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“A tour?” she mutters. “Is this really necessary?”

When Matteo speaks, his voice is low enough that only she can hear it. “It is important to be seen, so that you are seen as one of them. When the bodies go missing, the first suspects are the strangers.”

Pain radiates from her temples to her teeth, and Sabine struggles to think of anything, let alone Hector’s warning about keeping corpses in one’s wake. But after a moment, she manages. “That is why you leave before they’re found.”

“A fine strategy,” Matteo says, “if you’re content to spend your whole life running. But why run when you can put down roots and grow?”

As if to prove a point, he waves to a couple strolling by above.

Exchanges pleasantries with a gentleman on a bridge just before they pass into the brief respite of the tunnel.

Sabine wants to melt into the damp stone arch.

The only mercy, she thinks, is the fact that dusk is quick approaching.

But Matteo doesn’t even flinch when they emerge into the light again.

“How can you stand it?” she asks through gritted teeth.

“I am old,” he says simply. “I have had a long time to learn my limits.”

To every side, snatches of music and laughter fill the air, the streets packed for the first night of Carnevale, but the canals are glutted, too. Gondolas passing close enough to touch, voices washing like fog around them.

Desperate for some distraction from the discomfort of the sun, Sabine continues talking. “What is old, to those who do not age?”

“Oh, but we do,” says Matteo. “It may not show in the luster of our hair, the smoothness of our skin, the strength of our bones. But do not be mistaken. All things are touched by time, and we are no exception.”

Sabine frowns. “I do not feel changed.”

“You are still young,” he says, and she snorts. She does not feel it, has by now lived far longer than a human ever would. Matteo registers her doubt.

“For them,” he says, gesturing at the busy city, “age takes its toll in decades. For us, it is the work of centuries. And it is not measured in wrinkles, or gray hair. Where others rot without, we rot within.” He raps his knuckles against his chest. “We are hollowed, bit by bit, as all that made us human dies. Our kindness. Our empathy. Our capacity for fear, and love. One by one, they slough away, until all that’s left is the desire to hunt, to hurt, to feed, to kill.

That is how we die. Made reckless by our hunger.

Convinced we are unkillable until someone or something proves us wrong. ”

It has been decades since she thought of Hector.

Now, she thinks of him for the second time that day.

Standing at the altar in the church, a wolfish grin on his stained mouth, his stolen robes splashed red.

Renata, assuring her it was nothing but a stormy mood, that it would pass.

The sound they made as they were chained and burned inside their coffins.

“You say you’re old,” she says, forcing her mind back to the gondola, “yet you still seem to have your senses.”

A rueful smile. “Give me time.”

At last, the sun slips behind the buildings, the sickness withdrawing in its wake. Sabine feels herself uncoil.

“Oh look.” Matteo leans back smugly, rests an elbow on the gondola’s edge. “You have survived.”

She shoots him a withering look. Matteo only chuckles, though she thinks she can make out the slightest strain at the corners of his eyes, the line of his mouth, even as it melts away.

“We are none of us immune to the nature of decay, Sabine. But I believe its effects can be . . . delayed. With a semblance of control.” His gaze drops to her neckline as he says it, the baubles hanging there. “You kill too often and too easily.”

She shrugs, thumb skating over the tokens. “What can I say? My hunger runs deep.”

“Perhaps,” he ventures. “I’m sure it feels that way.

The hunger lives inside us all. To some it is an empty bucket.

To others, a yawning pit. And yet, no matter how shallow or how deep it feels, here is a truth that will either drive you mad, or bring you peace.

” He sits forward. “There is no filling it. You will never be sated. It does not matter whether you drink a carafe or drain a city. The hunger will not ease.”

Matteo leans back, elbows resting on the gondola’s rim, but his eyes never leave Sabine.

He stares at her with that gray gaze, as if she is a pane of glass, and he can see straight through her, all the way back to the frenzied night she nearly lost herself, the slaughter in the church.

As if he knows what happened there, how the more she fed, the emptier she felt.

How the hunger never waned, but opened in her like a chasm, so wide it nearly swallowed her as well.

“You must learn to master it,” says Matteo, “or it will master you.”

Sabine’s hand drifts to the charms around her throat. “Let me guess,” she muses. “You intend to show me how.”

The boat slows to a stop before the house again. Her host rises to his feet. “I do,” he says, offering a hand. “And who knows. You might even enjoy it.”