The Immortal Greek (10 page)

Alexander left to ring his majordomo for refreshments.

Malina circled her, more and more showing her feline nature. “How’s Karl?”

Alexander out of the picture, Ravenna unsheathed her claws, stepping before Malina and forcing her to walk back a few steps toward the door. “I don’t see how Karl’s wellbeing might be any of your business.”

Malina stopped and raised an eyebrow in an amused expression that enraged Ravenna. “It seems you don’t care an awful lot about Karl anyway.”

Ravenna felt a strong urge to unleash her frustration on the were-panther. “What does that even mean?”

“Do you want me to spell it out for you?” Malina stared down at her, a cold light in her eyes.

“You are nothing but—” Ravenna’s right hand moved of its own volition, but she was prevented from hitting Malina by a voice asking for Alexander. She hadn’t seen the boy entering the atrium.

“I was told to come here by three o’clock.” The young man was elegantly dressed and had a faint northern accent.

“Hi, Antonio. Thanks for coming.” Alexander greeted him.

Ravenna hadn’t noticed him walking back in either and wondered if he had witnessed any of her conversation with Malina.

“Let’s sit comfortably as we wait for the coffee to arrive.” Alexander steered everyone to a smaller hallway that ended with a studio and a powder room.

Ravenna remembered the studio well. She had been combing the house looking for anything that would incriminate Alexander, and yet she had taken special notice of that studio. From the art to the antique furniture, the whole room was filled with Japanese pieces. A collection of delicate-looking watercolors was displayed on the cream walls. Incense was burning as it had been when she had visited earlier. She recognized the scent of orange blossoms and vanilla.

Alexander offered her a leather chair, then did the same for Malina and Antonio.

“As I told you on the phone, my friends are coming. They’re just late.” Antonio seemed nervous. His eyes kept darting to the window behind the desk where Alexander had sat.

Alexander crossed his legs under the desk. “We can wait a few minutes.” He smiled when his majordomo knocked on the open door and entered followed by a maid pushing a cart laden with pastries, a pot of coffee, and several glass pitchers with fruit juices. “We can serve ourselves, Pietro. Thank you.” He dismissed the man with a smile, then proceeded to fix plates for Ravenna and Malina. He let Antonio serve himself.

The boy had become progressively more and more nervous and finally spilled his coffee on the floor when his cell phone rang. He took the call and said almost nothing, but shook his head several times.

“I get that your friends aren’t coming after all.” Alexander put his cup back on its saucer, then lowered both to the tray on the cart.

Antonio nodded.

“Do you know how your friend got the Immortal Death?” Ravenna was tired of the farce. She understood politics better than anyone in that room, but she had enough of coddling the rich brat. Malina shot her a dark look that Ravenna decided to ignore.

“I’m a werewolf, not an immortal. Why do you think I would know anything about that kind of stuff?” Antonio made to stand.

Malina patted the boy’s hand. “We know, but maybe you heard something that could lead us down the right path?”

“No, I haven’t heard anything. But you should ask your own.” Antonio’s cell phone rang again. When he looked at the screen, relief descended on his face. “My grandpa is here to pick me up. We’re celebrating my cousin’s were-mitzvah tonight.”

Alexander thanked Antonio for coming and accompanied him outside.

Malina turned to Ravenna the moment they were alone. “What’s with you? Did you forget protocol all of a sudden?” She reached for the pastries and filled her plate.

Ravenna looked at the plate, then raised her eyes to Malina. “Your appetite is disgusting.” She emphasized the word appetite with all the double-meaning a raised eyebrow and a sneer could convey. “No wonder you were turned into an animal.”

Malina’s eyes locked with Ravenna’s as she lowered her plate on her lap. “At least I don’t conceal my nature. I am what I am, but I’ve never lied or betrayed my friends.”

Steps echoed from the hallway. Ravenna shook her head, her hands firmly on the chair’s armrests. “I can’t believe your brass.” She breathed in and out and plastered a smile on her face.

A moment later, the door opened and Alexander walked in. He paused in the middle of the room to face both of them. “Are you ladies free the rest of this lovely afternoon?”

“I am.” Malina uncrossed her long legs and leaned forward to deposit her plate—still full—on the desk before her. “What do you have in mind?”

“The boy told us to look to our own. His grandfather sent us a message through him. Quintilius is a man of few words, but when he does speak, it’s in his audience’s best interest to listen carefully.” Alexander sat at the edge of the desk, his hands fist down on the table.

“Thought so too.” Ravenna inwardly sighed, thinking the day was never going to end.

“We’ll start with educating ourselves first. I want to visit with the one immortal in Rome who can tell us something more about the Immortal Death.” Alexander pushed himself forward, clasped his hands before him, then reached for the door. “We’ll go see the Apothecary.”

“Alberto Giudici?” Ravenna smiled at the idea of getting to see the man who had vouched for her change. She was always too busy with work to take time to drive to the Ghetto portion of Trastevere, where Alberto had his herbal medicine shop. Her bleak humor lightened by Alexander’s proposal, she stood to follow him outside.

“We can all drive together. No need to take two cars, so we can brainstorm on our way to Trastevere.” Alexander had stopped at the door, his eyes on Malina.

The were-panther looked at Ravenna, who didn’t deign her with a reaction. Malina shrugged and waved her hand in the air. “Yeah sure.”

“That’s settled then. Wait for me at the front. I’ll take a bigger car.” He exited the studio and called his majordomo to escort them outside.

Pietro arrived and led them to the front door. Ravenna hurried down the stairs, then stopped at the iron wrought gate and busied herself with studying its intricate work.

“We should talk.” Malina’s voice came from behind her.

“I disagree.” Ravenna thought she felt the warmth of the shifter’s hand on her right shoulder, but it lasted only a moment and was gone the next.

Malina stepped in front of her. “We’re working together and it would benefit the investigation if we could set aside our past.”

Ravenna wanted to scream at Malina to get lost. Instead, she stood before her and leaned until their foreheads almost touched, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “I am what I am because of that past.”

Malina didn’t flinch. If anything, she closed the gap and raised her hands to cage Ravenna’s head. “I told you one hundred times already. You got it all wrong. Things didn’t go the way you and the rest of Florence assumed.”

Alexander exited his driveway and drove his Volvo to the front of the house. As he rounded the corner, he found the two women intimately embraced, and wondered about Ravenna’s words about the fiancé’s betrayal. The idea he had read the enforcer completely wrong and misunderstood her saddened him. If Ravenna didn’t like men, he had no hope to seduce her. The ache he felt at seeing Ravenna with someone else cut him deeper than an unfulfilled fantasy should have.

He decided Margherita’s death was the reason for his jumbled emotions, but rejoiced when Ravenna walked to the front passenger door and entered the car to sit beside him.

She lowered the safety belt over her chest and her fingers brushed his thigh when she locked it in place. “I’ll let Alberto know we’ll be at his shop—”

“Do you know the Apothecary well?” Ravenna’s skirt had ridden slightly above her knees and he was delighted by the sight that diverted his mind away from thoughts of death. His fantasies came back with a vengeance. He imagined she wore nothing underneath, because he had told her so. He would ask her to raise her skirt higher and she would obey, her soft mouth opened in a silent moan, her chest rising and falling as she panted. He wouldn’t touch her. No, he would ask her to lock eyes with him as she slowly caressed her skin where he told her to.

Then Malina’s presence and the doubt that Ravenna might never be interested in him spoiled his mood and he stopped daydreaming about her and resumed listening to what she was saying.

“He is all the immortal family I’ve got left. Alberto vouched for me.” She adjusted her body on the leather seat, closed her knees, lowered her skirt, gave him a brief look, then tilted her chin up at the road. “How long do you think it will take to reach Trastevere from here?”

He brought his right hand before him, checked the time on his watch, while mentally calculating the fastest route. “We should be able to avoid rush hour and arrive there in thirty, thirty-five minutes tops.”

Malina nodded from the backseat. “Just skirt around Merulana Road and Santa Maria Maggiore because they started working on the new excavation site yesterday.”

“Oh, yes, they’ve found one of the walls of the poet Lucretius’s house. I read it in the
Gazzetta Romana
a few days ago.” Ravenna tapped one finger on the window.

“Actually, what they’ve unearthed is Laurentius’s villa. He was a merchant who became rich by selling wine produced in his vineyards in the south. He had a
taberna
, a small store—imagine a stall slightly bigger than a cubicle at the Trajan Market. My friend Marcus used to buy his wine there and I partook of it on several occasions. It was an exceptional red. Thanks to that wine, Laurentius was able to buy the house from Lucretius.” He drove the car into the afternoon traffic and hoped the goddess of green lights would guide them. Otherwise, they would hit rush hour and it could take hours to navigate what was supposed to be a thirty-minute drive.

“Sometimes, it’s hard to believe you were here, in Rome, when this city was at the head of an empire.” Malina lowered her window.

“Maybe it’s because those were the times when I was human, but sometimes, I miss them. It was exciting to be alive then. The greatness of Rome was something you could breathe in. The sense of being the world’s masters was intoxicating.” From his rearview mirror, he saw the were-panther slant her body on the seat so that she could accommodate her long legs, then leaned her head outside the window. Suddenly, he felt Ravenna’s eyes on him, but when he directed his gaze to his right, she was busy drawing circles on the glass. He couldn’t help but smile. Maybe there was hope after all.

“Do you remember a lot from before you were an immortal?” Ravenna stilled her finger.

He looked at her, but she didn’t move. “Yes, I do.” He chuckled. “Despite having lived for so long, I just recently realized that when it comes to minor details, my memory is excellent.” He paused to focus his attention on the traffic. “I have so many good memories from that period.”

Ravenna turned. “Can you remember your youth?”

He nodded, images of the crystalline waters of the Aegean Sea, his
thalassa
, flooding his mind. “Everything was the most azure of blues, the whitest of whites, and the greenest of greens.”

“Why did you leave Greece?” Ravenna had finally relaxed on the seat.

“Because I wanted to travel, to see the world, then I stepped foot in Rome and I thought nothing would ever compare to its grandeur and stayed.” He looked at Ravenna, and she immediately lowered her eyes.

“Did you ever regret it?”

“I have never regretted any of the decisions I’ve made in my life.”

“It must be nice.” She rested her hands on her lap, palms down, one on top of the other.

An awkward silence followed. Alexander wanted to probe her, but not in front of Malina. He turned on the radio and let the music from a local station fill the void. He kept one eye on the road and the other on Ravenna; the few times he checked the rearview mirror, he caught Malina looking at Ravenna as well. The sadness emanating from the shifter was difficult to ignore and made him wonder once again about the relation between the two women. Once they finally arrived at their destination, he inwardly sighed with relief. He couldn’t stand the silence and the heavyhearted atmosphere one minute longer.

He slowed the car to a stop in the middle of the road before Alberto Giudici’s apothecary shop. “You ladies go on while I look for a parking spot.” The cars behind them were already honking for him to move.

Ravenna nodded, then opened her door. Malina followed immediately. Amidst the angry honking, he heard appreciative whistling directed to the two beauties. He immediately vacated the spot and watched with the corner of his eye as they entered the shop, then rounded the building and was rewarded by a shot of luck. A car parked between two scooters was driving away, leaving enough space for him to fit in. One of the aspects of modern day Rome he liked the least was the traffic and the correlated scarcity of parking spaces. After locking the Volvo, he strode to the shop.

Upon opening the glass door, the silver bell dangling from the side of the doorjamb chimed, and the smell of medicinal herbs hit his nose. The bouquet never failed to take him back to the medieval times. The sweetness of the dried flower blossoms reminded him of his days as a farmer in Apulia, while the spiciness of the ground roots was linked to the memory of a monastery situated near the small city of Gravina where he had spent a few months. He had sought enlightenment and peace of mind and discovered the nearby village was rich in local beauties. He had stayed long enough to further his botanical education and build a reputation among the villagers who eventually had him kicked out of the monastery. The experience had been fruitful, because he could still name every plant hanging from the wooden rafters.

“Alexander Drako, welcome back to my humble shop.” The Apothecary, one of the few immortals who looked old, having being changed when he was in his seventies, walked to the front of the store to welcome him in. He had a white mane haloing his severe face, a long beard, and light-brown eyes speckled with that kind of cerulean blue typical of people past a certain age. Being an immortal allowed him to stand upright and move like a much younger person. He was slightly shorter than Alexander, but wiry, giving the impression he regularly exercised.

Alexander let the door close behind him and took Alberto Giudici’s proffered hand in his. “It is a great pleasure to see you again.”

Alberto covered their united hands with his left one and smiled at him. “It has been too long. Please, come to the back of the store. I’m brewing some tea for the girls.”

Alexander’s last visit to the apothecary went back to a century ago at least, and the store had looked different. He let the man walk ahead and show him the way. “I liked what you did with the place.” He could see the original woodwork here and there, and the masonry showed intact, but the merchandise was displayed in plain wicker baskets sitting on black metal shelves. Two additional rooms opened to the side of the long, rectangular chamber that once had been a church. Alberto headed to the right where he raised a curtain beyond which lay a small kitchen.

“Found a parking spot already?” Ravenna was at the cast iron stove fueled by crackling logs. The room was dimly lit, but the fire from the stove made it look cozy and inviting. She was checking on the big, light blue teapot.

“Nothing’s impossible for me.” Alexander headed toward the narrow wooden table by the wall and sat before Malina.

“Well, parking in less than five minutes in Trastevere is without a doubt just short of miraculous. I wonder what else you can do.” Malina crossed her legs and regarded him with a lazy smile.

He bowed with a flourish of his right hand. “I am truly versatile and I exist to please. Just ask lady—”

Ravenna bumped into him on her way to the table. He thought he heard Alberto chuckle, but he had his back to the man, and his full attention was on the enforcer whose eyes were staring daggers at him. He smiled at her, which infuriated her even more given how her chest heaved and she clenched her hands into fists by her sides. He also noticed how Malina was keeping close tabs on Ravenna’s reaction as well.

Meanwhile, the teapot announced the water was ready with a low whistle that increased in volume until Alberto removed it from the stove.

“Ravenna told me you’re investigating two Immortal Death cases.” Alberto came into Alexander’s line of sight, holding a tray with cups and saucers, a matching sugar bowl with miniscule tongs, and silver spoons. He shook his head. “Terrible, terrible way to die.” He set the tray on the table, then doled out the china before each of them. With unwavering slowness, he made a second trip to retrieve the steaming teapot. Two satin strings dangled from the lid. “Life should be cherished, not regretted.”

Alexander played with his cup. “Do you happen to know anything regarding the raw ingredients?”

“What do you want to know exactly?” Alberto removed the lid from the teapot and carefully raised the two strings revealing a small satin bag containing the herbs and flowers he had used for the tea infusion.

Alexander smelled chamomile, verbena, and a hint of licorice. “Is there any request for curare, valerian or belladonna?”

Alberto fixed the beverage for the girls, then asked Alexander for his cup. “No, not really. Valerian and belladonna are commonly used in homeopathy and natural medicine and easy to find. Regarding the curare, I’ve never had a request for it and for good reasons, given that it’s one of the most expensive ingredients an apothecary can carry and it’s also illegal in several countries.”

Malina uncrossed her legs and sat sideways. “That’s the reason why the Immortal Death is so pricey?”

Alberto shook his head. “What makes the Immortal Death potion truly unaffordable is the elaborate process that goes into creating it. Both flowers and stems from the valerian and belladonna are used. They must be dried soon after the plants are extracted from the soil, which isn’t an easy task given that harvesting the two plants at the same time when they are needed only happens once every several years.” He took a breath from the long winded explanation, paused a moment, grabbed a sugar cube with the tongs, and dumped it into his cup. “Then you have the curare to deal with. That plant can be found only in South America. It was used by indigenous people as paralyzing poison. They shot their enemies or prey with darts dipped in curare. The unfortunate recipient of that shot usually died of asphyxiation. On top of that, to make the Immortal Death, the curare must be undiluted and cooked in a special aluminum pot that will release aluminum particles into the potion. The temperature must be kept constant for a very long time, and most aluminum pots melt after a day.” He took a sip from his cup.

“It sounds all very complicated.” Ravenna looked at her tea. She hadn’t touched it.

“And I haven’t told you all the details that come in play much later in the production of the potion.” Alberto dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “May I offer you something to eat? I am afraid I haven’t a lot in my pantry. I usually don’t eat dinner. A piece of sweet bread maybe?”

They all politely refused, and Alberto resumed his tale. “I was saying that the pot must be made with a special metal alloy. Very few people are left with that kind of knowledge and they aren’t easy to find. Then the three ingredients must be treated again as a whole. Another special pot, this one made of glass and iron, is used. Several days later, a fresh brew of Immortal Death is ready to be put to rest for at least fifteen years, after which the cooking starts again in the aluminum pot.”

Alexander whistled low.

Malina let her empty cup clink into the saucer. “How long does it take from beginning to end to have a batch of the Immortal Death?”

“At least thirty years. I’ve read somewhere that the most potent is at least a hundred years old.” He refilled Malina’s cup. “But anything older than thirty years will keep an immortal human long enough to be able to die. The older the potion is, the longer its effect lasts.”

Alexander shivered. Marcus must have drunk a new brew, because he had been able to regain his immortality in a few days. His friend was alive because the vampire Claudius had used a cheaper product.

Ravenna pushed her cup away and hugged herself. “This is a nightmare. To think there is someone out there spending time and resources to kill us—”

“You know it isn’t exactly like that, my pet.” Alberto raised one hand to caress Ravenna’s face.

Her eyes filled with tears she didn’t cry. She leaned briefly into Alberto’s caress, but soon straightened her head.

Neither Malina nor Alexander made a comment, but let the moment pass. Finally, Ravenna thanked Alberto for his hospitality. Alexander rose from his seat, exchanged a few sentences with the Apothecary, then asked him if he could give them the names of the people who he thought had the kind of knowhow required to make the potion. Alberto told him he would inquire and get back to him with a list.