. If that spell fails, then we will use the pentagram tomorrow morning.”
“Ladies first, eh? Are you going to stay here? You might be stuck in this century and never see her again.”
“She wants to go back. That’s a sacrifice I will have to make,” Marco said. “But I hope not,” he added quickly.
“Don’t talk of sacrifice,” Veronica replied calmly. “It’s not like you to be so noble. You live to please yourself and for no other reason.”
Marco’s eyes flashed with dark fire. “Veronica, you said you would help.”
“I am helping.”
Sarah got the undercurrent of resentment in what Veronica was saying. It was more than an undercurrent—it was more like a rip tide. These two were still somehow linked, if only in anger. Nothing she could do about that.
“Time out,” said Sarah, raising a hand. “I’m not going back without you, Marco.”
“You may have to,” he snapped, glaring at Veronica. “I will get back somehow. With or without a little help from my friends. Trust me.”
“Trust—oh, I don’t think we should be discussing that right now,” Sarah said.
Marco looked again at the book in his hands. “Just say the spell, Sarah. If it works, the deed is done.”
Veronica pushed her long white hair away from her face, smoothing it with her hands as if she needed to calm herself. Her chartreuse eyes burned into Sarah’s. “Yes. He’s right.” She snatched the book of spells from Marco and thrust it at Sarah.
Sarah looked from her to Marco. The atmosphere between all three of them was highly charged, electric with tension, as if he and Veronica would be at each other’s throats in another second. Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to get out of the tent. She said the spell…and tumbled through time.
Her clothes were gone. She was in a gondola. A nice man was covering her with a striped sweater and shooing people away.
People in sneakers. People with fanny packs. She’d made it. But where was Marco? Two huge splashes in the water next to the gondola rocked the boat and made the gondolier jump onto the dock.
She saw a head of black hair pop up, spitting water and coughing. Thank God. He’d made it. But what or who had made the second splash?
Sarah looked down into the water and saw white hair swirling as the head it was attached to slowly rose. With eyes closed, Veronica Suona surfaced next.
She didn’t spit or splutter. She was too elegant for that. And unlike Sarah and Marco, she’d traveled through time fully clothed, although her heavy robes had almost drowned her.
Veronica opened her eyes and reached out to hold the side of the gondola. “I had no idea the spell would work for all three of us,” she said wonderingly. She turned her dripping head to look at a garbage barge chugging by. “Ugh. Is that my welcome?”
Marco spat again, still bobbing in the water. “If you don’t like the future, you can go back, Veronica.”
Sarah groaned in a low voice, still too stunned to move. She rubbed her head, wondering if she’d hit it on the way. Marco swam over to the dockside and hauled himself out of the canal, buck naked. He squeezed the water out of his hair with his big hands, looking angry. A small crowd of women gathered to watch, making comments he ignored.
“Well, here we all are,” he said to Sarah. “You, me, and Veronica.”
The gondolier said something to Marco. He nodded and got up, helping Sarah out of the boat and putting the sweater on her.
“What did he say?” she asked anxiously.
“He offered to loan me his hat.”
“OK. I don’t understand why, but OK.”
7
They walked through the streets of Venice, Sarah in the striped sweater, which was just long enough to be considered a dress, and Marco, naked except for the gondolier’s hat, which he held over his crotch. They ignored the curious stares. Most everyone seemed to assume they had stayed out all night at a Carnival party and were going home to sleep it off.
Sarah glanced at the date on the newspaper. Just as she’d thought. They had been gone a few days. Marco had left the gondolier to fish Veronica out of the canal.
“What’s going to happen to her?”
“I don’t care.”
“She did get us back. She gave you the book of spells, Marco. We owe her…something.”
“She gave you the book of spells. I think she figured out that you intensified their effect. She was looking for a free ride and she got it.”
Sarah hurried to keep up with his long strides. Being naked in a city full of people took balls and he really had them. Marco’s changeable eyes held only one message at the moment: get out of my way. They reached the land side entrance to his palazzo, and he rattled the knob, realizing that he didn’t have the key.
“What day is it?”
Sarah remembered the newspaper. “Friday.”
“Iva comes today. My cleaning lady.”
A mature woman, solidly built and carrying a woven plastic shopping bag and a purse, was coming down the street.
Keeping the hat in place, Marco edged behind Sarah.
“Buon giorno!” the older woman called.
“Buon giorno, Iva.” Marco bent his head to whisper in Sarah’s ear when the cleaning lady searched in her purse for the key. “She’s from Slovakia. She does not speak English or Italian very well.”
Sarah nodded. She supposed a question like why are you wet and naked? would suffer in translation anyway.
Iva looked curiously at Sarah and then at Marco, but she didn’t say anything. She found the key and opened the door, trudging up the stairs ahead of them. Marco brought up the rear of the odd parade. When the cleaning lady made a left turn on the second floor, he dashed up to the bedroom, tossing the gondolier’s hat to Sarah.
She caught it and came into the bedroom a few seconds after he disappeared into the adjoining bathroom. Ah, yes. No more chamber pots. The flushing sound was positively musical.
Somehow it seemed like the ultimate proof that they were back. Now if she could figure out whether she wanted to laugh or to cry, that would be great. But they were here and they were safe and that was what counted most. She hadn’t even missed her flight.
Sarah collapsed into a leather and steel chair, sitting with her knees together and her toes turned in, the pose of a woman with no underwear. At some point she was going to have to go get her duffel bag from Signora Dolcetti’s bed-and-breakfast. It was awfully nice of the gondolier to give her his striped sweater. She was going to return it, even though she wanted to keep it. What a souvenir—and what a story. One she would never be able to tell.
Marco turned the squeaky taps on full blast and got in the shower to scrub himself. As before, wisps of steam curled out from under the door, making her think of the first time she’d held the book of spells.
Damn. Where was it now? They couldn’t get Veronica Suona back to the eighteenth century without it. The sorceress really had given it to Sarah, now that she thought about, but she had arrived naked, holding nothing.
She could hear Marco shut off the water and make faint, fluffy-towel noises as he dried himself, singing under his breath. Sounded like he wa
s back on track. She was just glad that they hadn’t ended up in the hospital. In her dazed state, she would have tried to explain the story, and they all would have ended up on a psychiatric ward.
He came out, one towel tied low around his hips and one thrown over his shoulders, looking like a hunk from a razor ad. He had shaved. She wanted to kiss his baby-soft everything.
“I feel better, Sarah. How about you?”
His dripping hair trickled water down his chest and he mopped at it with the towel around his shoulders. Black hair, white towel: he matched his décor. She realized that his hair wasn’t as long as it had been and she touched her own—oh hell. Whatever had given her pale silken tresses down to below her waist had taken them right back, and left her cropped cut at the same length as before.
Shoot. She had loved the look. So Gwyneth. Well, she could always get extensions—and pay for them with ducats—which were in the palazzo—but not this palazzo at this time—the other one at the other time. Double hell. Sarah knew her mind was fried. Trying to make sense of everything that’d happened was going to take a long, long time.
But she had to say something. She kept it simple. “Wow. What an adventure that was.”
“Sarah, we never left this room. That’s the official story.”
She nodded slowly. “Well, yeah. I wasn’t going to tell anybody. I don’t really have anybody to tell.”
“Good.”
He flopped onto the bed, stretching out. He looked comfortable but she already missed the puffy maroon velvet comforter they’d had fantasy sex on. The room had gone back to black-and-white—blankets, upholstery, photographs. Everything was exactly as it had been before she’d cast the spell.
Sunlight streamed in the window where she had seen the spectral party of revelers. There was nothing behind the glass but the empty sky above, as if the vision had been burned away.
“Are you sure you feel better?” she asked after a while.
Marco was staring straight up at the ceiling. She looked, just to make sure it wasn’t morphing. The ceiling was fine. It was just there.
“We have to talk. About Veronica. And a few other things.”
“That’s OK,” Sarah said tiredly. “I don’t think people should have to explain their prior relationships. It just makes life complicated.”
He sighed, a huge, deep sigh that hollowed out his belly. “She initiated me.”
“Whoa. I don’t have to know. I don’t want to know.”
“And then she didn’t want to continue. It is a long story. She said I was too young and—”
Sarah rolled her eyes. Finding out in the very last minutes of her time in another century that he was a sorcerer bothered her. She had asked him flat out if he was one, and he’d said no.
She didn’t care about who he’d fooled around with. Not all that much, she amended.
“Marco, I really, really hate My First Time stories, especially when they’re long.”
“I understand. I can tell you the short version.”
“Mind if I take a shower?”
“Not at all.”
She got up and went into the bathroom, peeling off the gondolier’s sweater and hanging it up on a hook. She fully intended to use up every drop of hot water and every towel he had, and she did. Stalling for time, she shaved her legs, creamed her skin, did a little tweezing, and brushed her funky teeth. With a towel wrapped turban-style around her wet hair and several around her middle, she peeked out.
Marco was still lying there looking up at the ceiling.
There were a few points she wanted to clear up before she got really depressed. “Um, could we get back to what you said about being too young?” Sarah asked.
“Certainly.”
“How old are you?” Sarah asked.
“I am four hundred and twenty-two.”
She was just too tired to be surprised by that incredible statement. “You look great for your age, Marco.”
“Thank you.”
“And how old is Veronica?”
“Six hundred and five.”
Sarah went back into the bathroom. “Then you’re both old enough to know better.”
“Perhaps. She didn’t want me and she wouldn’t let go of me, either.”
Sarah found the toenail clippers. She sat on the edge of the tub and put one foot up, examining her toes. She paused, about to snip. “Why?”
“She has nothing else to do but annoy me these days. Her powers are waning and the sorcery business is not what it used to be.”
“Don’t tell me. It’s been outsourced.” Snip, snip. “That’s probably the best pun I’ve made all year.”
Marco was silent. Then he laughed. “Got it.”
“You’re a little slow, aren’t you?”
He got up from the bed and stood in the doorway to the bathroom, dropping his towels and fluffing his clean pubic hair with one hand. His big soft cock bounced. He looked so good he deserved a blowjob right then and there. But she had to finish her toenails.
Sarah concentrated on her task. “So when you say the sorcery business isn’t what it used to be, is that why you got into special effects?”
“Yes. It pays well and not just at Carnival. I do other things—the fireworks for the Festa del Redentore, for one.”
“Really. I’ve heard that’s a spectacular show.”
He grinned. “I like to give an event that extra something. You learn a lot over the centuries.”
“But you…” Snip, snip. “Kept telling me…” Snip, snip. “That you were not a sorcerer.” Snip.
He hesitated for a few seconds before replying and then he heaved a sigh. “I lied.”
She put her other foot up on the edge of the bathtub and examined her toes before snipping those nails one by one. “Yes, you did. That’s a problem. Relationships built on lies…oh, go ask Dr. Phil. They just don’t last.”
“Who is Dr. Phil?”
“Never mind.”
She could feel his thoughtful gaze on her but she didn’t meet it. Sarah felt like she’d come back to earth with a great big bump. It kinda hurt.
“Now that we are back in our own time…do you want this to last, Sarah?”
She set the clippers aside and stood up straight. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure what ‘this’ is. Do you know?”
“I would no longer define it as a hallucination for two.”
“Me neither.” She adjusted the protective cocoon of towels around her sweating middle. “It was hardly ever just the two of us. Talk about a cast of thousands.”
He nodded as if she’d said something very wise. “That is Carnival for you. So many crazy things happen. You sleep with people you never want to see again—everyone does. You drink too much. You dance until you drop. You wear silly costumes.”
Sarah stood up and brushed past him. “Mind if I borrow a shirt and some boxers?”
He grinned. “I liked the way you looked in masculine clothes. Are you going to twist my balls again?”
“Do not tempt me, Marco. Do not tempt me.”
“I love your sense of humor.” He slapped his hand hard against the doorjamb. “Why couldn’t I have met you first and not wasted four hundred years dating the wrong people?”
“Be serious.”
She rummaged through his drawers, finding a pair of boxers that looked like they’d shrunk, and put them on. Next, the closet. She yanked down a clean, pressed shirt that felt very nice against her braless breasts. She rolled up the sleeves.
“I am serious about you—about us.”
She shook her head. Now that they were back in the mundane world of their own century, the magic was evaporating. “I didn’t get that feeling.”
He looked chagrined. “I did everything I could to make you happy. Were you not entertained?”
“Well, yeah. But I think you had a better time in the past. That’s not your fault, though. Men just did then.”
“Exactly.”
“But you…enjoyed it so much
. That’s not a good sign.”
Marco sighed. “Sarah, Sarah. From the moment I saw you, I wanted you all to myself. But I am not perfect.”
She looked him up and down. He actually was. “The ladies like you. They always will. Plus you can come and go in time, make things appear and disappear—”
“Material objects are easy. The heart of a woman is much harder to move.”
Sarah just looked at him, trapped by the emotion in his gaze.
He broke the momentary spell. “Anyway, I tried not to do too much of that.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “So do you understand that there was too much now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t? And that it makes me nervous?”
Marco threw up his hands. “Most of what you saw is still there. Let me get dressed. You can go back to your rooms and get your own clothes, we’ll go out, get breakfast, and wander around—”
Reality was raising its ugly head and fast. “Room. Not rooms. I rented a poky little room with a lot of bugs in it.”
“Pah. Pack your things. Wouldn’t you prefer a suite in the Gritti? It is the most luxurious hotel in Venice. All I have to do is call—”
Sarah tapped her foot impatiently. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want to be pampered to pieces. And thanks for everything you’ve done. It’s been amazing. You really blew my mind.”
“Hmm.” He smiled thoughtfully. “You did the same for me.”
“But I am—not like you, Marco. I can’t afford five-star hotels and I can’t shazam around the way you can.”
“Do you want me to be ordinary?” His blunt question took her aback. “I can’t.”
“Well, no. But I don’t think—”
He put his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her tenderly. “Sarah, you are not in the least ordinary yourself. I don’t think you know that.”
Those goddamn mesmerizing eyes of his got her every time. It just was not possible that he wanted her more than any other woman. He was being romantic, wildly so. Sarah swallowed hard. She didn’t want to believe him. Whatever had happened, whatever he wanted to call it, was o-v-e-r.