“Deal!” Vanya said, before holding out his hand to Mikhail.

Sighing, Mikhail took three silver coins from the stash in his coat pocket.

As soon as the coins plopped into Emre’s palm, they disappeared into the leather pouch fastened to his sash belt.

“Wonderful.” His accent remained, but his voice lost some of its theatrical flair. “Are you three from around here or just passing through?”

“We’re traveling to the mainland,” I said.

“Good thing you stopped by. Few get an opportunity to see the fabled Hall of Wonders. Now, follow me.” Emre ushered us across the room and through a narrow doorway screened by a black velvet curtain.

Shelves lined the next room from floor to ceiling, and precarious display cases made a cramped maze out of the space. Leisurely, he guided us down the rows, pointing out objects of interest.

Strewn amid books and relics, specimen jars contained cloudy fluid and piecemeal remnants—a vodyanoy’s webbed hand, severed at the wrist; some black, knotted husk the beast tamer claimed was the heart of an upyr; the misshapen forms of more mundane animals.

“Did you see that baby pig?” Vanya said, looking as enthralled as Galina on her treasure hunts. “It had two heads.”

I shook my head. I’d felt too sickened by the upyr’s heart to even notice.

“It was probably sewn on,” Mikhail muttered.

Vanya turned to him, clearly aghast. “Have you no sense of wonder, Misha? Are you not entertained?”

“My idea of entertainment isn’t as provincial as sideshow acts,” he said dully.

“Excuse me, but when are we going to see the upyr?” I asked Emre as he paused to admire a rug he claimed was woven from rusalka hair.

“All in good time.” He winked. “There’s still much to see.”

“It’s alive, right?”

“Indeed it is.”

“Did you kill the vodyanoy yourself?” Mikhail asked, tracing his fingertips over the specimen jar.

“No, I acquired it from a Grozniy sailor,” he said. “The sailors believe that the teeth protect against drowning, so they hunt them at their leisure and wear the teeth on chains across their waist.”

I shivered, recalling the flicker of anguished awareness that had swept over the vodyanoy’s face moments before he had retreated underwater. In his previous life, he might have been a killer; he might have been a young serf plucked from the field, shoved into chain mail, and given a sword in hands more accustomed to handling a hoe. No matter who he was in his past, it seemed so cruel that such a creature could endure one bitter fate, just to fall victim to another.

“Why do you think some people come back?” I asked Emre.

“We all want to leave our mark on the world,” he said as though that answered it all, before turning back ahead and continuing with our tour. Along with the remains, the Hall of Wonders had a wealth of other artifacts. An early steam engine prototype from Yezmirny. Ancient icons in enamelled bronze.