Prologue
Davide was already bored,
“—exactly what your career needs.” Ping. Commisioner Capo Moro’s mouth kept moving, but Davide’s skull was already singing that familiar tune. “You’ve shown exceptional . . . intuition in your current role.” Ping. “But frankly, these unusual assignments aren’t leading anywhere productive.” Ping.
Three lies in thirty seconds. The nerve behind Davide’s left eye started its familiar throb as he watched Moro shuffle papers across the conference table. Psychological evaluations, case closure rates, God knows what else. The fluorescent lights made everything look sickly yellow.
“Regional Coordination.” Davide leaned back in his chair, studying the commisioner’s face. “Desk work. Reports. Committee meetings.”
“Important work. Strategic oversight.” Ping.
There it was again. The thing about catching lies all day, Davide had learned, was that you came to appreciate truth when it finally showed up. And the truth was sitting in Moro’s pinched expression, in the way his fingers drummed against the folder marked with Davide’s name.
He wanted Davide gone. Not promoted. Gone.
“What’s the real reason?”
Moro’s shoulders tightened. “I don’t understand—”
“The real reason you want me out of the freak show division.” Davide kept his voice level. Professional. “Because this isn’t about career advancement.”
“You’re being paranoid, Inspector.” Ping.
Davide had spent three years working cases that made normal cops request transfers. Each file stamped with classifications that meant nothing to anyone outside their little corner of bureaucratic hell. Each case solved through methods nobody wanted to examine too closely.
The other inspectors whispered. Called him lucky. Said he had good instincts. They had no idea that luck had fuck-all to do with it, that his instincts came with a price paid in daily migraines and the constant hum of other people’s deceptions.
But he’d been good at it. Better than good. Too good.
“You solve too much,” Moro said finally, his professional mask slipping. “The cases we give you—they’re supposed to be dead ends. Career killers. Ways to quietly shuffle problems into corners where nobody has to think about them.”
Finally. Truth.
“And instead, I make them go away.”
“Instead, you make them make sense.” Moro leaned forward. “You turn impossible crimes into solved files with neat reports and reasonable explanations. Do you have any idea how uncomfortable that makes people?”
Davide thought about the last case. Mrs. Silva, claiming her dead husband rearranged their furniture every night. Took him four days of interviews to catch the lies—her neighbor’s story about “never seeing anything suspicious” pinged false every time, until Davide pressed hard enough to get the truth. The woman’s teenage son had been sneaking in through the unlocked kitchen door to steal cash from her purse, rearranging furniture to cover his tracks and make the old lady think she was going crazy. Mrs. Silva’s dementia made her an easy target.
The file he’d submitted mentioned “resolved via confession and medical referral.” Clean. Explainable. The kid got community service, the old woman got proper care, and he didn’t have to mention in his report that the furniture really did keep moving even after the kid was caught.
“So transfer me somewhere I can do real police work.”
“This is about doing real police work.” Ping. “Regional Coordination handles serious crimes, organized investigation—”
“Cazzo, Moro. Parking violations and noise complaints.” Davide cut him off. “You want me filing reports about dogs barking too loud.”
Moro’s face flushed red. “You want to spend your career chasing fairy tales?”
The question hung in the fluorescent-lit air like a challenge. Blood that moved in patterns. Witnesses who told the truth about things that shouldn’t be true. The constant feeling that he was the only person in Florence who could see what was really happening in the shadows.
Being useful in ways that made his superiors squirm.
“Yeah,” Davide said. “I do.”
Moro stared at him. “The promotion comes with a thirty percent raise. Better hours. Actual advancement opportunities.”
“And no more strange cases.”
“No more strange cases.”
Davide could see the appeal. Clean work. Normal lies—expense reports and overtime instead of dead people and moving objects. Colleagues who didn’t cross themselves when they saw him coming. A career path that made sense to his mother.
But the impossible crimes needed someone who could catch the lies. Someone who could tell when witnesses were lying about seeing supernatural things and when they were telling the truth about very real crimes that just looked impossible from the outside. Someone who wouldn’t dismiss the impossible just because it was impossible.
“I’m declining the promotion.”
The words came out steady, matter-of-fact. Like he’d been planning to say them all along instead of discovering them in his mouth.
Moro’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “You’re refusing a promotion.”
“I’m refusing to file paperwork about parking meters when there are actual crimes that need solving.”
“Actual crimes.” Moro shook his head. “Davide, these cases—they’re not crimes. They’re curiosities. Flukes. Psychological problems masquerading as police work.”
“They’re problems that get solved when I work them and stay unsolved when nobody does.”
“And you think that makes you indispensable?”
“I think it makes me useful.”
“Useful.” Moro repeated the word like it tasted like shit. “For how long? Until you burn out completely? Until one of these cases breaks your mind?”
Fair question. The migraines were getting worse. The constant buzz of lies and half-truths was wearing him down. Some days Davide felt like he was carrying other people’s secrets in his skull until there wasn’t room for his own thoughts.
Sometimes the impossible was just . . . impossible. No rational explanation, no hidden criminal, no clever solution. Just Florence being fucking insane, and Davide caught in the middle with a splitting headache and no answers.
But the alternative meant pretending none of it mattered. Walking away from the only work he’d ever done that felt like it actually made a difference.
Even if he wasn’t sure he was making the right choice. Even if some nights he lay awake wondering if chasing supernatural crimes was slowly driving him insane, if the constant exposure to Florence’s mysteries was changing something fundamental in his brain. The migraines weren’t just from lies anymore—sometimes they came with flashes of things he shouldn’t know, shouldn’t see.
But what else could he do? Let the cases pile up unsolved while normal cops wrote them off as hoaxes or delusions?
“That’s my problem to solve.”
Moro leaned back, studying him with the expression of someone trying to decide whether to be impressed or concerned. “You realize this decision effectively ends any chance of normal career advancement.”
“Define normal.”
“Promotions. Leadership roles. Respect from colleagues.”
Davide laughed. It came out harsher than intended. “Commisioner, my colleagues already think I’m either incredibly lucky or quietly insane. Respect isn’t really part of the equation.”
“And you’re fine with that?”
Was he? Fine with being the guy who got called when nobody else wanted to deal with the supernatural? Fine with writing reports that danced around the truth because the truth was too strange for official documentation?
“I’m good at it,” Davide said instead of answering. Though “good” felt like stretching the truth. He solved cases, sure, but at what cost? And were they really solved, or just . . . managed?
The truth was simpler than fine. He was needed. In a city full of ancient stones and older secrets, someone had to stand between the living and the things that shouldn’t exist but did anyway.
Someone had to care about the cases that didn’t make sense.
Maybe he wasn’t saving anyone. Maybe he was just buying time, keeping Florence’s supernatural problems from spilling over into everyone else’s normal lives. Maybe that was enough.
Or maybe he was deluding himself, and in a few years he’d be the one they were writing psychological evaluations about.
Davide walked out knowing he’d just committed professional suicide. No advancement. No respect. No escape from the assignments that made normal cops request transfers.
But for the first time in his career, he’d chosen his path instead of having it chosen for him. Even if he wasn’t entirely sure it was the right path.
Whether it was worth it remained to be seen.
***
The next morning, his phone rang at 6:47 a.m. Torriani’s voice was apologetic but tense.
“Sorry about the hour, D’Amico, but we’ve got an emergency. High-profile victim.” A pause, papers rustling. “Maestro Ferdinando Bellacorte. Headless corpse in Palazzo Bellacorte. The mayor’s already breathing down my neck—apparently the bastard had friends in important places.”
Davide rubbed his eyes, already reaching for his jacket. “How important are we talking?”
“Important enough that I’m getting calls from Rome before the body’s even cold.” Torriani’s voice carried that particular strain that meant politicians were involved. “Scene’s secured, but it’s already looking like one of your special cases. And, D’Amico? They’re sending you backup.”
Backup. That was never good news.
A few minutes later, Davide’s email pinged with a stack of files. Crime scene photos, preliminary reports, background checks. And buried in the digital paperwork, a personnel file that made him snort coffee through his nose.
Dr. Luke Blackwood - Criminal Psychologist, Special Cultural Heritage Unit. BA Experimental Psychology, Cambridge. PhD Criminal Psychology, King's College London. Specialization: Ritual Crime Analysis, Behavioral Profiling, Historical Crime Patterns. Secondary expertise: Art Fraud Investigation, Cultural Heritage Crimes.
Christ. Another one. They kept sending him these academic types who’d probably read one too many books about occult crimes and convinced themselves they could profile supernatural killers. Last time it was Dr. Faralli with his theories about “psychic trauma patterns.” Before that, Professor Verdini, who insisted every strange case was “ritualistic displacement behavior.”
Now they’d gone international, apparently. Dragged some British expert all the way from England to explain the city’s supernatural problems to the locals.
All theorists. All convinced they understood the impossible better than the guy actually living it.
This was going to be fun. Or a complete disaster.
Probably both.