Beneath her cold smile
lurked something with a sinister flair. When the sorceress had visited last
week, she’d exuded it like a palpable odor. She’d brought a new vial of
medicine, stressing an immediate dose to ensure Bruno’s healing was complete, that no traces of the
beast lingered.
The hard glitter in the
sorceress’s eyes radiated hatred at Melina. She could live with that. And back at you, witch bitch.
Something else emerged
behind Elda’s gaze, as well,
some unspoken wish, and it had nothing to do with his recovery. Maybe the
opposite, a resistance to his complete healing? Melina sensed that if she
stared into her eyes long enough, the meaning would come clear.
It had haunted her
since Elda’s last grand exit,
her long parting look at Bruno.
The sorceress’s face had softened in a moment of vulnerability before she’d
vanished.
Absently, Melina traced
the book spines with her fingers. This library held an incredible array of
unusual literature from the 1400s to present day. The texts she most treasured
were those written by him. Some sections read like historical essays, accounts
of events that touched his life. Some were the journal of a soul tortured by
his choices, and by the traitorous acts of others. Pages and pages of demented
rantings, beast and man struggling for control.
Because he’d written in
Italian and Latin, it took her some time to translate. It helped fill the
endless stretches of time and acquaint her with his native language. While she
slept beside him, he murmured soothing endearments. No sooner did she leave the
bed than his murmurs took on a disturbed tone, and he’d thrash as if under
attack.
Strolling, she reached
the end of the shelves and realized she still had no idea what they held. Her
touch disturbed the last book enough for it to fall. She caught it, then
stared. Behind its resting place, a door had been cut into the panel.
Moving a few other
books revealed a double panel. A safe?
She glanced toward
Bruno again. Still resting. Why would he hide something here in his quarters,
where he had so few visitors?
A tug on the doors
accomplished nothing. Probably hadn’t been opened in too long. Come on, open up. She concentrated on
it. She pulled again, and the bookcase drifted out of the wall. Curiosity drew
her around it.
What
the…? Another entire wall of shelves, like a mirror
image. She took out a leather-bound volume and opened it. Handwritten but not
in Bruno’s script. Headings marked each passage, some less than a page, others much
longer. Illustrations accompanied each, like ingredients for a recipe. Or
instructions.
If
only I understood the language. It would take her
forever to translate. She carried the book to the table and set it beside her
laptop, then launched the Italian-English translation site she’d bookmarked.
Hoping the loopy script of the title wasn’t some outdated verbiage, she entered
each word, hit Enter, and frowned.
“That can’t be right.”
A repeat of the
procedure yielded the same result. Weird. Why would Bruno hide such a text?
Another round of books proved to be similar. Nearly every type of magic, dark
arts, or alchemy. From what she could tell, some were logs of experiments.
Her breath caught.
Maybe someone had transcribed Bruno’s transformation into a chimera? She
scrambled behind the shelves again but heaved a sigh. No way could she sift
through all the volumes.
Magic. It always
fascinated her. As Arthur C. Clarke had said, magic was just science we don’t
understand yet. An abstract concept, until her first few glimpses of it. The
strange couples at the Moon Masquerade ball. Elda appearing and vanishing like
a Venetian hat trick. Bruno’s chimera appearance, and the spell transforming
him back again. It all amounted to conclusive proof. A magical world existed
beyond the awareness of most people.
But any alterations to
a person’s anatomy had to have a scientific basis. Didn’t it?
