As Nico spoke, his words tickled something in the back of Jo’s mind—something she’d read in the recreation room months ago about a Julia around Nico’s time, the mistress of some pope. But the paragon of goodness and purity Nico was describing surely couldn’t be the same woman. There had to have been dozens of Julias in Florence back then. . .
Nico continued to speak, and the words, alight with the flame of love kept alive after all this time, was a beacon that lured her mind toward an oasis of calm in the storm that bellowed just outside of the Society’s existence.
Chapter 8
Waiting Game
JO WATCHED NICO paint until her eyes were bloodshot and he was rubbing stiffness from his fingers.
She’d stolen a heavy blanket from his bed somewhere around the time the conversation was dying, and had bundled herself up in it. It wasn’t that the room was cold, but that shefeltcold. Jo felt as if she’d been pitched out to the vacuum of space. The only tether she had to the world was the sound of Nico’s voice and, when that gave out, his brush.
At about the four-hour mark, Jo wished she could sleep. But it refused to come to her. No matter how much her mind begged for the relief, her body refused. So she settled for unfocusing her eyes and pushing her mind into a void until Nico stepped away from the easel, stretching, indicating that he was finished (for now).
“I should pick up a hobby.” It was the first time either of them had broken the silence in—Jo tapped her watch—three hours.
“A hobby? Seems like a good idea. What would you do?” He swirled his brush in a jar of mud-colored water.
“I don’t know, maybe you could teach me how to paint? It seems cathartic.” Jo stood, folded up Nico’s quilt, and walked over to set it on his bed. Not for the first time, Jo couldn’t help but admire the man’s room; the homey messiness and the warm colors mirrored the half-finished canvases splattered in paint and ink.
“I’m afraid we wouldn’t have enough time for that.” He placed the first brush in a different jar, and started the process on the second.
“Don’t we have eternity?”
“I’m afraid,” he said again slowly, “we wouldn’t have enough time for that.”
“Oh,ha ha, very funny.” Jo rolled her eyes, walking over to the canvas.
It was further along now, the streaks of color more obviously swirling into the silhouette of a woman. A beautiful woman, young and smiling and caught in laughter. It was breathtaking, even without Nico’s magic Jo’s eyes were drawn to it and only it.
In many ways, the Society was a shame. Niccolo de’Este would never receive the acclaim he so rightly warranted. His pieces would never win awards or hang in museums; he would never be compared to Pollock or Van Gogh or Murakami. Instead, he would only ever be appreciated by a sparse group of seven—most of whom had questionable taste. It was far, far less than someone of his talent deserved.
Jo could already feel the tell-tale ache in her heart growing thicker, lecherous—the same ache that seemed to thrive on realizations directly linked to her new reality. No matter how accepting she was of it, there was no helping the occasional feelings of loss that cropped up even still. For all intents and purposes, Nico was only nineteen. He should be studying art on a full ride at some university somewhere (or whatever the Renaissance equivalent was). He should be selling pieces by the dozens at local art shows. He should be living, just likesheshould be living. But their lives had been taken, all in exchange for the realities of people who would never know of their involvement, their existence.
Just like magic itself, it wasn’t fair. Jo sucked in a breath and thought with vehement sorrow that, even if they had all agreed to join the Society in their own ways for their own reasons, the prices they paid didn’t seem to balance out.
“I tease,” Nico said, oblivious to the torrent of thoughts that consumed her steps over to him and the easel. “Of course I would love to teach you to paint.”
His voice was light, the banter easy, serving as a reminder that there was nothing she could do. She wasn’t going to waste her time wallowing in righteous self-pity. “Fair” was hardly a driving factor in the whirring cogs and gears of the universe’s clock, wasn’t it? The members of the Society no more deserved their fates than the citizens of Japan deserved theirs, but that didn’t make any of it any less real.
“Well, you may be right, a different hobby might suit me better.”
“Then we shall find it together.” Nico gave his hands one more wipe on his apron, though the motion was hopeless. The garment had just as much pigment on it as had soaked into his skin. His expression shifted, and there was only a second before he spoke, but a second was long enough for Jo to fill with dread at what she knew he’d say next. “For now, however, I think we should return to the rest of them.”
A flash of panic ran down Jo’s spine at the thought, the sudden realization brought her back to the reality that existed beyond the reprieve that had been Nico’s room with a fierce and sobering shock. They’d been sitting for nearly six hours. Had the majority of the carnage already settled? Did the volcano, god forbid, erupt again while they’d selfishly escaped their unwritten duty of bearing witness to the world’s horrors?
Surely someone was still in the common area watching the news. The onset of the desire to know exactly what had transpired over the last couple of hours was swift and almost visceral, as if she was now personally connected to the damage and lives lost. Whether it was Takako’s legitimate association, or her own vicarious attachment, she felt instantly guilty for not keeping up to date.
“You’re right. I want to see what’s happened.”
With that, Jo and Nico wordlessly made their way down the hall. Not unexpectedly, there wasn’t just one person sitting on the couch in front of the television, but three.
Eslar leaned forward, elbows on his knees and chin resting on his laced fingers. He seemed to be almost unnaturally engrossed in the news (how he had the stamina completely eluded her), analyzing what appeared to be new footage with a frown. Jo wondered if he’d even left the couch once. Samson sat to his side, occasionally whispering things in one of the elf’s long ears. Wayne was an island at the far end of the couch, his grim expression warding off company. No one seemed to notice Jo and Nico’s arrival, and as she shifted her gaze from the men to the television, it wasn’t hard to understand why.
Most of the broadcast seemed to circulate between reporters’ comments about the carnage—of which there was a near indescribable amount—and actual footage of it. Mt. Fuji seemed to have finally settled. According to the scientists (for whatever their assessments were still worth) there were no further eruptions expected in the foreseeable future. That didn’t stop the continual oozing of lava and thick blanket of ash that now seemed to cover the globe. It was hard to believe, even harder to hope, that Mt. Fuji would stay dormant for long, not when its eruption had been so unexpected and violent.
Even if Mt. Fuji never erupted again, the catastrophe had already left its permanent mark, not just on Japan, but on the entire world.
“Look what the cat dragged in.” Wayne noticed their presence, his dry remark cutting Jo from the constricting tethers of grief that had already begun to form between her and the television. “We’d wondered where you two had gone.”
