Page 10 of A Dangerous Bargain

I think of the day I shed being the third Niccolo Pitti like it was a too-small coat. Niccolo had read the poet Dante’s Inferno to me and my sisters so much, the book’s parchment had grown puppy-ear soft in the corners where we turned the pages. The ancient poet Virgil was Dante’s companion through the underworld. I liked the idea of being someone who led people through the darkness. I like thinking I can still be that person.

I worried Niccolo would see the name I told Master Verrocchio to write in his ledger as a rejection of him, but he hadn’t. He hugged me so hard, my bones cracked, and said, “I love it. You deserve to have something all yours.”

What would he think of this girl angel?

Sometimes I miss my brother so much, the pain feels like a gaping hole inside me. Even though I’m angry he left, ashamed I’m the reason why, bigger than the bad feelings is the ache of his absence. Each time I turn to him and he’s not there is a savage kick, but the day turning to him isn’t my first instinct anymore? It’ll be a knife through my heart.

My voice grows rough. “I don’t care if it’s allowed or not! You can be whoever you want to be.” Not wanting the angel to notice I’m shaken, I close my eyes and let out a long, measured breath. “I’ll support you, even if you insist on being covered in lice.”

The angel—Lupa—throws back her head and laughs. The sound comes from deep in her belly and fills the entire room, wild and impolite and so utterly right, that I feel my mouth lift.

There’s a knock. Verrocchio’s housekeeper stands at the door. “Signore, I have drawn water for a bath.”

Lupa freezes. “What is a bath?”

My smile grows wider. “It’s a very special circumstance. I think you’ll like it.”

Lupa settles into the hot water with a contented sigh, even uses the soap and washrag with my instructions. I take on her snarled, lice-ridden hair myself, letting the soap sink into the brassy strands before attacking them with a comb.

In the fire-warmed kitchens, surrounded by the scent of sage and lemon, I can almost pretend she’s one of my sisters and not a divine being strong enough to tear out my throat with her bare hands.

“And you must scrub a body every week?” Lupa asks.

“Just your own body,” I clarify, lest she get the wrong idea. “You must always ask someone before you touch them. That’s an important rule to remember.”

Lupa hmms and sinks lower into the bubbles. I brush her hair and pause. There’s a ropey spiderweb of scars behind her ear, the tissue still pink.

A cold, uneasy feeling swirls through my chest. “What happened here?”

Lupa touches the scar. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t remember? Or you don’t know?” I fight to keep my voice even.

The quiet stretches longer and longer. Lupa keeps tracing the scar, one jagged fingernail digging in too deep. A bead of dark gold blood wells up.

“I think I was created this way.” She twists to meet my gaze, unease on her face. “Is it wrong?”

Wrong? ’Tis impossible. I have never heard of an angel needing to recover from anything. Every time the old angel injured himself—often, in a workshop filled with knives and fire and jagged bits of marble—his wounds closed up with a gleam of gold, leaving behind nothing. This wound is obviously still healing.

I trace the scar, my touch featherlight. Why does she have this?

She’s not yours to look after. This isn’t your problem.

There must be a perfectly acceptable reason for it. Perhaps Lupa has not fully come into her powers yet. Didn’t the priest say she was young? It must take time for angelic powers to settle. It would explain her feral nature, how she seems at once both so much wilder and so much more human than the old angel.

I begin to braid her hair. “There’s nothing wrong, but if it bothers you, you tell me. All right?”

Lupa dips her head forward, pressing into my touch like a purring cat. “All right.”

The pink, raw scar disappears beneath the braid. As her hair flies through my fingers, I can’t help but wonder:

Why is Lupa so different?

And how soon will it be before I can make my next bargain with her?

CHAPTER SIX

Where’s your shadow today?” Leonardo lifts on his toes and searches the street. “I thought you weren’t allowed to go anywhere without her.”