Chapter 13
Rome. Present day.
When the sky hung so gray and ominous that it felt like a blanket enveloping the city, Sira walked herself over to the Terme di Caracalla, the haunted open-air ruins of the Roman emperor of the same name. These ancient, grandiose public bath houses only bore his name because he was emperor when they were finished, so Sira always felt that naming them after him had been somewhat unfair. But then, she supposed, empires weren’t built on fairness. Grand they certainly were, she had to admit, even now that they were not what they had been built to be. What was now a sepia-toned skeleton had once been a meeting place of the ancient Romans, a point of recreation. The tawny remains of the massive structure broke high into the sky so that Sira had to tilt her head ba
