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reasons I can move quickly on implementing it. It’s been in my head a long time.”
    She laid a hand on his arm. “After what happened in Florence, Mother would never have given me this chance unless Ryan had demanded to work with me.”
    “I know. Okay, I know. Maybe it just takes me longer to switch gears these days.”
    “But you’re all right?”
    “I haven’t had a drink. Day three,” he said with a thin smile. And two nights of sweats and shakes and desperation. “I don’t want to go there with you, Miranda.”
    “Okay.” She let her hand drop. It seemed they both had their secrets now. “I’ll tell catering we’re ready for lunch.”
     
    It isn’t fair, it isn’t right. She has no business being back, being in charge again. I won’t have her ruining my plans. I won’t allow it. Years I’ve waited, sacrificed. The Dark Lady is mine. She came to me, and in that sly smile I saw a kindred spirit, a mind that could wait and watch and plan and accumulate power like coins in a jar. And in that smile I saw, finally, the means to destroy all of my enemies. To take what was mine, what was always mine.
    I had ruined her. I had done it.
    The hand that wrote began to shake, used the pen like a blade to stab at the page in the diary, viciously, until the room was full of ragged breathing. Gradually all movement stopped, and the breathing became slow and deep and even, almost trancelike.
    Control was slipping, sliding out of those competent fingers, leaking out of that strong and calculating mind. But it could still be wrenched back. The effort was painful, but it could still be done.
    This is only a reprieve, a few weeks in the eye of the storm. I’ll find a way to make her pay, to make them all pay for what was denied me. The Dark Lady is still mine. We’ve killed together.
    Miranda has the forgery. It’s the only explanation. The police don’t have the weapon. How unlike her, how bold of her to go to Florence, to find a way to steal the bronze. I hadn’t thought such actions were in her nature. So I didn’t anticipate, didn’t add the possibility into the equation.
    I won’t make that mistake again.
    Did she stand and stare down at Giovanni? Was there horror and fear in her eyes? Oh, I hope so. Is fear dogging her still, like a baying hound snapping at her heels?
    It is, I know it is. She ran back to Maine. Does she look nervously over her shoulder even as she strides down the hallowed halls of the Institute? Does she know, somewhere inside, that her time is short?
    Let her have her reprieve, let her bask in the power she’s done nothing to earn. It will be all the sweeter when she’s stripped of it once and for all.
    I’d never planned to take her life as well. But plans change.
    When she’s dead, her reputation devoured by scandal, I’ll weep at her grave. They will be tears of triumph.

twenty-four
    T he false moustache itched and was probably unnecessary. As were the contacts that changed his eyes from brown to an indistinct hazel and the long blond wig he’d fashioned into a streaming ponytail. His face and any exposed skin had been carefully lightened, toning down the gold hue to the pale and pasty complexion of a man much happier out of the sun.
    Three earrings glittered on his right earlobe, wire-framed glasses with tiny round rosy lenses were perched on his nose. He rather liked the bloom they gave everything.
    He’d chosen his wardrobe with care. Tight, pegged red pants, a saffron silk shirt with flowing sleeves, black patent leather boots with small heels.
    After all, he didn’t want to be subtle.
    He looked like a desperately fashionable, fanatically artsy type just skirting the edge of reasonable taste. He’d seen enough of the breed in his career to know the right moves, the right speech patterns.
    He checked his face in the rearview mirror of the mid-sized sedan he’d chosen from Rent-A-Wreck. The car hadn’t been a pleasure to drive, but it had gotten him the sixty-odd miles to Pine State Foundry. He had hopes it would get him back to the coast when he was finished.
    He took his cheap, scarred faux-leather portfolio case out of the car with him. Inside were dozens of sketches—most of which he’d borrowed, so to speak, from Miranda.
    The forgery of the David had to have been cast somewhere, he thought. Somewhere, due to time constraints, locally. And this was the closest foundry to the Institute. The one, his quick search of records indicated, the staff and