Starling (93 page)

her eyes as she thought about Piero tasting Minerva’s blood. Sickened and angry, she ducked through the doorway into the next room.
She realized she had been right, that they were back where she and
Falco had broken in a couple of months ago—the room with the surgical instruments and the dissected dog. Thankfully, the big table
was empty. No sheet. No decomposing animal corpse.
“I need a few minutes,” she said. “The Book of the Eternal Rose
is here somewhere. I have to find it.”
Falco cursed under his breath. “I will not let us die because of
your obsession with a book.”
“I’m not leaving without it.”
“Fine. Let’s find it.” Falco strode across the room and yanked
open a tall wooden wardrobe. He started flinging the clean linens
and bits of medical equipment onto the ground.
Cass stood behind him, looking for the book. It wasn’t there. She
went to the next wardrobe. Mortars. Crucibles. Measuring tapes. No
book. She crossed the room to the long counter.
And then, a creak of metal. A door opening. Voices. A woman
and a man. Belladonna and Piero had returned!
Cass’s blood pounded in her chest and ears, her pulse almost
drowning out the sound of approaching footsteps.
Mannaggia!
There was no time to think.
“Help me with this.” She ran to the table in the center of the room.
Breathing heavily, she leaned against it and pushed. Falco joined her,
grunting from the exertion. Together they forced the heavy table
right up against the door. Just in time. Fists pounded from the other
side.
“Cassandra. We know you’re in there.” Piero.
“You cannot escape,” Belladonna added.
Cass looked wildly around the room, feeling trapped, feeling
more like a caged bird than she had ever felt in her entire life. “Tell
me she’s wrong,” she said breathlessly.
“She’s wrong.” Falco headed to the nearest window. But they
couldn’t go out the way they had originally broken in so many weeks
ago. Now the glass was boarded over on the outside. He bent down
and began pawing through the medical equipment, looking for something that might break the glass.
“What about one of these?” Cass suggested. There were several
ceramic jars lined up on the counter. The first one was labeled “balsam.”
“Good idea.” Falco dumped the pine-scented liquid onto the
floor, crossed the room, and slammed the container against the nearest window.
It didn’t break.
Cass emptied a larger, sturdier crock. That was when she saw it.
Locked away in a cabinet, behind distorted glass—a thick leather
sheaf of papers with a six-petaled flower design on the outside.
“Falco,” she breathed. “I’ve found it.” But he didn’t hear her.
Cass emptied another ceramic jar onto the floor and slammed it
against the front of the cabinet. The container cracked, but the glass
held.
In the corridor, Piero or Belladonna began ramming the door
with something. The table wouldn’t hold them back if they broke
through the top of the door.
Cass glanced mournfully at the Book of the Eternal Rose but then
turned away in search of a weapon. There would be no chance for