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Back Cardinal Black Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. Title Page
  2. One: Into the Storm
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Two: London Calling
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Three: The Malignant Seven
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Four: Squirrels and Cats
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-One
  37. Thirty-Two
  38. Five: Revelation
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. About the Author

Di Petri nodded. With great grace, he pulled his cuff free. His face was blank. “It was pleasing to see you again,” he said, giving a short brisk bow. And to Hudson: “Please know that the opera makes gentlemen of barbarians. Possa tu camminare al sole tutti i tuoi giorni.” With that, he turned his back and departed the tavern.

“I think I just received an Italian curse,” Hudson said, but Matthew figured Di Petri was too much of a gentleman himself to have stooped to curses. “What’s this about the wine?”

“A place to start in Italy,” Matthew replied. “Venice.”

“I don’t exactly understand, but I’ll tell you that giving false hope to the people here is like cutting them off at the knees. I know you hate like sin to have to go back on your word, but facts are facts. No one is going anywhere anytime soon … except you, me, the professor and whoever else he pulls out of here. To Italy.”

Matthew nodded. “First … there’s Berry.”

Was it Berry any longer? Was there any way the woman he loved could be called back from her own descent into Hell? As Matthew watched Firebaugh inspect Berry’s tongue, he had to fight against a crushing feeling of despair. Had all of it been for nothing? All the deaths, all the violence … for nothing?

“Frederick?” Pamela called from the back. Her voice was ragged and hollow. “Frederick, how is our girl?”

Nash did not answer. He simply stared ahead, as Firebaugh looked at several small gray circles that had risen up on Berry’s tongue.

“Ah,” said Firebaugh, with an air of satisfaction. “Now I know which way to go.”

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Six

“Drink it all down,” said Firebaugh, as he had directed for the last nine days.

“It’s bitter,” she answered with a scowl. “Do I have to, Father?”

In his chair by the window beyond which morning snow flurries swept past, Nash did not reply.

Matthew was seated in a chair across from the scene of Firebaugh waiting for Berry to put down the cup of dark brown liquid he had just poured from a bottle. He said, “Advise her correctly, Mayor. Otherwise the professor will be calling on you again.”

Nash stirred, ran a hand across his mouth as if he wished to catch the words before they came out, but then he said, “Yes, daughter, you have to.”

“Rats,” she said. “That’s what it must taste like. Rats, and dead ones too.”

“Drink,” Firebaugh repeated.