Page 61 of Just for a Taste

“What?”

Zeno cupped my cheek carefully and caressed it. He smoothed down my hair with his other hand and gave me the smallest, saddest smile I had ever seen.

“My beloved Cora,” he murmured, brushing his thumb across my lower lip. “I did really mean what I said earlier. For me, there is only you. No one and nothing else. That’s why—”

Zeno’s fingertips lingered for a precious instant longer before he parted from me and rose to his feet. All the softness in tone and movement was gone. All that remained was a husk. “It’s time for you to go back.”

For several excruciating seconds, all I could do was blink. I desperately searched his face to see if he was joking, but it soon became clear he was dead serious.

“You mean forusto go home, right?” My voice came out as little more than a pathetic squeak. “Aren’t we going to ride back together?”

“I’ll walk you to the car.” Zeno took my hand, his touch mechanical, and helped me to my shaking feet. On instinct and desperation, I squeezed his hand, but he shifted it so we were walking arm-in-arm with a palpable space between us.

The path felt simultaneously short and long by the time we reached its winding end through the garden. Signora Rafia had pulled the car up so closely, the tires were practically touching the curb. Maneuvering me into the already open door was a seamless process.

The passenger-side seat—Zeno’s side—felt wrong, every setting incorrect. Most of all, the car seemed bizarrely open.

“Wait, what’s going on?” I cried, my nails digging into the leather seat. “Why are you acting like this?”

“I’m going to stay here a bit longer. I have . . . matters to attend to.” Zeno looked over his shoulder at the ballroom, which was already clear of guests. “You don’t belong in that world, and you don’t belong at my side.”

“What?”

I looked up at the vampire, who returned my gaze steadily and folded one arm across himself. He gave me a deep bow, then straightened with his eyes looking beyond me. “Good night, Signorina Bowling.”

With that, he shut the door. Even before the car began to move, I knew that beyond the tinted windows, Zeno had already walked away.

Chapter 30: Volti Subito

Itraveled on a train for the first time when I was nine years old. I had religiously read a chapter ofAround the World in Eighty Daysto Pa every night that summer, waking him up to hear every last word if he dozed off. He got train tickets for all of us near the end of the book, and when Ma told him he should have waited for my birthday to get them, he joked, “But she might’a got ’round to readin’Murder on the Orient Expressif I waited any longer!”

It was all I could think or talk about for days: being like Phileas Fogg. The tickets were for a nice passenger train, and it was the first thing I had ridden other than a rusty pickup or a bike too large for me. As far as I was concerned, going on that ride was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me, or ever would.

My first panic attack was on that train, right after I saw dirt underneath my nails. I tried to figure out for years what exactly made it happen, to no avail. Maybe it was something about the floating sensation of wheels on rails beneath me, or maybe seeing the grit on my hands was a subconscious reminder that I was out of place beside the tourists.

Now, with the subtle, rhythmic jerking of the car beneath me as we navigated through paneled roads, I knew both were to blame.

You don’t belong in that world,and you don’t belong at my side.

I stared down at my hands. My fingernails had been painted, and my palms had been scrubbed meticulously. But neither got rid of the dark hue of my skin, the freckles that washed over them, or the old burn scars I’d gotten working in the bakery.

Of course you don’t belong with nobles, you idiot,I thought, tightening my fists into balls and burrowing them in my skirt.You never belonged anywhere.

No—I had belonged once, or I’d felt like I did, at least. When I was gardening in the abbey, sitting with Zeno in the aviary, or just wandering the gardens. If nowhere else, that was a home.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked Signora Rafia, lurching forward in my seat.

Signora Rafia hadn’t said a word the entire time, or even looked back at me. She simply sat there with both hands on the wheel, head fixed forward. That was how she remained even now, seemingly unaltered by my outburst.

“Because,” I continued, leaning back in my seat and forcing my tone to soften a bit, “I—I don’t know what Zeno meant when he said I should go back. I don’t know if he meant the abbey, or London, or . . . somewhere else.”

“I have been given orders to drive you to the Abbazia di Santa Dymphna,” Signora Rafia stated. “I do not have any further orders.”

I closed my eyes and tried to convince myself I was asleep and that the events of the night were all some hydroxyzine-induced nightmare. I could have that, I decided, at least until after the ride back. Perhaps I could even convince myself that the blood on my chin—which had just reopened—was actually drool, and the pressure behind my eyes was a sleep mask worn slightly too tight.

Despite my efforts, I couldn’t drift fully into this fantasy. My phone, resuscitated for the first time in nearly seven months, sat against my thigh beneath my dress, and some part of me waited for it to buzz. Maybe, just maybe, in that brief span of Wi-Fi going through the city, Zeno would call me and explain that this was some misunderstanding. Even the clarity of being told he wanted me to leave forever would have felt better than this limbo.

Eventually, the ground beneath the car felt familiar, and it slowed to one final stop. Signora Rafia helped me out, and I was shuffled from person to person like some package on a conveyor belt. Based on how delicate the words and movements of everyone around me (even Signora Carbone) were, fragile, this side up was clearly plastered on my forehead.

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