Page 55 of Unbound

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him. “That thing’s survived this long. I don’t think you’re going to damage it. Now, when Luca touched the signatures, that’s when he had his, uh, episode. We lost him, Bruno.”

He’s still gazing adoringly at the document, staring at the Florentine-Latin hybrid that he can probably actually speak. Something in my tone catches his attention though, and he looks up. “Lost him?”

“Yeah. He disappeared from this mortal plane. It was like he was dead dead, not just, you know, vampire dead. Minnie, can you explain this better?”

I’m struggling, because truthfully, the memory of it still feels like a knife to the heart. All those hours, waiting for him to come back. All those hours when I didn’t know if he was gone forever. It was slow torture, and I never want to go through it again.

She nods, glaring at the Bargain. “Tricky bastard indeed. So, Bruno, it seems like he fell into some kind of trance, probably magical, that transported him back to his childhood. We now know he was older when his village was destroyed, so it wasn’t linear, but he did see and speak to his mother. Who, going by our family tree here, was called Caterina d’Argento.”

Caterina. Luca’s mom. I want to call him right now, tell him about all of this, but I hold off. I need to know more first. Bruno nods, fascinated. “And this happened when he touched the signatures? Which one? Though, is this just me needing my glasses, or are they blurred?”

“They are,” Minnie replies. “Though I’m sure you probably do also need your glasses.”

He gently smooths his fingertips over the signatures, and we all kind of hold our breath while we wait to see what happens. The answer is a big fat nothing. Minnie does the same, and the result is just as much of an anticlimax.

They both look up at me. “You should try,” Minnie tells me. “We don’t know much, but we do know that when it comes to Luca, you’re usually involved somehow.”

I don’t want to. In fact, I really don’t want to. I have absolutely zero desire to be catapulted back to my own childhood, thank you. I could end up anywhere. Maybe I’d get a happy scene with my whole family intact. Or maybe I’d get to witness Angie, burned beyond recognition in her own bed. Or my parents, dead next to each other. Serena, who was found by the front door, her fingernails torn out as she’d clawed to escape the inferno. Or I might skip all that and get the first time my grandfather beat me until I bled. It’s a game of Russian roulette that I do not want to play. But it’s for Luca, and if it’s for Luca, I have to try.

I take a deep breath, reach out, and run my fingers over those blurry signatures.

Nothing happens, and I’m sighing out my relief when my whole mind tingles, my vision fades, and the world goes black. The last thing I hear as I fall to the ground is Minnie saying, “Oh shit …”

Chapter 23

Rosa

Icome to, and I realize straightaway that I am not in my own childhood. I’m in his.

I’m lying flat on my back at the side of a pond. The grass is thick and lush, the day sunny and bright. I sit up, ignoring the wobble in my head, and look down at myself. Huh. I’m still me, grown-up me, not kid me, which is a fucking relief. I gaze around and see her approaching. She’s carrying a wicker basket, her long skirts tucked up into her waistband as she wades through a field of pretty blue wildflowers.

She smiles and waves, joins me in the grass. She sighs as she places the basket down. It’s filled with apples and peaches, so fresh they still shine with little pearls of dew. Her hair is thick and black, her skin tan and clear.

“Rosa,” she says, her eyes running over my face. “It is good to finally meet you.”

“Caterina?” I ask. She claps her hands together in delight.

“Indeed! Clever girl. So, we have a lot to catch up on. Would you like to ask me anything?”

“Uh, yeah. How is this happening? You’ve got to be dead.”

She nods, doesn’t look fazed by the bluntness of the question. “I am, yes. But I knew I was going to die, so I prepared this little bolt hole. A place I could wait until the time was right. Think of it as hidden compartment, a locked door, ready for the right person to come along. You know who I am now, who the d’Argentos were?”

“A little. Witches, powerful ones, going back a long time. More importantly, Luca’s parents.”

“That is indeed more important. Ah, my darling Luca … he was always such a sweet, gentle boy. A boy who would try and save a bird with a broken wing or hand-feed a motherless lamb. Always so deeply caring.”

I blink in surprise. I love Luca, and I see something of that in him. Towards me at least. But on the whole? You wouldn’t call him the kindest of souls.

“You look taken aback, dearest one. I know he is not that gentle boy anymore. He was taken from me by the monsters who transformed him.”

She sounds angry, and her eyes blaze. A ferocious mamma bear who knows her cub was harmed. “What happened?” I ask. I smell burning, distant but clear, my nose wrinkling at the faint whiff of smoke in the air.

“The Bargain happened. You know that witches have different skills, different specialties, yes? My husband, Valentino, was not born into the d’Argento bloodline, but he was a gifted harvest witch. He could grow any crop, anywhere, and bring plenty to the most barren of lands. Me? I was something different. Less noble. I had two gifts, passed down to me by a long line of d’Argentos … clairvoyance and blood magic.”

She stares at me, eyebrows raised suggestively. Like she’s waiting for me to catch up. It takes me a few seconds, but when I get there, she laughs at the expression on my face. “You?” I mutter, still in shock. “It was you who cast the goddamn blood spell that tied Luca and me together?”

She holds up her hands. “Guilty as charged. And why so aggrieved, Rosa? Has it not worked out well for you?”