The Last Will of Moira Leahy (16 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

DARK NOTES

S
unshine streamed through the window the next morning,-and a melody played itself in my head. The hummed bit I’d made up the day before had evolved into something more complex. I didn’t shut it down, just left it to whatever sustenance it might find within me. What a relief that these sounds were not piano. They weren’t sax, either. Just pure tone, the way it used to be. I couldn’t think what it meant, to be rejoined with this long-gone part of myself, but I felt more refreshed than I had in years and my blood seemed to fizz, effervescent, a restless brew in my veins.

I plotted my day. I’d have to call Kit and tell her just how fine I was and that Noel was back to his old self. But before that, I wanted to explore. And before
that
, I meant to find Sri Putra. I had my persuasive speech prepared for Noel but didn’t need it in the end. He’d stuck a note under my door.

I have to deal with my bloody wallet this morning, but I’ll be back to hunt empus with you after lunch. Be my date? p.s. If you go out, you may want to put your keris in the safe
.

Noel was humoring me, I knew; he’d hate having to dedicate any part of what remained of his day to my keris obsession. So I’d spare him and go by myself.

I showered and dressed, and eventually slunk over to the mirror for a cursory check. It was still impossible to see anything but her in the looking glass, even after draining my color and hacking my strands. I spied a hint of red roots, then tousled my hair to hide them. That fix would have to wait.

Traffic or no traffic, I would have
avventura
today.

WALKING THROUGH ROME
with a weapon in hand sounded like a ticket to trouble, so I did something I’d never done before. I bought a purse—a big one, with room enough for the
kern
. I probably should’ve just tucked the blade down a pant leg and secured it with a shoelace, Alvilda-style. Whatever, at least now I could tote it around without drawing attention to myself, and, I thought wryly, I’d have some defense against pickpockets.

Though I knew it worked out on paper, I still impressed myself when I located Sri Putra’s place. I’d nearly forgotten about the sledge-wielding landlord until I stepped through the door and saw him walking up the stairs.

“You’re back,” he said, stopping to tip his head. “Unencumbered.”

Three things happened in close succession.

I gasped as a static charge radiated through my bag-wielding arm, raising gooseflesh all over my body.

The Italian bolted down the stairs. “It will always be a struggle for you!” he said. “Why not let me have it? I can care for such things.”

“Wha—What are you talking about?” I leaned away, took a step, but he followed each movement, inch for inch.

“Don’t be alarmed. You have the keris with you, yes? I know why you fear it!”

“I don’t fear it!”

“You should, it is too much for you.” So close now I could smell his breath, a strong, sweet mint. “Let me take it. I will even buy it. It will be very fair.”

“I don’t want to sell it! Back off—”

“Why not be reasonable? Let me see it.” His fingers had somehow slithered inside my purse.

That’s when the third thing happened, just as I yanked my arm back, a hundred blue curses crystallizing on my tongue: A woman walked into the apartment building behind me, carrying groceries. She was old, weathered as a Castinian, but with sharp Italian eyes that spied the man’s hand resettling on my purse.

“Cosa sta facendo?”
she asked him. What are you doing?

He lifted both hands in the air, took a step away from me.
“Sto cercando d’aiutare la signora.”
Just helping the lady.

“I don’t need help,” I retorted, tucking the purse tightly beneath my arm again. It no longer tingled.

“Ah.” He nodded. “We will see.”

“No,” I said. “We won’t.”

He smiled at me, then addressed the woman. “Now, Mrs. Fiori,” he said in Italian. “Don’t work yourself up again, remember your heart. You know I wouldn’t harm a hair on her head, anymore than I would harm a hair on yours.”

Pears tumbled out onto the peeling linoleum when she dropped her bag. Chuckling, the landlord disappeared up the steps. She stared after him, her olive flesh pallid; maybe she did have a heart condition. I retrieved her pears, some with torn skins, and stuffed them back inside the bag, then offered to help carry her groceries.

“Mi segua, prego!”
she agreed, and led us down the hall with a limp. From her belt loop, she produced a key on a crocheted band, and unlocked a door a few feet from Putra’s apartment, on the opposite side of the hall. The smell of onions wafted out at us as she set her bag inside. I handed her the bag I’d carried as she regarded me.

She asked if I knew who that man was.

The landlord, I replied.

She clicked her teeth.
“Come si chiama?”

Though unused to strangers asking me, flat out, for my name, I told her:
“Mi chiamo
Maeve Leahy.” I was here to visit with Sri Putra, the
empu
, I said. Did she know where he was?

He’s dealing with an illness, she said.

What illness? I wanted to know.

She scrunched up her face, asked if I was a troublemaker.

No, I told her. I just wanted to see Sri Putra.

“Why do you?” she asked in her tongue.

I hesitated, then pulled the
keris
from my bag. Her eyes bulged as she backed into her apartment.

“Wait!” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s just a—”

“I know what it is,” she said, hiding behind the door.
“Magia nera.”

“Black magic? You’re joking.”

She looked at me sternly, said it was no joke.

“I’m sorry,” I told her, “but I don’t believe in those things—curses and spells and voodoo dolls.”

“Maeve Leahy.” My Irish name distorted in her mouth. “You look like a good girl. You should not be here. You should not have that … thing.” Again, her eyes dipped to the blade. “And you should stay away from Ermanno.”

“Ermanno? Is that the landlord? What’s wrong with him?”

She lowered her voice. “They hate one another. They will destroy one another. The woman will be hurt—always the woman. You will be, if you don’t get rid of that.”

I didn’t understand, and told her so.

“It is true that Ermanno is the man you met, but he is not a landlord,” she said. “Only the landlady’s son. He is taking over temporarily. He has always done crazy things but not had such power to match his skeleton-key fingers. Now, I fear he will creep in at night and pluck at my hair for his spells if the rent is late.” She crossed herself.

“He’s just trying to intimidate you,” I said. “Like a schoolyard bully.”

“No, he tries to summon evil spirits.”
Demone
was the word she used. “He tries to conjure the magic his brother brings from the east. I thought that was all behind us, but now that the
empu
brother is back—”

“Fratelli?”
They’re brothers?

“Fratellastri.”
Half brothers. Sri Putra’s mother had been Asian, she explained, and Ermanno’s Italian. They shared a father. “Now go and never return. There is no good here.” She shut the door.

At least now I understood why Sri Putra lived in Rome. He and Ermanno were brothers. Half brothers. One short and clearly Javanese, as Garrick had confirmed; the other tall and seemingly a purebred Italian.

I took a few steps and knocked on Sri Putra’s door, hoping Mrs. Fiori was mistaken as to his whereabouts. No response. I breathed a little quicker, though, when I spied another note addressed to me. I tore it free of a nail, read.

Visit Il Sotto Abbasso

Taken literally, that meant “the under down.” Was I meant to search under something? Was there a trapdoor in Putra’s apartment? A basement of some sort?

My hand hovered over the doorknob as I considered trying my luck again with the weak lock, but then I noticed Ermanno standing with his eyes on me—no, on the
keris
in my hand—from the wrong end of the hall. The building must have two sets of stairs. How long had he been there, what had he heard?

I didn’t wait to find out. I bolted down the hall the way I’d come, my head full of demon spirits and my nose the stench of onions.

I DIDN’T LIKE
to admit that Ermanno had bent any of my steel nerves, but I looked behind me more than a dozen times as I traced my path back to the hotel. It didn’t help that I felt the lift of my skin, the sense that someone’s eyes were all over me. Then I realized that
everyone’s
eyes were on me and that I still held the
keris
, and so I tucked it back into my bag.

It must be very powerful or he wouldn’t want it so badly
.

Hadn’t Glinda said something like that to Dorothy about her red shoes? Though I didn’t believe there was anything otherwordly about the
keris
, I had to admit that shock had been curious. Maybe the threat of black magic had been enough to make even a
keris
flinch. Or—I smiled—maybe that zap was the universe’s way of telling me I shouldn’t carry a purse.

I’d nearly reached the hotel when a mime’s street performance caught my attention. Dressed all in black, with a spade painted over one eye, the man entertained a small crowd with a deck of cards.
Choose one
, he’d indicate with a sweep of a gloved hand, and someone would.
Now, tuck it back in the deck
.

I knew the trick, the way he marked the chosen card with another so that he could find it again in a flash. Moira and I had awed our friends with that exact illusion countless times; it was one of the allowables. Harder to explain were the times we’d be separated and know what the other was holding—or what the other was feeling. But that wasn’t magic. That was just …
just
.

The mime did a quick shuffle, then lifted the two of diamonds before a young boy, who giggled and clapped along with the others. A good trick. The man caught my eye, offered me the deck, but I shook my head and kept walking.

My skin rose up again, but I didn’t look back. I wouldn’t fear Ermanno. He was just a man, as he’d said. A man and perhaps a fool, for trying to appear more than he was, for making others like Mrs. Fiori with her bruised pears afraid of him over something as phony as
magia nera
.

Phony or not, though, there was no reason for Noel to know about today’s adventure. What would he have done if he’d seen Ermanno’s hand in my bag? I imagined heated words. Dagger-eyed stares. Pistols at dawn. A sword fight. I grinned, despite myself. The beautiful, noble Englishman versus the beautiful, twisted Italian. I knew whose cravat I’d have tied around my arm, the scent of it faint with turpentine.

THOUGH MY ITCH
to explore never lessened, Putra’s latest note took priority. Visiting Santa Maria in Cosmedin and the Mouth of Truth—though I hadn’t a clue why he’d wanted me to go there—had brought good things. I was beginning to think that Il Sotto Abbasso must be a Roman attraction, too, since Putra must’ve known that my gaining entry to his apartment with Ermanno lurking would be unlikely. This was a disappointment; finding a trapdoor would’ve been fun.

I was passing through the hotel lobby on the way to my room when I ran into Giovanni. “You weren’t kidding when you said you work all the time.”

“I told you, my mamma is the owner. But what can I do? She makes fantastic cannoli.” He winked at me.

Ah, Italians.

“Any messages?” I asked.

“One. Your friend, Noel, wanted me to tell you that he is at the shops.”

Oh, well. Hearing from Sri Putra would’ve been more surprising than not at this point, anyway. I pictured Noel appraising antiques throughout the city and wondered if he’d remember our lunch date; the lost scepter of Romulus would trump his appetite any day of the week.

“He needed clothes,” Giovanni said, rupturing the image.

“Clothes? Noel needed clothes? You’re kidding.”

“Does this look like kidding?” He pointed to himself, his sober expression. “It is why his wallet was stealed from him—wearing blue jeans on Christmas.” He tsk-tsked.

“But he just went for pastries!”

“He knows now he must look his best for
passeggiata.”

I’d heard of
passeggiata—
when families went out to stroll the town in their finest clothes, confident they looked better than the neighbors.

“You two will have not a euro left if you are not careful. ‘When in Rome’ does not come from nothing.” His hands flew; God only knew what they said. “You look like tourists.”

“We are tourists.”

“You look like … a red spot.”

I scrunched my face to match his. “We look like pimples?”

“Targets.” The word burst from him. “They will crush your grapes and make you wine if they see you are tourists!”

I repressed a laugh. “Do we look that bad?”

His eyebrows did a funny dance—up with one, down with the other and switch—as he scowled at my faded Bugs Bunny sweatshirt. I covered Bugs in a protective gesture with my right hand. Moira and I had bought two of these tops when we were fifteen. Oversized. Perfect. Obviously long lasting. Exactly identical. Our mother had hated them. But, okay, maybe I was underdressed.