Arcadia Burns

THE SERUM


WITHOUT SAYING A WORD, Alessandro followed her down the central aisle between the linen-wrapped bundles that dangled from the rails. Now and then he touched one of the bags, then ran his fingers down it as he walked along, but he didn’t open any of them. Before they reached the rampart of plastic containers, Rosa took his hand.

At the sight of the containers he stopped walking. “So many,” he whispered. In the cold air, the words came out of his mouth as white vapor. “Are there any Panthera among them?”

“Let’s just say they’re not only mink and sable.”

She led him around the stacked containers to the metal safe on the back wall of the freezer. Everything was exactly as she and Iole had left it. The metal doors were open; the two fur coats lay on the floor in front of them.

Rosa went up to the safe. “Did you bring what I asked you—” She stopped herself when she turned to Alessandro.

He was crouching down beside the coat that Iole had been wearing. Only now did Rosa noticed a faint pattern of leopard spots shimmering through the dark brown of the fur. Alessandro had picked up one sleeve from the floor and was stroking it, lost in thought.

She swore quietly. “Panthers are—”

“Black leopards.” He didn’t look up at her.

She knelt down beside him. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, taking his face in both hands and making him look her in the eye. “If there were any way I could undo it…”

“I know.”

“Our families have been at odds forever. More people have died than…” She paused for a moment. “Than these,” she finished.

“That’s all right.”

“No, nothing’s all right.” She jerked her head at the metal safe. “There they are. God knows how many vials.”

He stood up and went over to the shelves with the little glass flasks lined up on them. The liquid inside shone golden. In the lowest compartment lay plastic syringes in sterile wrappings and bundles of sealed cannulas, along with two syringes like the kind used by diabetics for their insulin.

“Do you have it with you?” she asked.

With a nod, he put his hand in his jeans pocket, brought out a little leather case, and opened it. Inside, there were several vials that looked exactly like those in the cupboard. “This is one of the vials from the Castello. Cesare had his men inject us with the same thing back there. And I had a few with me at boarding school in the States, for emergencies.” He had already told her that, months ago, and she had remembered it after Iole led her to the cupboard.

“You said at the time that the prescription was handed down by the first Arcadians. At the time of their downfall.”

“That’s what Tano always said, anyway.”

“And he was given the serum by Cesare?”

“No, the other way around. Tano got hold of it somewhere. I always assumed it came from a dealer. Cesare kept it in a safe in his office, but Tano had a key of his own. I found it among his things.”

“Michele injected me with a dose of it that night in Central Park. He said the stuff came from Tano.” Rosa took one of the vials out of his hand. “May I?” She placed it beside the others in the metal cupboard. Outwardly there was no visible difference. A yellow fluid in a transparent vial.

“There’s a laboratory that used to work for Florinda,” she said. “It supplied immunizations for the refugees she trafficked into Europe from Lampedusa. We should be able to find out from that lab if it’s the same serum.”

“Yes, probably.”

“You think so, too?”

He nodded thoughtfully.

She took Alessandro’s ampoule off the shelf again, went over to the containers, and looked back at the rows of furs in their linen bags. “If they wanted to take their furs, they had to make sure that they didn’t—”

“Change back into human form,” he quietly ended her sentence. “They had to see that they stayed in animal shape even after death.” He seemed pale, but perhaps it was the chill in here. “The video that Cesare showed us, all the Arcadians in cages and unable to change back again…he said that was the doing of TABULA.”

“Trevini claims that a man called Apollonio supplied furs to my grandmother. Does that name mean anything to you?”

“Never heard it before.”

“He thinks this Apollonio may have been one of the members of TABULA himself. Or was at least in close contact with them. Could be that TABULA sold the skins of the Arcadians they’d abducted for their experiments to Costanza through Apollonio. Anyway, I guess she also got the serum from him.”

“But if it comes from TABULA…” Alessandro began. He stopped, then asked, “Do you think Tano got it from them as well?”

“Cesare hated TABULA,” she said doubtfully.

Alessandro gave a bitter laugh. “He was terrified of the organization. All the same, I wouldn’t put it past Tano to be making deals behind his father’s back.”

Rosa leaned against the ice-cold plastic containers. “Let’s assume that Tano really was secretly in touch with TABULA. Then he could have gotten the serum from them and passed some of it on to Cesare and maybe also to Michele. You said you thought it came from a dealer. But suppose, instead, he was the dealer himself. Suppose Tano sold the serum under the table to Arcadians like Michele, so that they’d be able to stop their own transformations—and other people’s.”

“It’s possible.”

“Did he ask you for money? For the serum that you took to the States with you?” Alessandro shook his head. “I just had to promise not to tell Cesare about them. Or my parents.”

“And did you do as he asked?”

“Sure. Tano was the first person to tell me about the transformations. I was actually grateful to him at the time.” He obviously wasn’t happy with the memory. “I really wish I could…wash myself clean of them all. Can you understand that? Tano, Cesare, my father…all the lies, all the things they did. I wish there were some way simply to eradicate it all.”

“I feel the same way. Florinda lied to me; even Zoe did. You and I have been used for other people’s purposes all along. And it never stops.”

He put his arms around her again. “If it gets to be too much…if we can’t take any more of it…we can get out of here. And then I won’t mind what becomes of all this in Sicily. None of it matters as much as you.”

His kiss warmed her, even in the chilly air of the freezer. They held each other close, she smelled his hair, his skin, and at that moment she’d have gone anywhere with him, even to the end of the world. Corny and sentimental, sure, but right now that was what she needed. The biggest, stickiest, sweetest helping of corny sentimentality since the invention of dessert. She wouldn’t have minded if it rained rose petals, or if Iole came out from behind the containers playing a violin. Plenty of time for indigestion tomorrow.

Only now did she realize that she was still holding the serum he had brought with him. Slowly, she raised the vial to face level, and as she paused for breath, she glanced at the syringes in the cupboard. His eyes followed hers, and then the corners of his mouth twitched.

She could feel her pulse beating faster in her throat. “Well, it must have its uses, right?”

His hand stroked the back of her head and stopped gently at the nape of her neck. “For a quarter of an hour?”

“Sometimes it lasts twenty minutes.”

“Not exactly a long time.”

“Better than nothing.”

Alessandro’s laughter was like a bright flame leaping into the air.