We pass sheep grazing by the roadside, a few men in woolen coats who look about as old as the stony soil itself. The road is more than winding; it is a labyrinth ascending higher and higher until the ocean has all but dropped away beneath us.

When we finally arrive at Lubenice, I am slightly queasy from the drive, but awed by the view. The sun has begun to burn off the haze and as I stand at the very edge of the ancient fort town, I think one could practically paraglide from here back to the mainland in an emergency.

A tiny whitewashed chapel stands near the edge of the settlement, which doesn’t even qualify as a town; only a few houses look like they’re actually in use. Everything seems to be made of the same white stone as the island itself, the rock that once supported an eastern gate having long since tumbled back down the hill. Shrubs grow in crannies in walls, grapevines and bougainvillea beautifully threatening to reduce anything still standing to rubble in coming years. A lone tree stands in the town center, which is nothing more than a cobbled courtyard between buildings.

“Now where?” I say, glancing at her.

Claudia sets her jaw and looks up, gaze lighting on an old woman setting a pillow to air in the window above us.

“Dobro jutro!” she calls up to the woman in a voice more cordial than I’ve ever heard from her.

The woman echoes her greeting. Claudia asks her a question, and the woman gestures with a rambling and increasingly agitated answer. After several minutes the older woman abruptly stops, wipes her eyes, and disappears.

“What just happened?” I say.

“She’s upset—she heard the news about Ivan this morning. She says he moved in earlier this month to the room above the wool museum back there.”

“Wool museum?”

“It’s open only during the summer. Ivan’s been renovating a wall on the edge of the cliff and made some repairs for the two old ladies living here. They liked him very much.”

I follow her between buildings toward the edge of the hill.

“She said two men were here last night,” Claudia says. “She heard them drive in and assumed one of them was Ivan, that he was up late drinking with a friend. Obviously, she has no idea we don’t drink.”

“We don’t?”

“It dulls the senses.”

“Which is why most people do it,” I say, droll.

“It dulls persuasion. And we can’t afford to be without our gifts,” she says pointedly. “The old woman said she went to check on Ivan this morning when he didn’t arrive for breakfast at her house. The latch was broken on his door.”

We come to the small building near the far gate. Claudia steps to the threshold, pauses to listen, and then swings the door wide.