Venom (30 page)

And then she saw Luca walking down the aisle, in his wedding outfit. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if she might stave off the waves of guilt that threatened to drown her every time she thought of her fiancé.

“What is it, Cass?” Falco asked. “What just happened?”

Cass realized she was holding her breath. She exhaled slowly. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.

Falco twisted her around to face him. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “You can tell me anything, Cassandra.”

“I’m, I have, when I was young, my parents—” She couldn’t figure out how to tell him the truth: that she was Luca’s, even though she didn’t want to be, that she and Falco could never be together the way they wanted. “I’m engaged,” she finally blurted out, feeling simultaneously terrified and relieved. “My fiancé is away, studying in France.”

Falco nodded. “Of course you are. You’re a beautiful woman from a noble family. I’d be shocked to find out that your aunt hadn’t
secured your future.” He looked at her expectantly as if he were waiting to hear more.

“So you aren’t angry with me?” Cass buried her shaking hands in the fold of her skirts. How could he not be furious? She had lied to him. Well, practically. She had let him kiss her, even though she couldn’t be his bride. She had even kissed him back.

Falco smiled at her through the dark. “Is that what’s been worrying you? No, starling. I’m not angry.” He pulled her body close to his again, burying his face in her hair. “You smell amazing,” he said. “Like roses and butterflies and cool spring mornings.” He held her hand up to his mouth, his fingers untying one of her lacy cuffs.

Cass’s relief started to fade as Falco’s lips found the bare skin of her wrist. “Wait a minute.” She pulled away. “
Why
aren’t you angry with me? You and I, we kissed, we might have—” Cass couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. Exactly how far would she have let things go if she hadn’t been ripped from her moment of fantasy by the stranger on the bridge? When he had loosened her bodice and reached beneath her chemise to stroke the skin of her upper back, all she had wanted was for him to loosen the rest of the laces. She definitely hadn’t been thinking about telling him to stop.

Falco’s eyes gleamed in the night. “Go on. We might have what?”

Coldness filled Cass’s whole body. She reached out and pushed Falco away from her. “I think I understand.” She pulled the lace on her cuff tight so that her wrist disappeared beneath the fabric. “All you wanted was a sordid little tryst? You were just going to keep going until I stopped you? That is so—so…” She struggled to find the correct words, but the cold fury that filled her made it difficult to speak.

“Improper?” Falco said. “Fun?”

“Fun?” Cass had half a mind to push Falco out of the boat and
right into the murky water of the canal. She reached behind her back and made a futile attempt to retighten her bodice. “You’re disgusting,” she spat out.

“Would you like help with that?” Falco reached toward her.

“Don’t touch me.” Cass gave up on the bodice. She wrapped herself tightly in the woolen blanket.

Falco laughed aloud. “You’re the one with the fiancé, and I’m disgusting?” He shook his head. “Women.”

“You’re disgusting because it doesn’t bother you to have an affair with an almost-married woman.” Cass felt tears pushing at the back of her eyes. That was all he wanted from her: fun. “You could be thrown in prison for that. Executed, even!”

Falco leaned in toward Cass. She stiffened, but didn’t pull back. “I know you want this as much as I do,” he said. “You aren’t going to report me. And even if you did, I’m inclined to think a night with you might well be worth imprisonment.”

Cass looked away from him, fighting the urge to soften. He was just trying to flatter her to get what he wanted.

Falco’s voice turned gentle. “I wish we could have more. I wish I could lie next to you every night. I wish I could parade you around on my arm in the daylight,” he said. “But if we can’t be together like that, then why can’t we be together like this?” He moved to kiss her again.

A part of her wanted to let him, really wanted to, but she was still offended by his thinking she’d be so willing to have a tryst with him and then marry Luca as if no one would ever be the wiser. “Don’t,” she said, leaning against the side of the boat. She stared into the night, seeing nothing. No movement. No lanterns. It was as if Cass and Falco were the only two people in the world.

Now it was his turn to look offended. “It can’t be wrong if we both feel the same way.”

Cass didn’t know how she felt; that was the problem. She could feel Falco’s eyes burning into the back of her neck, and resisted the desire to turn and meet his gaze. She skimmed her fingers over the water. She wondered exactly how she had found herself in this place. They passed a palazzo where yellow fire from a pair of cressets still lingered, long after a party had broken up. Cass saw her reflection ripple across the water. She hardly recognized the girl that looked up at her. Her face was thinner, paler, almost a stranger.

Then the flames flickered and the reflection shifted slightly. Cass realized she
was
staring down at a stranger. The girl’s head floated to the surface of the canal, ringlets of dark hair writhing like serpents, vacant eyes staring up at Cass almost accusingly. Cass screamed as the girl’s swollen torso surfaced, her neck encircled with bruises, her chest marred by a bloody X.

F
alco pulled her away from the water. She turned in toward him, hiding her face in his chemise. She was heaving, gasping for breath.

“It’s okay.” He cradled her with one arm.

Cass felt the boat come to life and move awkwardly through the water. Falco must be rowing one-handed. She looked up. “What are you doing? Pull over. Here.”

“What?” Falco released her to man the oars with both hands. The old boat creaked and groaned its way through the canal water, until the grotesque floating body disappeared in its wake.

“I need to get out.” Cass felt bile rising in her throat. She needed to get off the water immediately. She wanted to hurl herself from the boat, get lost deep within the winding streets of the Rialto, run until the floating body disappeared from her mind.

Falco rowed to the edge of the canal and moored the boat. Cass clambered over the side without waiting for his help. Grabbing her lantern, she took off down the closest street with Falco right behind her. Cass had no idea where she was going. All she knew was that she had to put as much distance between herself and that floating dead girl as she could.

She turned into an alley and leaned up against a crumbling brick building, her breath catching in the back of her throat. Falco caught up to her. “Where are you going, Cass?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.” In the distance, she saw the glimmer of armor. Moonlight reflecting off a breastplate. Soldiers. She grabbed Falco’s hand and started pulling him toward the soldiers. “Come on. We can tell them what we found.”

Falco gripped her arm. “What did I tell you about the soldiers? They’re corrupt. And besides, nothing has changed since the night we found Mariabella.”

“Are you crazy? Everything has changed.” Cass stared into Falco’s flashing eyes, almost unable to believe he was the man she’d been kissing just moments before. “There’s a deranged killer running loose in Venice. Everyone might be in danger.”

“Yes, and you’re still out alone at night, with an artist. A peasant. What’s your aunt going to think? How’s that going to look, Cassandra?”

“I don’t care,” Cass said. Another line from Michel de Montaigne’s writings echoed in her head.
A person of honor chooses to lose his honor rather than his conscience.
It was true. Cass would not let her crimes with Falco shame her even further. She had done wrong, but she was prepared to accept her punishment. If she got disavowed, or worse, she could handle it. But she could no longer turn her back on a pair of young girls who had been murdered.

She twisted her arm sharply to break his hold and went running off in the direction of the soldiers. She heard Falco’s boots thudding behind her.

“Cass, please,” he called.

Cass ignored him. Maybe he was afraid of the town guard, but she
wasn’t. The soldiers had turned a corner and Cass couldn’t see them anymore. She thrust herself deep into the twisted alleys, listening for the sound of their rough voices, their boots tromping in matched cadence against the stone streets. She glanced back over her shoulder. The area behind her was deserted. Either she had lost Falco or he had left her. And the soldiers were nowhere in sight.

Just as she was about to give up, she heard gravelly voices coming from a narrow alleyway on her right. Cass plunged into the dark opening and skidded immediately to a stop. Two hunched-over figures were rooting through a pile of trash. Even in the dark, Cass could make out the telltale lesions on their long, spindly arms. Lepers. They weren’t supposed to be out in the streets. The fingers of her left hand reached down toward her rosary, cradling the rosewood crucifix as if it would protect her.

One of the lepers looked up at her from beneath his hooded robe. Circles of flesh were missing from his left cheek and the bridge of his nose. In the faint light, his eyes looked black as coal, as if he were not just diseased but also possessed. His toothless mouth twisted into a grimace as he reached out to Cass with a hand that had only three fingers.

“Hungry,” he said, his voice so low and distorted that she almost didn’t understand.

Digging into her suede pouch, fighting feelings of terror and revulsion, she tossed a couple of coins at the men and watched as the one retrieved the money with his clawlike hand. The second leper didn’t even look up.

Cass retreated from the alley. Back on the main street, she turned a slow circle, looking, listening for any sign of the soldiers. All she saw were heaps of trash and the shadowy outlines of buildings. A
trickle of sweat made its way from her hairline to her right eye. Cass wiped at it with her sleeve. No luck. She peeked down the next alley. It was black as pitch, even with her lantern. Cass glanced down and saw that the beeswax candle had more than half melted away. Soon she would be walking the streets of Venice in complete darkness. Alone.

How long had the dead girl been in the water? she wondered. Was there a murderer stalking the streets nearby? Cass gave up on finding the soldiers. Someone else would likely report the body at sunrise, if not sooner. It was time for her to find her way back to the Grand Canal so she could get home.

Squinting between two ramshackle private residences, Cass saw the telltale reflection of moonlight on water. A canal, just a block away. She turned and walked parallel to the canal until it bled into a larger one. She followed the large canal and eventually came upon the Grand Canal once more. She headed back toward the boat, hoping Falco hadn’t deserted her completely. Eventually she saw the blue batèla, bobbing at the edge of the water. It was empty.