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IV

On the fifth night, Sabine finds her prey strolling with a man.

One who reeks of gluttony and greed, his attention drifting everywhere but to the woman on his arm, in her gilded lily mask. Sabine’s mood darkens, even as her hunger peaks. She wonders if she’ll need to handle him as well.

But on the sixth night, the woman is alone again.

Sabine follows the lily from her front door to San Marco, watches her weave between the crowds and carts, buy a bag of candied fruit, and stop before a living statue on its pedestal.

A woman dressed as a marionette, a wooden mask with a puppet’s face, and pale ropes running from her wrists and ankles to a wooden frame above her head.

Her prey clearly has a penchant for performers.

The lily drops a coin into the bowl and the puppet jerks to life, moving through the motions with a wooden gait. Sabine cannot see the expression on her face, but she’s sure it is a mix of curiosity and wonder.

Sabine surveys the square and chooses her own performer, this one dressed as a jester. She strolls up and drops a coin into his cup. It lands with a heavy clink, and he springs to his feet and begins to juggle for her.

She watches, feigning interest, until she hears the rustle of skirts, feels the lily drift up to fill the narrow space beside her. Sabine smiles behind the painted safety of her peacock mask and turns, pretends to startle in recognition.

“Hello again,” she says, making her voice sweet and bright. “I found a better pair of shoes.” Then, nodding at the jester, who has finished his play, and is pretending to be made of stone again, “Isn’t it delightful?”

“Indeed!” says the lily. “I wonder how they stay so still.”

“I don’t know,” says Sabine. “I can barely sit through dinner.” She is rewarded with a laugh like little bells. She turns away from her prey, scans the square as if taking it all in for the first time. “I wonder, are there any others?”

And just like that, the gilded lily hooks her elbow through Sabine’s and says, “Come, I’ll show you. There is a great one, over here.”

On the seventh night, she learns the woman’s name.

Bianca.

Bianca, whose voice is high and sweet, and always on the verge of laughter.

Bianca, who is twenty-two, and recently engaged, to that oafish man Sabine saw her with two nights before.

Bianca, who seems excited to be wed, which is enough to convince Sabine that she has chosen well, will be doing her a kindness, sparing her the horrors of a marriage bed, the burden of being a wife.

Bianca, who is not from Venice, but Modena, and though her fiancé brought her here to experience the spectacle of Carnevale, he seems to care less for the balls than the corners where bets are placed and cards are played, and so, Bianca has been left largely to her own devices.

It is all wonderful but, she must admit, it is a little lonely, too.

How lucky she feels, then, to have made a friend.

How grateful, to have met Sabine.

By the eighth night, Sabine is ravenous.

And yet, there is a new shade to her hunger. A clarity, a brightness, every sense sharpened by the single-minded focus.

She paces the house until dusk, eager to resume the hunt.

On the ninth night, they return to the Ducale, she and Bianca, and perch like birds on the upper colonnade, making up stories about the dancers below. They spin messy yarns of sordid affairs and murder plots, Bianca’s contributions fueled by her love of novels, Sabine’s drawn from memory.

At the end of the night, Bianca insists that Sabine come with her the next and final day, to witness the menagerie they’ve gathered in the square, a caravan of birds and monkeys, tigers and bears.

Sabine is already making her excuses when Bianca’s hand comes to rest on her arm, her eyes twinkling behind her mask as she says, “Please, say that you’ll come. ”

And Sabine finds herself saying yes.

Until now, she has only seen the Carnevale by night, imagined it rising up like mushrooms after dark.

How strange, then, to see the costumed masses revel in the sun.

The daylight ushers in another kind of torment: children. They dart between skirts and horses, stalls and carts, their faces painted and their voices loud.

Sabine wishes she were in her darkened chamber, safe within her bed.

Her feathered mask provides a small shield against the light, but she is tired, her head pounding from hunger and the sun’s vicious glare, even sheltered as she is beneath the parasol that Alessandro gave her when she left.

Meanwhile, Bianca throws her arms out and delights in the arrival of the spring.

How bleak it’s been, this winter past, she says. So much rain, so little sun.

Sabine grimaces behind her mask, and lets Bianca draw her toward the crowd, and the cages, and the creatures kept within.

Her mood lifts at the sight of them, prowling behind their bars, these creatures larger and fiercer than she has ever seen.

A bear rises on hind legs and towers overhead.

A red-faced monkey grips its cage with human-looking hands.

A bird with every-colored feathers squawks and settles on its perch.

But it is the cats that most enchant her.

Mouths wider than a man’s head, and teeth as long and sharp as talons.

Fur in shades of black, and white, and even red. Like her.

Sabine approaches the ginger beast, steps right up to the bars, and in response, the lion growls, retreats, as all beasts do, sensing danger.

Behind her mask, she smiles, showing teeth.

Once, Bianca gets too close to a cage, and the tiger within lets out a warning roar. She leaps backward with a delighted yelp, and clutches at Sabine as if escaping peril. As if she has not fled one predator in favor of another.

Sabine laughs, softly, to herself, and holds Bianca tighter.

Ten days.

Ten days that seem to last forever.

And then, somehow, are gone.

Suddenly, it is the last night of Carnevale, the most extravagant one yet.

It is the feast before the famine, the entire city gorging on its pleasure.

The hours wilt and drop away. The sky over Venice explodes with light as fireworks ring in the final hours, the blasts echo like thunder, and beside Sabine, Bianca lets her head fall back and gasps in childish delight.

It is magnificent.

And then it is over.

Bells toll across the square, and Sabine walks her companion home. Along the way, Bianca sheds her mask, lets it dangle on its ribboned backing from her wrist. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes glassy with wine.

Her head lolls on Sabine’s shoulder as she murmurs sleepily, “I wish it did not have to end.”

“So do I,” she lies.

If her own heart could beat, it would be racing now, giddy in anticipation. Instead, there is only the coiled silence. The hollow waiting to be filled.

They are almost to Bianca’s when Sabine leads her off the road, into a narrow gap between the buildings. Bianca giggles, the sound bubbling up, her limbs off-balance from the night of drinking and dancing.

Sabine takes off her mask, and Bianca studies her face, then reaches out and curls a copper lock around her finger, the air above her nothing but curiosity and trust.

It has already happened.

Sabine has killed her a hundred times.

Has let her imagination feast on the inevitable act.

In some of her fantasies, Bianca struggled.

In others, she was so surprised that she went still.

But in none of them did the woman’s fiancé come stumbling around the corner.

Bianca startles, turning toward the sound, but Sabine presses her back against the wall. Holds a finger to her lips, makes sure to smile as if it is a joke.

A game.

The man walks straight by the narrow alcove, never once glancing into the dark.

And then he’s gone.

Sabine drops her hand, and Bianca takes a breath, lips parting, perhaps to make a joke, or ask a question, but the words die on her lips as Sabine bows her head and brings her mouth to rest against the woman’s throat.

Bianca stiffens in surprise, and Sabine wonders, briefly, if she would welcome this, if it were just a kiss. But her pulse is a desperate beat, her skin so thin a barrier, and Sabine has waited long enough.

Her teeth sink in.

Bianca gasps, and Sabine’s grip tightens, blood spilling through her lips, the heartbeat heavy on her tongue.

And it is exquisite.

Every pulse repays a minute, an hour, a day, nine days of waiting, ten nights of wanting, of unremittent hunger, every agonizing moment hoping her restraint would be rewarded. Hoping the suffering endured would be worth it when she reached the end.

And it is. It is worth it for the heady rush alone, the dizzy thrill, the lifeblood pouring in, soaking through Sabine’s body like deep water on dry earth.

Bianca whimpers, and Sabine’s teeth drive deeper still, pinning her prey to the wall as she closes her eyes, and drinks, and drinks, until there is nothing left but a body, abandoned, and a stolen pulse cradled in her chest.

A heartbeat that blooms within Sabine.

And lasts all the way home.