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"—which, again, is another reason why this was a stupid fucking idea."
"Tiens, he's coming around, he's not dead, it cannot possibly have been so bad an idea. And besides, this woman's services came very highly recommended on Yelp."
"Are you telling me you thought it was a good idea to source a witch via Yelp—"
Amadeo winced, stirring. The two men arguing about nonsense somewhere over his head were so loud, and he was so tired, and his whole body throbbed as if he had an ague. He was unwell, he thought, trying and failing to lift himself off the ground. He must have taken a chill; he felt so cold. Simply opening his eyes felt like an enormous effort. But if he were ill, Amadeo thought vaguely, why was he lying here on the floor and not on his pallet? Why would these men not stop yelling? Amadeo's head lolled to one side and he blinked, and blinked again. Beneath him were not the rough flagstones of his master's kitchen, but unfamiliar tiles, starkly white and polished to uniform smoothness. He did not know where he was.
The ache in his body slowly receded; his eyes no longer felt so heavy. His mind cleared, and so he realised that he was following what the two men were saying, even though they were speaking in English—a sibilant, slurring tongue which Amadeo had heard spoken in some of the bigger markets and pilgrimage places of Venice, but which he had never before understood.
Where was he? Amadeo didn't know, but better to get himself off the floor before he tried to tackle that question in earnest. He couldn't get his feet under him properly just yet, but he was able to pull himself over to one corner of this white-tiled room. There, sitting with his back safely to the wall and his elbows tucked in neatly by his sides and his legs hugged up to his chest, he was quite out of the way.
For the first time, then, he was able to look up at the two arguing men. One was older, with a head of short silver curls; the other younger, with blond hair. He recognised neither. Both of them were attired in a manner that, to Amadeo's eyes, seemed outlandish. The older one wore all black, even down to his curious leather jerkin, though his garb was so form-fitting that Amadeo did not think he could actually be in mourning for anyone. The other was in a costume that was even tighter, with no seams or lacings that Amadeo could see, and the whole was patterned like the hide of one of the jungle cats that the patricians sometimes kept in their menageries. Perhaps the master had decided on the final exotic figures to include in his current composition and these were the models he was planning to use.
It took Amadeo a moment to realise that the blond man was staring at him with an expectant look on his face. He could not think why.
"Well, Armand?" the man said, spreading his arms wide. "Do you want me to see if the incompetent witch will refund the Venmo payment? Because I will gladly and very publicly tell her that the quality of her magic-workings shames the very memory of her foremothers, but if it means I lose my 5-star rating on the SpellCastr app..."
Amadeo stared at him. He understood the words, perhaps, but not their meaning.
"Well?" the blond man snapped.
"Armand?" said the man with the silver hair. "Hey man, it'd be great if you could weigh in here."
"Io sono..." Amadeo paused, cleared his throat, and then decided to try out some of this English which now, apparently, sat at the tip of his tongue. "My name is Amadeo, sirs."
The silver-haired man stared at him.
"You see?" said the blond man after a moment, folding his arms. "This is why I have long mistrusted the craven commercialism of online recommendations. Daniel, you really should learn to rely on word of mouth instead."
The blond man—Lestat—spent some time holding a slim, polished bit of black stone up to his ear and speaking in a languid and curiously accented French which Amadeo could also somehow comprehend. Lestat's tone of voice, to Amadeo's ear, was so polite that it shaded into offensiveness.
"A fifty per cent refund only," Lestat eventually said in English, sliding the stone into an improbably placed pocket in his animal skin attire. "Which is a kind of irresolution I cannot respect—either your work is good and you stand over it, no refunds, or it is not and you cannot, il faut rembourser au nom du respect de soi—but she also said the last of the spell will wear off within 24 hours."
The silver-haired man—Daniel—continued to stare silently at Amadeo in a way that made him feel most uncomfortable.
"So he will be without his memories for a day," Lestat said with an airy wave of his hand, "it is nothing, you can do worse with enough bumps of coke. He'll still let you fuck him, I'm sure."
"I have all my memories, sir," Amadeo said, which was not entirely true. There must have been something before the ship, after all. Something before the long weeks sailing west, west, under a blazing sun; there must have been something between going to sleep last night and waking up here in this cool, tiled room. It was just that he did not know what those memories could be.
From where Amadeo was sitting, he could see through the door into another room, that one as dim as this one was bright. Thick velvet curtains tightly drawn took up the length of one wall; there were fat pillows heaped high on a low, wide bed. The carpet was so opulent that it stretched all the way from one side of the room to the other. A curious type of shaded candle burned on a table beside the bed, bathing the whole in a warm golden glow. These were rich men, then, with tastes for luxury. Amadeo swallowed hard.
"Amadeo." He looked back to see that Daniel had crouched down in front of him; still a full body length away from Amadeo, but now their eyes were on a level. Daniel made to reach out, all unconscious, to take Amadeo's hand, and then visibly had to restrain himself. "You mind telling me what year it is?"
"1529," Amadeo said, uncertainly.
"You know," Daniel said after a moment's pause, "sometimes I wish I still needed glasses, just so I could take them off at moments like these and sigh dramatically while pinching the bridge of my nose. Okay, 1529. Sure. We can deal with 1529 for 23 hours and change."
Daniel stood and pointed at Lestat. "You, Marc Bolan Junior, out. I don't want to see you for the next 24 hours. I—"
"Well, I think that—"
"No thinking from you," Daniel said. "When does that ever work out? We'll be charging everything to your credit card, by the way. Goodbye."
Lestat rolled his eyes enormously and said, "You know, I would protest more if I had any actual investment in your bizarre little relationship melodrama of the week." He went out through the bedroom; after a moment came the sound of a door closing behind him.
"Well," said Daniel into the sudden quiet. "What are we going to do with you now?"
Amadeo clasped his hands in his lap, holding himself still. He couldn't remember his master sending him here; he didn't think he fully understood much of anything that had happened since he'd woken up. But he knew the whole point of him, regardless, was to serve. "I—"
"Actually," Daniel said, holding a hand up, "scratch that. Wrong way of putting it. Amadeo, how about I introduce you to one of the great by-products of something you won't experience for another while yet: the day off."
"The... day off?" Amadeo said, hesitant.
"Yeah," Daniel said. "In other circumstances I'd start with telling you about seizing control of the means of production and the Marxist dialectic but that might be a bit much to start off with. Plus I hear this place has a bitchin' spa."
Daniel led him out of the tiled room, through the bedroom, through the doorway, and down a short hallway. Like the bedroom, the hallway was painted a shade of blue so dark it was almost black, and the carpet was so thick that Amadeo couldn't hear his own footsteps. There were no windows, and the only light came from small but powerful sconces set at intervals high up on the walls.
"Pretty swank, right?" Daniel said. "All the other times I stayed in Vegas, I was in a Holiday Inn Express, except that one time my publishers put me up in the Bellagio and then I got so blitzed on pina coladas I don't remember anything except trying to swim in the fountains there. The night manager was not impressed. Anyway, the kind of place you can stay on Lestat's dough is a whole other level."
Amadeo didn't understand any of that, but smiled blandly in what he hoped was a polite way.
At the end of the hallway was a rectangular metal door which opened by itself and which led into a very small room. Daniel touched something on the wall, the door closed, and the small room swayed beneath Amadeo's feet, making him think of what it was like to be on the deck of a ship making for Venice through a sudden spring storm. But almost as soon as the motion started, it stopped. The door opened again, but now the hallway on the other side looked different. It was different. Here, the walls were such a dark green they were almost black, and the floor was made of thin and astoundingly regular wooden boards.
Amadeo had seen many strange things since first he had entered his master's house, but none quite like this.
Daniel, however, did not seem to find any of this strange. He set off down the hallway, hands in his trouser pockets, and Amadeo decided that following him was less disconcerting than the thought of staying in that small, swaying room. They rounded a corner, passed through doors made of single panes of impossibly clear, thin glass, and entered a round, domed room with stone walls. Behind a low counter on the far side of the room stood a very tall woman with her hair in long braids. Daniel went over and spoke softly to her and handed her a small rectangle; she smiled and nodded and said, "If you'd follow me?"
One section of the stone wall opened outward at a touch of the woman's hand—a cunningly hidden door—and she led them down another, gently sloping hallway and into a larger round space. Amadeo stopped and stared.
"If you would like any assistance at all," the woman said, gesturing at a pane of opaque black glass built into the wall next to the door, "please feel free to contact me. Otherwise, I'll let you gentlemen enjoy your session."
Amadeo barely registered her departure, because this was a hammam. He was in a hammam. He couldn't remember the last time he had been in one. In fact, he didn't think that before this moment he had remembered that he had ever been in one.
This hammam was smaller and less crowded than the one of his... of his childhood. Yes, his childhood. It held just him and Daniel, surrounded by walls of warm alabaster that seemed lit from within. There were fountains feeding plunge pools that curved around the perimeter of the room, one cold and one hot. In the centre of the room stood a black marble slab. The air was warm and perfumed and it made Amadeo shiver.
"I'm going to hit up the sauna first," Daniel said, shucking his clothes without any sign of self-consciousness. He left them on a set of low shelves to one side of the door, and then picked up a towel that he wrapped around his waist. "Feel free to do whatever."
He padded off and disappeared through a door in the far wall, and Amadeo was by himself. By himself. When had he last been by himself? His master's house had many rooms, and they were rarely quiet ones.
And so in the quiet, Amadeo disrobed. He stood there for a moment, feeling his hands shake, but the door stayed closed. Daniel did not reappear.
Free to do whatever.
The pools were deep enough that Amadeo only needed to crouch a little to be entirely submerged in the warm water. There, he held his breath for longer than he'd thought he could, and thought vaguely of the day he had been baptised. It was important, the priest had said, to provide young gentlemen with a way to slake their thirst that did not offend the sensibilities of the citizenry. Theirs was a good Christian city. A whore might be a whore, but not a heathen.
When he resurfaced, his breath hitched for some time. He let himself float, staring up at the domed ceiling far overhead, and allowed himself to think of nothing.
Once out of the water, Amadeo sat on the marble platform in the middle of the room. There was a copper pot of greenish-black soap, another of various utensils, and a coarse washcloth. Smearing on the soap and then scrubbing it off—arms and chest and belly and legs—was a pleasant rite. The servants at his master's house never had recourse to more than a bucket of cold well water to wash with. And Amadeo was more scrupulous than many, but even he could only ever wash himself piecemeal and with scraps of coarse soap in some courtyard corner.
Having the time and the materials with which to be thorough, to spend time with his whole body, was a luxury that he relished. His arms and legs had more power to them than he remembered, even though they had grown leaner—an effect, perhaps, of whichever ague had afflicted him. Amadeo even used one of the files from the copper pot to tend to his nails, which he had clearly shamefully neglected of late and let grow over long.
When he was done, Amadeo felt wrung out, much like a washcloth. He took one of the towels from the shelf and dried himself with it, feeling oddly reluctant to put back on the clothes he'd been wearing. Neatly folded though they were, to Amadeo they looked like some animal's crumpled, discarded skin.
The towel was large enough for Amadeo to wrap himself in it, at least, and he was sitting like that when the door opened again and Daniel returned. His curls were matted damp to his scalp; sweat ran down his body, to where his prick hung thick and heavy between his legs. Amadeo quickly looked away.
His master had always been clear: a borrower would tell him when to look and not before. It was not for Amadeo to desire.
"Who knew I was able to last that long in there?" Daniel said, padding over to the wall. There was a button there, which he pressed, and something like a small rain shower started up from a metal pipe that curved out of the wall over his head. He grabbed a bar of soap and started to scrub. Amadeo felt his cheeks heat, and resolutely looked away once more. "I'd go over gangbusters at Burning Man these days, but figures that I'd only be cut out for a week spent in Satan's taint when I've finally developed some standards. Those robes and slippers there are for us to use, by the way."
The slippers were almost comically oversized on Amadeo's feet, while the robe was short enough to leave his calves on full display. Daniel did not seem to find anything amiss with this, though. Once he had towelled off and donned his own robe and slippers, he tapped at the glass panel on the wall. It lit up at Daniel's touch, showing a series of brightly coloured shapes and words.
"The hotel will take care of the laundry," Daniel said. "C'mon, we should head back up to the room. I forgot I had a conference call lined up."
They retraced their steps—up the hallway to the other round room, out through the glass doors, back around the corner to the room that swayed, along the other corridor—and as they walked, Amadeo thought about the fact that he understood none of this. Not where he was, or why this place was full of so many strange and wonderful things, or half of the words that came out of Daniel's mouth.
Perhaps even now Amadeo was truly lying back on his pallet in a corner of the kitchen, fitfully dreaming. That, too, might explain why he couldn't remember coughing once since he'd woken up in the tiled room, even though the ache in his chest had been his steady companion these past two months.
Or perhaps Amadeo was the one who had gone astray in someone else's dreams. That might be why he sometimes caught Daniel, as now, looking at him with an expression of faint surprise on his face, as if he'd expected to see someone else walking beside him.
Daniel referred to it as "the room", but it was in fact several, all interconnected. There was the doorway from the bedroom to the tiled room, of course, with two more doors set into the same wall, and then on the wall opposite was the door that Daniel vanished through, gripping one of those smooth black rectangles in his hand and telling Amadeo that he could find a change of clothes in the suitcase.
It took Amadeo a moment to realise that the soft-bodied trunks in one corner of the room were what Daniel had been referring to. He opened one, the larger one, and found it full of clothes very like the ones he had taken off in the hammam. They were all well made, in muted tones, with stitching so fine that Amadeo was sure many women had ruined their eyesight as they toiled over these garments. Amadeo did not want to wear any of them.
In the smaller case, Amadeo found clothing that was more worn, but also more to his liking. First, there was a pair of grey hose made of some thick, soft cloth, with a drawstring at the waist to keep them up on him, and cuffs that clung curiously to his calves. He followed this with one of the many short-sleeved, thin tunics that had been wadded up in one corner of the case. Amadeo had never before seen clothing with writing on it. He did not understand what Sonic Youth Sister '87 Tour meant, but when he tugged the hem of the tunic up to his nose, the fabric smelled agreeably of Daniel. Amadeo did not know why he was so certain of that—he had never stood close to the man—but there it was.
On the wall facing the bed was a stone fireplace, unlit and flanked by two large and well-cushioned chairs. The dark blue velvet felt pleasant when Amadeo ran his fingertips over it against the grain. There was still no sign of Daniel reappearing, so Amadeo thought he might allow himself to sit in one of those comfortable chairs, just for a moment. And then, as time went by and the room continued to be quiet and dim, Amadeo thought there could be no real harm in tugging his legs up to his chest—in resting his head on one arm of the chair—in letting his eyes drift closed.
When he dreamed, it was of an orchestra tuning, the excited hum of the audience, the smell of greasepaint—of the actor stepping forward into the spotlight to play his part.
The room was just as quiet when Amadeo woke, slowly, as if rising up from the bottom of some deep well. He had no idea how much time had passed, but it felt good to stretch his arms and legs as it came back to him where he was: not in Venice, not in his master's house, not anywhere he knew.
"I had a cat who used to do that," Daniel said. "The stretching, I mean."
Amadeo startled and looked over at him. He hadn't heard Daniel come in, but there he was: sitting on the bed propped up against the mound of pillows, legs stretched out in front of him and ankles crossed. Daniel was once more dressed all in black and he had a thick book in his lap. It looked as if he had been there some time.
"Of course, that cat was a spectacularly shit mouser so maybe the comparison doesn't hold up," Daniel said, nonsensically.
Amadeo straightened himself to sit gingerly on the edge of the seat, looked down at the floor. The thick pile of the carpet was easier to focus on than that assessing look in Daniel's eye. His fault, of course. The master had made his expectations clear from very early on. A servant never fell asleep before his master, lest the master have some want that needed tending. "I apologise, sir," Amadeo said stiffly. "I—"
"I'd prefer if you didn't," Daniel said. "Well, not about that."
Amadeo blinked. "I don't understand."
"Well, and that is why we got that 50% refund, isn't it?" Daniel said, acid-bright.
Amadeo didn't understand that either, but sensed it might be safer not to respond.
While Amadeo had been sleeping, someone had lit the fire in the hearth—or at least, now lights flickered and glowed within it. There were no logs, no charcoal, no kindling, and the flames danced soundlessly. The sight, to Amadeo, made only a little more sense than the fact that a large section of the wall on the other side of the fireplace was now showing moving images. Figures walked, gesticulated, moved their mouths, all in perfect silence and with more fidelity to life than any painting Amadeo had ever before seen.
One of them was the man from earlier, Lestat, his animal-hide costume now barely visible beneath an ankle-length coat of peacock feathers. He was surrounded by a scrum of people and flashing lights. Along the bottom of the screen ran a line of white text on a red background: TVL LEAD SINGER IN DIPLOMATIC SPAT WITH RUSSIA.
"I will say, the Clown Prince of Crime has made watching the news a whole hell of a lot more entertaining, which is saying something in the 2020s," Daniel said. "And we're not even to the end of the first leg of the tour yet."
Something occurred to Amadeo, and before he could stop himself he said, "You say things you know I won't understand just to irritate me."
An expression flickered across Daniel's face, too fast for Amadeo to properly register it; he thought it might have been a smile. "Clever boy," Daniel said, then, in a different tone, "Come on. We're going out."
Going out did not mean leaving the building. It did not even require either of them putting on shoes.
"Are you kidding me?" Daniel said, tucking his book under his arm and this time turning left into the corridor instead of to the right. "The staff here is paid way too much to give a shit whether the guests walk around barefoot. I don't think they'd care if we walked around nude holding a monkey. And this place charges too much to have to worry about advertising to the general public. They don't even have a website. It's fine."
The corridor branched in two. Daniel again went to the left, and through a set of double doors, and then they were standing in a small, shaded atrium on the edge of a great, flat expanse of roof. The sky overhead was a brilliant blue, the city below them vast and bewildering, with no spires or sea in sight and the whole permeated by some great and alien hum. But ahead of Amadeo, taking up all of the roof as far as he could see, was a mass of lush greenery.
It was a garden.
"Not sure you've been in one of these for a while," Daniel said, sitting on the low bench which ran along the back of the atrium where the shadows were deepest, and opening his book. "Thought you could do with a spell up here. And hell, they're growing this in the middle of a goddamn desert, more people should stop by to appreciate it."
"You aren't going to join me?"
"Nah, I'm good," Daniel said, waggling his book vaguely in Amadeo's direction. "You go ahead. Pretty sure Bram's going to figure out his pacing issues here any time now."
Amadeo walked into the garden. It was laid out as a series of gravel paths that wound between raised beds filled with flowers of every size and colour and beneath long pergolas draped with vines. Slender trees rose up towards the sky; the scent of jasmine was heavy in the sun-dappled air. Here and there were openings in the greenery, placed just so to allow a strategic view of some piece of weathered statuary or trickling fountain or, away on the horizon, a range of rose-tinted mountains. Amadeo walked, and trailed his fingers through leaves and petals, and let the breath sigh out of him.
He did not know how Daniel knew it, but it was true that Amadeo had not been in a garden in some time. His master's house in Venice had none, facing as it did onto the canal, and Amadeo was allowed to spend less and less time away from home these days. They had once spent some months in Ferrara while his master worked on a commission, and Amadeo had citrus-bright memories of walking in the hanging gardens of the ducal palace there, surrounded by the perfume of orange blossoms. Before that, briefly, the gardens of some palazzos in Rome; before that again, he did not know, but Amadeo thought he remembered a low, musical voice in the darkness saying that paradise is a garden through which four rivers flow. He liked to imagine that was the voice of his mother.
At the far end of the garden was a small, square patch of grass. It was the one area that was not shaded by some branch or structure. When Amadeo got there, he walked out to the middle of it, closed his eyes and tilted his face up to the sun. The grass tickled his toes; his skin prickled in the heat. It did not feel like peace, exactly, but like a reminder that there were places where peace could be had.
Amadeo let his head drop and opened his eyes. He discovered that from where he was standing, he had a clear view directly back to the atrium and to where Daniel was sitting—sitting and watching Amadeo in return, an unreadable expression on his face.
As they walked back to the room, Daniel cleared his throat and said, "I've never seen you like that before. In sunlight."
Amadeo did not know what to say in response.
"Days off", it seemed, were tiring. Amadeo did not understand why—he had done nothing yet today to earn his bread—but once back inside the room, he was glad to let himself sink into the chair next to the fireplace. He found himself idly watching the flames, unable to spur himself to do much more than that. Perhaps it was because he couldn't recall when he had last eaten. Yet he wasn't hungry, and the thought of a dish of polenta or a bowl of broth seemed oddly unappealing to him. Perhaps it was a lingering effect of whatever strange ague he'd had—illness did often affect the appetite.
Daniel did not seem any more minded to seek out food than Amadeo was. From a sleek cupboard built into one wall of the room, he retrieved two glasses and a bottle of water. He filled both and handed one to Amadeo before sitting down in the chair opposite him.
"Well," Daniel said, taking a sip of water, "what's the verdict on Amadeo's Big Day Off?"
Amadeo was reminded, suddenly, of the time that Signore Zanetti, the goldsmith who lived next door to his master, had suspected one of his servants of stealing from his workshop. He had made all of them, from the oldest apprentice to the youngest scullery maid, line up in the street, and used his whip on the palms of their hands until one of them had finally confessed. Amadeo smiled nervously. "It was very pleasant, sir. Thank you for your generosity."
"Not like the holidays you're used to, huh?"
By now, Amadeo felt as confused as he did tired. There was something about the tone of Daniel's voice, the glitter in his eyes, that made Amadeo think that the questions he was voicing were not the ones he was truly asking—that he was looking for Amadeo to give some very particular answer. If Amadeo knew what that answer was, he would have given it gladly.
He settled for saying, "We have the mornings free on Sundays and saint's days to attend Mass."
"And you do that? Go to Mass?"
"It is expected." And it was no particular hardship. Amadeo did not understand enough Latin to feel obliged to follow the service beyond keeping track, in a vague way, of when to join with his fellow servants in the responses and when to kneel. His attention was always more caught by the play of light on the red-and-white chequerboard of the basilica's floor and the great sculpted tombs which lined its walls, and his imagination by the possibility that one day he, too, might have learned enough from his master to make a piece of art worthy of being housed in such a place.
And then, Venice was a bustling port that drew people to it from all over the world. It was common for Amadeo to spot among the Massgoers a face as dark or darker than his own, and for him to wonder whether they might hail from the same place—whether they prayed in the accents that might once have shaped Amadeo's voice, too.
He had never had the courage to approach one of them.
"But most days you're just… working," Daniel said.
"Yes," Amadeo said.
"And you work as a model for your, uh, master?"
"Among other things, yes."
"What kind of paintings does he have you model for? He's a painter, right?"
Amadeo nodded. His master had once entered a competition for the commission for a new statue of St Mark, to be set up in a busy piazza, but his proposal had not been well received. Once home, he had smashed his maquette in a rage, and then sought Amadeo out. The evening had been unpleasant. "Yes, a painter. And he has used me for a Nativity scene, a study of the raising of Lazarus, a pastoral scene… wherever he has need of me, really."
"A man who can't get enough of a pretty face," Daniel said dryly.
"Oh, no," Amadeo said, shaking his head. "He never paints my face. I am just for posing."
Daniel's brow furrowed. "What do you mean, 'he never paints my face'?"
"My master was ever too merciful to lie to me," Amadeo said. "Perhaps as a youth I had a bloom, but these days he finds me most useful when he's doing preparatory sketches and is trying to work out the anatomy of a hand or the line of a leg."
"He doesn't find you beautiful?" Daniel said in a strange, flat tone of voice.
"He says that I am serviceable," Amadeo said. He didn't understand why Daniel was looking at him like that. Surely to be thought of that way was much better than to be thought beautiful? Beauty always faded, and a faded beauty would be cast aside. The loyal servant with a skill would forever have a place in their master's house.
"You are…" Daniel rubbed at his forehead. "Christ."
Amadeo didn't understand. "But isn't that why my master has lent me to you? I promise that he has trained my mouth well. Or if you prefer to wait until Signore Lestat has returned, I can take you both—"
Daniel's hand suddenly shook so hard that he spilled his water glass all over the floor. He swore, and jumped up, and Amadeo couldn't stop himself from flinching back. When Daniel noticed that, he swore again. "No, don't, I… this is real fucking weird coming from me, but I promise in this scenario, it's not you, it's me. Well, actually, it's not just me either, but it's definitely not you."
Amadeo's confusion only deepened. "But—"
"Aren't you tired? I think I'm tired. Time to turn in. You can take that one," Daniel said, gesturing to the big bed as he walked off, "I'll bunk down in the other room."
Amadeo hesitated for a moment, but he was too tired to make any protest. He lay down on the side of the bed where Daniel had earlier lain. It was so much more comfortable than the pallet in his master's house. He was asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow, and he slept there unmoving until Armand opened his eyes.
Twenty-four hours had passed, and a lifetime's worth of memories had returned. It was 2025 and he was in Las Vegas, a city which Lestat had surely chosen in large part because he knew how much it would irritate Armand to have to trail Daniel there. Tomorrow night there would be another concert, at least if Lestat did not succeed in having them all run out of town first.
Armand closed his eyes again. The reversal hurt far less than the initial spell had, but that was cold comfort. Armand's stomach roiled a bit, as if he'd drunk heavily from someone lost in an alcoholic stupor.
"Oh goodie, you're awake," Daniel said, far too loudly. It was one of his Daniel's many fascinating qualities that he could be so alert and energetic so soon after waking, and it was indeed a quality that Armand had sometimes benefited from in delightfully carnal ways. But Armand did not always have to like it.
Armand opened his eyes to find that it was Daniel's turn to sit in the chair by the fireplace. The expression on his face was one that Armand associated with those last days in Dubai, when Daniel just hadn't been able to help himself.
And when, of course, neither had Armand.
"Not sure what I did to deserve that particular blank glower," Daniel said. On a side table next to him was a martini glass of blood; there was an olive on a stick balanced on its rim. He picked up the glass and took a considering sip. "Since I'm not the one who had the stupid fucking plan. You've realised this was a stupid fucking plan, right? A stupid fucking plan involving magic, by the way, which is bullshit and a whole other reason to be pissed with you."
Armand sat up on the side of the bed, braced his hands against the mattress. In his sleep, the cuffs of Daniel's sweatpants had ridden up and were now just below his knees. He stared down at his bare feet. "The plan was not inherently flawed."
"You tried to have some random person from the internet restore your childhood memories through the power of a particularly zesty herbes de provence blend. Something that you didn't even deign to run by me first, even though you swore that… Shit, Armand, are you telling me you don't see any issues with that?" Daniel took another sip and set his glass down. "Because I'm seeing several and they're all jumping up and down and communicating in semaphore using red flags."
"It would never have killed me." Many worse things hadn't succeeded in killing Armand. All he had wanted was to better remember what it was to have been Arun; to be more certain that Arun had ever existed at all. True, he had succeeded only in a temporary loss rather than a permanent recovery, but you took your opportunities when you saw them.
"That's not the fucking point," Daniel snapped, and it was not that Armand could ever forget that Daniel was his fledgling, but rarely did Daniel provide him with such a visual reminder: eyes flashing like an electrical storm, teeth sharp and bared.
"And what is?" Armand shot back.
"Time takes shit away, Armand," Daniel said. "That's how it works. I don't remember what the first house I lived in looked like, or the name of my second-grade teacher, or what any of my grandparents sounded like, and I've been around a hell of a lot less long than you have. And it's not great but it's—"
It was Armand's turn to flash his fangs. "But at least you know what it is you've lost! At least you can be sure your parents didn't send you away! They didn't sell you! Amadeo could never be sure of that."
Daniel's face crumpled for a moment, as if he'd just seen someone get hurt. Then, with a visible effort and a deep breath, he let his teeth retract and his eyes fade to their more usual bright blue. "Fair. That's fair. But you didn't deserve that, whether they did or they didn't send you—"
"Arun."
"You. You didn't deserve that. And that's what you've got to remember. It happened to you and you didn't deserve it."
The tips of Armand's claws gouged deep into the mattress.
"Just like I didn't deserve to come back to my hotel room," Daniel continued, "and find my boyfriend seizing in the bathroom at the feet of the newest entrant to the Billboard Hot 100."
"It wasn't that bad," Armand said.
"Oh it really fucking was," Daniel said. "But you know what it also was? It was a slap in the fucking face."
Armand stared at him.
"You know what you two told me in Dubai?" Daniel went on, implacable and unstoppable. "You said that when you left Paris, you went places. Egypt, New York, San Francisco: 'here, there, and everywhere.' And silly old me, I assumed that those stops were listed in chronological order, but they weren't, were they?"
Armand looked away.
"I sat up on that roof today and I read my copy of Dracula and let me tell you, maybe the one thing ole Bram emphasises more than his godawful bigotry is just how good a job the count does at wiping the memories of the people he feeds on. And I thought to myself, well, I know Armand's never given much of a shit about fiddling with the memories of the people he's actively fucking, let alone the ones he merely feeds on. And I thought to myself, what if New York came after San Francisco, and there I was in my shitty East Village walk-up and you knew that and I was what, easy pickings? Acceptable prey on nights you were feeling nostalgic for the good old days of disco and debauchery?"
Daniel jabbed a finger at his temple. "These holes in my memory, I always thought it was just the after effects of pickling my brain in the '70s, but now maybe I think something different. Maybe that gap in my memory where the summer of '85 should be isn't because I had real low standards in pharmaceutical recreation, maybe it's because you were there too." Daniel was leaning forward now, his elbows braced on his knees. "And I'm asking you, why do you get to hurt yourself to try to take back what you lost, but you also get to hurt me by keeping back what you took?"
"You wouldn't want—"
And Daniel was faster now than he had been, stronger, coming into the first full bloom of his strength, and when he landed on Armand's lap it was with enough force to knock him back against the pillows and with enough speed that he was able to pinion Armand's arms over his head before Armand fully realised what was happening.
"Stop telling me what you assume I want," Daniel said through gritted teeth. "And stop pretending my actions don't mean anything, you asshole."
Armand stared up at him, breath hitching. How many times had they been like this before: Daniel, younger and dark-haired, riding Armand's cock on the backseat of a Lincoln town car? Daniel, five nights ago, rubbing himself off against the cut of Armand's hip and shuddering and swearing as Armand nipped teasingly at his neck? He had lost count.
Even Armand could see the irony in that.
"When Amadeo was... when my memories were different," Armand said, after a moment. "You did not tell me who I was or what I had done. What I would do."
"Nope," Daniel said.
"You just gave m-me nice things," Armand said. Warm water to bear up a tired body; the promise of shade on a hot day. The offer of sensation without compulsion behind it. A companion.
"Yup," Daniel said.
"Why?" Armand said.
"Why wouldn't I?"
Armand tugged free of Daniel's grasp. He reached up and touched Daniel's face: so different from how Armand had first known him, but in essentials just the same. He buried his fingers in Daniel's curls and let himself imagine the answer to that question—fully and properly—and a tremor like an earthquake ran through him. When it was over, Armand felt different; and when it was over, Armand closed his eyes and found where he'd built that wall inside of Daniel's mind and, with one sharp gesture, he pulled it all down.
He felt rather than heard Daniel's gasp, and when he dared to look up, Armand saw that Daniel's eyes were wide and bright and rimmed with tears.
"I knew it," Daniel said, and there was a grin spreading over his face. It made him look wild. Armand couldn't tear his gaze away. "I fucking knew it. There you fucking are, you were there the whole time, it's all there now I—wait, you were the son of a bitch who keyed my car in '87?"
Armand looked up at him through his lashes and said, "In such cases as these, I believe, a good memory is unpardonable."
"Jesus tapdancing Christ," Daniel said, "you couldn't just flirt like a normal person?"
Armand thought about it seriously. "No."
"You're real fucking lucky I love you," Daniel said. "You know that, right?"
"Yes," Armand said, smiling, pulling him closer. "Yes. I remember."