Free All You Desire by Kirsten Miller

more than that.”
    â€œPan-pan?” Haven had asked. “What’s that mean?”
    â€œMy dad told me it’s what they say in the Army. I think it’s French or something. It means you need help.”
    â€œWhy don’t they just say ‘help’? Why do they have to get all fancy and speak French?”
    â€œHow would I know? Stop asking so many questions and let’s get a move on. I’m hungry as a horse. You wanna eat hot dogs?”
    â€œYeah,” Haven said. She hadn’t eaten in hours, and her mouth was already watering.
    Together, they walked the mile back to the Decker house. That night, they camped out in the yard. Beau’s father built a fire for them, and they stayed up late roasting marshmallows. No one mentioned the party. It was one of the best nights of Haven’s life.
    Haven had sifted through her childhood memories and found dozens of similar scenes. Beau had always been there for her—even when Haven hadn’t deserved his friendship. Now she had a chance to repay him properly. Whatever it took, she wouldn’t let him down. Wherever he was, she would find him and take him home.
    Â 
    TWO DAYS HAD passed since Beau’s disappearance—long enough for the police to officially declare him a missing person. Ben Decker now had the NYPD searching for his son, but no one was satisfied with the progress they’d made. There were no leads. No clues. Beau seemed to have stepped off a plane at LaGuardia Airport and vanished without a trace. The cops had warned Beau’s father to brace himself for bad news. But Haven was certain that there was still time to save her best friend. It was this one little hunch, with no proof to support it, that managed to keep her sane.
    Two mornings in a row, she dragged herself out of bed before dawn and returned alone to the palazzo Iain had shown her. Haven stood in the square from sunup to sundown, letting her body freeze in place as she tried to invite more visions from the past. She didn’t notice all the tourists who snapped photos of her—or the locals who whispered and laughed. Iain offered to keep her company, but Haven couldn’t allow anything to distract her. She needed to see more of the life Beatrice and her brother had shared in the mansion at the end of the square. More importantly, she needed to see Naddo .
    But the vision Haven craved never revealed itself. There were a few tantalizing glimpses of medieval Florence—a rope being tossed out of a third-story window. Piero shimmying down the side of the building and Beatrice pulling up the rope once he’d landed. Or Beatrice hiding in a cabinet while her furious mother searched the house for her. But Haven saw nothing that could help her find Beau. Still she waited. The longer she stood in front of the palazzo, the darker the visions became. She watched the Vettori family’s belongings be loaded into carts and hauled away in a hurry, the carts’ drivers steering around bodies that lay in the street. Later she saw the plague doctors descending on the house like a flock of vultures, each dressed in a dark overcoat and a terrible, birdlike mask. Their parties lasted late into the night. Until they stopped altogether.
    On the third day of Haven’s vigils, Iain took a train back to Rome to pick up some much-needed cash and a few changes of clothes. The night before, they had lugged their suitcases from their luxury lodgings to a run-down youth hostel at the edge of town. Their new room reeked of pot smoke and bug spray. Next door, four British college girls partied with a local soccer team while Haven and Iain huddled together on the lumpy mattress, their arms locked tightly around each other. Unable to sleep, Haven gazed at the golden ring on her finger and wished it had the power to transport them back to their apartment in Rome. At dawn, she and Iain rose and began the long trek to the center of Florence When they reached