“That’s why they had us cut up vipers into Theriac,” Jerome said, as if something finally made sense. “They wanted the blood.”
“Yes.”
“But you just said Theriac doesn’t work,” Mircea pointed out.
“It doesn’t. Drinking immune blood, even assuming it could survive the cooking process, would do a human no good at all. The digestive process would destroy it. But if someone didn’t have that problem. . . .”
“Someone like a vampire?” Mircea asked.
The man smiled. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Your, ah, bodily functions, are completely different from ours, especially in the absorption of blood.”
“So a vampire could take an antidote,” Bezio said, frowning, as if he didn’t see where this got them.
“Or make one,” Mircea said quietly. He looked at the mage. “And if the . . . animal . . . in question, the one slowly building up an immunity to a toxin, took too large of a dose? Or took them too close together?”
“Well, then.” The mage smiled. “You’d have to get yourself another animal, wouldn’t you?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“What a huge waste of time,” Bezio said, as they came in the kitchen door.
“And of shoe leather,” Jerome said tiredly. “I can’t believe we had to walk all the way back.”
“Not a damned gondola in Venice tonight,” Bezio agreed.
Cook and Lucca were by the fire, where something was bubbling in a pot. “You didn’t find him?” she asked, turning to look at them.
“Oh, we found him,” Bezio said heavily. “That’s why it was a waste!”
“Huh. Place has a decent reputation.”
“For what?” Jerome demanded, sprawling at the table.
“Charms, poultices, love potions . . .”
“And a little something to take care of things when love goes wrong,” Jerome added sourly.
“He asked about poisons,” she jerked a thumb at Mircea. “They’re good at that.”
“If that’s good, I’d hate to see bad,” Bezio said, peering hopefully into the cupboard where she kept the wine.
Wine came to the house in big barrels that Paulo kept under lock and key. But cook always had some on hand, for soups and stews, and a nightcap for herself—and for them, when they could find it. But she’d gotten better at hiding it lately, having learned of their thieving ways. And Bezio came up empty-handed.
Mircea strolled casually toward the pantry and she rolled her eyes at him. And stuck a spoon of something in Lucca’s mouth. “Is that good?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Doesn’t need salt?”
He shook his head.
“All right then. Tell the rest to wash up and come help themselves. I’m not waiting on you lot.”
He nodded and ran out, and Jerome glanced at the pot. “Is that dinner?”
“Why, you hungry?” she asked sardonically.
“No, but this place is usually covered with food by now.” He looked around at the pristine tabletop, the unused cutlery, and the massive frying pan gleaming on its nail by the fireplace.
And then back at the pot of what smelled like bean soup that appeared to be the sole item on the menu tonight.
“No dinner party,” the cook confirmed.
“But what if a client gets hungry?”
“No clients, either. Everybody’s out.”
“Out where?”
“Where do you think?” she asked, taking off her apron.
“I don’t think anything—”
“As we always expected,” Bezio put in, peering into a crock where they’d been lucky before.
But not this time.
Jerome made a face at him. “—since we’ve been out, too,” he finished.
“You didn’t hear?” Cook started grinning.
“Hear what?”
“The challenge is tonight. They moved it up.”
“What?” Mircea had been shifting sacks of rice about in the pantry, but at that he came to the door.
“Tonight?” Jerome repeated. “But I thought it was tomorrow—”
“Everybody else did, too,” she told him. “Makes sense, last night and all. But I guess they didn’t want to interfere with the closing ceremonies—”
Or they didn’t want to give the senator more time to prepare, Mircea thought grimly.
“—so they called it for tonight. Teach you to run off.”
“Everybody went?” Jerome asked, looking stunned.
“Mostly.” She shrugged. “And the rest have the night off.”
“But . . . but how are they getting in? That’s got to be, well, everybody’s going to want to be there—”
“I don’t want to be there,” Bezio said, as the cook shrugged.
“Oh, of course you do,” Jerome said irritably.
“No, I don’t. And neither do you. If the senator loses, it’ll be depressing, and if the consul does . . . you really think his supporters are going to take that lying down?” He shook his head. “This could blow sky high. I’m good here.”
“Me, too,” the cook agreed, and plucked the decanter of wine Mircea had found out of his hands. “I have plans.”
She toddled off, a small wizened figure in a lumpy black dress, and Bezio grinned. “You ever wonder what her plans are? I mean, she knew about love potions . . .”
“Whatever they are, they’re probably more exciting than ours,” Jerome said, sounding aggrieved. “I wonder if we could—”
“No.”
“But there might be standing room—”
“No.”
“We won’t know unless we—”
“No. Listen to papa.”
“You’re not my papa.”
“I’m old enough to be.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” Jerome snapped.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.” He frowned at Mircea. “I thought you were getting us drinks.”
Mircea sighed and went back to the pantry.
“Get extra,” Bezio called after him. “I have the strangest taste in my mouth.”
“Your fault for being crazy enough to try anything in that place,” Jerome said grumpily.
“You bought it.”
“Not by choice. And you’d think people who deal in alchemy could make decent wine!”
“Wine making isn’t alchemy; it’s art,” Bezio argued, getting down a trio of mugs, then sitting at the table and putting his feet up on the wood pile. “And none of those creatures tonight would know anything about that.”
“I told you they were creepy,” Jerome reminded him.
Bezio nodded. “Did you see the guy with the bones?” He shivered.
“I thought that Hieronimo, or whatever his name was, was worse. Talking about how to poison people, like it was nothing!”
“Crazy, like I said. Not to mention that he didn’t make any damned sense.”
“He did to me,” Mircea said, coming back in with a decanter of decent red that had been well hidden inside a sack of beans.
“Really?” Bezio stuck out a mug. “Enlighten us.”
“He offered a possible explanation for what happened to Sanuito,” Mircea reminded him.
“Guess I must have missed it.”
“He implied that someone could have used Sanuito’s blood to make a workable version of Theriac. A vampire version—”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. But if they did, it might explain what he was doing with that pot of antidote. Maybe he was trying to hint to me about what was happening—”
“First of all, bollocks,” Bezio said. “And secondly, bollocks.” He drank wine.
Jerome sniffed his mug dubiously. “Does this smell all right to you?”
Mircea inhaled. Sharp, fruity, maybe a little musty, but Cook sometimes forgot where she hid the decanter so it could have been in there a while. “Yes?”