Page 54 of Fastest Kill

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The salt bath had worked, and that was something to be thankful for. When things like this happened, it always made Dario feel very naive about how the world actually worked. Unless you knew magic, there was no way to fight or protect against that. He fucking hated that feeling.

Dario had called Serapis back and had him explain what Agrippa had done in the easiest terms possible.

"He must have laid a compulsion on her," his uncle said, running a hand through his curls. "It isn't a curse or a weapon necessarily. It is more like a leash. Something old and subtle, designed to loop fear back on itself and keep looping until the person either broke or was brought to him. The salt neutralized the point of contact where he placed the spell on her. Without the salt, the fear would have kept escalating. She might have gone cataleptic inside forty-eight hours."

Dario listened with his hands bunched into fists and his jaw locked.

"I see," he managed to grind out through his teeth. All he could think of was that a five-hundred-year-old creature put his hands on his Frederica in a room full of people, and Dario had been eight feet away doing a passable impression of an oblivious husband, and if he had known⁠—

"Whatever you are thinking, nipote, you couldn't have stopped him, and you certainly can't fight him right now. If this could be solved with a bullet, I would have pulled the trigger centuries ago," Serapis's calm voice interrupted his thoughts. "You got her out. You foiled Agrippa's plans to take her from us. We have an updated photo of what he looks like now. These are all wins."

"But we didn't get the mirror. We failed," Dario pointed out, readying himself for the verbal beating.

"You didn't fail, Dario. We can deal with the mirror being in his hands. I wouldn't have been able to deal with losing you or Frederica."

Dario grunted. "That's it? No lecture?"

"If you expect me to berate you as Gabriella would have, you will be waiting a long time," Serapis replied, making Dario flinch. "I know I've made a lot of mistakes, Dario, but I do care about my family. We need to make a new plan to account for Agrippa having the mirror. That's all. Leo is running down leads on him that we didn't have before. This is a win, as I said. Now, go get some rest, and look after Tore's girl, hmm? He'll be upset when he learns about this."

"I'm more worried about Despina, to be honest," Dario replied.

"Quite so," Serapis said with a chuckle and hung up the call.

Dario put water on to boil and found pasta in the back of the cupboard.

The safe house was decent with kitchen equipment, as safe houses went. He got out the garlic, olive oil, parmesan, and bacon. He cooked the way he always enjoyed. No hurrying it, no cutting corners.

Despina and Tore cooked the same way, he noticed in Rhodes, both of them moving around a kitchen with the patience and ease they consistently applied to other parts of their lives.

Dario had no doubt they would have had some fantastic fights, but they never went out of their way to intentionally hurt one another. He hadn't realized how much he wanted that before he saw it for himself.

Frederica came out of the bathroom while he was grating cheese. She was wearing the oversized shirt she slept in and looked younger and more wrecked than he was used to seeing her. He turned back to the cheese before she could catch him looking.

"You didn't have to cook," she said softly.

"I know, but cooking calms me down, and we both need to eat," he replied without turning. "Sit down, this carbonara is almost done."

She sat at the kitchen table without arguing, which told him more about her current state than anything else could have.

Dario put a bowl in front of her and sat across from her with his own. For a few minutes, neither of them said anything.

"He touched my temple. That was all," Frederica said finally. "The woman who reminded him of me had a scar right there, too." She reached up, not quite touching her temple. "But I don't have a scar there. I've never had a scar there."

"Which means whatever he saw wasn't physical," Dario suggested. "Fucking sorcerers."

She nodded, turning her fork through the fine strands of pasta. "It was something else, then. Something he recognized." She was quiet for a moment. "I called my father."

Dario looked up at her. "How was Tore?"

"Not happy. I wanted to know if he'd ever actually met the man he was running jobs for." Frederica ate a mouthful of food. "He said only once. Years ago. He didn't describe him the way I would describe Agrippa. Tore said he was stocky with dark hair. But the eyes? He said the eyes were that silvery pale, and that they were much older than his face. He didn't think anything of it at the time. My father has met a lot of strange people."

"He would have. Maybe Agrippa used someone as a proxy or changed his appearance with magic," Dario replied. "Poor Tore must be having a shit time of it. He's been running jobs for two masters who are trying to destroy each other for decades."

"He didn't know," she said with a mild warning in it.

"I'm not blaming him. Serapis is my uncle, and I had no idea who he was, remember?" Dario held her gaze until the warning dialed back. "I'm saying your father has been collecting very strange clients for a very long time. Which means you probably have too, in a tangential way. You grew up in that world. Altun knows your parents and has been like an auntie to you. Serapis knew your father. Agrippa might have been watching the Alesci family longer than we thought."