She paused a moment, then said, “You should probably come over.”
* * *
HE ARRIVED at their house and found a home-cooked dinner waiting. He felt another one of those moments of displacement. On the one hand, this wasn’t him, this house in the suburbs and dinner with glasses of wine and actual domesticity; on the other hand, he could get used to it. It left him standing at the edge of the kitchen, bundle of papers under his arm, torn in two directions.
Amelia nudged him to say “thank you” and take his seat at the table to share in salad and pasta marinara. By unspoken agreement, they waited until after food to talk. Even so, Kitty still had food on her plate when she leaned forward, eyes wide, and asked, “Well?”
“Where should I start?” Cormac asked. The story was a tangle that he was still working out.
“Start with the hundred-and-fifteen-year-old murder,” Ben asked. “You didn’t actually figure it out, did you?”
“I believe I did,” Cormac answered smugly, and told a trimmed-down version of the whole thing. He left out the parts where he committed arson, failed to report a suspicious death to the proper authorities, and beat the crap out of Anderson Layne. By the skeptical looks on their faces, he was pretty sure Ben and Kitty guessed he was leaving out details. They were smart enough not to push him.
“And Judi gave you the key, just like that?” Kitty said.
“Whole code, all laid out.”
“So she could have helped you all along.”
He said, “I think they wanted to make sure I was serious. That I wasn’t just screwing around.”
“So it really was a test like in a fairy tale.” Kitty wrinkled her nose.
“Whatever it was—the key worked. Amelia decoded the whole thing.” He thumbed the stack of pages he’d brought. He figured Kitty would appreciate the reading. “I also asked your Web guy to take down the online version. Figure we didn’t need it hanging around anymore.”
“And … what?” she said, and sure enough she was reaching for the stack with curved, clawlike fingers. “You find anything? Did she say anything?”
He could sit there with half a grin on his face and drive her nuts, but he didn’t. He had the page folded down, the one where Amy explained why Kumarbis dedicated himself to destroying Roman, and drew it out to hand to Kitty.
Her eyes scanned over the lines, written in Amelia’s pointed cursive, and she started reading out loud.
“‘So amazing, thinking that such a power might exist. And yet utterly chilling. Kumarbis, for all his vague notions, for all his damaged psyche, is right—even if Dux Bellorum did nothing else, what he did at Herculaneum means he is viciously dangerous and must be stopped.’”
“Herculaneum?” Ben said. “What’s that have to do with anything?”
Cormac said, “Herculaneum is another town buried by the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii.”
“I know, but what does it have to do—”
“Wait. Be quiet, I have to think.” Kitty put up her hand, scrunched up her face, held her head as if she could squeeze the memory out. “It was something Kumarbis said, but it was right before everything went to hell. It’s all a mess … I can’t remember.” She opened her eyes wide. “Herculaneum. When I asked him about the Manus Herculei, that artifact Roman was going after, he said it didn’t refer to Hercules, it was Herculaneum. I just remember thinking, what the hell is that? Then I had other things to deal with.” Her thoughts darkened, turned inward. The trauma surfaced, sometimes. But she buried it quickly.
Ben was the one who broke the heavy silence. “Wait—so we are saying that Roman used magic to cause the eruption of Vesuvius? That’s the implication here, right?”
Because this wasn’t the first time Cormac and Amelia had been presented with that possibili
ty, they weren’t surprised.
“Could he do it again?” Kitty asked softly.
That was the implication. They still weren’t any closer to finding Roman or knowing how to stop him.
Ben said, “So, what, we need a geologist on the team now? We can’t guard every active volcano on the planet. Even if he was able to make a volcano explode, why would he do it? What would it accomplish? Who’s to say he didn’t just, I don’t know, hate Pompeii?”
Kitty reached for the bottle of wine to pour another glass, but it was empty. She sighed. “I’ll spread the word. I’ll let everyone know what we’ve found. Maybe the old vampires like Marid can shed some light on things. Um, no pun intended.” She considered her empty glass of wine and furrowed her brow.
Meanwhile, Ben had gone to the cupboard to fetch another bottle, and he refilled Kitty’s glass. Cormac shook his head at the offer of more. He needed to hit the road soon.
He’d gone and solved a whole collection of mysteries, a hundred-year-old murder and a magician’s secret code. He even got paid—even if it was Layne’s dirty money. Still spent the same. He ought to feel satisfied. Instead, he had a nagging suspicion he was missing something.