beside her dying sister, when her hatred for Pantaleone blotted out everything else.
But how about her own life? Would the snake show up to save itself?
She had to lie there and wait. The men in the front seat were laughing. The sound of the honking horn and the engine noise came in through the vents of the van, and once there was music, like a gigantic carnival. Maybe they were in Times Square.
Now and then, when they stopped, Rosa kicked both feet against the side wall of the van with all her might. Again and again, until her tights were hanging around her calves in scraps and the skin underneath wasn’t in much better shape. But nothing she did in here would attract any attention outside. This was Manhattan. No one was going to notice a clattering sound in a delivery van driving by.
In her helplessness, she bit on the rubber ball until her jaws ached. Her pulse was racing, but the Lamia in her was not impressed. It might have been putting Rosa to the test.
Her ability to change shape could have been a gift. Instead it just confirmed what Rosa already knew. She was different. Not like ordinary people, not like the other Arcadians. Her head was simply too messed up.
She stretched out full length on her back, swallowed sour saliva, breathed more slowly, and waited to see what would happen.
At last the van stopped, and this time she heard the doors of the driver’s cab being opened. More voices joined those of the first two men. They were expected.
It was bitterly cold in the back of the van.
Footsteps crunched in the snow outside. The street noises had died down a good deal. They weren’t in the middle of city traffic anymore. Maybe this was someone’s yard.
When the rear door was opened, she saw the men’s outlines, with gnarled branches behind them. Leafless trees, made visible in the darkness by the red back lights of the van. A park. Maybe the park.
One of the men climbed into the back while another leveled a shotgun at her. They knew about it. They were making doubly sure.
“Same as before,” said the man in the van. “Only a girl.”
Her stapler was in her jacket back in the club, and they had taken her cell phone away from her.
She heard Michele’s voice outside. “Then give her the injection now.”
She screamed in spite of the rubber ball when the man rolled her roughly over on her stomach, raised her skirt, and dug a needle into one buttock. Then they were holding her. The hands of strange men on her skin. She had no memory of the events of sixteen months ago, but her body recognized the situation at once. She began kicking and struggling, hit the man on the chin with her elbow, defended herself as best she could.
It made no difference. He hauled her out into the open air and set her on her feet in the snow. Someone undid the strap at the back of her head and took the ball out of her mouth.
“Assholes!” she spat.
There were four men, including Michele Carnevare and the bouncer, obviously now promoted to bodyguard. Behind them in the snow stood a black jeep with mirrored windows. Both vehicles had stopped beside a wide pathway through the park, near empty benches and overflowing trash cans. There was light behind a nearby avenue of trees, as if searchlights had been set up there. Indistinct voices came from that direction; figures were moving around. Was there any point in screaming to draw attention to herself? But Michele would never have made her get out in this spot if the people over there hadn’t been in his pay.
“What do you want with me?” she asked him, ignoring the other three.
“And what do you want with Valerie?” he replied. “I wasn’t lying when I said she’d disappeared. I’d very much like to know where she is myself.”
“So?”
“Did she have anything to do with the murders?”
“What murders?”
He gave her face a resounding slap. Her head flew to one side, her cheek burning. When she looked at him again, all she saw was his dimples. Alessandro’s dimples.
“What murders?” she asked again.
This time it was the bouncer who moved to hit her. Michele held his arm back. “That’ll do.”
She laughed at the bald-headed man. “Go fuck yourself.” She could taste blood in her mouth, but she held his angry gaze until Michele sent him back to the jeep. Only then did he