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I

Venice, Italy

Two nights until Carnevale, and the city is bursting at the seams.

Carts rattle down the narrow roads and clog the bridges. Carriage wheels clatter over stone, the roads and houses overrun, voices filling the air as tents are raised and piazzas made ready.

The collective noise is more than enough to hide the sound of the girl struggling against Sabine.

She has just arrived, carried on the tide of traffic from Verona. Cities, she has found, make perfect hunting grounds. Places so busy, a handful of deaths will almost always go unnoticed. Still, she is careful. Never leaves more bodies than she can count.

Sabine’s fingers tighten on the back of the girl’s neck as her teeth sink deeper. She used to tell them not to be afraid, but that was so many, many years ago, before she learned how much she liked the taste of fear.

Bright, and bittersweet.

In her arms, the girl stops fighting.

Her heart grows sluggish before finally it falters, fails. Sabine sighs and lets go, watching as the body lands with a soft splash in the canal below, the sound swallowed by a commotion on a nearby bridge.

There is a blue silk ribbon in her hand, freed from the girl’s hair as she was drinking. Sabine curls the fabric around her finger, savoring the last echoes of the heartbeat in her chest.

“Quanta avventata,” says a voice behind her.

How reckless.

She turns to find a man she’s never met, leaning, arms crossed, against the wall.

At first glance, he is a gentleman, his clothes rich and tailored to his form, broad shoulders, tapered waist. His eyes deep gray, like chips of slate, his black hair neatly combed, a mustache curling like a second grin over his upper lip.

She didn’t hear him coming. A mystery, until the side of his mouth tugs up, flashing a pointed fang.

Ah, she thinks.

He is not the first of her kind that she’s met since Hector and Renata.

There was a man with snow-white hair in Barcelona.

A woman thin and coiled as a rope in Athens.

A pair of sisters in Marseille. The older ones Sabine could not read, but the sisters were younger, their curiosity plain as pipe smoke on the air.

And Sabine knew that if she crooked a finger, as Renata did that night, so long ago, they would follow.

But she didn’t.

The time for friends has come and gone. On the rare occasion when she covets company, she finds it, and afterward, the blood tastes brighter for the time they’ve shared.

But Sabine prefers to hunt alone.

And so, each time their paths have crossed, she’s kept her distance. And each time, she felt their presence long before she saw them.

But this one has caught her by surprise.

And he does not seem intent on leaving.

“Posso aiutarla?” she asks— Can I help you? —the Italian rolling off her lips. She has been told she speaks it well, almost as if it were her native tongue. It is not hard to learn, when one has time. And Sabine has plenty of it.

His eyes flick past her, to the canal. The girl’s body vanishing beneath the surface.

“It is considered rude,” he says, “to make a mess in someone else’s house.”

Sabine looks around. “And yet, I do not see a house.”

Casually, the man unfolds his arms, and abandons the wall, rising to full height.

“You do not see four walls,” he says. “You do not see a roof. A door. But do not be mistaken. You are standing in my house. ”

He ambles toward her as he says it, and as he does, a strange thing happens.

Sabine feels herself retreat. Not out of choice, or even fear. The air around her thickens, then goes solid, that telltale hook of trying to cross a threshold through which she hasn’t been invited.

Again the man steps forward, and again Sabine finds herself forced back, until she feels the street drop out beneath her heels, the water sloshing against the canal walls below.

Indignation rises in her, but fascination, too.

“How?” she asks, boots balanced on the edge.

The stranger doesn’t answer, only looks up at the sky, as if considering the moonlit clouds. And then he turns his back on her and sets off down the road. The air relaxes, and Sabine takes a careful step from the edge when she hears him call out, “Venga.”

Come.

She laughs, a cold sound sliding through her teeth, is halfway through telling him just where he can go without her, when the man glances back and smiles at her, almost warmly, and says, “That was not an invitation.”

A hand, invisible as the doorway, and just as firm, plants itself between her shoulders and she feels her body moving forward before her mind can think to hold it back.

Sabine understands then, that despite his easy manner, he is old.

Old enough she never heard him coming.

Old enough to lay claim to streets and open air.

Old enough to move her like a puppet.

The knowledge makes her skin prickle with a primal kind of fear. It has been such a long time since she was made to feel like prey, and she detests it, wants to tear this stranger open crotch to crown, wants to get away.

But more than either one of those, Sabine wants to understand.

To know how he has done it. So she can do it, too.

The moment she starts forward on her own, the hand retreats. But she can feel it, hanging just behind her, like a draft. Knows that if she stopped, or turned, or tried to leave, it would be there to catch her.

So she does not stop, or turn, or try to leave.

She catches up, and walks beside the man instead of in his wake.

To a passerby, they would appear a happy, handsome couple, on their way home. Sabine, in her fine dress, her hair a loose curtain of molten copper. And him, with his broad shoulders, fingers clasped behind his back.

A handful of men stroll down the opposite side of the canal, and when they spot Sabine and the stranger, one calls out, lifting the bottle in a way that is half greeting, and half toast.

“Don Accardi!”

The man beside her smiles, waves, bidding them good night.

“Don Accardi ?” she asks as they walk on. “Is that your name?”

“It is how I’m known, in Venice,” he says, “But you may call me Matteo. And what shall I call you?” he adds politely.

“Why ask? Surely you are strong enough to pluck it from my mind.”

Matteo shrugs. “Perhaps,” he says. “But that would be rude.”

“Oh, that would be rude?” She sneers. “But forcing me to follow you—”

He tuts. “Am I such loathsome company? You are the one who came into my house—”

“It isn’t yours —” she counters as they cross a square.

“—and tossed a corpse in my canal—”

“Bodies are found floating every day.”

“The least you can do is be a decent guest,” he continues, leading her around a corner, “and walk with me—”

“I do not even know where we are going.”

“To my home.”

Sabine cocks a brow and says, “I thought all of Venice was your home.”

And there it is, again, that odd, affable smile. As if the entire thing amuses him. They pass beneath an arch, into a columned courtyard, a riot of wisteria blooming in the corners.

“Here we are,” he says, coming to a stop at last.

Sabine stares ahead. And then up. It is less a house than a palazzo. Three stories tall, its front as ornate as a church.

“Do you live alone?” she asks. “Or are there more of you?”

Matteo seems to weigh the words before he answers. “There are no others like us here.”

“Let me guess,” she says. “You scared them all away.”

“No,” he says. Then, “Only some.”

His boots echo softly on the courtyard stones as he approaches the front door, which is its own grand affair, wrought iron forming a half circle overhead, tendrils thrown out like rays of sun.

It swings open at his touch, and he strolls in, but as Sabine goes to follow, her body snags on the threshold. She finds herself pinned, unable to go forward, unable to retreat. She grits her teeth, good humor withering.

“You brought me all this way,” she says, “only to leave me at the door?”

Matteo tips one shoulder in the entryway. “Ah,” he says, clicking his tongue. “I was afraid of that.”

“Do you intend to let me in?”

“I would, but I cannot.” And before Sabine can point out the absurdity of laying claim to an entire city but not the house in which he lives, Matteo lifts his voice a measure.

“Alessandro?” he calls out. “We have a guest.”

A moment’s silence, followed by the soft tread of bare feet, and then a second man appears at the far end of the hall.

Elegant and young, honey-blond hair ribboning around his face, his eyes a shocking shade of azure blue—but it is the red that draws her gaze.

His fingers are coated crimson, the color splashing up his arms, across his tunic, leaving flecks like freckles on one cheek.

“Did we interrupt?” Matteo asks, to which Alessandro gives a languid shrug.

“No,” he says. “I was just cleaning my brushes.”

So that is what he’s covered in. Not blood. Paint.

As he ambles toward them, Sabine realizes two things.

He is handsome, in a doll-like way.

And he is unmistakably human. She can hear the soft and steady turning of his heart, can taste his caution wafting down the hall.

“Have you brought home a stray?” he asks, at the same time Sabine mutters, “So you have a pet.”

Matteo looks between the two of them and laughs. “Alessandro Contarini, this is . . .” He trails off, waiting for her to introduce herself.

“Sabine.”

His mouth twitches. “How odd,” he muses.

“Is it?”

“I knew another Sabine once.” The words are a chip of ice between her shoulders, but, small mercy, he seems content to leave them there. “Go ahead,” he says, shrugging off his cloak. “Let her in.”

Sabine’s attention slides to the mortal in the hall. Matteo’s pet. “Yes,” she purrs, fingers rapping against the air, where they land as if on wood. “Go ahead and let me in.”

The young man, Alessandro, studies her.

Not as a mouse studies a cat, but as an artist studies a subject, deciding how best to capture it. Then he bows, one hand billowing outward in a flourish. “You are most welcome here.”