Belladonna

time Bella would just pose completely nude.

Cass leaned close to Madalena. “I think we should leave,” she said softly.

“Oh, please, Cass,” Mada said. “Stay for a while.” Correctly interpreting Cass’s change of mood, she said, “The painting doesn’t mean anything. What sort of woman actually asks to be painted as Venus? She’s obviously in love with herself.”

“I don’t care about the painting,” Cass lied. “I just have a little headache, that’s all.” It was true. The nape of her neck and her temples were stinging. Perhaps Siena had braided her hair too tightly. “And there are entirely too many people here.”

“Well, you should have Bella’s handsome house physician whip you up a tonic,” Mada said.

Cass recalled how the ladies from tea had gossiped about Signorina Briani’s attractive doctor. The doctor, the butler, Falco. Cass wondered how many other young men boarded at Belladonna’s villa. Perhaps she collected attractive staff the same way she collected books.

When Cass frowned, Madalena added, “Just let me have a few more dances.” She stared at her with wide, pleading eyes.

“All right,” Cass relented. “Go dance. I’m going to rest in the library.” Bella’s portrait there didn’t seem so bad now that Cass had seen this latest work. She still hadn’t made eye contact with Falco. He was being mobbed by other guests eager to discuss his techniques and sitting fees.

“I’ll be quick,” Mada said. She stood up from the table and left on the arm of a man with close-cropped black hair and piercing green eyes. Cass stood too. She weaved her way through the milling guests.

Her head began to hurt worse, blood pounding an uneven tempo in her ears. The guests were loud. Too loud. The airy violin music had sharpened into scalpel blades, each stanza cutting a bloody path across her skull.

Cass found the library and collapsed into a chair. The room was quiet and dim, the only light coming from a scattering of dying orange embers still flickering in the dark fireplace. She turned her back to the wall, refusing to look at the painting of Belladonna draped just as she had once been. What she needed to do was take advantage of this moment and search for the Book of the Eternal Rose. She would, just as soon as her headache faded. Burying her head in her hands, she pressed her fingertips hard against her temples to slow the throbbing.

“Signorina? Are you all right?”

Cass looked up. The silhouette of a man stood in the doorway. Undoubtedly, the handsome house physician. He didn’t sound young, though. Maybe the gossiping hags from tea had been exaggerating.

“It’s my head,” she said. “It’s pounding. Is there something I can take for it?”

As the man came closer, his features began to sharpen. Cass dug her fingernails into the armrest of her chair. Her stomach plummeted, and for a second she thought she might faint.

It was the man from the terrible workshop in Venice, the place where she and Falco had discovered the tin basins filled with dismembered body parts. It was Angelo de Gradi.

He had followed her to Florence.

eighteen

“Nature works in circles. Trees lure prey and hide predators. Predators leave behind carcasses so that they might be absorbed into the soil and feed the trees.”

—THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE

She recoiled in her chair. “What do you want?” she asked. De Gradi was blocking the doorway entirely. She looked around for an alternate escape route.

He stared at Cass. Deep lines formed in his tall forehead. “I was told a woman had taken ill. I’m a doctor.” He took a step toward her, narrowing his eyes. “Have we met before, Signorina . . . ?”

“I’m better now, thanks,” Cass said quickly, without giving her name. She jumped up and pushed roughly past de Gradi and out into the corridor. She needed to find Madalena.

Halfway down the corridor, Cass glanced over her shoulder. De Gradi wasn’t following her. She had never been officially introduced to the man who collected body parts and also served as Signor Dubois’s physician, but she had thought certainly that he knew of her and the trouble she had tried to cause for Dubois at Madalena’s wedding. Could it possibly be a coincidence that he was here, now, in Florence?

Cass fled back to the portego, which had grown even more crowded now that the sun had set and several guests had come inside from the garden. She didn’t see Madalena anywhere. Ribbons of smoke billowing from the tall red candles in the windowsill stung her eyes. She blinked hard.

Even in the dim lighting, the dresses and doublets of those in attendance glimmered like precious stones— bright sapphires and rubies spinning around the room. Cass’s headache hadn’t gone away, and the jumping flames and whirling colors weren’t helping. Worse, the candle smoke was melding with the scent of sweat and perfume, almost making her gag. She needed fresh air. She had to get out of the villa.

She’d just step outside onto the lawn. She knew she should find Siena and ask for company, but it wasn’t as if she were going to wander far.

Descending the spiral staircase to the first floor, Cass saw a pair of lanterns and a box of tinder on a table just inside the door. She lit one of the lanterns and slipped out into the night, following the walkway of stepping- stones that led across Belladonna’s lawn. The sky was full of stars, and she could just barely see the outline of another villa off to the west. It was late, and there was no candlelight glowing from its windows. Whoever lived there was likely tucked safely into bed.

There were other villas across the main road: tall houses of marble and stone that flanked the little church, which sat nestled back from the street. Still, they looked plain in comparison to Villa Briani’s splendor.

Cass stood in the grass, inhaling deeply. She was grateful for the occasional wisp of wind that blew through the damp curls at the nape of her neck. The pounding in her head was fading away.

She was surprisingly unafraid, all alone, wrapped in the starry darkness. The trees, the flowers, even the elaborately manicured hedges cast soft shadows in the light of her flickering lantern. Cass realized she hadn’t had the nightmare about Cristian since leaving Venice. She didn’t know if it was the change of scenery or the reappearance of Falco that had driven away those terrible nightly visions. Either way, she was grateful.

She glanced back at the front door of the villa. Was it possible Angelo de Gradi honestly didn’t know who she was?

Cass shook her head at her own stupidity. She had panicked for nothing. There was no reason for de Gradi to recognize her on sight. She had never given him her name at Dubois’s masquerade ball, and it wasn’t as if he could have identified her beneath the starling mask. He had no idea she knew so much about his activities in Venice, that he was paying peasant boys to steal bodies from graves and then dismembering the corpses in his Castello workshop.

But what was the corpse collector doing in Florence if he hadn’t followed her here? Dubois was still in Venice—as far as Cass knew. Had de Gradi come here on business for the Frenchman? Or was he working for Belladonna now?

Maybe Venice had run out of dead. Between the scourge of “vampires” in Florence and the persistence of the plague, there was certainly no shortage of fresh corpses here.

An idea occurred to her: Falco had undoubtedly crossed paths with de Gradi during Belladonna’s birthday party since the two were former business associates. He had to know why the physician was in Florence. Cass resolved to ask him.

Then she thought of the paintings he had made for Belladonna, and her headache came pounding back.

Something rustled in a grove of trees that ran along the northern edge of the property. Cass turned toward the noise, nearly dropping her lantern as a deer materialized from the inky blackness. It ambled to the edge of the