“I cannot apologize enough.” Valetti’s hand shook as he set his teacup into its saucer. “Police were knocking on doors until the sun was practically risen again. I am so sorry for the disturbance, I assure you this is one of the quietest neighborhoods in Venice. Disruptions such as this simply do not happen in this area. The families are old and well respected. The police, some of them, do not respect the old ways the way they should.”
There was an odd note of privilege in Valetti’s voice that I hadn’t heard before, layered with a genteel outrage, as if the normal course of business for the police was simply something not to be borne by this neighborhood in particular. I eyed him over my espresso, my third of the still-early morning. “How well did you know Signore Balestri?”
“Not well, not well at all,” Valetti dismissed with a casual wave. “I knew him in the way of neighbors. We were friendly, of course. He was a part of the neighborhood, and we respected each other’s position in the city.”
“He was Connected,” I said bluntly. “A magician.”
“Ah, well, we all in Venice are Connected to some degree or another, don’t you think?” Valetti’s smile had turned a bit condescending. Interesting. “As to being a magician, well… Signore Balestri liked to style himself in the mode of a pure-blooded magician, yes. However, he was more, how would you say, grandfathered into the role. His family was one that had long held a position of power in the senate, and that accorded him some measure of respect.”
“How many people make up this senate thing?” Nikki asked.
Another hand wave. “We have a long and glorious history of which we are perhaps a bit too proud. But I’m afraid the reputation of Fabrizio Balestri did no favors to his family legacy. He was known as a debaucher who would use what little Connected ability he had to manipulate the unwitting into purchasing a string of designer technoceuticals he’d manufactured in boutique supply.” He glanced up, catching my confused expression. “It’s become quite fashionable in Europe, and arguably in Venice for quite a bit longer. We do tend to set the trends rather than follow them.”
“Of course,” I murmured, but Valetti either didn’t catch my sarcasm or didn’t understand it. He continued on.
“Obviously, setting oneself up as a drug kingpin requires a great deal of work and organization. So even those of us who have the means and the capability of recognizing true magical compounds when we see them, and who could then synthesize them into distributable form, it is too much, you see? Yet it is tempting to step into this scene at least in part, if only to provide a glimpse of what’s possible to those who cannot achieve psychic greatness on their own.”
“This city is filled with humanitarians,” Nikki muttered.
“So, Balestri was one of these boutique suppliers,” I said, turning the phrase around in my mind. I had to admit, I liked it. “You make just enough product for a very limited distribution. Your advertisement is word of mouth, and your clientele is very exclusive.” It wasn’t so different from Leonardo and Rocky Mountain Ricky when I thought about it. They were the end of a very long supply chain, but in their own little neck of the woods, they could run their business however they saw fit. And catering to a group of vetted, proven regulars, was a better business model no matter what the product.
“Indeed,” Valetti said. “You can see the appeal, and Signore Balestri proved not to be able to resist it. I cannot fault the man for that. If it weren’t for his other flaws, it would have been a benign indiscretion. Nothing more. But he insisted on going further, pushing the boundaries of taste and decorum.” He sighed with false regret. “It’s perhaps no wonder that he drew the attention of some senior dark practitioner, no doubt irritated that he was moving in on his turf, as they say.”
I exchanged a quick glance with Nikki. “Wait a minute. You think this death is a one-off? You don’t think it has anything to do with threats that are facing the magicians in the city?”
“Signore Balestri? Oh, I can’t even imagine. And if so, then allow me to be the first to say how terribly sorry I am for bringing you all this distance, and how even sorrier I am that I called in a favor from Signore Stone to make it happen. Because if the threat that I believe is stalking Venice’s canals and byways is truly so indiscriminate as to strike down Fabrizio Balestri, then it is not only the elite who have the issue. In fact, it is not the elite at all. We have nothing to worry about.”
I eyed my espresso with dismay. Valetti was making less sense as the morning went on, not more.
Fortunately, Nikki was still tracking him. “You’re saying that if this was the work of the butcher of Venice, he suddenly isn’t as scary a perpetrator, because he’s not targeting the top-level magicians anymore.”
“He could as easily strike a common prostitute next and it would no longer be a surprise. Not that that wouldn’t be a horrible turn of events, of course,” Valetti said hurriedly. “I merely mean that the method to dispatch such a criminal suddenly would move from a pair of tweezers to a hammer.”
One thing about Valetti, he certainly had a distinctive turn of phrase. I debated asking him about the Red King, but hesitated. There was something more to Balestri than Valetti was letting on—the man had been a high-level Connected, even if all those systems had gone dark within him by the time I’d reached him. And he had a recipe book. Why was Valetti downplaying him so much?
Valetti looked up as a new man entered the room, a staffer who held out his phone with a gloved hand. “The prelate, Count Valetti,” he said quietly. “He is quite ready for you, at your convenience. He wishes you to call him directly.”
“Excellent.” Valetti beamed as he rose. He turned to us. “I’m pleased to share we will have all your questions answered in short order this morning and be able to put your mind to rest regarding Signore Balestri’s unfortunate death as being any part of our larger question. The prelate is in a unique position to assist in our efforts. We’ll go to see him now. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll make this call and then meet you in the foyer?”
Without waiting for us to respond, Valetti tapped on his phone and held the unit up to his ear, quickly striding away. The phone call connected, and a murmured wave of melodic Italian drifted behind him on the lilac-scented breeze.
“There are so many things wrong with what we just heard, I’m having trouble keeping up,” Nikki observed.
“I’m right there with you.”
We stood as well, keeping our voices low as Valetti’s staff came in to clear away the breakfast dishes. We were already dressed for the day, so we headed immediately down to the foyer. It was a small but elegantly appointed room, and we were more or less alone except for the doorman, who, not too surprisingly, hovered near the door.
Nikki sidled closer to me. Today, she wore a feminine Italian business suit in deep black, the jacket cinched at the waist. On her feet were four-inch pink leather platform heels, or, as Nikki liked to refer to them, walking shoes. “I asked Council HQ to give me the lowdown on this prelate guy. Simon was all over it.”
“I can imagine.” Simon was one of the newest members of the Council, a former addict and gray hat who had ascended to the position of Fool of the Arcana Council in the late 1980s after he’d cleaned up. In addition to adding a certain looseness of style that the Council sorely needed, he also was a tech wizard of remarkable skill. He kept the Council fully wired and was able to track nearly anyone through the various iterations of the internet that circled the globe, dark web and arcane web included. “How deep did he have to go?”
“Not all that deep. Ol’ Prelate Patrick had plenty of information available from the most basic of Google searches.”
“Please tell me his name really isn’t Patrick.”
“It’s not.” She grinned. “But that sounds better then Prelate Alfonse. Anyway, the prelate has been custodian of the Casino of Spirits for the past decade. It’s a quiet job, given over mostly to maintaining the research library and allowing tours every so often. The library is for members of any established religious order, and it contains texts on world religions that are considered to be quite extensive.”
“A haunted house seems like an odd place for a library.”
“From what Simon was able to gather, its relative remoteness and less than ideal location was chosen quite deliberately. The church didn’t want to give the arcane texts more power than they really deserved by outright banning them, and they were too well-known to simply be destroyed. So shutting them up in a tiny little building which is difficult to access, not to mention haunted, tends to cut down on the curiosity seekers. And it became known that those who frequented the Casino of Spirits were put on a watch list by their sponsoring order, which also helped cut down on patronage.”
“A watch list seems a lot worse than your standard library fine.”
“You’re not kidding. It doesn’t stop inquiries, though. Most of the searches tend to be along the lines of identifying specific demons in a spiritual practice’s deep mythology. And perhaps not surprisingly, there’s been a noticeable uptick in those types of searches in the last few weeks. Simon suggested that the prelate might have some questions for you on that topic.”
I lifted my brows. “The prelate knows I’m involved with the rash of demons that’s hit the planet?”
Nikki snorted. “Honey, everyone north of the equator knows you’re involved with that. But bottom line, the prelate himself isn’t so much an enigma as boring as shit. Started out as a Catholic priest in the requisite tiny little town in Italy, moved up to becoming an administrator at the Vatican, ran afoul of some church staff realignment—though it seems a benign issue, not that he caught the pope’s robes on fire or anything—and he got put on spook duty. That was ten years ago, and he’s been here ever since. He’s allowed himself to let his freak flag fly a bit more in the subsequent years, but only among close friends.”
I grimaced. “That’s all Simon could find?”
“That’s all we’ve got so far, yup. Simon texted me some family stuff that might have bearing—Alfonse’s family used to live in Venice during the Middle Ages, a fair number of them priests. Then again, a fair number of everybody’s families seemed like they were priests in the Middle Ages.”
“Beats working in the fields, I guess.”
“And you never needed to worry about what to wear.”
Valetti chose that moment to interrupt our conversation, and we were out the door and onto his private pier a few moments later, where a small motorboat waited for us.
“It is a beautiful day, and there are so many tourists in the city. This is easier than walking, especially when we get into open water.” He smiled with his usual self-deprecation. “And, too, if we are followed, we will know it much more quickly in a boat, yes?”
This made perfect sense, and I certainly didn’t mind the open-air transportation. Today, none of us were wearing masks. However, by the time we entered the Grand Canal, I realized that our lack of costumes put us so much in the minority, I began to feel seriously underdressed.
As we left the canals and moved into the shallow Venetian lagoon, I was gripped by an undeniable apprehension. I scowled down at the water, reminding myself that it was only a few meters deep. Deep enough to drown in, sure, but it wasn’t like we were boating over the Mariana Trench. I didn’t really have anything to worry about. And I could swim, technically, though that was a recent development. I didn’t want to test that skill out right now to see if it remained with me.
Pushing those thoughts away, I turned to Valetti. “Carnevale starts tonight, right? The big parade or whatever?”
“The opening ceremony is tonight, and the parade is tomorrow. Piazza San Marco will be overrun for the next two weeks. The balls commence at the same time, both the public ones and the more private ones.” He gave me what could only be a pitying glance. “I can get you tickets into some of the events, but some, I’m afraid, are invitation only and quite exclusive.”
“I’ll try to conceal my disappointment.”
Once again, he didn’t seem to understand the sarcasm for what it was and instead nodded encouragingly. Beside me, Nikki turned away to stare out over the lagoon, and I watched her shoulders tremble with quiet laughter.
We arrived at the Casino of Spirits a half hour later, Valetti making good on his intention to ensure we were not being tailed. The building itself was not all that prepossessing, a thought that made me smirk, though it was pretty in its own way: a three-story rose-brick row house rising in front of us, with a view that gave way to a private dock and a more traditional church-like building plus several other smaller structures on the far side.
Standing on the dock were two men, both in coordinating priest’s robes, both looking like they routinely accepted visitors on the front dock, though we were the only boat venturing close.
“Why aren’t the others trying this?” I asked, peering over at the tourists who were staring at us, cameras poised. I turned away, once more regretting that we weren’t wearing masks.
“Because their pilots know they will be refused. You come to the private dock of the Casino of the Spirits by invitation only. Otherwise, there is a public entrance at the front.” Valetti gave a dismissive wave. I was beginning to think dismissive waves were the Venetian salute.
I turned my attention to the men waiting to greet us. The prelate in his emerald-green robes stood taller and straighter than the black-frocked priest beside him, thin and angular beneath robes that seemed a size or two too big. His face was gaunt and unsmiling as we pulled up, and I waited until Nikki had clambered out of the boat and turned to me before letting myself be hauled onto the dock. When my feet were on more or less steady ground, I turned to the prelate.
“Justice Wilde,” he said without preamble, his hard gaze narrowing on me intently. “You’ve been busy.”