Incubus Moon (8 page)

“I’ve been doing that all morning.” I began pacing in front of the tall floor-to-ceiling windows. “It’s the same recording every time. You’ve reached a number that’s not in service.”

I was so frustrated that I squeezed my fist around my iPhone and felt the metal casing pop. This was followed by a shattering sound, as small fragments of broken glass rained down onto the tops of my sneakers.

“Oh my God!” Christie sprang up from the couch and ran over to me. She raised my bloody hand with the mangled cell phone in it and examined both with a mixture of concern and shocked disbelief. She wasn’t the only one.

Mark was on his feet too. “You okay, Buddy?”

“I—I don’t know what happened.” This wasn’t a total lie. All I knew for certain was that one minute I was pissed off and in the next my iPhone was scrap metal. “It just exploded in my hand.”

“Imagine what would’ve happened if you’d had that thing up to your ear when it went off,” Christie said with wide eyes.

“Yeah, but it didn’t blow up,” Mark said with equal disbelief. “He crushed the thing!”

“That’s ridiculous.” Christie was already pulling me down the hall and in the direction of the bathroom. “We need to get that wound cleaned right now and make sure there’s no glass in it.”

“Babe, I watched him do it—”

“For heaven’s sake, Mark. Call the front desk and get them to send up a doctor.”

“No!” The opulent ivory and gold Eighteenth-Century décor was suddenly overpowering. I felt dizzy and nauseous and needed to sit down, but Christie insisted on getting me into the bathroom, where I perched on the ornate bidet while she held my tender hand under the pedestal sink’s faucet to flush the abrasions. “I’ll be fine. No doctor.”

Mark folded his arms and leaned against the bathroom doorjamb. When I looked up, he was staring intently at me. I could swear that I was hearing his thoughts. He knew what he had seen and wasn’t about to let it go.
Shit
.

To my considerable relief, he instead asked, “What did Laura’s sister have to say about this Riccardo guy?”

I looked from Christie to Mark and exhaled with renewed irritation. Once again, I was no-fucking-where. Every time I got close to learning something vital about my origins, the trail conveniently vanished. “That there is no Riccardo in the family.”

In the days that followed, Zia Lucia, along with several prominent members of the Marmaggi clan, lavished sumptuous meals on us in their equally sumptuous apartments located in the most desirable neighborhoods the city had to offer. A few even boasted picture-postcard views of such famous landmarks as the Coliseum, Piazza Navona, and the Pantheon.

The Marmaggi’s were clearly a wealthy lot.

Strange how that on my last visit nine years ago, Laura’s relatives were living in modest dwellings on the outskirts of the city and working unassuming jobs.

Now, they were respected bankers and lawyers, doctors and politicians, some of whose adult children had gone on to become famous television and sports figures throughout Italy and Europe. All this mega success in under a decade.

Some might call their rise to prominence magical. Other might say the family had struck a deal with the devil. Whatever was behind their good fortune, I was growing more suspicious of them by the day. Mark and Christie, on the other hand, were having the time of their lives.

Thrilled to be given the royal treatment, they reveled in our after lunch or dinner strolls through Rome’s Historic Center, discovering its hidden jewels that most tourists would never get to enjoy. We were also afforded private tours of the
city beneath the city
off-limits to the general public; a part of Ancient Rome that had been buried for millennia beneath newer structures and still survived strikingly intact. Even I was impressed by these steps back in time.

Trouble was we weren’t here on vacation—at least I wasn’t.

It was also getting harder to control my emotions’ constant yo-yoing between anger and frustration. Anger, I was learning, triggered a new and dangerous strength in me. I was going to have to keep it together, considering that a fair amount of people and situations were routinely beginning to piss me off. My crushed iPhone was another matter entirely.

Luckily, my friends had been too distracted to bring the subject up again. But I continued to wear the gauze bandage Christie had affixed over wounds that were no longer there.

On the eve of our final night in Rome, Lucia pulled me aside.

“
Caro Austin. Questi documenti di cui mi hai parlato si trattano di uno scherzo cattivo e nient’altro. Perché non te li scordi
?”

Because I wasn’t the least bit convinced that the adoption papers were a bad joke. I also had no intention of dropping the matter. Not after the Riccardo incident.

Someone out there knew the truth.

Now more than ever I was determined to find out who that someone was. Particularly after several family members claimed to have met my father, Joshua, shortly after his marriage to Laura. He’d supposedly been stationed at the U.S. Military base in Naples and met my mother on a day trip to Rome. Photographs of him? But of course. They had dozens of them
somewhere
, along with pictures of Laura pregnant with me.

Contacting that military base before I returned to Los Angeles moved to the top of my To Do list. They’d have documented proof of whether or not my father had been stationed there.

It seemed that yet another facet to my becoming an incubus was a newfound ability to perceive falsehoods. I could
feel
rather than specifically hear a person’s thoughts. And behind the smiling eyes of the Roman branch of the Marmaggi family were a great many secrets and lies.

I was relieved to be getting out of Dodge.

Mark and Christie were naturally disappointed for me, but also sad to be leaving sooner than planned. We weren’t due back in Los Angeles for another five days.

“I still think you should’ve accepted their invitation to put us up,” Mark said in the taxi en route to Leonardo Da Vinci Airport. “They seemed like nice people to me.”

Christie nodded and patted her stomach. “And Laura’s sister’s an amazing cook. This has got to be a record for me, five pounds in five days.”

I responded with sullen silence, watching the small, European cars whiz by us.

“Ever stop to consider they might be right about that birth certificate? That it’s a hoax?”

I gave Mark a sour look and hadn’t meant to.

“Buddy, I’m on your side. You also happen to be the spitting image of your father. In my book, that’s irrefutable proof that, at the very least, you’re an Iverson.”

Christie nodded again. “What about their marriage certificate? If Laura and your father were really married, there has to be a record of it somewhere.”

They were right. Too bad I was so damn irritable I couldn’t think straight. Another apparent side-effect to being an incubus was heightened emotions, especially anger. I liked being angry. It energized me. It didn’t, however, give me a right to be pissy with my friends. They didn’t deserve it.

I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’re right, but I couldn’t find one in any of Laura’s files.” The minute we got home, I was going to blow the lid off this mystery. And nothing, I promised myself, was going to keep me from doing just that.

Except we weren’t heading back to Los Angeles right away.

“You’ll get to the bottom of it,” Christie said, snuggling up to her husband on the bench seat next to me. “And for what it’s worth, I applaud your decision not to let the rest of the trip go to waste. Prague’s going to help chase away those disappointment demons, you’ll see.”

I was tempted to say, “Wanna bet?”

Through a Czech design connection, Christie arranged for lodgings in a charming boutique hotel located in Prague’s historic center, which was to be their treat. It was the least they could do after I’d paid for the airline tickets and accommodations in Rome.

Our rooms offered lovely views of the old Charles Bridge, its thoroughfare extending over the Vltava’s murky waters, and ending with the imposing Prague Castle perched high on a hilltop overlooking the city. I appreciated the gesture, but honestly, all I wanted was to get home and make one last ditch effort to obtain the answers I needed surrounding my strange adoption, which I was still convinced was no hoax.

If that effort failed, I was officially done with it. I’d do what my friends suggested and put the infuriating mystery of it behind me and get on with the rest of my life.

I was also still in the dark about the whole being a demon thing. Other than the entity at Joy’s claiming that my thirtieth birthday triggered the change, it didn’t explain how and why this had happen to me. How did a guy even begin to put something like this behind him?

In the meanwhile, Prague delivered. It proved exactly what Christie had promised it would and was the diversion I needed to pull me out of my sullen funk, at least temporarily.

Her contact, an engaging and flamboyant fellow named Pavel, proved an exceptional tour guide. By day, we visited all the noteworthy sites. By night, he had us wiling away the late hours in the trendiest restaurants, bars, and dance clubs the city had to offer. Dancing was anathema to Mark, which didn’t stop the rest of us from tearing up the dance floor without him.

It also quickly became evident why Prague was the porn capital of Europe. The women and men of the Czech Republic were hot, hot, hot!

Christie’s words to me during the ride to the airport in Rome turned out to be truer than I could have hoped for. Prague really had chased away the disappointment demons.

The night before our departure, Christie and Mark bowed out to spend a romantic evening alone. Fine by me. Pavel had lined up some special fun of his own for us.

Regrettably, that fun proved to be outside of my comfort zone—multiplied by ten!

I peered out through the taxicab window at the large banner above the entrance to Alcatraz, one of Prague’s most infamous sex clubs, and felt my shoulders slump. It boldly announced:
Men’s Only Night
. With all the hot Czech women afoot, in addition to my complete lack of sex in nearly two weeks, I was ready to pop.