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and orange flame. And yet I couldn’t look away.
    I knew these eyes. In a place beyond memory, I knew them, and I was terrified. I knew every sinew of this beast, how quickly it moved, the shape of its hatred as it turned in my direction, the vibrations that echoed through the earth as it galloped toward me, the sting of poison from its horn.
    I stared, and the karkadann stared back.
    And then it whinnied.
    I shot away from the dais, slid on the slick marble, and wound up sprawled facedown in a mosaic of mermaids about five feet away.
    Laughter. Light, bubbling giggles. I stood gingerly, rubbing my butt where I’d smacked it on the stone floor. A girl about my age filled the far doorway, smiling brightly at me. “Forgive me,” she said in a crisp British accent. “I simply couldn’t resist. You looked so intent there.” She stepped forward into the dim light trickling down from a clerestory that ringed the room. “Of course, you’ve very little to worry about. There hasn’t been a single report of a karkadann sighting. And they probably wouldn’t be making horse sounds, at any rate—”
    “Who are you?” I asked, before I could hear her dissertation on the vocal emissions of various unicorn species.
    “Cornelia Bartoli,” she said. “You must be Astrid.”
    “Corneli a ?” I asked. “I thought you were a man.” So had Lilith. An older, more responsible man.
    “No, that’s my Uncle Cornelius. But I go by Cory and he by Neil.”
    “I go by Astrid,” I said, and nodded at the dais. “Nice décor.”
    “You should be proud,” Cory said, smiling wistfully at the figures locked in combat. “That’s not my ancestor up there.” She touched the hem of Clothilde’s robe, a look of reverence onher round, freckled face. “You look just like her, don’t you?”
    I bit my lip to keep from saying that I’d spent my childhood wishing I wasn’t related to her, or at least not the daughter of someone so obsessed with our freakazoid lineage.
    “I can’t believe how well this was preserved,” she went on, her short, brown curls bouncing as she spoke. “This place was sealed for a century, and yet this figure looks almost new, doesn’t it? Nothing else survived this well. The laboratory is a shambles.”
    Perhaps that was the smell. Rot and stale air. But no, that wasn’t quite right either. “Was there…a fire in here?”
    Cory frowned. “Probably. Every plague imaginable was visited upon the Cloisters after the unicorns disappeared. Apparently, it was ransacked several times by mobs looking for the secret of the Remedy. I’ve spent the last month mucking this place out. It was rather disgusting before I got my hands on it. Speaking of which, would you like the tour?”
    I reshouldered my backpack and grabbed the handle of my rolly bag. “Yes. But can we start with my room?”
    She brightened at this. “Of course. You must be so jet-lagged. This way.” And off she bounced toward the door whence she’d come. I did my best to keep up, but the plastic wheels of my suitcase kept catching on ridges in the floor mosaic. Behind me, I could feel the eyes of the karkadann.
    As if, even in death, it watched.
    The door led to a small hallway and then to narrow, twisting stairs lit by bare yellow bulbs. “The wiring is still a bit spotty,” Cory explained, pointing to duct-taped twists of wires running up the walls. Between each bulb was an empty sconce formed with an upturned hock and hoof. All through the stairwell, pieces of bone and horn poked out from the masonry. Eventhe walls here were made from unicorn. This place was like an elephant graveyard. I shuddered and did my best to keep toward the center of the stairwell.
    We reached the next floor amid a tsunami of unicorn history chatter from Cory. She and Lilith would be incredible chums. This girl was every bit as gung ho about hunting as my mother. “So you’ve been here for a month?” I asked hopefully. “How are you liking Rome? Have you been