Gift of Fire

him?”
    Jonas nodded grimly. “With great pleasure. Matteo was skilled with a sword too, and he was younger and faster than Marino. In the end it was Marino’s death that locked the image in the corridor. It was the broken sword handle that stayed behind to become the key to accessing the vision, although there was no one left to use it.”
    “Jonas, it’s hard to believe it was only an illusion.”
    “I told you, Giovanni Marino was a genius, and he knew what he was doing. He did such a good job with his creation that when it started to cycle, you and I thought that we were actually a part of it. You became Isabella and I became her jealous husband, Matteo.”
    “I think it was more than that, Jonas,” Verity insisted.
    He smiled in understanding. “The illusion was probably all the more real for us because we were each temperamentally suited to assume their roles. You’ve had experience as an anchor who’s been sleeping with the man she anchors, and I’ve had a hell of a lot of experience being jealous of you. I can’t think of anyone I’d want to kill more, in fact, than a man who had the power to pull you into the corridor with him.” Jonas realized his hand was clenched into a fist.
    Verity gently unknotted his fingers. “Relax, Jonas. It’s all over.”
    He forced himself to inhale slowly and let the tension seep out of him. “I’ve told you about my end of the thing. Tell me what was happening with the crystals.”
    “I still don’t understand it all,” Verity said honestly. “I could feel the green crystal tuning itself to the crystal in the image.”
    “I’ll bet one of the secrets the guy in the vision was trying to hide was the technique for tuning the crystal so that it could be used as a key to unfreeze the image.” Damn. What he wouldn’t give to learn those secrets. Now that he knew what was going on, Jonas figured there had to be a safe way of activating the vision again. He wanted to study that manuscript.
    “When you picked up the corridor ribbons, I concentrated on the red crystals instead of the green. They seemed to hold a more positive power somehow.” Verity shook her head uncertainly. “I felt I could use them. Tune them, make them work for me. I didn’t feel that way about the green crystal. It was dangerous, Jonas.”
    “You found a way to use the red crystals to pull me out of the grip of the ribbons, didn’t you?” Jonas searched her face. “Those damn snakes really had a hold on me this time, Verity. They were stronger than anything I’ve come up against in that corridor. I grabbed them because for a while there I actually believed the whole thing was real; I believed you were going to be killed. I picked up on the emotions and skills that Matteo had used, and suddenly I was Matteo.”
    “I believe you did save us, somehow. That battle was for real, Jonas. I’m convinced we were actually in that image. But when it was over, you couldn’t get rid of the ribbons.”
    “They were too powerful, probably because the vision itself was so damn powerful. I would have become a walking ghost of Matteo. Not the whole man, just the part of him that had been left behind in the corridor. The part that was enraged, the part that could think of nothing but vengeance and killing. I was afraid I would turn on you next, the way Matteo probably turned on Isabella. Giovanni Marino would have had the ultimate revenge.”
    “Matteo murdered his wife after he killed Marino?” Verity’s expression was one of outrage.
    “I don’t know what actually happened,” Jonas said soothingly. “For us the story ends with the creep’s death. I just got the impression from the residual emotions Matteo left behind that he was as furious with his wife as he was with her seducer.
    Verity sat back. “I don’t think he killed her,” she declared after a moment. “I think that after he’d killed Marino, he came to his senses and realized his wife was just an innocent victim. I bet they both locked the door of that chamber, went back home, and lived happily ever after.”
    Jonas eyed her indulgently. “Sounds like a nice, cheerful ending.”
    “But probably not the real ending, right, Quarrel?” Crump spoke from the doorway. “People back in the Renaissance had some nasty notions of vengeance, didn’t they?”
    Jonas snapped his head around, setting off the dull, throbbing ache again. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said, annoyed. “How long have you been standing