Luthier's Apprentice, The (15 page)

“Don’t you dare insult my father!” Corey growled, struggling to free himself from the soldier’s grasp. “And my mother never had a career. She never wanted to be a violinist. You forced her to play, even though you knew she hated it and didn’t have the talent. You would starve her, too, wouldn’t you? Just like Paganini’s father did to him. You would force her to play until she fainted from hunger and exhaustion.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. I didn’t know you had fallen so low, Sonia,” Niccolò drawled.

Sonia ignored Niccolò’s comment, her sultry gaze fixed on Corey. “What a pity you are not a girl. Your parents could not even get
that
right.”

“I’ll make you pay,” Corey hissed, “for all the pain you’ve caused my mother, and for my father’s death. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll make you pay for all of it.”

Emma had never seen such pain and anger on Corey’s face. She wanted to reach out to him, to assure him everything would be all right.

“I find your courage most amusing,” Sonia said. “But you are a fool if you think there is something you can do about it. In this world, I am the ruler. In this world, I am God. I decide what is and what is not. I decide who lives or dies. I will not allow a silly boy like you to disrupt my plans. It’s Halloween night and the witching hour soon approaches.” She pointed to an enormous clock hanging on the wall. “And our sweet violinists are waiting for their lovely fate. I do not want to keep them waiting.”

The clock in question read nine-thirty. It seemed this clock had the power to tell real-world time.

“What’s going to happen during the witching hour?” Emma asked.

Sonia chuckled. “Look, Niccolò, look at the little apprentice. I have to admit—she is beautiful. Too bad she will not grow up to become a professional violinist. Too bad those lovely fingers of hers will be destroyed by cutting and scraping wood. But you have your bloodlines and I have mine. Yours is to craft and mine is to play. You see, my beauty, soon, very soon, there will be no male violinists left on earth. Only female violinists will triumph. I will erase each and every male violinist from the face of the earth.”

“Not if I can stop you,” Corey muttered.

Emma stared at Sonia. “You’re mad.”

“Not at all,” Sonia said. “All my life I played the violin with unbelievable skill, yet I was patronized by my male colleagues. Men, always men. I stood against the world. In a time when the music arena was controlled and monopolized by men, I stood against them all. And let me tell you a secret: I was better than all of them put together. I was born with that special gift. But was it appreciated? No. I was an object of envy. Each time I went on stage, my male colleagues waited and longed and prayed for me to fail, to forget a note, to misplace a finger. But each time I succeeded. They could not take it, could not tolerate it—the idea that a
beautiful
woman
could play better than them.”

Niccolò stifled a yawn.

“Until that night…” Emma said, remembering a newspaper article she had once read about Sonia. She was beginning to understand. The woman was mental, delusional with dreams of greatness and revenge.

There was a faraway look in Sonia’s eyes. “Yes, that night. The whole world stood there, seemingly pained, yet I could feel their triumph radiating from their faces, from their skin, from their very souls. They loved my failure; they wallowed in my humiliation. All the newspapers of the world could not wait to publish the news the next day. The great Sonia Ivanov, humiliated live on stage!”

“What happened?” Emma asked.

“Happened? Nothing happened, except age. I was past seventy! Why do you think I aroused such envy? Not only was I a woman—but an old woman at that.”

Emma and Corey exchanged glances. Past seventy? The event she was talking about had happened about ten years ago, meaning she had to be at least eighty. Yet she looked like a young woman. Had she found, like Niccolò, the secret of youth and immortality?

“Do I have to listen to this?” Niccolò asked.

“The great Niccolò Paganini,” Sonia taunted. “But I triumphed over you, too, did I not? Just as I will triumph over the whole music world very soon.”

“What do you intend to do with the violinists? Kill them?” Emma asked.

“I’m afraid it is more
complesso
, more complex than that,” Niccolò said.

“Niccolò is quite right.” Sonia approached Emma. “What I intend to do with them is much more complicated. He should know. He has been doing it for the past few hundred years. You see, it is
not
easy to look this good. You have to pay a price for youth and beauty.”

“So all the rumors were true,” Corey said. “You’ve somehow found a way to remain young forever. You made a pact with the devil, just like Paganini did before you, and you have built yourself this—this purple nightmarish world.”

Sonia turned in a circle, her arms wide open. “You do not like purple?”

“Wait a minute. I don’t get it. What’s the connection between the two of you?” Emma asked, turning to Niccolò. “Why are you here together?” She turned back to Sonia. “Why did you say you triumphed over Niccolò?”

“Obviously, she must have found a way to get his power and the secret of immortality from him,” Corey said. “Don’t you see? He’s like a slave to her.”

“I prefer the word servant,” Niccolò muttered.

“Clever
ragazzo
,” Sonia said, mimicking Niccolò. “You see, Niccolò was a gifted musician and a master of the dark forces, but he had a weakness, and that was his downfall.”

Emma and Corey exchanged looks—and suddenly it dawned on them. They simultaneously said, “Poker!”

Niccolò clapped sluggishly.

Sonia’s lips twisted in a crooked smile. “I see you have done your homework.”

Corey stared at Niccolò. “You lost all the power to her over a game of poker?”

Niccolò seemed to wince. “I’m afraid so,
mio bambino
.”

Sonia’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. “Life is full of surprises, is it not? But enough is enough. You are wasting my time with trivial gossip. I need to concentrate on more important matters. Guards, chain them to the wall!”

The soldiers dragged Emma and Corey to the wall and shackled their wrists and ankles. They were side by side, close enough to hear each other whisper but too far to touch each other’s fingers.

“You can’t keep us here!” Emma shouted. “Are my mom and Aunt Lili here? What have you done to them?”

“Perfect,” Sonia cooed, ignoring her pleas. She waved at them from the middle of the chamber. “Do you have a nice view from there? I do not want you to miss any part of the fun.” Then she added sweetly, as if talking to a toddler, “Do not fret,
lapushka.
You will see your mommy and auntie soon enough. Guards, keep an eye on the two brats. Niccolò, stop standing there like a pole in the middle of Trafalgar Square and follow me.” She turned on her heels and walked out of the chamber, her stiletto heels clicking against the floor.

Niccolò followed her, but not before throwing Emma a sharp, meaningful glance. What was he up to? She struggled against the chains.

“Save your energies for later,” Corey whispered. “We don’t know how long she’ll keep us here.”

“I don’t think it’ll be long,” Emma replied. “The ceremony she mentioned, whatever it is, will take place in about two hours. My head is turning in circles. Where the hell is Annika? Nobody’s mentioned her. I think they don’t know she’s here.”

“I hope she hasn’t been discovered. She might be our only chance of escape.”

“If Sonia has hurt my mom…” Emma clenched her fists. “I’m sure now my mom is here. And Aunt Lili, too. Somehow—don’t ask me how—I can feel their presence.”

“Good. Get mad.”

Emma leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. She felt as if she hadn’t slept for days. Her stomach churned from hunger. “I’m starving.”

“Me too. We should have asked Niccolò for some food.”

“Maybe we can ask those things,” Emma said, gesturing to the soldiers.

“Try.”

“Hey, we’re hungry! Can you bring us some food?”

The soldiers remained motionless like surrealist, modern art statues.

“So much for trying,” she muttered.

After a moment, Corey said, “I wouldn’t worry about your mom. I have a feeling her life is not in danger like the violinists. Think of it, your family is descended from Niccolò. Your mom, your aunt, your grandfather—they’re all connected to this mystery.”

“But how? Why are my mom and aunt here?”

“Obviously, they’re a piece of the puzzle. A puzzle we haven’t been able to solve yet.”

“I wonder what Holmes would say in this situation.”

“At least, Holmes had food.”

She sighed. “Okay, let’s start from the beginning. That’ll help structure our thoughts.”

Corey nodded. “Good idea. So my grandmother Sonia ‘inherits’ the power from Niccolò as a result of a poker game. We assume this power includes this world as well as the ability to look younger and live forever.”

“And the power of sorcery. I mean, just look at those soldiers.” She paused thoughtfully. “This world can’t be the creation of Sonia alone. She wasn’t alive in the 1800s when the violinists started disappearing. So is it Niccolò’s legacy?”

“We must move back in time to when Niccolò made the pact with the devil.”

“Okay, okay. So this is the scenario: Sometime during the early 1800s, Niccolò sells his soul to the devil in exchange for extraordinary playing skills and eternal life.”

“Yes, he gives up his soul,” Corey said. “But there must be something else. How do the missing violinists fit into all this?”

“Maybe it wasn’t only his soul he had to offer, but other souls as well.”

“Exactly. Other violinists’ souls!”

She nodded. “Which is why they vanished.”

Corey went on. “The majority of the missing violinists were involved with the Church or wrote religious music… What better gift to the forces of evil?”

Emma shuddered.

“Are you okay?”

“I felt chills, but not from the cold,” Emma said. “Let’s continue. So Niccolò offers not only his soul but those of other innocent violinists as well. That much seems clear. Did this parallel world exist back then? We don’t know. We’ll have to ask Niccolò. We’ll have to ask him where he’s been all the years before Sonia came along. I wish I had asked him when I had the chance, but my mind was a mess.”

“I don’t blame you. I felt the same way. Especially when I saw Sonia.”

They were quiet for a moment.

Emma broke the silence. “I’m sorry.”

“For?”

“For what you’re going through. It must be awful to have your own grandmother kill your father.”

“Thanks,” he murmured. “Dad was an excellent pilot. I always sensed there was something wrong about his accident. Anyway, where were we? Let’s move on to Sonia. So she gets involved with sorcery and gambling. Somehow she finds out about Paganini—that he’s very much alive and well—and challenges him to a game of poker.”

“It’s ironic, isn’t it? What a perfect match: both consummate gamblers as well as virtuosos.”

“Tell me about it.”

“But where does Grandpa fit into all this? He’s just a violin maker. Why has he been coming here for? Unless…” She paused. She stared at Corey. “The woods?”

Corey nodded slowly. “What if, all these years, he’s been getting the wood from here? That might explain the portal in the attic room. You said he never let you go in there. It’s obvious he didn’t want you to find the portal. I don’t blame him.”

“But I still don’t get it. Why would he need wood from
this
place?”

“Maybe there’s something special about this wood, something we don’t know,” Corey said. “That’s another piece of the puzzle we need.” After a pause, he said, “Think about it. Your ancestors have been luthiers for generations. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Maybe... I don’t know, maybe they
have
to be luthiers, maybe that’s part of the pact that Niccolò made with the devil. Maybe that’s part of the deal.”

“I agree. There has to be something special about this wood. You heard all the crazy violin music outside. It was coming from the woods. Trees don’t play violin, so what’s producing the music? And what about Mom and Aunt Lili?”

Corey nodded. “Another missing piece of the puzzle. But let’s continue. Sonia wins the game, gets Niccolò’s power, makes him her servant, creates this world...but how does your aunt fit into all this? Why is she here? Maybe she’s in it, too. And your mom—”

Emma shook her head. “No way.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

Corey sighed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“They must be here against their will,” she cut in. “Maybe Sonia, for some reason we still don’t know, also kidnapped Aunt Lili. Maybe that’s why she’s been away all these years. Maybe she was never a recluse in the Hungarian mountains like my mom said. Maybe that was a lie.”

“So many maybes. But if in fact your aunt is here, as Sonia implied, what has she been doing all this time? And if Sonia abducted her—why? There has to be a connection. But let me go on.