plucked the E string and...it sounded in tune. More weirdness. A quick pluck of the A, D and G strings found the same.
“Holy crap,” she muttered.
Giddy excitement coaxed her to place the base of the violin against her shoulder and hug it with her chin. Grasping the neck with her left fingers, she—
“No.”
She quickly set the violin back in the case.
“You are not that stupid, Summer. If playing the violin was some means to calling up Beneath or the devil or some dark curse, then I’m not going to risk it.”
Besides, she prided herself on following the rules, or at least, not rocking the boat when it came to her missions. She did her best and did not raise questions. She liked maintaining that militant control while on the job. Because in life? Not so much control. Especially when she bit people for sustenance. She did something to them. They were never the same. And that lack of control required balance in all other aspects of her life.
Holding a hand over the violin, ready to touch it, she flinched when the breezy whisper felt more like a shove into the springtime than a suggestion. Almost as if something wanted her to touch it.
That was creepy. And not in the good way.
“Nope. Not going to play it.”
She inspected the end of the bow, wondering if she should loosen the hairs a few twists because it wasn’t good for it to be kept tightened when not in use. Yet she’d found it in this condition. Obviously, this was some sort of magical violin.
Placing the bow in the case, her wrist suddenly twisted and the bow glided across all four violin strings in rapid succession.
“Oh shit. I did not do that.”
She dropped the bow, but it landed on the strings, and again, drew out a series of notes.
“No, no, no. It’s not me. I didn’t do it!”
She looked around. A weird feeling that someone was watching and would finger her as the culprit crept up her neck. A strange silvery whisper tickled her ear, and she shook her head and slapped at her long blond hair near her ear.
The tones from that weird, accidental bowing of the strings had sounded incredible. As if the violin had been waiting ages, endlessly, ceaselessly, for someone to come and release that sound.
“But not me. Oh no.” She took a step away from the open violin case. Staring hard at the bow, she waited for it to move of its own volition. It didn’t flinch.
Dashing to the case, she slapped the lid down and rebuckled the latch. Then, tucking the case under her arm, she raced down the dark hallway, fleeing toward the cool morning daylight.
For once, she’d creeped herself out. And the last thing she needed was to be accused of playing a violin that would put her in league with the devil Himself.
La Villetta cemetery; Parma, Italy
“Hexensohn!”
At the sound of the guttural accusation, the man sat up—and banged his forehead on the stone directly above him. He pressed a hand to the flat surface. Solid and cold. He pushed. It didn’t move.
He opened his eyes to...no light. Darkness muffled. And cold, so cold. Sucking in a breath, he couldn’t feel his heartbeats.
But he didn’t panic. The realization that he was trapped inside a container was only a minor distraction. What disturbed him was that he was aware of his thoughts. And that he was thinking. Again. After...
His death.
Sitting up in a panicked lunge, this time his forehead did not connect with stone, but rather, he felt a sludgy resistance as he rose upward and moved through the stone. His body ascended with little effort until his hands and shoulders felt the warmth of sunlight on them. Slapping a hand onto a hard surface, he levered his body up and out until he sat upon a stone monument.
“What in all...?” His shoulder bumped a stone pedestal, and he leaned against it. Not relaxed, by any means, but more getting his bearings. He sat up off the ground a few feet, one leg dangling over the edifice. Columns surrounded the area, and around that, a black wrought iron fence. Had he just risen from a sarcophagus?
Hmm... Looked like a fancy monument to someone long dead. Could it be his own? He had died. The knowledge was instinctive and ingrained. A certain fact. And he recalled that last, painful, gasping breath so clearly. Had it only been just yesterday?
A deep breath took in his surroundings. The air smelled of mildew and jasmine flowers. Birds twittered nearby. And the weird rushing sound of something unfamiliar not far off. Gasping out a breath, he pressed fingertips to his chest and realized his lungs were taking in air. He breathed? But how? He— Wasn’t he dead?
Something had sung to him. Called him. Summoned him with that vile curse hexensohn. It meant witch’s son, and he’d hated it once and already hated it again. Yet accompanying the curse he had felt the music. The pure and rapidly bowed tones from an instrument that had once facilitated his very livelihood.
Glancing about, he took in the close-spaced tombstones and nearby mausoleums. He sat in a cemetery, upon a large tombstone. And that startled him so that he slid off the stone sarcophagus, stood, wobbling as he stepped a few paces, and then turned to study the bust placed upon the pedestal where he had just risen. He narrowed his eyes. The face and hair on the bust looked familiar. Though it wasn’t life-size, perhaps a bit bigger. Had he ever appeared so...regal?
“Not me. Can’t be,” he muttered. “I’m dead. This is a dream. Some means of Hell torture. It has to be. No one comes back from...”
His eyes took in the area. The entire monument he stood within was about ten feet square with eight columns, two supporting each corner of a massive canopy. Wandering to the edge and stepping down onto the narrow strip of loose stones circling the structure, he turned and looked high over the front of the canopy.
And he read the name chiseled into the stone above. “‘Nicolo Paganini.’”
He grasped his throat, marveling at the sound that had come from him. Because... “I could not speak for so long.”
Years before his death he’d lost the ability to speak. It had been miserable, and he’d to rely on his son, Achille, to press an ear to his mouth so he could hear the barely imperceptible sounds he’d made and then interpret to others.
“Achille?” Where was he? How many days had it been since his death? Had his son buried him? How had he come to rise from the grave?
What was happening?
The brimstone bargain? No. He had not fulfilled his portion of that wicked bargain. And yet...the sound of a violin had woken him from his eternal slumber.
He tapped his lower lip in thought and then was surprised at the feel of his skin and—he opened his mouth. He had teeth! All of them, in fact. They had all fallen out in the years before his death.
Looking
