The Last Will of Moira Leahy (24 page)

Reach up. Kick the dirt off
.

“You must be hungry then. A lot.”

Hungry. Tired. Ready to move on
.

“I want to get past it, Noel. I’m ready to be free.”

“So decide it,” he said. “Make it happen.”

“I want …”

Reach. Just do it
.

“What do you want?” Noel asked, as whispers of risk and possibility played over me like the kiss of a bow over taut strings.

“I want …”

Reach
.

And I did. I stood and reached across the table, touched the strong bones of Noel’s cheek and jaw, knowing the skull beneath shone full of light. Then I put my butter-tang mouth on his and hoped he tasted my solidity.

Someone’s voice cleared behind me. Our waiter, with a message from Giovanni, who’d made the reservation for us. We were needed back at the hotel.
Emergenza
, he’d said.

Noel’s mother had been found.

THE BIKE’S SLICK
power and the way the wind whipped at me as we turned down another street reminded me of a ride on the Penobscot. Even the sound of fireworks seemed swallowed whole by the engine’s throaty growl. People bundled in mufflers and heavy coats lined the streets as we sped past. Even more gathered in the piazzas, dancing to the buskers’ music and drinking. Families sat on folding chairs and ate from kettle pots. Teenagers lit earsplitting bottle rockets. Children played with sparklers and spray cans of string. Old women sang. The smell of roasting chestnuts permeated the air.

I tucked my hands under Noel’s jacket and nestled my face against his back. I let my fingers wander a little—easy enough to blame on the bump of a tire against cobblestones or the need for a better grip. But the moment rained magic, the sky aflame. I found a place between his shirt buttons and grazed his skin. He hunched his shoulders and pressed against my cheek. I kissed him through his jacket.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” I said, knowing my words would be flung safely away.

Car horns blared as we neared our hotel, and firecrackers split the air as we rushed through the door.

“Dio mio!
I have looked for travel for you to leave right away,” Giovanni told Noel. “Your hunt man—”

“Jakes?”

“—he said you should go tonight to London.”

“So it’s England,” Noel said.

“You say you do not like to fly in planes,” Giovanni said. “There is a train leaving Termini station in a few hours. It is a slow train to Milano in the night, but you will be there by morning. From there, you can go on to Paris and London.”

Noel turned to me as the sulfurous scent of explosives filled my nostrils. “Come with me,” he said. “You thought you might like to before.”

I smiled, so happy he’d asked; and though part of me tingled at the whisper of
avventura
, I shook my head. “That was when it was about packing up an apartment, seeing Ellen’s shorts, and thanking a mannequin. This is your mother. Your journey.”

He nodded, and I knew he understood. “Giovanni, can you look into flights for tomorrow? Put me on a red-eye to London?”

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“I can’t leave you now.” He took both of my hands, raised them to his chest. “Let’s have midnight.”

I smiled, and for the first time in my life, felt a little like Cinderella. In a piratey kind of way.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

ON PASSION AND PURGATORY

H
ow do you know when the time’s right, when you feel safe enough, when you’re willing to take the chance? These are questions I’d asked myself over the years, when I’d said no to a date or turned my head to avoid a love scene in a film. When I’d clung to
just, just
. Now I knew the answer: You know because the time’s right, and you feel safe enough, and you’re willing to take the chance. Because you’re with the right person.

Noel and I stepped into my room, and I locked the door behind us, leaned against the wood. He said my name, and I turned but couldn’t look at him.

“I hope you don’t think—” he started. “What’s in your head?”

“I don’t know. I don’t—” I met his eyes. “You said once that you loved me. Do you still? Do you want me at all?”

“Of course I still love you.” His eyes went dark. “Of course I want you.”

Tension unraveled in me—
thank you, thank you
.

“But I’d never want to be one of your regrets,” he said.

The words hurt for a second, but then I realized that he didn’t know what I’d come to understand. Time to remedy that. I put my hands on his face.

“I love you, Noel. I love you and want you, and I’m not made of glass, damn it.” I couldn’t read the complex play of emotions over his face, but then his hands settled on my waist.

“Christ,” he said. “The woman of my dreams is throwing herself at me—”

“Well, I wouldn’t say throwing—”

“—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—”

“So don’t.”

“—but maybe you need more time. You’ve been through hell.” He stared beyond me, at the door.

“Noel Ryan, you look at
me
now.” I tried for a witchy glare when his eyes met mine. “Are you telling me what I need?”

“No, just—”

“Let me rephrase.” I arched against him. “Don’t tell me what I need. I need you. And I demand your compliance,”—I couldn’t help myself—“pirate.”

He raised a brow. “Let me get this straight. I’m at your command? I have to listen to you?”

“Absolutely.”

His hands spread over my back. “Then who am I to resist, lowly wretch that I am?”

“I’m glad you finally know your place.” I stood tall and kissed his mouth, felt his hesitation and was almost grateful for it.
Yes
, I thought,
let me do everything, let me be able to
.

I wanted to prove it to myself, and somehow I did that night. I possessed a flame, a passion that grew and twisted into a knotting ache of desire. The need my actions impelled frightened me a little, but not enough to stop.

“I love you,” he murmured, and kissed my neck, our bodies pressed together. “I adore you.”

How could I have gone without this? Why did I?

It’s how it should’ve been
.

Slow. Kisses to face and lips, ears and neck, that melted away the chill inside of me. Fingers on eyelids, feathering lashes, playing over cheeks, making music there. My mind swelled with a rich inventive melody as I reached for Noel’s buttons, peeled off his jacket and shirt, touched flesh I’d seen a few times in person, more often in my dreams.

“You’re so beautiful.” He held my chin when I tried to turn away. “I’m almost afraid to touch you.”

“Don’t be.” I pulled my blouse over my head, let it fall to the floor. “I’m not afraid,” I said, though I felt a hint of nerves when I recognized the depth of his desire. But Noel was not Ian. Then was not now. There was no storm here, and I would not shut down. I wanted this moment. I moved into his arms. “I trust you.”

We lay together and spoke love words, creating incandescent moments I’d remember all my life: when he traced over my skin as if I were a piece of precious marble and called me beautiful—until I believed him; when he kissed me until every thought toppled from my head and my body bowed to sensation; when he linked his fingers with mine and kept his gaze on mine as we joined together, finally, so different from what I’d known; when he whispered words—pianissimo, incomprehensible—in a language that was foreign to me but that I learned bit by bit as the minutes passed; when we twined close, after, and both trembled.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be cold again.”

Yet, despite the warmth within me, the light I knew had grown so much, and the exhilaration of newfound freedom and triumph and love, something was wrong. The music in my mind had turned dissonant—a crash of sounds that didn’t belong together, like the splinter and hiss of burning ice. I pushed the noises back and kissed his chest.

“Buon Anno
, Noel Ryan.”

“Happy New Year, Maeve Leahy.”

“Auguri.”
I settled against him and tried to sleep. Still, I couldn’t shake the disconcerting emotion that lurked close, like a faceless presence just outside a darkened windowpane.

NOEL WAS GONE
when I woke, already on a red-eye flight to London. He’d left something on the pillow beside me: a miniature replica of that unfinished work I’d stumbled upon in his studio weeks ago. Finished now. Full of color and depth. Ardor shone on my face as my lips pressed against a saxophone, and a crimson wash covered it all. The red woman, he’d said. Not made of glass at all, but warm, passionate, alive.

He’d written a chant on the page.

I love you, Maeve Leahy
.
I love you
I love you
I love you
I love you

NOEL’S WASN’T THE
only note I received that morning. Another had been tucked under my door.

Visit Museo delle Anime del Purgatorio

Proprio in tempo!
My mind filled with a new composition, a
Rocky-
esque song of achievement. Sri Putra was not only alive, he’d found my note and, through it, me—not to mention a way around his brother’s prying eyes. But why did he want me to visit a museum of purgatory? I headed down to the lobby; Giovanni was more informative than any guidebook.

“Museo delle Anime del Purgatorio is a small and beautiful museum near Piazza dei Tribunali,” he said, straightening papers behind the front desk. “Sometimes the dead in purgatory leave a mark before they go to heaven. The museum shows this. If you like that, there is also a place called Santa Maria della Concezione. There are …” He thumped his head.

“Heads?”

He frowned. “The bone.”

“Skulls?”

“Sì
. There are skulls and bones all over, even in the walls. You should go and say hello to them. It is a beautiful crypt.”

“A crypt?” I rolled my shoulders. “Who wants to be surrounded by death? I try not to think about it, Giovanni.”

“You are in the wrong city, then.”

He had a point.

“There is heaven, angels,” he said, spraying cleanser on his desk. “Heaven, it makes death great. Yes?”

“Sì
. If you believe in that sort of thing.”

“You do not believe?”

I had to laugh at his scandalized expression. I supposed everyone in Rome, or at least most everyone, was Catholic. “I’m glad you believe, Giovanni.”

“Life is good,” he said. “Death is part of that, so death is good, no?”

“I’d like to think so.”

He waved a paper towel in the air. “Then you should think so.”

I WAS ABOUT
to head out to see if the museum of death-gone-wrong was closed for the holiday when Noel called. I could barely hear him over the clamor coming through the line.

“I’m using Jakes’s iPhone—and no comments about that,” he said as I laughed. “We’re on a train that’s about to leave London for Wareham. Can you believe it? Wareham’s a town near Purbeck.” Wareham as in Garrick Wareham. “And my mother’s last name, she changed it to match mine: Ryan. Faith Ryan.”

My heart raced for him. “You must be so excited!”

“And missing you, remembering you,” he said with a tone that brought to mind the taste of his skin. I wished I could kiss him, run my hands down his back; I told him so. He groaned, said, “Have you made plans yet?”

“I may stick around a while longer. There’s more I’d like to see and …” Museo delle Anime del Purgatorio stared up at me from a scrap of paper, and despite a pang of apprehension, I decided to tell him the truth. “I found another note this morning, slipped under my door this time.”

He paused. “Did Giovanni see who left it at the desk?”

“No one left it. I asked. It must’ve been delivered to me directly.” Hush. “Noel?”

“I’m trying to figure out if I can get off the train. We just started moving. It might be possible—”

“Hang on, listen!” I told him about the note I’d dropped at Putra’s place, the one that jetted beneath his door. Surely, he’d found it—and me, because of it.

“Sit down, Maeve, there’s something you need to know.”

“I am sitting.” My fingers splayed out like a five-pronged anchor over the cool sheets.

“I don’t know why I kept this to myself. Maybe I wanted to prove it first so that you wouldn’t accuse me of overreacting again, or maybe I didn’t want to scare you—but now you need a little fear. I want you to change your room, or better yet go back to Betheny. I can’t protect you when I’m nine hundred miles away.” Protection again. But it was hard to feel outraged when he sounded so urgent. “Take out your notes,” he said. “Lay them out, side by side.”

I gathered them, minus the business card Ermanno had liberated the day we’d met: two notes in my jacket, three in a drawer, today’s on the side table. I put them on my bed.

“Look at the note that invited you to Rome, the one with Putra’s address,” he said. “Compare the handwriting in the first line to the writing in the address.”

Visit with me in the New Year
.
There is much I wish to tell you
.
Via della Scala —, No. 47
Trastevere

I noticed nothing, and told him so.

“Compare that to any of your others then,” he said. “Any that use the word
visit.”

Visit Santa Maria in Cosmedin
Visit Il Sotto Abbasso
Visit Villa Borghese
Visit Museo delle Anime del Purgatorio

“The
V
is different,” I said. Of course Noel would pick up on that.

“It’s not just the
V,”
he said, as the difference in the
N’s
leaped out at me, too. “That’s just the easiest to see. There’s an openness to the first line of that invitation, and the last three lines don’t have that—in fact, they read like the work of someone trying hard to replicate something but not quite able to get away with it.”

“Wait, I don’t—”

“It’s a theory,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure I’m right. My grandfather swears he met the
empu
, so it’s probably true that Putra wrote part——note——” The line broke up as I registered his suspicion.

The invitation had two authors? “Still there?”

“I hear you,” I said. “Keep talking.”

“The business card Ermanno took that first day—Putra wrote on that in front of my grandfather. Studying it would’ve been telling, so I went to Ermanno and tried to get it back. He said it was impossible, that he was an expert at making things disappear permanently. Then he asked about you.”

No wonder Noel had been so annoyingly overprotective.

“I think Ermanno was with Putra in Betheny,” he continued. “Siblings traveling together—it’s not unlikely.”

Maeve, let’s travel someday on a train
.

Yes, maybe it’ll come off the track, and then we can go wherever we want, drive it across the sea and over to Europe—

“I think Ermanno wrote part of that invitation, Maeve, and I think he left all those other notes, too. He knew you had the
keris
, and he’s the only brother we’ve seen.”

“But that’s exactly why it can’t be him!” I said. “He’s seen me in person. Why leave notes? And why would Sri Putra leave a note that asks me to visit him without leaving an address?”

“Who knows? Effing notes have been as irrational as Ermanno. The only thing I’ve learned about that guy is he’s obsessed with your
keris.”

This, I knew.

“The first time I saw him alone, when I went back to get that note, he said the
keris
would harm you and I should give it to him. I told——go——hell——threat——wallet vanish. I need you to——what——listen——Maeve, can you hear me?”

“It’s the phone line. I’m losing you.”

“Promise——stupid——notes——Ermanno—promise——”

“I promise to stay away from Ermanno, Noel. Don’t worry. I’ll forget about the notes.” The connection died. I hoped he’d heard my reassurances.

I studied the notes again; how could I have missed those
V’s?
What else had I overlooked?

I remembered
Old Gypsy Madge’s Fortune Teller and the Witches Key to Lucky Dreams
, gifted to Ned Baker by someone looking for something stronger than love spells. Perhaps someone obsessed with
magia nera
.