It was, in the end, a blessing that two more vampires arrived at that very moment; for if things had continued as they’d begun, Victoria wasn’t at all certain how she would have pried her mother away from the most inappropriate of all candidates for a second husband.
But the appearance of two more undead—apparently the coachman from Regalado’s barouche and a female acting, ironically, as a chaperone, perhaps?—set the next events in motion.
Unaware of the situation into which they’d entered, the newcomers bared their fangs, let their eyes light up with a red glow, and dove into the melee. Moments later, after a flurry of lace and silk and damp feathers (from Lady Melly’s bonnet, after she was shoved face-first into a bush), stakes of all sizes and efficacy, along with much poofing and grunting and thunking of bulky silver crosses, there were two piles of vampire dust, three would-be victims still cowering against the wall, an indignant widow being ushered off to Oliver and his carriage, and the flapping coattails of the Conte Regalado as he dashed up the front steps of the villa.
Victoria wasn’t even breathing hard, but she was flush with satisfaction and a feeling of well-being. Verbena wore a smug smile, and somehow her mistress had a feeling that poor Oliver was never going to hear the end of the adventure, even though he’d been relegated to stay in the carriage.
“Excuse me for one moment,” Victoria said to no one in particular, eyeing the door through which the conte had disappeared. If he thought she was going to let him live another day to court her mother, he was severely mistaken. “Keep the carriage waiting. ”
She slipped away as the rest of them burrowed into the carriage, Lady Melly still screeching her outrage with her daughter and the world in general. She hadn’t seen the dispatching of the vampires, for by the time she’d extricated herself from that fortuitous bush, they were nothing but piles of dust.
Victoria intended to feed her mother’s ignorance by utilizing the gold disk as soon as possible.
However, she had this one last thing to take care of.
It wasn’t hard for her to find the conte. He was under the impression that she’d allowed him to walk away a free undead, so he hadn’t gone far into the villa and was peering through a side window at the ladies being helped into the carriage by Oliver.
“Curiosity killed the cat,” she said as he whirled. She slammed the stake into his chest and added, “and the vampire too. ” His poof wasn’t eve
n especially large.
To ensure that they all returned home safely, Victoria crowded into the carriage with Lady Winnie, a pouting Lady Melly, and the dreamy-eyed Lady Nilly.
Two of the other near victims—a Miss Anne Malloren and a Mrs. Stefania Faygan, both Americans—clambered into the carriage as well. Their male companion elected to ride above with Verbena and Oliver, leaving Victoria crushed in the midst of skirts and the target of her mother’s death-gaze.
There was nothing for it, however, and Victoria resigned herself to an uncomfortable—yet oh, so relieved!—ride back to the Gardella villa. Oliver had agreed to take the three others to their quarters, and until they left the carriage, at least, Victoria would be spared the lecture that was sure to come.
Instead she allowed herself to relax a bit, now that her neck was feeling normal and the carriage was moving at a rapid pace away from the horrible villa. As if unwilling to acknowledge the events of the evening, the ladies about her were chatting as if they were returning from a night at the theater. Victoria thought she heard the dark-haired Miss Malloren mention something about swimming with a shark…but that must have been a moment when her mind wandered and she’d misunderstood. Surely no one would be so foolish!
Although…when one considered Victoria’s own vocation, perhaps it wasn’t so crazy.
The other woman, Mrs. Faygan, who was dressed in a lovely gown of rose, decorated with matching pink pearls, seemed to be quite enamored with the Italian pasta noodles she’d become familiar with during their visit to Rome.
This launched the conversation into a direction quite distant from vampires and stakes and eerie villas…and the women began a heated discourse about the merits of cannoli versus English lemon biscuits.
Victoria faded in and out of the conversation, but it wasn’t until they had delivered their three guests to their quarters that she realized what she’d forgotten.
The leather cord, with the splinter, was still lying somewhere in the gardens at Villa Palombara.
Eighteen
Wherein the Ruby Box Is Opened
Max stripped off his soaking clothes and slapped them over a wood-backed chair. His hair was still wet enough to plaster to his face and neck, but at least it wasn’t dripping anymore, and at least it wasn’t long enough to get in his eyes and mouth. He combed his fingers through the wet locks and slicked it back from his forehead and temples and over his ears.
Returning to the Consilium had taken longer than he planned. He had initially hoped to make the trip, then return to the villa in the event that Victoria needed his assistance to find her mother. But because he was carrying the alchemist’s papers—or whatever it was they were—he’d decided to take no chance of being followed or spied upon and took a much more circuitous route than he would have liked. By the time he’d come dripping onto the marble floors of the Consilium, it was nearly midnight, and Wayren asked him not to go back out. As always, it was a request, not an order. But one he could not deny.
The time had come.
He avoided looking at the small ruby box that sat on a little table next to a small lamp. It was so small, yet it beckoned. Here in this sparse room in one of the far reaches of the catacombs that attached to the Consilium—so distant and secret that no one but Wayren and Ilias, and perhaps Ylito, knew of its existence—the small ruby box was the only bit of color.
It mocked him. The life-altering box that he could no longer avoid.
The decision that was no longer his to make.
Had it ever been?
He pulled on the dry clothes Wayren had found for him, annoyed at the way they clung to his still-damp legs, hurrying because the subterranean room was chilly, and so was his skin. As he pulled on his shirt he looked down at the little silver vis bulla. The one that didn’t really belong to him. Brushing his fingers over it, he touched the filigree cross, the impossibly dainty fingernail-size thing that hung there and gave him the power, the purpose, the exoneration he needed.