Page 62 of Vesuvius

‘Julia isn’t trying to control me. She’s – she’s like me.’

‘What, a liar? She snared you in her political mess. Sorry, isusea better word?’

‘Since when do you care?’ Loren snapped, eyes bright and damp.

It caught Felix off guard, yanked the cobblestones from under his feet. He’d made Loren cry. He shouldn’t have lashed out. He should apologise. It’d be simple. One of those easy gestures, the kind friends shared.

‘Fucked if I know,’ Felix said instead.

Loren’s lips parted in fleeting surprise, but his face turned to stone. With crisp, even motions, he folded the letter and tucked it in his toga. Shoving off from the wall, he headed for the alley’s exit.

‘Loren, I didn’t mean that,’ Felix tried. ‘No, I did. But I shouldn’t have said it.’

‘Whenever I start to think you’re halfway decent, you ruin it.’ Loren’s mouth tightened at the corner: his signature expression. Felix hated thathe recognised it. ‘I’m going to find Julia. Take the coward’s way out if you want, but I don’t cut ties when a situation stops serving me.’

Shit. Felix watched helplessly as Loren was swallowed by the swarm of the Forum.

Lurking in the shade of the alley was far more comfortable than confronting . . . that. After all, Felix wasn’t supposed to care. But Loren had slotted into all his rules, easy as reaching back for a friend’s hand in a crowd so as not to be parted. No one had ever reached for him before. Felix wasn’t ready to lose grip, even as he felt the fingers slipping away.

He thought back to the statesman – Senator Servius, rather. Darius sneaking from Julia’s estate. Clovia’s head bobbing in the atrium pool. And he thought of everything they could do to Loren now that he’d tangled with Julia.

Smugglers were bloody. And they never hesitated.

Shit. Felix steeled himself, then ran after Loren.

For a thief, a festival crowd was less a party and more an opportunity.

Felix’s father would take him to the Circus Maximus on festival days. Not to celebrate. To pickpocket. They had a routine: little Felix, all curls and dimples, would scream that he’d lost his da’, and kind strangers would swamp him. He’d be scooped up, cradled and comforted. Then, tucked against their chest, he’d sneak his fingers into their pockets and rob them empty. One of his few remaining memories of childhood.

Now that he was older, sharper, less dewy-cheeked, Felix adjusted his strategy. Preying on the generosity of middle-aged strangers didn’t work the same at seventeen. These days he looked for drunks with wide pockets.

Pity Felix didn’t have time for petty theft. Today in Pompeii, alcohol flowed free.

He scanned the crowd, shouldering through pressed bodies, all somewhere between sufficiently tipsy and absolutely blitzed. Cups passed between hands and steady music thrummed beneath a current of excited babble. Felix’s fingers ached to grab something. Anything. Deep in his pocket, he found another marble, but a body jostled him, and he seized at the contact. The marble slipped and bounced away between sandaled feet.

No more bribes for Aurelia.

Across the Forum, Felix caught a familiar shade of blue, the robes the attendants of Isis wore. Camilia, short-haired and short-tempered, slumped on a set of crooked steps. Felix hadn’t seen her since the Priest of Isis sliced his arm, but she and Loren were friends, right? If anyone might talk sense into him, maybe she could. He shifted directions, skirting a cluster of girls.

When he straightened, Camilia was no longer alone.

Curly hair and a tiny toga. Celsi again, the fussy boy, and his hand was cupped around Camilia’s ear in the way children believed inconspicuous. Her brow scrunched.

Felix stilled. Not wise in the crowded Forum. More bodies bumped him, and a gaggle of children half Aurelia’s age did their best to bowl him over. He stumbled, skin itching. Camilia and Celsi’s duo turned into a trio. A middle-aged man, skin the same olive as Celsi’s, stormed over. He grabbed Celsi by the arm and jerked him away.

The phantom sensation of a hand curled around Felix’s own wrist. He blinked. Blinked again. His lungs tightened. The sway of bodies, the echoing pulse of a drum –his own father dragging him down temple stairs, feet tacky with blood on white marble, a cooling body robed in sacred purple splayed behind . ..

The memory thread snapped, and with the next drumbeat, disintegrated. Felix yanked himself present, shivering with anger at his mind for pulling him through time like that. He rubbed his wrist, the ghost of long-faded bruises. His father hadn’t meant to hurt him. He’d pulled Felix away from the hurt, he was sure of it.

Not what Celsi’s father had done. Dragged him – Felix’s stomach soured – towards worse.

Camilia rubbed her eyes. A second later, she fled in the opposite direction, walking faster than Felix could hope to catch up to. He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d intruded on a scene he shouldn’t have witnessed. If he were braver – if he were Loren – he might have intervened, if only to wrench that man’s hand off Celsi’s little wrist.

The ebb and flow of the crowd dragged him back in, though he felt more on the outside than ever. He couldn’t relate to these strangers. He wasn’t like them. A mystery cup of liquid appeared in his hand from an equally mysterious source. Alcohol would only dampen the senses Felix needed sharp, but between the press of the crowd and the lingering pinch in his chest, a sip couldn’t hurt. He brought the cup to his nose. Nothing unusual. Good.

He threw it back. All of it.

Bitter hops burst across Felix’s tongue, searing his throat. Within seconds, a fresh cup was exchanged for the old. This was a mistake. He swallowed another mouthful and turned. And promptly spit it back out.

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