Page 35 of In the Garden of Monsters

“It would not be surprising if there are ghosts here. That is why I would like to know more about the palazzo.”

“I think I might know how we can learn a bit of its history.” As I told him about Giulia’s journal, he grew quite animated. “I haven’t told the others about it. I think there’s something important in it, and I didn’t want them to become so interested that they’d take it from me.”

Paolo nodded his understanding. “This secret is safe with me.”

He walked me to my room, and I retrieved the journal from its place in the bottom drawer. I watched him thumb through it, a broad smile on his lips.

“This discovery, it is marvelous, Julia. I will read it and help you understand.”

He hurried off to his room, clearly excited. Once he disappeared, I shut the door and almost locked it, but hesitated, remembering my words to Jack, that I would leave it open.

But there was a part of me that worried about Ignazio. Someone had, after all, left the tarot card under my pillow, and it was rather clear he was taken with me. I had no doubt he would be more than happy to take me to bed. Of course, another part of me wondered if that would be so bad. Then I thought of the ghost of myself in the fire, pointing at Ignazio. If there was any sort of warning I should heed, it was the one from my other self.

I leaned against the door. There wasn’t a sound to be heard save for a bit of wind outside rattling a loose window shutter. I suddenly felt horribly alone, and I didn’t want to be. Deciding to take a chance on Jack, I left the door unlocked. I closed my eyes, letting the darkness envelop me, my heart a soft drumbeat in the quiet room.

Finally, long after midnight, I felt the subtle shift of the mattress as someone climbed into bed with me. In my half-asleep state, I assumed it was Jack. Without opening my eyes, I pushed my body against the warmth next to me. The earthy scent around me seemed familiar, yet there was something different, something I couldn’t quite place in my drowsy mind. Soft hands caressed me with the barest of movements, and although it would seem impossible to fall asleep in such an amorous moment, I must have been very tired, for I began to dream that Jack was a woman, large and powerful, cradling my body, wrapping herself around me from behind, her breasts against my back, her breath hot in my ear. Her flesh was soft, like the downiest pillows, and I let myself luxuriate in the sensation of her cool skin against mine. Then she kissed the tip of my ear, her tongue traveling across the tight skin, her hands roaming over my body, teasing my nipples with her fingers.

I moaned and rolled myself into her so that her mouth was upon mine, one of her hands between my legs, her other at my ear, whispering something I couldn’t understand. Everything about this woman felt familiar, made me cleave to her. My hand found her hair and I held her as she devoured me with her mouth. We writhed against each other, and I felt truly alive, lost in multiple waves of satisfaction.

Then I was awake, Jack thrusting deep into me, my eyes flying open with the sensation of my cry, something I could not contain. I had wanted this, yet this communion wasn’t what I thought it would be. Still lost in the sensation of my dream, it was hard to reconcile the real-life feeling of this big man above me. He filled me, pushing into me in a way that was quite pleasurable, but Jack was a bit of a disappointment compared to the ecstasy I had felt in my dream.

I didn’t reach the same culmination he did, and when we lay next to each other afterward, I was relieved he either didn’t notice or at least didn’t comment. It seemed irrelevant; I had taken my pleasure with the woman I envisioned—but how could I possibly explain that to him? I could barely explain it to myself. And while he certainly had been partaking of me while I was lost in that vision, I also knew, instinctively, that the being who had given me such pleasure wasn’t Jack. The woman in my vision was more than him, bigger than life, her spirit unable to be tamed.

“That was...” Jack began.

“Nice,” I finished, not wanting to hear him gush sentiments I couldn’t share.

He rolled over toward me, and his hand found my face. He stroked my cheek softly. “You are...unexpected, Julia.”

“And so are you,” I said, although I was sure we did not mean the same thing.

“I can’t stay with you,” he said. “Gala...”

“I understand.”

He kissed me, a slow, tender kiss that was indeed nice. It was a skill at which he excelled. I found I wanted more, but he slid out of bed, put on his clothes, and was soon gone.

A heaviness filled me after he departed, my mind turning over all the sensations I had just experienced. Sleep came fast and easy.

I dreamed again of the woman caressing my skin lightly with her fingers, her voice in my ear. Leaning back into her, I tried to understand her words. Then my dream shifted—it was no longer her voice but Ignazio’s. “You are mine,” he said, his heat radiating through me. “Only mine.” Smoke. Leather. Cinnamon. His scent was so heady that I could almost taste it.

He ran his hands along my arms, down across my belly, his fingers stopping above my sex, at the edge of my folds. A tease. I pushed myself into him, my body begging for more, but his hand did not shift. His lips caressed the back of my neck and my shoulder, every contact sending a deeper rush through me.

“She cannot give you all that I can,” he whispered.

Somehow, I knew this was true, but I wanted him to prove it to me. One finger moved a little lower. I desperately pushed my hips upward, hoping for more. Then he abruptly turned to smoke, dissipating, the pressure against my back dissolving into nothingness.

I awoke with a start. Dawn light pooled at the edges of the drapes. I was alone, but my body was hot in the places where Ignazio’s hands had lain against my skin. And I could have sworn the scent of cinnamon still lingered in the room.

10

I lay in bed, waiting until the sun was up enough that I could join the others for breakfast, turning over every aspect of the previous evening in my mind, trying to understand what I had experienced. Jack had surely come to my bed, and when I was readying for the day, I was relieved to find a used condom in the trash, proof that I had not imagined him there. But my fantasies of the woman and of Ignazio had to have been fabrications of my oversexed mind, though I couldn’t shake the feeling that they, too, had been real.

“My beauteous Proserpina, come, sit,” Dalí said, patting the chair next to him when I arrived in the small salon where breakfast had been arranged.

I followed his instructions, and a servant placed a demitasse cup of espresso before me, which I gratefully downed, then asked for another.

“Not much sleep last night?” Jack asked innocently, nudging me with his foot.

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