The Chamber of Ten

sensed simmering panic.

“Tell her to calm down,” she said, glancing back at the main doors again. That was all from Nico, she thought, and he was approaching across the piazza, and then suddenly the flashback that wasn’t him. It was Volpe. She shivered, because even thinking the name gave her goosebumps.

If he had approached, he was holding back, waiting outside or something. Maybe he was just afraid to come in because that would mean facing her questions.

“One of the obelisks is open!” Sabrina said, and that snapped Geena’s attention back to the laptop. She pushed her way past Finch, with Domenic still beside her, and knelt so that she could get a better view of the screen. Tonio placed one hand on her shoulder and she knew what that touch meant: This is amazing! Sabrina’s crazy camera work settled at last, focusing on the broken lid of one of the obelisks and the thing it contained.

“They’re tombs,” Tonio said.

In her time working in Venice, Geena had been witness to the exhumation of dozens of bodies, all of them buried many hundreds of years ago. They never frightened her, but there was always something unsettling about setting eyes on a corpse that had been out of sight, alone, and at peace for so long. Though she was not a religious person, to Geena it felt intrusive and disrespectful, and she’d always had trouble identifying the line between recently buried and of archaeological interest.

“My God,” Sabrina’s voice hissed, “it’s wearing …”

A hat, Geena thought. A black hat and robe, covering less formal attire beneath. And she thought of bleeding palms and the vague sense of ritual.

“Nico!” Ramus said. “Look everyone, it’s Nico!”

For a moment Geena scanned the screen desperately, thinking that they’d seen his drowned body down there, and in the space of a heartbeat the idea that she’d imagined everything since the flood hit hard. But then she sensed those around her turning away from the table of equipment, and she, too, stood and turned.

She bit her lip against the wooziness that still shifted the world around her. Behind them Nico was standing just inside the entrance to the reading room.

“Nico!” she said, unable to keep the rush of relief and affection from her voice.

He seemed not to hear; his eyes were blank, his face expressionless. He carried a heavy-looking bag in one hand. Then he started walking toward them, and Geena cringed at the way he moved—a stiff, stilted walk as if he’d smashed bones in both of his legs.

“What’s wrong with him?” Ramus asked.

Geena moved toward him. Domenic’s grip tightened briefly on her arm before letting go, but she knew he was still behind her. Don’t be a fool, she thought, Nico would never hurt me.

She smiled, vision blurring with tears that seemed to well up from nowhere.

Behind her the BBC team were still chattering excitedly about what they had seen, and Finch seemed to be talking into a cell phone. Of course, she thought. They don’t even know about Nico.

“Where have you been?” she asked. Nico had paused. He looked dirty, tired, and sad, and she could already tell that he hadn’t washed since leaving her apartment. “Nico, I’ve been so worried and …”

“No,” he groaned. He sounded desperate and pained, as if talking was a strain. The sudden look in his eyes —burning and triumphant—did not match that voice.

“Nico?” I saw what he did to that man, she thought, but could she really suspect him of doing something so terrible?

No. Not him. Not Nico. But someone else.

“Run, Geena,” Nico growled, low enough for only her to hear. Glancing back she could see others turning to watch them now, and one of the BBC men was pointing a small handheld camera their way. Domenic was approaching her, his eyes flitting from her to Nico and back again.

She turned back. “We’re going to find out exactly what happened,” she said.

“No! Run!” Nico repeated, louder this time. The terrible urgency in his voice gave her a frisson of fear.

He leaned forward, and then his walk turned into a headlong rush, a controlled fall that set his feet stumbling against each other. And for the first time she saw what he had in his other right hand.

A knife.

“Come here, sweetness,” Nico said. But the voice was no longer his own. Deep, guttural, harsh, she had heard it before in those strange flashes of a time long gone. And it carried a madness she could have never expected in someone she loved so much.

Just as Nico fell against her, Domenic pulled her back.

But the knife still did its work.

VIII

STABBED ME stabbed me Nico stabbed me …

She felt hands ease her fall as she slumped to the cool tiled floor. Voices were raised, and somewhere in the distance pounding footsteps faded away, leaving only the taunting ghosts of their echoes. More than one pair of footsteps, too, and someone must be chasing him, and she thought, Don’t hurt anyone else. Faces gathered above her and she did not recognize any of them. She felt for the pain, searched for the flash of agony that would show where the knife had punctured and how much damage it had done. She held her breath, terrified, and then gasped again in case she would never draw another.

Someone was holding her arm too tightly and she tried to twist it away, but there was no give. Her head rested on something soft—a leg, a hand, a bag, she didn’t know—and then Domenic was above her, his strong features stark in the light that had suddenly become so clear and defined. Shouldn’t my vision be fading, not solidifying? She’d read somewhere that hearing was always the last sense to go before death, and when she gasped again her ears seemed to pop and the confusion and panic roared in.

“Don’t move her. Don’t move her!”

“Ramus, stay away from him. He’s still carrying the knife!”

“Call an ambulance—”

“Call the police—”

“I’ll get the first aid kit.”

And from a distance, “I’m going after him!” Ramus, running, pursuing Nico because he’d appeared here at the library and stabbed her.

“Oh shit,” Geena groaned, and she looked up into Domenic’s face as she probed for the injury. She drew breath without it bubbling, felt her heart thumping good and strong, and there was no rush of warmth in her stomach. And the person holding her left arm squeezed even tighter.

She turned her head slightly and there was the wound. A slice across her shoulder, a bloody tear in the fabric of her blouse. The wound pouted slightly, and though gruesome it was also strangely beautiful. Such vibrant colors. She worked in the faded stone- and dust-shades of history, and yet here was the true lifeblood of her, and it was as bright and alive as any color could be.

“Don’t look,” Finch said. She realized that he was kneeling on her left side, leaning over her and sheltering her from the bright sunlight streaming in the library’s high windows. He touched her arm, turned it this way and that, then caught her eye for the first time. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said. “No artery hit. It’ll bleed like a bugger and you’ll need stitching, but you were lucky.”

“He didn’t get me anywhere else?” she asked, and her soft voice sounded surreal. Am I really asking that? About Nico?

“No,” Finch said. “I’ve checked. That’s the only place. And he was hardly here long enough for that. Here.” He plucked the folded handkerchief from his jacket pocket, shook it open, folded it again, and placed it on the wound.