Thank you everyone for reading along!

Enjoy!

Erik

Chapter 34

The Blame

For the next ten minutes, Raoul remained at the bar to sip at some rust-colored, translucent liquid. Olivier did attempt some small talk - and the vicomte kept it very small. All: "Yes, M. Leroy", "No, M. Leroy", or "That's fine, M. Leroy". And the bartender - Olivier Leroy, apparently - did his best to keep the boredom from his own face.

I pitied the man.

Raoul left shortly after, giving Vincenzo a murmured goodbye, strolling out quickly with his head down and hands in his pockets. His fingers fiddled with the Tarot cards beneath the fabric of his pants.

Meg stood as well. She extended her arms, stretching, then smiled at me. "Good to meet you, Erik." She addressed Vincenzo. "My mother will be expecting me back at the Pink Silk Inn." She made her way around the table and walked past the bar. "See you later, Olivier?"

He grinned at her. Pleasantly, respectfully, not wolfishly. He looked at her like an equal, even as he said with a wink, "I'll have my coin purse ready, Mlle. Giry."

Meg gave him a lighthearted warning look, a brow raised. "You'd better have an enormous purse."

He laughed, eyes shining. "It's not the only enormous thing I'll bring."

It was Meg's turn to laugh, corners of her eyes crinkling. She continued toward the door, but I noticed the small flicker of emotion as she looked back at us, at Vincenzo, and waved goodbye.

Vincenzo seemed not to notice, so I brushed it aside. I looked at Olivier. "Now, here I thought you were finding buckets of free milk."

He flashed his teeth. "Cheeky." A chuckle left his lips. "I think I like you better than that pompous little fop Santi keeps around."

I was given a warm look from Vincenzo, whose smile slowly disappeared as a thought entered his mind.

"Your father," he started in Italian, then corrected, "or rather, father-in-law - he doesn't seem to trust me."

I smirked. "Well, you are the thief who caused a stir at the party he attended."

He cocked his head. "If my skin was whiter, would he mind as much?"

My brows furrowed. "What are you implying?"

"It's...easy," he said, "to mistrust someone of Romani blood if all they've ever heard are bad rumors. It's especially easy to mistrust them when they are embodying those rumors."

"I do believe he is merely worried after the fact that you partake in criminality," I said, and noted the irony that he'd been very accepting of my executions and previous thievery. However, it had also been clear that I'd wanted out, that stealing was in my past, while Vincenzo had created a very current thief's empire. "I believe it's that. Not your race."

"Hm." Vincenzo leaned back. "If you say so."

"If you're so worried about it," I said, studying his unreadable expression, "then why have you leaned so hard into thief-hood? You've...become Giovanni. Bigger than Giovanni. If you're worried about what people think-"

"I don't worry about it," he said slowly. "I already told you that."

"You could have joined other Romani groups in Paris."

"Have you seen how the gadjos here treat them? It's as bad as it was in Venice. We are persecuted for things we don't even do - take their children. Threaten their way of life with our supposed supernatural abilities. Steal. Steal, steal, steal." A long pause. "So I said yesterday - if they want to make me their villain, a villain I will become. Because fuck them." He bared his teeth. "The moment those rumors against my people go away, that's the moment I will dissolve my band of spies and thieves and live modestly - I assume, if that ever happens, I can actually find a damn job."

"The rumors won't go away," I said softly, calmly, "if you continue stealing."

A flash of fire entered his gaze. "Look at you - speaking against theft when you were once one yourself."

I narrowed my eyes. "I'm not speaking against it - that would be hypocritical at best - I merely-"

"Think it's best if I, myself, don't?" he retorted lowly. "You think it will help anything?" His nostrils flared. "I see you as a brother, Erik - you are my brother, regardless of blood - but that blood that we don't share is significant. You are not me. You do not understand, and never will. Oh, I know you have your own struggles." He gestured to the mask. "I will never know what it is to have to hide your mere face from the world, from every person alive, no matter where you go - I admit this. I do not tell you what you should and should not do to protect and defend yourself. The fact is, Erik...the fact is that these rumors against my people were not borne of our actions. My clan - we were peaceful. We made it a point to be honest and generous, to be kind to the white-skinned people around us. But one child goes missing from a nearby Venetian home, and we are targeted.

"Turns out," he continued, "oh, it turns out that the child had been taken by the mother's sister without her knowing. My people dead, because of rumors. Because of the belief that we are a...certain way." His eyes continued to blaze. "I will be called a thief whether I am or not. So why not enjoy some wealth and power, some control, while I take their abuse? I'll say it again: I won't martyr myself, I won't walk the straight path and still be pelted with stones, just for the comfort of those who throw the stones in the first place. What I've come to understand? Those gadjos want me to be a thief. They want me to be something to fear. They don't like hearing about someone like me being someone like them. It makes them uncomfortable to know I am...to know I am human. So I will give them exactly what they want. It is their responsibility to ask for something else - to expect something else. Once they figure it out, once they open their mouths to ask it, then I will happily oblige."

I didn't say anything.

The fact was: I understood completely. I understood better than I wanted to.

"Mario thought me evil, don't you remember?" he continued. "He thought Giovanni was demeaning himself to live with the likes of me, that I was something to shun? I proved him right, as well."

I stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"It only took me a week to corner him alone - a week after I found the bodies of Salvatore, Giovanni, and Carmelo." He held my stare. "I got him alone and took a knife to his throat. I left him for his servants to find him, then fled for France in the night." He smiled without pleasure. "He got what he deserved."

The mention of the knife put a picture so strong, so vivid, into my head that I had to grip the table. A silver blade, glinting in the dim light, dripping with liquid rubies - the thing dragging across a neck. Blood, like water from Hell, dribbling down a throat. Choking sounds. A slowing heart. Then silence. Death.

I didn't bother examining the face of the victim in my vision, or whose hand it belonged to. It didn't matter. The damage was done.

I gripped the table against the spinning, spinning, rapidly spinning room.

Oh, God. Not now.

"Erik?" Vincenzo's voice was far away.

"I'm fine," I whispered.

"Well, that's a damn lie." I saw him shift. "Do you need-"

At the feeling of his hand on my shoulder, a shrunk away. I stared at the table. At the fingers there. They were red, sticky, shiny. This was a hallucination. I had to keep reminding myself that.

"What's happened?" Vincenzo sounded genuinely frightened, now. "What has happened, Erik?"

But all I could articulate was: "There is blood on my hands."

A pause. It was almost too quiet. I was sure that Olivier was staring. That the entire tavern was staring.

"Erik," Vincenzo said, and tried touching me again. He succeeded this time, even while my heart banged wildly against my sternum. "The death of our family was not your fault."

I wanted to tell him that he misunderstood.

But I blinked.

Perhaps he hadn't misunderstood at all.

Because the blood on my fingers disappeared. The tavern had stopped turning.

"I know," I lied.

"I don't think you do." I was too ashamed to look at him, but I could feel his dark eyes boring into mine. "Mario dealt the killing blow. Not you."

How could I even begin to explain how he was simplifying a very complex situation? Of course I hadn't pulled the trigger, but that didn't mean-

I shook my head. "I know," I said again, if only to escape this topic. Speaking of this would only lead to more information of where I'd been the last few years; it hadn't only been my family I'd killed. Good God, not even close.

Another long pause. "It's people like Mario who need to feel this sort of grief," he said, and when I finally looked at him, he smiled with crystal clear vengefulness. "And one M. Vaillancourt will be at your second performance tomorrow night. Unlike Mario Cardacci, he does not have guards posted his at house. He seems to rely on fear alone as a defensive tactic." He smirked. "I think our boy Audric is due for plenty of grief, wouldn't you say?'