Page 35 of A Dangerous Bargain

“Shall we?” He nods south, away from the cathedral and its Easter celebrations.

“Let’s go.”

Today is the day we break into the Palazzo della Signoria and go through Piero de’ Medici’s records. Waiting until Easter was Leonardo’s idea. It’s a feast day, so the palazzo should be less crowded, less guarded. And now that Lorenzo de’ Medici is done sitting for his portrait, no one will suspect the artists of wrongdoing if we mess something up.

We melt away from the last of the crowd. Lupa waits for us beneath a street tabernacle, dressed in the trousers and shirt I loaned her. She grins and catches her fist in her hand at the sight of us. “Yes, it is time for crimes!”

I shush her. “Crimes are bad, remember?”

Her mouth pulls sideways. “If they are so bad, why does doing them feel so good?”

We take a roundabout way to the Palazzo della Signoria. There’s an eerie, abandoned feel to the city, heightened by the distant roar of the crowd at the cathedral. In the absence of people, the shuttered windows overhead feel like judgmental eyes, all of them watching us with reproach. The feeling of being watched grows stronger when the Palazzo della Signoria’s austere clock tower rises above the red rooftops.

I’m not doing anything wrong, I remind myself angrily. The palazzo is a government building. This is a republic. I’m merely trying to obtain information about a missing person. If answers about my brother lie within those stone walls, I deserve to know what they are. My entire family does.

“Here.” I stop beside a wooden door. Flies buzz over barrels of food scraps. We’re entering through the kitchens. Since today is a holiday, all the servants will have the day off.

Leonardo tugs the knob. “It’s locked.”

I straighten my shoulders and nod, my heart beating faster. “Lupa?”

She replaces Leonardo.

At first, nothing happens. But then an eldritch breeze lifts her hair. Gold glimmers in her eyes, the flash of a predator’s stare in the dark. I can’t feel the breeze on my face, but I can feel it inside—a whisper of wrongness just under my skin, the feeling of padding too close to a graveyard at midnight.

Something inside the lock clinks.

The wrong feeling lessens at once. I shake my head, ridding myself of its last dregs. “Let’s go.”

The kitchen is warm and dark, the fire banked to embers in the wide hearth. Bread dough proofs on a flour-dusted table and fills the air with a sweet, funky smell that’s not entirely unpleasant. Lupa marches to the door leading deeper into the palazzo as Leonardo gently shuts the outside one behind us. He snags my sleeve when I go to follow her.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he says, too low for the angel to hear us.

“Yes?” I don’t understand why he’s asking this.

He tips his head. The wind has had its way with his hair, and I can’t read his expression. “You won’t be able to unlearn what you discover.”

I grimace, not wanting to talk about this now. “What do you mean?”

He loosens a breath, like he doesn’t want to say it. “The Medici aren’t good people, Virgil. If your brother is or was working with them in secret…”

Then your brother might not be a good person either.

The implication is a striking viper; I recoil from the danger instinctively. “You don’t know the first thing about him!”

But I can’t forget Niccolo’s warning in the Inferno. The one I never told Leonardo about. My brother told me not to follow him, and here I am, doing exactly that. I assumed he was shooing me away from danger, but what if he had another reason? Like mold behind a gilded wall, once you peel back the wood, there’s no ignoring the rot beneath.

Leonardo lifts his hands placatingly. “I can see I’ve overstepped. I’m sorry.”

“You have.” He’s only looking out for me, but I never asked him to and I don’t want it. I hitch my shoulders higher and cross the room, not waiting for him. There’s a soft, frustrated sigh, and then Leonardo’s footsteps are shadowing my own.

Outside the kitchen door is a dark, unadorned corridor. A servants’ passage. When the door closes behind us, we’re shut off in complete darkness. There’s a faint noise, and I blink as a glow erupts on Lupa’s hand.

“You can conjure fire from nothing?” Leonardo says, aghast.

She turns, frowning. “Yes?” A dying coal is pinched in her long fingernails. “Can’t everyone with an ember?”

She touches the coal to a lantern’s wick, and it sputters to life. The scent of burnt hair wars with the dampness, but she doesn’t act like it singed her. “Lead us, Virgil.”