“We have been walking for more than an hour!” cut in Hypnos. “We haven’t found anything.”

“Soon, we won’t be able to see anything either,” pointed out Zofia.

Overhead, the light was failing faster and faster. The shadows beneath the statues of angels turned long and bladelike, and the cypresses looked unnaturally still. For a moment, Enrique imagined slender enkantos peering out at him from behind the trees, their nocturnal Otherworldly eyes glowing with hunger. His grandmother said they could sniff out dreams and make them real … for a price. In that moment, Enrique’s wound throbbed. Have I not already paid it? He turned from the grove, pushing aside the thought of Otherworld creatures slinking in the shadows.

“We have to keep looking,” said Enrique, “keep thinking. If we don’t find the safe house key, then we won’t have anywhere to go. Zofia needs a place to build her inventions, and I need a library and—”

“Perhaps our time would be better spent finding Séverin,” suggested Hypnos tentatively.

Enrique felt stunned. “Séverin?”

“We know he’s somewhere in Venice,” said Hypnos. “We can use what time we have left to try and find him somehow … then it won’t matter that Laila destroyed the Mnemo bug! I’m certain Séverin will know what to do.”

And there it was. This is not your place. What was he doing thinking he could lead them or solve a riddle? That was Séverin’s role, not his.

“Maybe you can ask him about the ‘island of the dead,’” said Hypnos.

Enrique’s ear felt hot, and his wound throbbed.

“Oh yes, why don’t I do just that,” shot back Enrique. He turned to the empty air beside him, then feigned shock. “What’s this? Oh yes … he’s not here, and we can’t find him without showing our faces and risking the whole thing because the Fallen House thinks we’re dead! But I suppose it would be better to risk death than give me a chance.”

Hypnos stepped back. “That’s not what I said—”

But Enrique had heard enough. He stalked off toward the unfinished tombstones, his heart racing, his breaths coming fast. For a couple of moments, he stood in the shade of a cypress, watching the shadows swallow up the graves. Maybe they were right. He should give up and go back, and not waste more of anyone’s time … especially Laila’s. She barely had any time left to waste. How would he show his face to her? Footsteps echoed behind him, and Enrique’s hands balled to fists at his side. He didn’t want to apologize to Hypnos.

But it was not Hypnos who appeared beside him. “I don’t like the dark,” said Zofia.

She looked small and sylphlike in the dusk. The rising moonlight picked out the silver in her white-blond hair, and her huge eyes seemed unearthly. Enrique tensed. Was she blaming him too? But then Zofia reached up to unclasp a pendant from her necklace.

“I don’t have many left,” said Zofia. “But it does help with finding your way through the dark.”