She nodded. “What about the violin?”
“Keep it safe. And unplayed.”
“I can do that.”
“I know you can, Santiago. You have served Acquisitions well over the years. I’m sure this little mishap was nothing more than that. An accident.”
“It was. I swear to it. You know I would never lie.”
“I do know that about you. Call me as soon as you’ve confirmed the Paganini grave at the Parma cemetery remains intact.”
“I’m off to do a little grave digging.” Yikes. “Sorry, Director Pierce.”
“Every Retriever faces a life-altering challenge at one point or another in their career. This may be yours.”
Life altering? He was really laying it on thick. “I’m always up for a challenge. Goodbye.”
She slunk back into the seat and closed her eyes. “Good one, Santiago. You may have just unleashed untold evil into the world.”
It always sounded more ominous in the movies. Of course, the movies had a soundtrack that made everything ominous.
“Good thing there’s no soundtrack today,” she muttered.
Had an accidental slip of the bow across the strings disturbed the famed violin maestro in his grave?
Only one way to find out.
“Guess there’s no rest for this wicked violin thief.” She swallowed, wishing she’d found a donor to slake her thirst earlier. “This is going to be a long day.”
The Villetta cemetery in Parma sat close to the edge of town, nestled near residential areas. On one side of the cemetery stretched gorgeous vast green fields and trees. Summer drove along the road edging a field, feeling as though it were a little oasis within the bustle of the busy world.
It was nearing noon, a lazy time of day that found most inside eating or relaxing before a meal. She wore her sunglasses, and she tinted all the windows in her cars for protection. A vampire could certainly venture out in the daytime, even in the sunlight. But they did burn much easier and faster than most, and direct sunlight could leave nasty sores and burns. So she never went anywhere in the summertime without a sweatshirt jacket and sunglasses. Sunscreen helped a bit, as well.
Though homeschooled by her parents, she’d been allowed to study those subjects that had most appealed to her and had basically designed her own education. Music and mechanics had topped her study list. So what she knew about Nicolo Paganini was that he had been buried in the cemetery only after much struggle to actually allow his body a proper burial. History books told that he’d refused the last rites on his deathbed, so the priest had denied him burial in consecrated ground. His son, Achille, had fought and struggled for years and had finally, after decades and agreeing to donate the remaining bulk of his father’s estate to the Catholic Church, won his father a resting place in Parma.
One could read the details of that weird burial struggle and assume Paganini had refused the last rites because he had been dabbling in the occult and perhaps had even made a deal with the devil, but it was also known that, at the time of refusal, he hadn’t thought he was going to die.
But it didn’t make sense to Summer. If he’d refused to play the violin then he couldn’t have been the devil’s associate, as so many had accused him.
Then again, what did she know? The musician had a sordid and interesting history. Accused of deviltry merely because he had been a prodigy on the violin? Stupid. But not for the time period, she supposed. And if he really had made a deal with the devil that would easily explain his phenomenal talent.
Summer knew people made deals with Himself every single day. And they were real and signed in blood and paid with breath and bone. She’d had a run-in with Himself once. She tried very hard not to ever let that happen again. And she had a built-in warning system thanks to her allergy to demons.
Checking the GPS map on her phone, which she’d attached to a plastic holder on the dashboard, she verified the cemetery wasn’t far off. She’d not once been in Italy before today, but appreciated the quiet afternoon drive. With luck, the cemetery would be as peaceful. And if she had to actually do some grave digging she would be granted privacy.
If she arrived at the graveyard to find that indeed the grave had been disturbed and the body was gone, she’d...
Summer blew out a breath. “I have no earthly idea what I’ll do.”
Her Retriever training had not covered tracking a newly unearthed dead man and returning him to the grave. Though, now she thought about it, all she had to do was rebury him. Right? It made sense. But what about a violin raising hell did make sense? And was it all of Beneath, or was it a metaphorical hell in the form of the man being some kind of demon or hellish being?
“You’re thinking about this too much,” she muttered as she drove by a man wandering along the road’s edge.
The single-lane tarred road was paralleled with grass growing high in the ditches. In need of a mow, but she liked the overgrown nature. A quaint countryside drive. So seeing a man wandering by in a black suit, looking rather dazed, gave her pause. She slowed the vehicle and peered in the rearview mirror. He stared after her, yet continued walking. Dressed in a long black coat, black pants and white shirt, and with long black hair. Was the coat actually a tux? The tails of it went to the back of his knees. His eyes looked like black voids from the distance. He was slim, but not unattractive. Maybe a little dirt on his face and hands?
In that somber suit he looked out of place against the cerulean sky and emerald field. On the other hand, maybe he was coming from a funeral that had just been held at the cemetery?
Or he could be...
“No. Freaking. Way.”
Summer’s heartbeats dropped to her gut, and she slammed the Audi to a halt. Grabbing the cell phone from the dash, she clicked online, thankful that she got Wi-Fi out here. Searching for Paganini brought up a page full of images. Tall, slender and darkly handsome for a nineteenth-century guy. Some caricatures made him look comical with a bent spine and spider-long fingers as he viciously attacked the violin. No actual photographs, though. She supposed photography had been invented a little later.
She shook her head as she gazed at the man walking away in the rearview mirror. “Can’t be. He looks...healthier, if not...normal.”
Shouldn’t a guy risen from the dead look...dead?
Tapping the steering wheel with her thumb, she then rubbed the hematite ring along the leather wheel. She was seeing things she didn’t want to believe. The director had spooked her with his warning about disturbing the dead. “He’s just a local. Wandering home from a funeral. Yeah.”
She shifted into Drive, but didn’t take her foot off the brake pedal.
The cemetery loomed ahead, within shouting distance. Could he really have climbed out of a grave and now be wandering the countryside? The man had been buried—she quickly did the math—around one hundred and seventy-five years ago. Wouldn’t
