Chapter 13

Nancy

If I had known what I was getting myself into, I would never have shown up at the Casa dei Giochi that night. In fact, I almost didn't go in the first place, because the note summoning my presence didn't look entirely legitimate. First of all, it was handwritten—which was strange. Secondly, it wasn't signed—so there was no way of knowing whom it was from. It could have very well been a trap. But then, there was that name Arlecchino thrown in there. I was absolutely sure that only members of Sonitrico knew each other's Commedia dell'Arte names. That was a clue…and it implied legitimacy.

"What is it?" Ned asked, looking down into my puzzled face as I folded the note back up.

"I don't know…" I sighed, reaching up to run my fingers through my long hair. "Supposedly I'm needed at the Casa dei Giochi tonight. Supposedly Tazza wants to speak with me."

"What do you mean, supposedly?"

I shrugged one shoulder, ascending the steps to open the front door. "I mean…I'm not sure if this note is legit or not."

Ned raised an eyebrow. "You think it could be a set-up?"

"Possibly…but not likely." I gave him a fraction of a smile, stepping inside the great room and letting the door slip shut after us. "Anyway, I have plenty of time to think about it."

I really didn't want to stay on the subject of the case. It was that morning's turn of events that had sparked the need for something other than the case—that release had come in the form of Ned Nickerson and it was my full intention to drag every boring scrap of small-talk out of the boy.

I looked around the lobby, whispering a silent, "Thank you, Lord," at the sight of Helena's empty desk chair.

"Come on, let's talk in here," I motioned for Ned to follow me, easing open the bedroom door and slipping inside.

"Talk about what?" He smiled. "The case?"

"Anything but that," I exhaled a tired sort of laugh as I sank down onto my bed, crossing my legs and leaning against my knees. "I'm spent when it comes to the case. Besides, I've been missing home like crazy. And you've barely said two words this whole time."

"True, I guess," Ned laughed a little, sticking his hands into his jean pockets. "Home is…pretty boring."

I smiled. "I like boring, though. I miss boring."

"Well, you can come home whenever you feel like it."

"Not…really." I looked down, tracing the pattern of the bedspread with my fingertips. "I need to wrap this case up. I promised Sophia I would. Plus, I'm getting paid."

"Ah." He nodded, leaning one shoulder against the painted wall. "Gotta make some extra cash, huh?"

I smiled again. "Yeah…you could say that."

"Local Starbucks is hiring." Ned shrugged, tossing me a teasing look. "I hear filling orders for frappuccinos is a lot easier than fighting mafia crime rings."

"Easier, maybe. But I like a challenge, remember? And they're not the mafia…I don't even know if the group we're tracking is the crime ring. We have no visible proof. And Nico isn't telling the police much of anything."

"Nico…?"

"Nico Petit," I explained. "He's the phantom who stole…well, presumably he stole lots of things. But he also stole my locket."

"Really? When did he steal it?"

"Um," I bit my lip. "While I was sleeping."

Ned's eyes widened. "What?"

"Uh-huh. Tore it right off my neck."

"You're not serious."

"I am so serious." I couldn't help but smile a little, just because of the total shock on his face.

"Look, Nancy," Ned started off, trying to stay calm. "I know you're really into this, but…it sounds really dangerous. And if you're not careful—"

"But I am careful, Ned." I sighed, looking up at him. "And no matter how many fancy words you use, you're not going to convince me to go back home. It's just not happening."

"Fine. But I'm at least going to stay until the case is over. It's winter break, after all. And I just happened to be one of the twelve students who got picked for this Europe trip thing."

"So that's why you're here," I smiled, leaning back against my hands. "I thought you were just coming to hang out with me."

"Well…yeah. That too."

"Did anyone else come to Venice with you?"

Ned shrugged one shoulder. "Yeah, I've got a couple of friends staying in the city. But I'm planning on spending all my time with you."

I managed a little smile, not knowing how to reply without sounding rude. "Well that's really sweet of you, Ned…but I don't know how much free time I'll have. What with the case, and everything."

"No, no, it's fine," he said, putting up a hand. "I understand—you have a job to do. But when you do have free time…"

"I'd love to hang out with you." I nodded. "Gosh, Ned. You don't know how much I've been wanting to go home. I know it sounds so childish, but…I just miss doing nothing. You know?"

"Mm."

I sat Nickerson down in the desk chair and forcing him to tell me everything that had happened while I was away. I relished the dullness of it all, imagining that feeling of falling asleep with open books and the afternoon sunlight on my face.

Eventually our party was crashed by Helena, who was quite surprised to see the tall boy in the varsity tee invading our bedroom. She asked if he was "the boyfriend"—the infamous boyfriend, not anyone's particular boyfriend but simply "the boyfriend" like if he was my boyfriend, her boyfriend, Margherita's boyfriend, everyone's boyfriend.

"No," I laughed in the nicest, most polite way possible while Ned just sat there and blushed.

We waded through the awkwardness like water and eventually the sun started to set. I was absolutely starving, so we decided to walk around Venice until we found some kind of food (preferably pasta.) It was only five thirty, so I had plenty of time to decide about the meeting at Casa dei Giochi.

Dinner was casual, and I was glad of it. My brain was too fried to deal with unwanted implications or, quite frankly, anything beyond shallow, platonic conversation. So we walked back to the Ca as dusk fell. I had grabbed an evening paper from the stand outside the restaurant, but I hadn't glanced at it until we were nearing the entrance of the Ca. And when I did, my heart skipped a beat.

"Oh my gosh…"

"What's wrong?" Ned asked, hearing the shock in my voice. Then he looked down at the paper in my hands. We had both stopped short in the patio of the Ca Nascosta.

Nico Petit Escapes Prison!

Ned took a short step forward to glance over my shoulder at the headline. I caught my lower lip on my teeth.

"Hey, that's the guy you were telling me about…" he murmured, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. "How did he escape?"

I was barely listening. Multitasking was not one of my strongholds, and scanning the article as quickly as possible was far more important than listening to Ned's semi-surprised reactions to the turn of events.

It is common knowledge that thief Nico Petit, "Il Fantasma," is accustomed to getting himself out of sticky situations, but no one expected him to attempt an escape that would baffle the police and defy the integrity of security systems at Il Epetesta. "I don't know how it happened. No one knows how it happened." Said chief of security, Officer Poritrari. Living up to his name, the phantom has slipped away once again, leaving officials clueless in his wake.

My shoulders sank with my next exhale as I looked up at Ned. He seemed to lose interest in the article as soon as my own eyes left it.

"How could this have happened?" He asked.

I shook my head slowly, obviously having no satisfactory answer to the inquiry. "Better question, how come Sophia didn't tell me about this earlier?"

Ned, who was proving himself to be quite a pacifist, jumped to her defense. "Maybe she didn't know."

"I'm sure she did," I rolled my eyes and fluffed the newspaper back to its natural quarter-sectioned crease. "No matter how many times she tries to reassure me, I know for a fact that the GdiF learns of these developments much sooner than the general public."

I pounded up the stairs, which were starting to shadow and bend with the fading light. Ned followed me to the landing, where I stopped with my fingers against the doorknob.

"Nancy."

I drew in a deep breath and opened my eyes, freeing my sight of its momentary quarantine from the land of the living. Ned was looking down into my face, his eyebrows gently nudged together in the middle of his forehead.

"What?" I finally asked, feeling a heaviness in my voice that rendered it almost too weak to raise.

"Please don't get upset about this," he said gently, placing one hand on my shoulder. I noticed its warmth through my sweater. "It's not your fault that this phantom guy escaped prison, and it's not your boss' fault, either. So just…don't take it personally. Okay?"

"Okay," I tore my gaze back to the glossy oak door in front of me. "I'll try."

Ned gave me a little half-smile, then dropped his hand from my shoulder. "I better be getting back. The other guys will be wondering where I am. We promised the rest of the football team that we'd do a Skype-in tonight. They just scored a great win for us back home."

I nodded, trying to shake the tension out of my hands and voice. "Oh, cool. I guess I'll see you later, then."

"It was great hanging out, Nancy…" Ned started to descend the stairs, muttering the proper sort of farewell, but I wasn't paying much attention.

I waved politely, opened the front door and let myself inside, exhaling a quiet sigh of relief when the void of human life greeted me. I could still feel the thin, inky paper in my fingertips, and I could still taste the words of that article with my eyes.

Why hadn't Sophia told me? Was I really that unimportant? Was my help no longer needed? Was I slowly and carefully being moved to the dugout to watch from a distance? What was Sophia's problem?

I looked at the newspaper again, and considered calling her. I considered blowing up at her, yelling about the unfairness of it all, and acting like an amateur, juvenile, over-privileged teenager from the lap of lux and the inheritance of a rich lawyer—and wouldn't that be the truth? I was no match for the dogs in the fighting ring. I was going to lose. I was already losing. I had lost. And I couldn't stand that.

I looked at the newspaper again, and I watched my fingers curl around the edges. I watched my knuckles whiten. Then I slipped one hand into the pocket of my sweater and retrieved the note I'd found on the table earlier that afternoon. The one which summoned my presence to the Casa dei Giochi. The one written in the hand I didn't recognize. The hand I didn't trust.

Samantha Quick was never far away. She was just in my wardrobe, in fact. Another world if I ever knew one—hers was the appearance I transformed myself with, hers was the baggage I carried through the streets, and hers was the identity I stole that night for my own satisfaction.

I still didn't know whose handwriting was on that note, but I didn't care. I no longer needed a validation. I was becoming Samantha Quick and going to Campo Santa Margherita and talking to Tazza and playing it cool. Nothing was going to stop me.

The nine o'clock streets were lush—swirled into a watercolor of mostly indigo that felt smooth and smoky between my fingers and hair. The darkness was cold, but my arms were bare. As promised, I'd returned Helena's white cardigan to her drawer that morning and found myself comforted by the chill that rushed around my arms like a lover's wanting grasps. I'd forgotten a coat and I'd forgotten my mask—but I didn't realize that the latter was missing until it was brought to my attention by Josiah Daniau, whom I found standing outside the front door of the Casa dei Giochi.

I didn't expect him to be standing there. In fact, his presence startled me and interrupted the motions I'd already gone through in my mind's eye—the familiar action of knocking on the door, inclining my Samantha Quick face towards the security camera, and hearing the rough Italian accent welcome me inside. None of this happened, because Josiah stopped me.

"You're not going in there," he said.

The borderline command caught me off guard. "Yes, actually…I am," I lessened the distance between me and the door, feeling an uneasiness coming into my fingers. "I was told that Tazza wanted to speak with—"

"I lied."

My hand fell from the door. "You lied?"

Josiah nodded.

"You mean…you were the one who left that note for me?"

"Yes."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. There he was—a peer, a spy, a kid caught up in the high-paying crime industry. I sized his slender, strong body up in one quick glance and decided that he'd majored in deceit. He practically had a master's degree for a professional liar. I wasn't gullible—not as Samantha Quick, and not as myself.

"I don't believe you."

"You think I'm lying?" he sounded surprised.

I nodded, switching my sights from him to the door, and reaching out for the handle.

"Don't go in there," he said again.

I felt a syringe of something cold puncture my pride. "Josiah, honestly. I don't have time—"

"Nancy."

The name, although whispered, caught me off guard. My gaze froze on my hand, which had gone slack on the doorknob. My voice was dead in my throat, so I couldn't speak. All I could do was turn and look at him as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a familiar black shape—my GdiF radio.

"Nancy Drew? You dropped this."

And I knew exactly who he was. I had questions, lots of questions, but none of them rose from the bottom of my lungs. All I could do was stare at the radio in his hand like it was an object poisonous to the touch. He took one step closer.

"If I'm remembering correctly," he began, a smile starting to tease the corners of his mouth, "You never apologized for almost breaking my ribs."

I opened my mouth to reply, but words neglected me like an unwanted child. How could he have been treating this so lightly? Clearly I was an object of amusement to him. I squared my shoulders, shut my mouth, and snatched the radio.

"Who are you?"

Josiah shrugged one shoulder. "I'm not who you think I am. That's all you need to know."

"You're a spy." I said, with a nod to affirm it.

"But not for them," He jolted one finger in the direction of the building. "I'm working with…"

I waited for the reply, raising one eyebrow and not regretting my air of disbelief.

Josiah lowered his voice even more, taking another step closer. "I'm working with the GdiF. Detective Leporace."

"Show me your proof." I demanded, keeping my voice grounded.

"I…" he sighed, dropping his head and looking down into my eyes. "I don't have any proof."

Both eyebrows went up this time. "Really? Well then, I'm afraid I'm going to have to call you a liar again—"

"Sophia didn't give me any proof."

Something about his words piqued my interest. It wasn't just the context of the phrase or how he'd used her first name—it was the disappointed undertone, the code, the clue that there was something lying just beneath the glossy surface of his voice.

"What do you mean?" I asked, turning the radio over in my hand.

"Look, I can't talk about it here. I only have a few minutes alone with you."

His voice wore a mask of urgency, but his face wore a mask of paper mache, painted black with stripes of white across the eyes. The smile wasn't enough, the sparkle of blue wasn't enough. I wanted to see his face. I wasn't going to believe him until I saw his face.

"What is your name?" I asked.

Josiah shook his head quickly. "I can't talk about it here."

"Tell. Me. Your name." I demanded, barely raising my voice above a whisper.

"Joe." His gaze locked on mine, relaying a look of slight shock at my forwardness. "Joe Hardy."

"And how, Joe Hardy, do you expect me to believe a word you say when I haven't even seen your face?"

There were a few seconds of silence, where the arrogant undertones of my voice settled into the thick air around us. I waited for Joe to reply, recognizing that look of gears turning behind his eyes. I'd only seen him once before, but I'd already learned his body language and I could tell that he was devising a plan.

"You want to see my face?"

I nodded.

"Okay," he said. "But only on one condition."

I scoffed a dry laugh. "Why am I not surprised—?"

"Show me your real hair."

I swallowed. "What?"

"That's not your real hair." Joe told me, apparently quite sure of the fact.

"And how do you know that?"

"Because." A little smirk found its way to his face, and he dared not bite it back.

His eyes found mine and traced down my left cheek, stopping behind my ear, where a small gold hoop was pierced. Something other than my earring was the target of his attention, and almost automatically, he reached up to touch it. His fingers never came in contact with my skin—in fact, they retreated back to his side before they could reach their destination, but I felt the emanating warmth of his hand in the cold night air.

He looked down, snapping out of his slight trance. I noticed the edges of his ears color with a faint blush. "You missed a piece."

My left hand quickly found the lock of titian that had mischievously escaped my blonde wig. I felt my next exhale quaver on the cold.

"Fine," I concurred. "I'll show you my real hair. But only if you show me your face."

"Deal." He smiled a little. "Who's going first?"

"We'll both go. At the same time."

"Why?" he asked, reaching up to untie the black string that secured the mask on his head. "Because you don't trust me?"

"Precisely," I replied coolly, feeling my heartbeat quicken for reasons I couldn't explain. I edged my fingers under the net of the wig.

"Well, like I said before," Joe took one hand to the face of the mask, spanning it with his index finger and thumb. "You should have more faith in me."

And then he slipped his mask off. And I slipped my wig off, feeling my hair tumble down in messy waves. My gaze had never left his face, but now rested on something that seemed entirely new, only by illusion. Against my will, I felt my next exhale rush out in a fevered escape.

The soft light from the entryway swept over his jawbone, casting sculpted shadows across his suntanned skin. He looked like a painting, a sculpture, something in a museum that you weren't allowed to touch. His blue eyes followed my torrents of hair, almost as if he could feel it without touching it. He lost himself in it. And I lost myself in the design of his face—cheekbones, eyelashes, nose, lips.

I snapped out of it, wondering when my breath had become so irregular and how my heartbeat had grown so loud. I looked down, noticing our hands—his holding a mask, mine holding a wig. We had both just stripped away a part of ourselves, revealing a bit more of the truth. It was something that we didn't have to talk about.

"Nancy," Joe finally said, advancing first like an inexperienced soldier. "Please. I need to talk to you somewhere safe. I have information that you need in order to solve this case."

He was speaking as if he knew everything there was to know on this topic—perhaps he did. Perhaps I should have believed him. Perhaps I should have had more faith in him. But I didn't.

"Please," a breed of hopelessness started cross-contaminating his voice. "Please meet me at Campo San Polo tomorrow morning. Nine o'clock. Okay?"

I pulled my gaze from his hands to his face—his now open, naked, unashamed face, which intensified the expression of desperation that I'd only ever caught glimpses of through his gemstone eyes.

My voice was still being stubborn, hiding in my lungs. I kicked the sugar from my thoughts and emotions, deeming them childish and stupid and distracting. I couldn't let Joe's good looks get in my way. He was a beast, like any other spy, with fishing line wrapped around his little fingers, reeling in what he wanted and throwing back what he didn't. I knew the game just as well—but I had nets, not hooks and lures and bait. I was smart. Smarter.

I straightened my shoulders, lifted my chin, and drew in a deep breath. Joe raised one eyebrow.

"I'll think about it." I said.

"You still don't trust me," he said.

"Correct."

He smiled. A genuine smile, complete with a tired little laugh on the exhale. But he didn't say anything else. I'd given him my final word, and now all he could do was steep in the aftermath of it.

I nodded, he nodded, and we parted ways. I could sense that he was watching me as I walked down the street and turned the corner, but I didn't look back to check. I couldn't.

FlightFeathers: EEEEP I'M SO HAPPY YOU LIKED THAT CHAPTER! Haha Joe is fabulous. :') That was my favorite line for sure. I WAS LAUGHING AND SMILING SO HARD READING YOUR COMMENT OMG. 3 I hope you like this installment! *hugs*