Page 64 of Roguefinder

“You don’t have to,” Jesse said.

But we were in Rome to catch Ulfrik. I pressed my hand to the wall.

Nothing. Just the drip of water and the low hum of the temple’s retrofitted lightbulbs.

I dropped my hand.

Jesse took it and laced his fingers with mine. “We’ll try somewhere else.”

“Another dudes-only cult cave?”

He tugged me toward the stairs. “A Roman bath complex two streets over.”

But my gift didn’t spark there, either—or at the next three places we visited. When I yanked my hand from a marble bust, Jesse squeezed my shoulder.

“It’ll come,” he said as we stepped into the afternoon sunlight. “You have to be patient.”

“I’m patient.”

He gave me a look that said he knew exactly how full of shit I was. Then my stomach growled, and his lips curved.

“Lunch.”

“Finally. I was about to eat that bust.”

Twenty minutes later, we entered a restaurant wedged between a dry cleaner and an abandoned beauty salon. The inside was roughly the size of my bedroom back in Hale Valley, with four small tables and battered chairs. A long counter held glass cases loaded with cannoli, cookies, and fluffy pastries my mother would have called cream puffs but probably weren’t.

The place was empty, but garlic and tomato wafted thick in the air. A swinging door led to what I assumed was the kitchen.

“We’re lucky,” Jesse said, pulling out a chair. “It’s usually packed with locals. We must have missed the lunch rush.”

I sat across from him and looked around. “Where are the menus?”

His eyes warmed. “There aren’t any. You get whatever Consolata feels like making.”

I glanced at the swinging door. “Are you sure she’s open? This place looks⁠—”

“Listen more closely,” Jesse said. “Use your wolf.”

Oh, yeah. Good point.

I closed my eyes and let my beast rise. With my wolf hovering, I sifted through the layers of noise, discarding the distant rumble of scooters and the determined rattle of the restaurant’s refrigerator. Just when I started to give up, I found it.

There.

Somewhere behind the swinging door, a heart thumped.

Except the rhythm was all wrong. My business major hardly qualified me to assess heartbeats, but I’d endured enough sports physicals to know the basics. And this heart was all over the place, its beats scattered and stumbling. A watery sound leaked between the pulses, which faded abruptly before strengthening again.

When I opened my eyes, Jesse’s were soft. And sad.

“She doesn’t have a lot of time left,” he said.

As if he’d summoned her, footsteps echoed from the kitchen. A moment later, a woman bustled through the door. She was at least eighty, with gray hair pulled into a bun and tucked under a net. A floral apron covered a black dress that started just under her chin and finished around plump calves. A small gold crucifix glinted at her throat. When she spotted Jesse, her face broke into a smile that showed straight white teeth with a prominent gap in the center.

“Yes-say!” she exclaimed, swooping to the table with surprising speed. Jesse grinned as he stood, then laughed when she scowled and pinched his side.

“Magro!” she said, throwing up flour-dusted hands.