Soon the volume was turned down and Alessandro appeared on the lower deck of the yacht in a dark blue diving suit, with oxygen cylinders on his back, his diving mask pushed up on his forehead. He held something that glittered metallically in one hand.
“He has a gun!” shouted the man beside Rosa.
“No,” she placidly contradicted him, “that’s not a gun.”
Alessandro grinned, and with his forefinger he traced a figure 3 in the air. The others onboard must have thought he’d lost his mind, but Rosa smiled.
She stepped clumsily over to the deck chair. Her iPod was lying beside it. She took the cable out of the earphones and went back to the rail with it. Sunlight shone on the silvery case. As it did on the device in Alessandro’s hand.
“‘My Death’ was my mother’s favorite song,” he called. “She used to listen to just that one song. After her death I played it over and over again myself. But then, on that plane—I thought it was time to put an end to it. Or at least try to.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Didn’t work too well.”
“You switched them. While I was asleep.”
“You knew?”
“I’ve known for quite a while. When I was in your mother’s villa that first time … the song felt like a part of it.” Like Gaia’s ghost.
He raised the player in his hand and let the sun sparkle on it. “This is yours. I thought I’d bring it back to you. Maybe you can use it.”
“Underwater?”
“Who knows?”
She weighed up the flat device in her own hand and swung back her arm.
Two silver arcs cut through the air above the sea. The crew exchanged baffled glances.
The iPods collided in midair at the highest point of their trajectory and fell into the sea.
Alessandro sighed. Rosa laughed. They looked at each other, grinning.
“Let’s go after them!” she called over to him.
And they both dove into the deep blue sea at the same time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KAI MEYER is one of Germany’s most successful authors, with millions of books sold worldwide, and his novels have been translated into thirty languages. The British edition of THE FLOWING QUEEN (published in the U.S. as THE WATER MIRROR) won the 2007 Marsh Award for Best Children’s Book in Translation and his historical novel THE VOW was turned into a movie by celebrated German director Dominik Graf. Kai lives in Germany. You can visit him online at www.kaimeyer.com.
CREDITS
Cover photo © 2012 by Aimee Barker
Cover design by Sarah Hoy
COPYRIGHT
The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut, which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Arcadia Awakens
Copyright © 2009 by Kai Meyer
Translation copyright © 2012 by HarperCollins Publishers
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meyer, Kai.
[Arkadien erwacht. English.]
Arcadia awakens / Kai Meyer ; translated from the German by Anthea Bell. — 1st U. S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When seventeen-year-old Rosa Alcantara travels from her native Brooklyn to her ancestral home in Sicily, she falls head over heels for Alessandro Carnevare, whose family is the sworn enemy of hers, and must confront both of their families’ criminal—and paranormal—pasts.
ISBN 978-0-06-200606-6 (tr. bdg.)
[1. Organized crime—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. Shape-shifting—Fiction. 4. Vendetta—Fiction. 5. Sicily (Italy)—Fiction.] I. Bell, Anthea. II. Title.
PZ7.M57171113Arc 2012
2011024829
[Fic]—dc23
* * *
12 13 14 15 16 LP / RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First U.S. Edition, 2012
Originally published in Germany in 2009 by Carlsen Verlag.
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