“Do you stock these?” he asked her. “I found most of them online and . . .”

She didn’t wait for him to finish. Her manner became abrupt.

“Take a seat over there, I’ll find these for you and bring them over,” she said.

“I’ll come with you, there’s loads on there,” Massimo offered.

The girl looked at him, her face even more serious than before.

“You can’t have them all, anyway. There’s a limit to how many you’re allowed to borrow. Now, if you’ll please take a seat . . . I’ll be quicker doing it alone.”

Massimo could easily guess the cause of the sudden change in her behavior. The list of books he was looking for included, among others, such titles as I Kill with My Bare Hands, Totems of Flesh, and The Taste of Blood . . .

“I’m not planning on killing anyone,” he joked, trying to reassure her, but she’d already disappeared behind a bookshelf.

Massimo felt strange and uncomfortable. This girl didn’t mean anything to him, and yet her undisguised revulsion had caught him by surprise. One look at the titles of a few volumes of criminal psychology and forensic psychiatry had been enough for her to decide that he wasn’t to be trusted. She might even think he was dangerous.

He thought of Superintendent Battaglia again. She didn’t have anyone waiting for her to come home either. He wondered if the loneliness bothered her, and if, like him, she searched the crowds daily, frantically looking for a friendly face.

Massimo looked down the corridor. There was no sign of the librarian. He imagined her with a peeved expression on her face as she searched the shelves for the titles he’d requested.

Perhaps he’d been looking for the wrong kind of company. There already was a woman in that town who’d caught his attention, and she wasn’t the kind to be put off by his interests. But he couldn’t go to her empty-handed. He needed to make a small offering to the goddess of destruction—for that was what she was—to calm her ire and propitiate her favor.

The thought made him smile. He checked his watch; perhaps the botanic gardens might still be open.

-32-

-32-

The thread was shiny and tough, made of material he had never seen in the forest. The people who lived in the village used it to catch animals from the lake and the river. The first few times he had seen them doing it, he’d thought there must be some kind of sorcery involved in how the fish had leapt out of the water and thrashed about, suspended in air. But then he had noticed the thread glinting in the sun, and he had understood: it was just that it had no color, like the sky on an overcast day.