Page 41 of The Devouring Time

The war had crushed any lingering belief I’d had in a merciful God, but what if the army chaplains had been casting spells and performing apparent miracles before my eyes? Surely it would have made a difference.

Adrian clears his throat. “That’s very insightful,” he says tactfully, “but is there anything you can tell us about the painting? Or Bianca Giuliani. Was she a, er, witch?”

“Sorceress is the more proper term, and not that I’m aware.” Lovejoy sits down, drains her champagne glass, and pours some more. “Though doesn’t mean she wasn’t. I can’t read her letters either, since I don’t know Italian.”

Many collectors bought books merely to have them on their shelves. Still… “You never had them translated?”

She shrugs, her silk robe slipping off one shoulder and revealing more of her pajamas. “I’ll get around to it some day. I can tell you some things about the painting, though.”

We both lean forward eagerly. “Such as?” Adrian asks.

“Bianca Giuliani was born in Florence, tutored in painting by her father, who was a minor artist himself. She married and had a child with a fellow painter, but about three years into the marriage she had what we would call a nervous breakdown. She left her husband and the child behind and moved to Rome. Unusual, but for whatever reason the husband seemed to be glad to let her do as she wished. Two years later, she was back, begging him to let her resume the life she’d abandoned, but he claimed she was a madwoman and refused. In the end, she returned to her father’s house in shame and disgrace. As far as I know, she never saw her child again.” Lovejoy looks sad for a moment, then drinks some more champagne. “The Wheel of Aion is the only thing she’s known to have painted after her sojourn in Rome, though she sketched many versions of it before and after.”

Unease creeps over my nerves. A woman leaving her old life behind to pursue some unknown goal in another city, then trying to return to it to find everything changed…

It’s not the same—I’m just trying to plot her story onto my own life. Having been accused of madness myself, it’s only natural to try and make a connection. “So what’s special about the painting?”

“It’s a wonderful work of art,” Lovejoy says. “I’d pay good money to see it with my own eyes. Otherwise, nothing particular, aside from its unusual subject matter. Aion in his zodiac wheel, always with the sign of Libra at the top of the wheel and the constellation of Virgo in the sky above.”

“Why is that important?” I ask when she pauses.

“Do you know how the zodiac first began?”

I’m not one for astrology, but I know the basics. “The sun appears to move through twelve constellations over the course of the year, yes? So whatever constellation it’s in when you’re born, that’s your sign.”

“In essence, yes. Or it was.”

Adrian frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Over millennia, the stars and earth move. Originally, during the period of the year demarcated as the sign of Libra, the sun did indeed seem to cross that constellation. In fact, it still did so when Bianca Giuliani lived. But at this point in history, the cosmic bodies have progressed to the point it’s in Virgo.”

“I don’t understand,” I say after a long moment.

She shrugs. “Neither do I. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe she meant to indicate the painting was set in a time long after she died.”

Time. Everything seemed to come back to it.

Adrian leans forward slightly. “When Sterling was here before, how did he act? Did he want anything other than the collection of letters?”

“No, he seemed very focused on it alone.” She blows out a long stream of smoke that lazily loops around her neck like a snake. “As for how he acted: supercilious. Demanding. Spoke to me as if I was a dog expected to perform a trick.”

My face grows hot from embarrassment. “I’m so sorry.”

“You seem it.” She watches me curiously. “You claimed there was some issue with the ownership—that you’d just discovered the book was stolen goods, and needed to return it to its true owner immediately. In exchange for what I’d paid for it, of course.”

“It wasn’t stolen!” I protest immediately, lest Adrian take it as proof of wrongdoing at Forgotten Folios. “It had been in the same family for a century.”

“I didn’t believe your claim at the time. And even if I did, I’d want better proof and a court order.” The ember on the end of her cigarette flares red as she takes another draw. “I ordered you off my doorstep, and a few days later some rather unsavory characters came to visit.”

My heart sinks even as my pulse speeds. I’ve tried to believe that the death of the previous owner of the Key of Mithras was a coincidence. But her words strip away that assurance.

Am I a cold-blooded murderer? After everything I did, everything I saw, in the war, after my vow never to kill a fellow human again…

A vow I might have broken back at Cleo’s Clam House, even though the man had turned into a monster. That I could forgive myself for—there had been no choice, and it wasn’t just my life on the line. But this…?

Something is deeply, terribly wrong with me. Even if I’d been under the influence of whatever drug Hart and Myers injected me with, the fact remained some part of me must be capable of sending hoodlums to terrorize a woman and kill a man.

“What happened to them?” Adrian asks.