Page 83 of A Dangerous Bargain

“Why are you doing this?” Leonardo’s voice is small and helpless.

Niccolo stalks to Lupa’s side. “She’s become too human.” He tilts her chin with the knife. She hisses, and he flinches. He digs the knife in deeper, opening up a weeping gold line on her skin. “We knew a woman was not a worthy vessel.”

Damp rot fills my mouth.

I’ve failed Lupa.

I’ve failed her just like I failed Niccolo. She told me to live, and now I’ll be the one watching her die.

Lupa’s eyes meet mine, fierce and full of resolution. Her mouth lifts. “Goodbye, Virgil. I’ll see you on the other side.”

Niccolo’s knife arcs up over Lupa, a gleaming, glittering fang.

“Lupa!”

It slashes downward and rips through my soul.

Leonardo grabs my face at the last moment, tucking it into the crook of his elbow, sparing me from the horrible sight of the mortal blow. There’s a terrible, wretched scream, and it takes me a moment to realize the sound is tearing from me.

Then an awful stillness.

I throw off Leonardo, rushing to the body slumped over and silent in the chair. I cradle her face, sweep away her tangled hair. Her eyes are shut, eyelashes fanned across her cheekbones. There’s no blood, which surprises me. I feel lower, around her neck, her chest, and then her stomach, searching for the handle of the knife.

Leonardo steps beside me, his arm extended, fingers lighting on the knife’s handle.

It’s sticking out from the portrait just above her head.

The ruined canvas peels from its frame, one bold, brown eye staring back at me.

The girl in my arms wakes up and starts to scream.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

The girl kicks away from me, her screams quickly dissolving into sobs. Niccolo unlocks her chains. I half expect her to run, but instead she sags in the chair like she can’t hold herself up. Her unsteady hand goes to the space behind her ear. Iron breaks on my tongue when she discovers the scar tissue there, when I see her eyes grow round with shock.

“Who are you?”

It’s Lupa’s voice, but… not. There’s a wrongness, like velvet brushed in the opposite direction.

“We’re friends,” Leonardo says softly. “We’re here to help you.”

She smiles, a dreamy, half-asleep thing. Her beige skin is going gray—a sickly pallor spreading faster than any wasting illness. A trickle of blood weeps from her nose to her mouth, leaving behind a smear of red. I stare, cold sweeping through me. Just moments ago, it was gold. Just moments ago, she was Lupa, and now she’s not.

“She’s sick!” I cry. “Help her!”

“We have no more use for her,” Niccolo says.

What do you mean? The question dies in my throat.

Because I understand now, with awful, heart-stopping clarity.

Demons don’t visit Florence.

They possess it.

They inhabit the bodies of Florentine citizens while they’re on earth.

Lupa’s eyes flutter shut. Her head lolls to the side in the circle of my arms. Her body goes limp. I feel frantically for the pulse in her neck, but there’s nothing. Only a horrible stillness that fills me with horror. Leonardo sinks to his knees, a soft, helpless whimper escaping the hand over his mouth.