Veiled Magic (15 page)

“Peter.” Donata forced his name through suddenly numb lips.

He turned his head in her direction and frowned at her. “I hear the sirens, Donata. This will just take a second.”

She shook her head frantically and pointed down at his side. “Peter. You've been shot.” She couldn't believe that after all her years as a cop, this was the first time she was seeing someone bleed from a gunshot wound. She'd talked to plenty of dead crime victims who'd been shot, of course, but that was a very different thing from watching someone she liked gush red in front of her. For a moment, she almost felt faint, then got a hold of herself.

She grabbed a wad of napkins from a nearby table, trying not to think about what might already be on them, and stuffed them into the gory wound on his side. They immediately turned bright crimson.

“I'm okay,” Peter said impossibly, although his large hand replaced hers and held the damp paper against the hole. His breath came hard, but otherwise, he seemed unaffected.

Antonio staggered to his feet, one hand held out beseechingly. “I am so sorry, my old friend. When I looked for the book about this curse, my superior came to me. He told me you were wanted for stealing Vatican treasures and were to be arrested by the police.” His deep brown eyes filled with tears, and his voice was a ragged whisper. “I know you are not always dealing within the law, and so I believed him. I swear I did not know that they would try to hurt you.” His gaze flew from Peter to Donata and back again. Cynical as she was, Donata didn't doubt his heartfelt apology. She had no idea what Peter thought; his face was set in lines of pain and stoicism.

“I understand,” Peter said to Antonio. “You did what you felt you had to do. I forgive you.” He turned to leave, shoulders rigid.

Antonio negotiated the few steps that separated them and hugged Peter with desperate intensity. Then he gave a sob and ran out the door.

Peter looked after him bleakly, took Donata's arm, and steered her toward the back of the bar.

“Time for us to leave too,” he said. “I'm pretty sure this place has a rear exit that lets out onto an alley. If we go through the back ways, we should be able to make it to the guesthouse without being spotted.”

Donata let herself be pulled along, but spared a glance for the wound on his side. “Shouldn't we be going to a hospital? You've been shot!”

Peter grunted. “I'm fine. And I don't think we want to be anyplace too public right now.”

Donata dug in her heels as soon as they had traversed a couple of streets away from the bar. “At least let me get some bandages or something,” she hissed. Her hands were stained with blood from her attempts to keep pressure on the wound as they ran.

“Let's get back to the room in one piece. Then we'll worry about bandages,” Peter said. And grimly refused to discuss
it again until they had slunk their way up the back stairs and into their tiny refuge.

Once inside the door, Donata ran to the bathroom for towels and filled a pitcher from the kitchen with warm water. Blinking back tears of fear and frustration, she shoved Peter into a chair, pulled off his jacket, and unbuttoned his shirt. When she saw what lay underneath, she let out an involuntary gasp.

Peter gave a chuckle, only slightly tinged by bitterness. “Apparently I'm not that easy to kill. Even when my oldest friend is lending a hand.”

Together, they looked down at the tanned skin of his left side, already healing over as they watched. The torn edges of the injury slowly knit together, the skin puckering and reforming, with only a thin scar at the entry and exit sites to mark that he'd ever been shot.

“Great Hecate,” Donata breathed. “I can't believe it.” She used a damp towel to wipe away the dried-on blood, feeling limp with relief.

“I guess being half Dragon is turning out to be a good thing after all,” Peter said with deceptive lightness. “Remind me to thank my father if I ever meet him.”

Donata's stomach clenched with guilt as she thought of the things this man had gone through in the past few days, all because she'd come into his life. If there had been any way to take it all back, she would have. But even Witch that she was, she didn't have that kind of power.

“I'm so sorry, Peter,” she said. “For everything.” She slumped down on the chair next to him. “And it was all for nothing.”

He shook his head—“Not for nothing”—and reached into his jacket pocket to pull out the small leather-bound book Antonio had brought to show them. “I'm pretty sure they never meant him to give this to us—just use it to hold our attention long enough for those Cabal goons to get the jump on us.”

Donata's mouth dropped open. “But . . . how?”

Peter's lips twisted in a wry smile. “That last hug he gave me before he ran out. He shoved the book in my pocket, when no one could see.”

“So he really was trying to help you, despite everything?” She couldn't quite wrap her mind around the swing from treachery and betrayal to handing them the information they needed so badly.

“I don't think he knew what they intended,” Peter said. “Antonio was always all about following the rules and doing the right thing. I guess, in the end, he decided that giving us the book was the right thing.” The anguish in his eyes made Donata want to weep.

Peter laid the book down, gently, on the table in front of Donata. “I hope the answers we need are in here,” he said. “God knows the price we paid for it was high enough.”

Then he went to stand in front of the living room window that looked down on the bright lights of the city of Rome. He stayed there, unmoving, until the dawn broke over the hills, and never said another word.

*  *  *

The next morning, they got back on the Casaventi family jet and winged their way back to the States and the problems that awaited them there. Not that it mattered much; it seemed those problems were following them wherever they went.

Donata had gone to bed not long after their return to the guesthouse, although she'd spared a few minutes to run out and buy food for the silent Peter, knowing his Dragon metabolism would need fuel for all the healing it had done. He hadn't even acknowledged it—or her—when she'd come back to the rooms, but there was nothing left but a few crumbs when she woke up in the morning.

They'd packed and left the chintz and their effusively polite landlady behind them with little regret. Peter probably only said two or three sentences during the entire process, and now, two hours into the flight, he sat staring out the window, deep in thought. Donata left him alone. She'd done enough damage already. Without speaking, they'd tacitly agreed to put off looking at the book until they were on the plane home.

Finally, Peter got up and fetched some snacks from a cabinet toward the front of the plane. Stiffly, he laid them on the table where Donata sat, a high-carb peace offering she was happy to accept. She toasted him with her water bottle, liberated earlier from the same place.

“You okay?” she asked.

Peter shrugged. “I'm . . . adjusting. Lots of changes in a short time. And I don't much like change.”

Donata opened her mouth and started to say, “That's—”

“Let me guess: a Dragon trait.” He grinned, like the light coming out after a dark and stormy night.

“'Fraid so,” she said. “So, now what?”

Peter pulled the book out of his jacket pocket and put it down on the table between them. Its brown leather cover was worn and stained, and it smelled of dust and the passage of time. In truth, it didn't look all that special.

“I guess we'd better see what this thing says, since we went to so much trouble to get it,” he said matter-of-factly. He pushed it in Donata's direction. “It's your puzzle. Go for it.”

She picked it up gingerly and carefully cracked open its spine. Tiny flakes of paper floated in the plane's recycled air, and Peter suppressed a wince.

“Sorry,” she said. “I know it's old.” She looked down at the first page and swore loudly and profligately.

Peter raised an eyebrow, impressed.

“What's the matter?” he asked. “Don't tell me it's in some secret code.”

“Worse,” Donata growled. “It's in Latin.” She put the book down with a less-than-gentle thud. “Freaking Latin.”

Peter let out a genuine belly laugh, and Donata glared at him.

“What? You think that's funny?”

He tried to stop, without much success. “Latin isn't all that amusing. The look on your face, however . . .” He snorted
and picked up the book.

“So you didn't have to study Latin in Witch school?” he asked, half seriously.

If anything, Donata's scowl grew deeper. “Healers and professional spell-casters study Latin,” she said. “I talk to the dead. The
recently
dead. Latin wouldn't do me much good, so it wasn't part of my training.” Under her breath, she muttered, “My sisters can read Latin. I suppose I can ask one of them to translate it for me.”

Peter smiled. “Don't worry—it won't come to that. I can translate it myself.”

Her gaze shot to his face in surprise. “You know Latin?”

“I don't know why you're so shocked,” he said mockingly. “It's part of a classical copyist's education.”

“Copyist my ass,” she snorted. “So where did you learn Latin—Fagan's School for Forgers?”

“Yale, actually,” he said with a perfectly straight face. “The family has a large endowment there.”

Of course they did. Donata waved a hand at the book. “Well, what does it say, then? Is there anything about the Pentacle Pentimentos and how to remove the curse?”

“Give me a minute, will you?” Peter bent his head over the book, allowing her a chance to study him while he studied it. She hoped he was learning more than she was.

He flipped lightly through the first few pages, then raised his head, glancing from her to the book, then back again.

“It looks like this was written by a Dominican monk, sometime during the earlier years of the Inquisition.” He made a face. “His handwriting is atrocious.”

“Does it mention the painting?” Donata asked with ill-concealed impatience.

“Not yet,” Peter replied. “It looks like a journal of sorts. Mostly a kind of running diary-slash-confessional. So far, the worst thing he has to admit to is taking a second helping of bread at dinner.” He bent his dark head back over the book. “Let me see if there is any mention of the Pentimento later on.” He pulled out a pad and pen, and started jotting down a few notes.

Donata resigned herself to a long wait. But about twenty minutes later, Peter let out a cry of triumph.

“Did you find something?” she asked, eagerly.

“I think so,” he said. “He says, ‘
Hodie nos utor a novus beneficium pro Deus.
'”

“Which means? Non–Latin speaker here, remember?”

“Ah, something like ‘Today we use a new gift for God,'” Peter translated. “Wait, there's more, a few pages later. ‘
Is est tantum pro putus of pectus pectoris quod phasmatis
.' ‘It is only for the pure of heart and spirit.'”

Donata looked aghast. “Does that mean we have to find someone who is pure of heart and spirit to take off the curse?” She shook her head. “I don't think I know anybody who answers to that description.”

Peter chuckled. “Hey, don't look at me. I haven't been pure since, well—never mind.”

She looked at him curiously, but decided it was better for both of them if she didn't pursue that line of thought. “Is there anything else that would help us? Because I'm thinking that right now, our best bet is a four-year-old. And I don't really want to borrow anyone's kid to test this out.”

Peter put one finger between the pages to mark his place. “Well, remember that no one with Paranormal blood can use a Pentacle Pentimento, so the user has to be a Human, for starters.” He looked down at the page again. “Here he refers to warriors for God: ‘
proeliator pro Deus
.' I think that means the only ones who can use the painting without being affected by the curse are holy warriors. That would explain the whole ‘pure of spirit' thing.”

Donata made a face. “Great. So we have to find someone who isn't a Paranormal but knows about them, who is also pure of heart and spirit.
And
who would be willing to help.”

He whistled. “Sounds like a tall order.”

“Hmmm . . . maybe not, if you know where to look . . .” Her voice trailed off as she thought.

“And do you know where to look?” Peter asked, doubt clear in his tone, if not his words.

“Not me,” she admitted. “But I might know someone who would. Do you remember me mentioning my friend Magnus?”

Peter searched his memory of the conversations they'd had over the last few days. “Was he the Shapechanger who'd dropped out of Ulf training?”

“
Opted out
, not dropped out,” Donata said fiercely. “He made a choice. A hard choice. And he's been paying for it ever since. These days he's not as averse to using his strength and natural talents as he used to be, but he still isn't willing to risk becoming a berserker with no control over it either. Magnus gave up his entire world to be true to himself; that's not an easy thing, you know.”

“Whoa!” Peter held up one hand. “I didn't mean to touch a nerve.” He looked at her with narrowed eyes. “You're involved with this guy, aren't you?” He didn't seem too happy with this revelation.

Donata shook her head. “No, I'm not. We had a brief affair, years ago, but it didn't last.” She hesitated, and then went on. “You have to understand, Ulfhednar are pack creatures. When Magnus walked away from his old life, he built himself a new one, created a new extended family for himself, so to speak. They're mostly people who are on the fringe, like him, not accepted by society, whether Human or Paranormal.” She paused, beset by an old ache. “Magnus is reasonably law-abiding, but many of his new pals exist in the gray zone, or are just out-and-out criminals. Our relationship couldn't survive the strain, me on one side of the law, and too many of his buddies on the other. So we called it off. But we stayed friends.”