Blood And Moon

Rome should never be this quiet.

That was my first thought as I crossed a narrow street near Trastevere, my boots striking the rain-dark stone. No scooters whining around corners. No glasses clinking behind restaurant doors. Not even a couple arguing loudly enough to involve the entire neighborhood. The Tiber seemed to have lowered its voice. I stopped beneath a streetlamp and looked back. Empty.

Rain had stopped less than an hour ago. The pavement shone black, cut by broken lines of gold from the windows above. Usually, I loved Rome after a storm. The city looked older then, all worn stone and shuttered windows, as though the centuries had risen to the surface. Tonight, it looked like it was waiting. I pulled my coat tighter. “Ridiculous.”

I had stayed too late at the architecture studio again, correcting drawings that had been acceptable three versions ago. Lorenzo called it perfectionism. I called it refusing to present a facade with windows two centimeters too narrow. It was an occupational hazard. I noticed proportions. Crooked cornices. Balconies that leaned a fraction too far over the street. The kind of renovations that made you wonder whether the owner had a personal grudge against good taste. Which was why I noticed the bookstore.

It stood between a wine bar and a dark apartment entrance, set farther back than the buildings on either side. Three pale stone steps led to a tall wooden door. Its windows were made of slightly warped glass, framed in a green so dark it looked black beneath the streetlights. No sign. No name. No opening hours. Just books. Shelves crowded the windows and vanished into the dimness beyond. I knew this street. I had walked it dozens of times. I would have remembered those steps, that uneven facade, the old glass catching the light.

I checked the building beside it, then the one on the other side, as if either might explain what I was seeing. Neither did. A single book stood upright in the center of the display. Its cover was black, without a title, an author’s name, or even a decorative line. I should have found it unremarkable. Instead, a pressure gathered beneath my ribs.

I took a step closer. The sensation sharpened into something stranger than fear. Recognition. I stared at the blank cover. Recognition of what, exactly? My own questionable taste in late-night decisions? I glanced toward the wine bar. Its chairs were stacked inside, the lights off. No one was there to watch me interrogate a shop window.

For most of my life, I had carried a restlessness I couldn’t explain. I had a job I loved, friends, and an apartment I had spent two years making my own. I knew where to buy coffee on Tuesdays and which market stall sold the best tomatoes. I had plans, deadlines, rent, meetings. A life with clean lines. Yet sometimes, in the middle of a storm, I would stand at my bedroom window and feel something inside me push against my bones, as though the body I had been given was too small.

I never mentioned that feeling to anyone. I certainly never mentioned the tiny flickers of electricity that sometimes danced across my fingertips when I was angry. Static, I told myself. Stress. A nervous system with theatrical instincts. Thin explanations, perhaps, but I liked explanations. The black book offered none.

I climbed the first step. The air changed. Behind me, Rome was still visible, but its silence had deepened. The distant streetlamp cast a steady pool of light. Somewhere above the rooftops, a thin sliver of moon slipped between the clouds. Nothing moved. Every sensible instinct I possessed suggested going home. I reached for the handle. The door swung inward before I touched it. I froze.

Warm air drifted through the opening, carrying the smell of leather, old paper, dust, and something faintly burned. Smoke. “Hello?” No answer. No bell above the door. No footsteps from the back of the shop. I leaned forward and looked inside. Rows of books climbed toward a shadowed ceiling. A brass lamp glowed on a narrow table.

“Well,” I whispered, “that’s not unsettling at all.” I stepped over the threshold. The door shut behind me. I turned so quickly my bag struck my hip. I grabbed the handle, half expecting it to resist. It moved beneath my fingers, perfectly ordinary. I could leave. I should leave. Then I noticed the table. The black book was lying on it. I looked toward the front window. The place where the book had stood was empty.

I hadn’t heard anyone move. There was nowhere for a person to hide between the display and the table. I searched the shadows anyway, my pulse thudding in my ears. “Hello?” I tried again. Silence. I should have left then. Instead, I stepped toward the book, because I had always been better at examining a problem than walking away from it.

The floor creaked beneath my boots. The shelves were crowded with volumes bound in cracked leather and faded cloth. Some spines carried symbols I didn’t recognize; others bore no lettering at all. The brass lamp had no visible cord. Its light seemed too warm for a bulb. I pulled out my phone. No signal. “Of course.”

The book waited in the center of the table. I knew how absurd the thought was. A book couldn’t wait for anyone. And yet every time I looked away, I felt it drawing my attention back.

Up close, its cover wasn’t blank. Faint lines traveled across the black surface, curving into shapes that almost resembled writing. I bent nearer. The pattern shifted. I blinked, and the lines were somewhere else. My mouth went dry. I held my hand above the cover, close enough to see the slight tremor in my fingers. Don’t. The warning arrived without a voice. At the same instant, something pulsed beneath my skin.

The lamp flickered. I snatched my hand back. The light steadied. “Enough,” I said, more firmly than I felt. I turned toward the door.

“Remember.”

The voice came from behind my shoulder. Male. Low. Close enough that I should have felt the speaker’s breath. I spun around. No one. I stood perfectly still, listening for movement between the shelves. There was only the faint creak of old wood settling. “Who’s there?” The shadows remained empty. Then the voice returned. Not from the room. From inside my head.

“Remember.”

Pain flashed behind my eyes. I staggered against the table. The lamp shattered with a sharp crack, scattering darkness across the shop. Heat rushed up my spine, followed by a cold so fierce my teeth struck together. Something surged into my arms. White-blue light spilled across my fingertips. Not a spark. Not static. Light, moving beneath my skin.

I stared at my hands. The glow traced the lines of my palms, brightening with every frantic beat of my heart. I tried to shake it off, as though it were something that had caught fire. The book snapped open. Pages tore past one another in a blur, whipping up a wind that lifted my hair. I stumbled backward, but the table caught my hip. Desperate to steady myself, I reached out. My palm struck an open page. Everything stopped. No turning pages. No wind. No sound at all.

For an instant, I saw a horizon burning red beneath a dark sky. Fire stretched as far as I could see, rising in twisting columns around a solitary figure. A man stood among the flames. Tall. Motionless. His face hidden from me. The fire bent toward him. And something in me answered.

It wasn’t a thought. It wasn’t even a feeling I recognized as mine. It was an ache so old and sudden that I reached for him before I understood I was moving. The man lifted his head. White light consumed the horizon. Then there was nothing.

When I opened my eyes, my cheek was pressed against a wooden floor. I lay still, trying to understand the quiet. The air smelled of dust and leather. My hands ached. For one disorienting moment, I expected to feel heat rolling across my face. Instead, the shop was cold. I pushed myself onto my elbows. The black book sat closed on the table. Beside it, the brass lamp glowed, whole and unbroken.

I looked at my palms. No light. No burns. Only a faint trace of dust where my skin had touched the page. Whatever I’d seen, it had felt more real than the floor beneath me. I grabbed my bag and ran.

This time the door opened at once. Cold air struck my face, followed by a burst of noise so sudden I flinched. A scooter growled past the end of the street. Someone laughed from an upstairs window. Music spilled from the wine bar. Rome had started breathing again. I stopped on the pavement and turned.

The bookstore stood exactly where it had been. Dark green frames. Three pale steps. No sign above the door. And in the window, the black book stood upright in its display. I walked home without looking back.

By morning, the city had recovered its talent for being unbearable. A delivery van blocked half the street below my apartment. Someone was leaning on a horn. Two neighbors were having an argument loud enough to become public property. I stood in my kitchen holding an espresso I had forgotten to drink, grateful for every irritating sound.

The night before, I had gone into a bookstore. A voice had spoken to me. Light had moved across my hands, and I had seen a man standing in fire. I could recount every detail. I couldn’t explain a single one.

In the shower, I searched for a sensible answer. Exhaustion could account for my nerves. An old building could make strange noises. But a book moving across a room? A shattered lamp that was suddenly whole? I shut off the water before my mind could offer anything worse.

I dressed for work, tied my hair back, then let it down again. I was running late, a fact that would normally have ruined my morning. Today, I barely cared. On my way out of the bedroom, I stopped in front of the mirror. It was tall and antique, with a dark gold frame and a thin crack near its lower corner. I had bought it because the flaw made it cheaper. I told people I liked its character. The truth was that perfect things made me restless.

Perhaps because I’d spent so much of my life trying to look like one. My reflection stared back at me. Blue-green eyes. Tired shadows underneath them. An entirely ordinary woman who had apparently lost the ability to recognize an ordinary evening.

I raised my right hand. A thin black line crossed the center of my palm. I leaned closer. The mark vanished. For a moment, I didn’t move. Then I turned my hand over, checked the back, and looked at my palm again. Nothing. “Sleep,” I told my reflection. “You need sleep.” It sounded unconvincing even to me.

My route to the studio didn’t take me through Trastevere. I went anyway. I needed to see the shop in daylight, to measure it against the street around it and find something I could trust. A building had walls. A door had hinges. There had to be a reason I’d never noticed the place before.

The lane was busy now. A woman tugged a reluctant little dog along the pavement. A delivery driver stacked boxes outside the wine bar. Laundry dripped from a balcony overhead. The bookstore was still there. Relief loosened my chest. Then I saw the windows. They were coated with a thick film of gray dust. The green paint had peeled from the frames, exposing splintered wood beneath. One of the stone steps was cracked clean through.

There were no books in the display. No light inside. I moved closer. Beyond the filthy glass, empty shelves leaned against bare walls. Dust covered the floor. The shop hadn’t simply closed for the morning. It looked as though no one had opened it in years.

I reached for the door. A rusted chain hung through the handles, secured with a heavy padlock. My hand stopped short. Last night, I had walked through that door. I remembered the smell of smoke, the warmth of the lamp, the book’s rough page beneath my palm.

I stepped back and studied the facade. Every proportion was the same. Three steps. Recessed entrance. Warped glass. Even the uneven stonework beside the frame. The building hadn’t changed. Everything inside it had.

My reflection hovered over the window, pale against the grime. I leaned in, searching the vacant room for the table. That was when I saw the word. Someone had traced it through the dust on the inside of the glass.

Remember. I stopped breathing. And somewhere deep beneath my ribs, something answered.