“And you are special for having wielded it this long. This weapon is not known to stay so consistently with one master. You have pleased it, even when you’ve tainted it.”
“Maybe it liked being tainted.”
“Indeed.” She frowned, then bent down and placed a kiss on the blade, as she’d done on my palm. “May yours be the last undead life it takes, the last cold blood it drinks.”
As she handed it back, the weapon felt warm, the way it often did when it was ready for a fight. No normal sword craved battle the way this one did. For the first time I wondered if it was just a sword, or if there was something or someone else making it do what it did. I slipped it back into the scabbard and waited for Calliope to meet my eyes again.
“So you came to ask a question. Better ask it.”
“What are the Seven Sisters?”
“Not what, who,” she corrected.
I hadn’t thought we were looking for people. The way Parker and Bill had discussed the Sisters, it sounded like an object. Or several objects. They’d used the phrase goods.
“Who are they, then?”
“Who were they.” As always, it was a matter of asking Calliope the right questions, only now she was feeding them to me.
“Who were they?”
“The Seven Sisters were the wives of a great Italian alchemist named Giuseppe Mastropietro. These are not the same Seven Sisters of the Pleiades mythos, though there is often some confusion there, naturally. Giuseppe’s wives were all young, beautiful noblewomen. This was a time when alchemy was not mocked, but revered, and the families of these women believed they were destined to live lives of wealth and immortality. The ultimate goal of alchemy, as you know, is the ability to create gold and an elixir of eternal life.
“What many do not understand was the terrible outcome of the failed experiments these alchemists performed. Each of Giuseppe’s wives was little more than a lab rat to him. The philosopher’s stones he attempted to create—vessels for supposed eternal youth and immortality—were never quite right. They did not kill the women, but turned them into monsters, more living dead than truly alive. He would pretend they had passed naturally and would soon take a new wife. And so this continued for almost fifty years.
“It was his eighth and final wife, Marcela, who learned the truth, though history only claims he had seven wives. With Marcela, the experiment was a success. He created a true philosopher’s stone and the key to eternal life. But when he tried to take it from her, she killed him. She killed the other wives, as well, which was a great mercy at that point, since they were prisoners in their own bodies. She left their home in Napoli and took with her Giuseppe’s seven failed attempts at immortality.”
Marcela.
My heart stopped as the story sank in, and I glanced to Holden, who had been with me in the biker bar.
“What happened to the seven failed stones?” he asked.
“Over time, she sold them off. They had the appearance of fine jewelry, and as you can imagine, a woman with immortality in front of her comes to encounter expenses. It took her hundreds of years, but the necklaces were sold off and scattered. Only, recently, a young curator became quite interested in the gruesome story of Giuseppe, and has seen fit to bring all the necklaces together for a display.”
Of course. Of course. It all made sense now. Profound, hideous sense. Marcela, the biker bitch, was the same Marcela who had been granted immortality by her foolish alchemist husband however many centuries earlier. And now that she had an opportunity to reclaim her lost goods, she was bound and determined to get them, whatever the cost.
“You said the other necklaces made his wives like the living dead,” Holden said. “Is that how she is able to do what she does?”
Calliope shook her head. “Necromancy predates Giuseppe’s experiments. It is older than modern society, and it will continue to be practiced long after she is dead and gone herself. I believe, though, her connection with the other wives may have made her better able to find those like her, those who can manipulate the dead. And being around his other wives, who were not alive but not dead, may have also been what helped her understand her gift. Regardless, the necklaces have nothing to do with necromancy. They are, however, dangerous and powerful in their own right, and I think it ill-advised that Marcela be allowed to have them back.”
“She destroyed an entire city to get back some cursed necklaces?” I asked, stunned at the revelation. No excuse would have been good enough to justify what the necromancers had done, but this one enraged me more than others I had imagined. The selfishness of it was astonishing. “Why would the other bikers care?”
“As you pointed out to me not five minutes ago, immortals have little concern over what mortals do. Marcela has lived longer than most vampires, and she cares much more for her own wants than she will ever care about the people of a city. Mortal lives come and go in a blink. She saw an opportunity to get what she believes is rightfully hers, and she is taking it. As for the others, it’s amazing what the promise of wealth and money can do. Not to mention she likely offered them their own taste of life everlasting. Imagine what that might drive a man to do.”
I didn’t have to imagine it. I knew the madness that accompanied the drive for eternal life. I’d seen people do and say things they would have thought they were incapable of.
“Where are they now? The necklaces?” I asked.
“I believe they arrived at the Met earlier this week. Whether they remain there still, I’m afraid I cannot say. Determining the fate of objects is not something I’ve ever been skilled at.” She shrugged.
“How did you know all this?” Such specific history wasn’t something Cal usually offered.
“I knew Giuseppe once.” She gave me a soft smile. “I told him he ought to stop at seven. He should have listened to me.”
“Reason will rarely hold a man back from love,” Sig said, staring at her.
“And love, it seems, will rarely lead a man to reason,” she replied.