And Ben felt… exhausted.
He picked up the briefcase full of gold, handed it to Tenzin, and walked toward the stairs.
“Where are you going?” she called.
“Home.”
The problem was, Ben wasn’t quite sure where home was at the moment.
So he went to Tuscany.
Chapter Nine
THE HOUSE IN TUSCANY WAS out in the country, surrounded by olive groves and grapevines. The vines in midsummer were laden with thick-skinned purple fruit and lush green leaves. He walked through the vineyard during the day and ate the sweet, seedy grapes. He brought a blanket into the olive grove and lay in the afternoon shade, reading a book or napping. He ate sandwiches made from the bread and cheese he bought when he rode his old bike into town. He opened cans of salty sardines stored in the pantry and picked tomatoes from the garden the caretaker tended.
He drank a lot of wine.
When the sun set, Ben locked himself in his room and slept. He slept long and hard, and he tried not to think about blood or gold or pretty girls with deadly fangs. He stayed in the primitive wing of the house with no electricity and let his phone die. When it was dark, he slept. When the sun rose, he woke.
Ben knew he’d have to go back to Los Angeles eventually, but he wanted to take some time to think about his life.
What the hell was he doing?
Who was he?
A human? A vampire in training? A lackey or a leader?
Could he walk through a world where he was always seen as inferior because of his mortality? Would he be satisfied living in the human world again?
Was living in the human world even an option at this point?
Ben thought it would be Tenzin who found him eventually, but it was his uncle. Giovanni waited for him one morning a week or so after Ben had arrived in Tuscany, taking shelter in the library before Ben dragged himself out of bed.
His uncle said nothing at first. Then he stood, patted Ben’s cheek, and said, “We’ll talk tonight. I’m tired,” before he left the room.
❂
BEN took a nap that afternoon and woke to the smell of steak smoking on the grill. He walked out and saw Giovanni manipulating the flame around two thick cuts of beef, searing them from the outside before he warmed the coals underneath them and left the steaks on the grill to finish cooking. There was an open bottle of wine on the table and two full glasses.
“Sit,” his uncle said. “The meat is almost done.”
The dinner was simple, which was all he’d ever expect from Giovanni, who had not learned how to cook more than the basics in over five hundred years of life. Meat, bread, wine, and a few tomatoes sliced from the garden, with olive oil poured over them. Ben sat and drank his wine, staring out over the orchards at twilight.
Ben looked at his uncle.
Giovanni was, objectively speaking, the most handsome man Ben had ever seen. When he was in high school, all the girls had a crush on his Uncle Giovanni. Every girlfriend he’d brought home had angled for a hint of a smile. It had annoyed him until his last girlfriend said Ben and Giovanni looked more like brothers than uncle and nephew. That had made his chest puff up at the time, but now it freaked him out.
Because it was true. His uncle used clothes and hair and glasses to age himself for humans, but if you looked carefully, Giovanni didn’t look a day over thirty. He’d stay that way forever, and Ben was quickly catching up.
“I talked with Tenzin in Rome,” Giovanni said. “You have both made a friend in Emil Conti.”
“Huh.”
“The new regime in Naples is decidedly more open and willing to work with him. Added to that, they’ve already been able to shed more light on the library theft. Zeno was invited down to examine the documents they were keeping from Emil’s people. Emil believes Zeno’s status as a native Neapolitan and former clergy will be of benefit in building trust.”
“You must have agreed to let him go,” Ben said. “He’s under your aegis.”
Giovanni drank some wine and shrugged. “It will help clear things up for my clients.”
“Right.”
“And Emil is a good ally. Filomena could be as well.”
“She’s something, all right.”
Giovanni was silent.
“It’s not that she used me,” Ben said. “It’s that I was oblivious to it. I thought I was a bishop when I was a pawn.”
Giovanni nodded. “I understand. But you won’t be oblivious next time.”
“If there’s a next time.”
They were both silent for a long time.
“There doesn’t have to be,” Giovanni said. “Not for any of this. You know that, don’t you?”
Ben cleared his throat. “Be honest. Has living a normal life ever really been an option for me?”
Giovanni paused. “I talked to Matt and Dez before I left.”
“Yeah?” Ben sipped his wine. “How are they? I haven’t been by for dinner in too long. How’s Carina?”
“Growing quickly,” Giovanni said with a smile. “She starts school in the fall. Soccer too. She already has her first set of cleats and her very own ball. It’s purple. She’s very excited.”
Ben felt his throat close up. He remembered when Carina had been born. Had listened to her hummingbird heartbeat when Dez had been in the hospital in Rome. And now Carina was buying cleats and starting school.
His heart began to race. It was all happening too quickly. His uncle looked like his brother. Babies were growing up and Ben was graduating. Casper was slower every year, and Isadora’s hearing was beginning to go.
“Gio—”
“I talked to Matt and Dez before I left LA,” Giovanni said softly. “The apartment over their garage is empty right now. You could rent it if you wanted. Matt has an opening at the company in his online security division. You are more than qualified for it. You could—”
“It’s not the job thing,” Ben said in a rough voice. “I’m not worried about… It’s not the job.”
“I know.” Giovanni stood and took the meat off the grill. “I know it’s not about a job.”
Giovanni sat down again and poured more wine while the meat rested and the temperature in the hills dropped. A cool breeze drifted over the tops of the trees, sending a shush of sound through the valley.
“Who am I?” Ben asked. “Benjamin Amir Rios, bastard pickpocket? Ben Vecchio, ward of the famous vampire? Your son? Tenzin’s… butler?”
“You’re none of those things,” Giovanni said. “Or maybe you’re a bit of all of them. What is important is that you have the choice.” His uncle leaned across the table and squeezed his shoulder. “The man you are, Benjamin, the man you’re becoming… I am privileged to know him. Whatever you choose—whatever you do—I will be there. Beatrice will be there. You are ours. Maybe you don’t have our blood, but—”
“What if I wanted to be an immortal?”
Giovanni’s hand tightened, and Ben realized for the first time how much his uncle truly wanted him to say yes.
“Either of us,” Giovanni said. “You know this. Either of us would consider it a privilege to sire you.”
Ben blinked hard. “And if I wanted to get an office job, find a nice wife, and raise fifteen kids?”
“I’d be godfather to every single one,” Giovanni said. “And we would watch them always. Protect them always.”
“Why are you making it so easy?” Ben sniffed.
“Because I love you. I want you to be happy.”
Ben started to laugh. “And yet I hear a ‘but.’”
“But I also want you to be challenged. Excited and driven about whatever you do. Because you won’t be happy unless you’re challenged.”
Ben put his head in his hands and gripped his hair. “Why can’t you just tell me what to do already?”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Sometimes I wish it did.”
“No, you don’t.” Giovanni dropped a slab of steak on his plate an
d passed the bread. “Besides Ben, if I told you what to do, you’d find a way to do exactly the opposite. Then you’d argue with me that your way was what I should have chosen to begin with.”
He took a deep breath. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“Of course I’m right. Now eat your dinner. I didn’t ruin it this time.”
“Thank God for small miracles.”
❂
THEY were kicking a ball back and forth the next night when Ben finally asked about her. “So did she go back to LA?”
Giovanni didn’t need to ask whom he was talking about.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “She told me you needed human time.”
Ben nodded.
“She also told me not to leave you alone too long because you’re a brooder.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m fairly sure Tenzin thinks any reaction time over five minutes long is brooding.”
Giovanni chuckled. “I’m not sure about that, but she does live in the moment.”
“Has she always?”
“Well…” Giovanni stopped the ball with his foot. “You have to remember, she’s the type of immortal that will get fed up with the world, then go sleep—figuratively speaking—in a cave for a century without thinking twice. So when she’s awake, she’s present.”
Ben thought about that and it made an odd kind of sense.
“To get to be that age without going mad,” Giovanni continued, “I think you have to live in the moment.” Giovanni started kicking the ball again. “They’re very different personalities, but if you think about Carwyn, he’s the same way. He exists in the present. It’s rare to get him ruminating about history. Vampires who ruminate about history tend to meet the sun because they become melancholy.”
“You ruminate.”
Giovanni nodded. “I used to. And how long do you think I would have lasted if I hadn’t met Beatrice? Not long.”
“Gio?”
“Hmm.”
“Do you wonder? About me and Tenzin? About… whatever it is we are?”
Giovanni paused. “Not anymore. I love you both. Whatever you are… you’ll figure it out, Ben. Both of you are simply more alive when you’re together than when you’re separate. I don’t know what that means yet. I don’t think you do either.”
Ben let that one sink in for a while.
“It’s okay,” Giovanni said with a smile. “You don’t have to know yet.”
❂
THEY were playing chess and drinking wine the following night.
“I think I want to move back to New York,” Ben said.
Giovanni paused, a rook held in his hand. “You want the town house?”
“No,” Ben said. “I’d stick out like a sore thumb in that neighborhood. I’m thinking about a loft in Brooklyn.”
“For?”
Several kicks under the table from Fabi, a few dropped hints from Tenzin, and lots and lots of sleep were starting to make things clear. “I want to do what you do,” Ben said. “Or at least I want to try. But not with books. I can’t spend that much time looking for books, Gio. I’ll go crazy.”
“Do you think this is a surprise to me?”
“I want to find art,” Ben said. “Antiquities. Take on clients and find things for them on commission. What do you think?”
Giovanni paused and finished his wine. It took three more moves from both of them before he replied.
“You can’t do it alone,” Giovanni said. “Not in the immortal world. No matter what your reputation, skills, or connections, there will be some who only take you seriously if you have a vampire partner.”
“She’d go with me. You know she would.”
“So you’re the brains and Tenzin is the brawn?” Giovanni tapped the table. “It has possibilities. You’d be in O’Brien territory.”
“Would that be a problem?”
“I don’t think so. You don’t have political ambitions, and neither does Tenzin. If you gave them a cut rate for family and associates like I do with Ernesto, you’d probably be fine. Cormac is the one to approach. Talk to Gavin.”
Ben nodded, growing more and more excited about the idea as he thought about it. “I can do that.”
“They wouldn’t like Tenzin living there…,” Giovanni said. “Or maybe they would. If it would open a business relationship with her allies in Asia, they might not have a problem. She’d have to play nice sometimes.”
Ben shrugged. “I can get her to play nice when necessary.”
“You’re possibly the only one who can.”
“Do you think it’s a big enough market?” Ben asked. “Could we make any money with it?”
“If you were good, you could make very good money, but we should consider it an offshoot of Beatrice’s and my business to start. I’ll refer clients to you when they need to find antiquities—”
“And eventually I’ll refer clients to you if they need to find books.”
Man and vampire both smiled.
“This could work, couldn’t it, Gio?”
“Are you excited about the idea?”
Ben paused and really thought about it. “This feels right,” he said. “More right than anything else I’ve thought of. I just have to keep Tenzin from forging copies of stuff we’re hired to find.”
Giovanni closed his eyes and turned back to the chessboard. “I’m pretending I didn’t hear that.”
“Good call.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“I won’t.”
“You risk your reputation and mine, Benjamin.”
“I get it. I get it. I’ll keep her in line.”
-❈-
TO Lady Filomena De Moura
Immortal Guardian of Naples and the Second Parthenopean Republic
Nena (I told you I’d give you a nickname),
Forgive me for leaving your beautiful city so abruptly. I meant no offense, so I hope none was taken. The events that led to your rise were, admittedly, surprising to me, but I hope that Tenzin and I were able to assist you in our own way. I understand the collection of Sicilian tarì have been returned to the Neapolitan treasury. I am grateful that our small part in their recovery was satisfactory. (And the bonus was very much appreciated.)
As I have now discovered the delights of your city, I hope to return again soon. I understand you and Emil Conti are working toward smoother relations between the Neapolitan and Roman courts. I wish you both well.
Until our next meeting I remain…
Your admirer,
Benjamin Vecchio,
International Man of Mystery
Scourge of the ____________ (still working on that one)
-❈-
DEAR Ben,
Come back to Naples soon. You will be welcome.
Nena
Epilogue
THE HUMIDITY WAS EVEN HIGHER than when he’d left two weeks before, but Ben was whistling when he saw the prow of Claudio’s boat as it drew up to dock near the train station.
“Ciao, Claudio.”
“Ciao, Ben.”
He threw his satchel into the back of the boat and climbed in next to Claudio.
“It’s still hot,” Claudio said. “Even at night. It’s not cooling off at all anymore.”
“I know.”
“You have your passport? Get it out. I’ll take you to the airport right now. Get you out of this dreaded damp furnace.”
“No, thanks.”
Claudio shook his head. “Fine. Whatever you want. You’re an idiot like her, I think. Come back in the spring. It’s much nicer then.”
Ben smiled. “You’re the one who lives here, Claudio.”
The young man shrugged. “Where else would I live? It’s Venice. The greatest city in the world.”
❂
BEN heard Louis’s trumpet echoing down the quiet canal as they approached the house. Claudio let him out at the end of the Rio Terà dei Assassini and tossed his bag up to him.
“You have the key?” Clau
dio asked.
Ben held it up. “I made my own copy.”
“I’ll talk to you later then. Try not to die.”
Ben blinked. “Okay. Is there an ambush I need to know about?”
“No,” Claudio said. “I say that to all the humans I know who hang out with vampires.” He waved and drifted off down the canal.
Ben watched the lights of his boat until they disappeared around a corner, then he turned and punched in the gate code before he twisted the key in the lock. Both the gate and the door swung open easily because he’d oiled them before they left Venice the last time. It was little stuff like that Tenzin always forgot to do.
“Honey,” he called quietly when he stepped into the courtyard. “I’m home.”
A faint sound of laughter echoing off marble.
Ben dropped his bag on a bench and walked to the turntable at the end of the entry hall. He picked up the needle and skipped to “La Vie en Rose,” then he walked over and plucked the wineglass out of Tenzin’s hand and set it on the coffee table.
Accusing grey eyes met his. “I was drinking that.”
“I know,” he said. “But you should be dancing.”
“This is becoming a bad habit, Benjamin.”
Ben pulled her to her feet and spun her out before he tugged her back and grabbed her around the waist as the trumpet solo started. After a few minutes, she relaxed in his arms and let him lead.
“I thought you’d go back to LA,” she said.
“I missed your house.”
She chuckled. “Good to know where your loyalties are.”
“My loyalties are never in question,” he said in a soft voice. “You should know that by now.”
She didn’t say anything, but her hand gripped tighter at his waist.
They danced silently around the entry, their feet shuffling along the checkerboard marble as the record scratched and echoed and skipped. The moon rose through the arched window over the stairwell and the ancient house breathed with the tide.