“Tomorrow,” said Séverin. “One, or all of them, I don’t know, will meet me at the Bridge of Sighs at midnight. It’s all planned. We can get you out.”

Eva’s mouth twisted. “And how do you know they will come for you, Monsieur? You may not have killed them, but even I could see that how you treated them was a death of its own.”

Séverin sat back, the words buzzing in his skull. Eva was wrong. They would understand … they would give him one more chance. Wouldn’t they?

As the gondola slipped through the water, Séverin regarded the inky lagoon beneath them. It seemed alive. A hungry thing that swallowed the reflections of cathedrals and palazzos, lapped up stone archways and chewed off the faces of angels carved into the frames.

The water fed upon the city.

Séverin leaned away from his reflection in the black surface. For a moment, the canal seemed to mock him, whispering to him in the dark.

My belly holds the bones of empires. I’ve eaten sighs, and I’ve eaten angels, and one day I’ll eat you too.

9

ENRIQUE

Enrique touched his bandage gingerly. In the three days since he’d lost his ear, the pain had subsided to a low ache. He traced the strange new flatness against his skull, the little nub of scabbing skin where his ear had once been attached. As a child, he had been willing to give up his ear. Eager, even. For he thought it meant that his dreams would come true. When he was nine years old, he’d even gone so far as taking a knife to his earlobe before his mother caught him and started shrieking.

“Why would you do such a thing?” she had demanded.

“For the trade!” Enrique had replied. “For the enkantos!”

His mother had not been impressed, and she had promptly complained to his grandmother, who only laughed. After that, his mother forbid his lola from telling him more tales, but the very next day, Enrique crept to her side and sat by her feet and tugged at her long, white baro.

“Tell me a story,” he begged.

And she did. His lola used to tell him tales of the enkantos in the banana groves, their long fingers parting the shining leaves and their wide eyes aglow in the dusk. Even though she wore a cross around her neck and never missed mass on Sundays, his grandmother never forgot the enkantos outside. Each week, she left a bowl of rice and salt outside the door. When they went on walks and passed beneath the trees, she would bow her head and whisper, “tabi tabi po.”

“Why do you do that?” Enrique asked. “Why do you say ‘excuse me’ when there’s no one here?”

“How do you know, anak?” his grandmother would say, with a twinkle in her eye. “They have been here long before us, and it is only polite to ask that they allow us to cross their territory. The enkantos and diwatas are a proud folk, and you would not wish to offend them, would you?”