Page 44 of Roguefinder

A man sat behind it, his features youthful but unremarkable. His hair was somewhere between brown and blond. His eyes were blue. Nothing about him was unpleasant to look at. He was just the sort of person you saw and immediately forgot.

The woman turned to him and spoke in brisk Italian, but I caught “Van der Meer” and “Lawson.”

The man—who had to be Carlo Gesualdo—gave her a sharp look. “English for our guests, Alessia.”

She slammed her eyes downward. “Of course, signore.”

“Leave.”

She obeyed like he’d yanked on a string, pivoting in place and exiting without so much as a glance in our direction. When the door shut behind her, Carlo motioned to the chairs in front of his desk.

“Please make yourselves comfortable.”

Jesse took the chair on the left. I settled into mine, which was closest to the candelabra. Wax dripped down the candles and onto the desk. My mother would have had a shit fit.

Carlo turned to Jesse with a smile. “Wolfseeker. It’s been a long time since I spoke with one of your kind.”

The hair lifted on my nape—but not the way it had when I’d heard the man sing. This didn’t make me want to walk toward it.

No, everything inside me tightened, my body bracing like it had on the football field when I’d prepared to take a hit.

Jesse inclined his head. “Signor Tesoro. We’re grateful for the audience.”

Carlo folded his hands on top of his desk, and I had to wrench my gaze from his knuckles so I didn’t think about how he’d murdered his wife and her lover.

He turned his smile on me. “I’d heard rumors of a newly sired wolf in the Americas. Tell me, boy. What do you think of immortality so far?”

Fuck. Jesse and I hadn’t rehearsed this. What the hell was I supposed to say? The idea of living forever was weird. On the other hand, Jesse was excellent at rimming my ass.

“So far, so good,” I said.

Carlo stared.

And, abruptly, I realized why he freaked me out so much. He wasn’t moving. Not like a regular person, anyway. His chest didn’t rise and fall. He didn’t blink. His eyes stayed open like a doll’s, the irises round and bright.

“I’m eager to take in a performance,” Jesse said. “I’ve spent a great deal of time in Rome over the years, but I’ve never had the pleasure of visiting the Teatro della Rosa.”

He continued, praising the building’s architecture and trading small talk with Carlo. I busied myself cataloging the office and trying not to be too obvious about it.

The space lacked windows, which made sense given Carlo’s iffy relationship with sunlight. A closed laptop sat near his elbow, the sleek black case a jarring contrast to the ornate candelabra. Built-ins behind him held books and a couple of marble busts. My gaze moved over the shelves and almost kept going.

On the lowest shelf, a wooden holder held small blue vials stoppered with cork. They were pretty things, the glass the only splash of color in the room. Dark liquid inside caught the candlelight.

Blood. Carlo’s maybe. He probably kept it on hand for his “pets.”

“We heard an incredible tenor as we came through,” Jesse said, pulling my attention back to the conversation.

“Francesco,” Carlo said with a slight nod. “His final performance is tomorrow evening. It’s a bittersweet thing.” He turned his round, unblinking eyes on me, and I suddenly felt kinship with the butterflies my sophomore biology teacher had pinned on a mat.

Carlo went on, seemingly unaware he was Uncanny Valleying me into a flop sweat. “Francesco enjoyed a successful career when he was human. He embraced the dark gift in 1905 and spent decades in silence. A performer who never ages attracts attention. But the silence became its own kind of death for him, so he began to sing again. A few recordings from his human years survive, but the quality is too poor for anyone to match that voice to the man on my stage tonight. That won’t always be the case. If he continues performing publicly, humans with cell phones will ask questions.”

He paused like he waited for me to reply. But I had no idea how to respond to someone who ran around saying “dark gift” like a cartoon villain.

And I’d promised Jesse I’d be good. Speaking up would probably earn me another round over his lap, followed by a round or three on his dick. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing to ever happen to me, but I wasn’t going to slip up and start some kind of supernatural turf war just because I loved getting my cheeks clapped.

Jesse cleared his throat. “Francesco is generous to share his gift with the world one last time.”

Carlo turned to him. “Infatti.”