Page 31 of A Dangerous Bargain

I want to ask him to come in with me, but I can’t quite bring myself to say it yet. I need to warm up to the question, like trying to pet a nervous dog.

Leonardo takes another bite and chews slowly. He still hasn’t wiped off the charcoal near his mouth, and the smudge bothers me more than it should. After a century, he swallows and says, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

My stomach swoops at his stern tone. “If you’re worried about Verrocchio noticing Lupa’s gone—”

His eyes snap to mine. “I’m not worried about Verrocchio. I’m worried about you. I don’t trust Lupa.”

I suck in a breath. “Are you jesting?”

He shakes his head, dark eyes never leaving mine for an instant. There’s a ring of amber at the edges I never noticed before. ’Tis strange how you can see someone every single day for your entire life and still discover new things about them.

For example, the fact that Leonardo likes everyone, but not Lupa.

“She’d never hurt us!”

He runs a hand over a white scar on his arm. The wound he gave himself to save Gorgio from the ravenous, old angel. “You’re the one who named her she-wolf. Does a wolf mean to kill, or does she kill because she’s hungry? She’ll hurt us if she has to.”

I square my jaw and take a too-big bite of food and wash it down with a too-big wine gulp. He’s wrong! How could he not see that Lupa is nothing like the old angel? She would never attack an apprentice. She’s too strangely human. She cares about me.

“She uses her teeth, Virgil,” Leonardo says. “If you watched her, you’d see.”

I look away when Lupa makes bargains with the other artists, but it’s only to give them privacy. Still, it’s impossible to ignore how when people approach her with their knives, she shakes her head and leads them into the corner where the light doesn’t quite reach. Cloaked in shadows, she splits their skin with her mouth instead, drinking tenderly. Sometimes a trickle of dark burgundy dries on her chin. Once, I reached across the table to wipe it away with my thumb before I remembered what the stain was.

“She won’t hurt us,” I insist, more quietly this time. “Not unless you strike a bargain with her.”

The noise of the city settles between us. The rush of the river, the bustling bridge. Leonardo takes another thoughtful bite and wipes his mouth again, somehow still managing to miss the charcoal smudge. “You’re not afraid of angels.”

“No.” I bite the inside of my cheek as I say it, because that’s not the whole truth. Lupa doesn’t drink my blood because she won’t bargain with me. She can’t hurt me because I’m going to die. There’s nothing left of me for her to take.

Leonardo leans closer. “Most people are.”

Our faces are close—too close for me to ignore it anymore. I wipe the charcoal smudge from his mouth. He flinches and I freeze, thumb lingering at the corner of his lips. Sudden understanding rushes through me. “The angels frighten you.”

He laughs softly, but I can see the gooseflesh rising beneath his freckles. “Is it that obvious?”

“No.” But it makes sense. He’s refused to make a bargain with one; he never lets himself be alone with Lupa. Come to think of it, he tries to keep me from being alone with her too. How many bargains of mine did he watch me make with his heart in his throat, wanting to save me from myself?

My hand falls from his face. I should’ve noticed he was afraid sooner, but I couldn’t imagine him afraid of anything.

“Verrocchio’s old angel… he wasn’t the first angel I knew.” Leonardo braces his elbows on the step behind us and leans back. His long body fully takes up a third of the staircase now. People step over and around us, and we should probably move, but I don’t say a thing. I’m drinking in his every word.

“I’m a bastard, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.” His words are teasing, self-deprecating, but his smile doesn’t touch his eyes. “When my father finally married, I loved my stepmother like she was my own mother. She was the one who taught me to draw, and then paint. She was the daughter of a painter, and she wasn’t afraid to make bargains with the workshop’s angel. I used to draw marks on myself with charcoal to look more like her. When she told me she was pregnant and I’d have a little sibling with red-gold hair like mine, I wept with excitement.”

My lungs clench. His use of the past tense isn’t lost on me. “What happened?”

His eyes flutter shut. His face lifts toward the sun, his freckles like flecks of cinnabar. If I painted them, it’s the color I’d use, along with a hint of sienna earth. “There were complications. When they tried to stop the bleeding, they couldn’t. She died, and my sibling died with her.”

He’s got that curl out again, twisting it tenderly between his thumb and index finger. In the light, it’s shot through with chestnut. I picture him tucking it into his pocket each morning before he sits across from me at breakfast. Imagining him reaching for it and not finding it makes me tense. It’s too easy to lose. He needs to be more careful with it.

“She should’ve lived, but she gave way too much of her life to the angel,” I guess.

He shrugs, not saying anything.

I suck in a rattling breath, knowing I’m right.

And I’ve done the same thing to myself.

He can’t find out what you’ve done.