Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil — Chapter no 31

II

The sunlight tears her out of sleep.

For an instant, Sabine is somewhere else—pressed into the corner of a barn, curled on the stone bench of a crypt—before the room takes shape around her. Beyond the bed, a crack where the curtains don’t quite meet, the harsh sun forcing its way through.

She rises, cursing softly at the intruding light as she pads over to the window. Discovers it is not as early or as bright as she first thought—what she took for midday sun is actually late afternoon, the low light glinting off the surface of the water. An hour or two until dusk.

She pulls the curtains shut, sighing as the darkness is restored. But there’s no point in going back to bed, now that she’s awake.

Instead, Sabine decides to explore the room she’s chosen.

After all, despite the dark, her eyes can pick out every detail. The carvings on the bedposts. The ribbons of pink running through the marble floor. A hand mirror and a brush. A low velvet settee. A comb studded with small jewels. The gold trim on the painted ivy and, hidden there, a pair of golden leaves, extending into handles. A cabinet, disguised to blend in to the wall.

Inside, she discovers half a dozen dresses, each neatly folded and wrapped in paper. Parcels of honeycomb and emerald and aubergine. She draws them out, fingering the layers of silk skirts, the perfect stitching and lace trim. All finely made, though a few years out of style.

Still, Sabine tries them on, until she finds one she likes best: a bodice and skirts the indigo of a freshly rising bruise. She slides the jeweled comb into her hair, and then abandons the safety of her darkened room for the muted

light of the hall beyond.

By day, the house seems even grander.

It is quiet, too, the sounds of the city muted by the heavy walls, but she can feel the others in the house, one a weight, solid and silent, the other thinking, breathing, disturbing the air like a tremor, simply by being alive.

She moves toward the second, is halfway down the stairs when she picks up the soft scrape of a palette knife, the whisper of a brush, the telltale sigh of breath. Matteo’s human pet. She finds him in a room that might once have been a small salon and is now a studio.

Alessandro sits in a pool of late-afternoon light, attention hanging on his canvas. From the doorway, she cannot see what he is painting, but she can see the pallor of his skin, the hollow in his cheek, the veins like blue ribbons at his throat.

“Have you come to spar again?” he says without turning his head. “I suppose I can always use the practice.”

Sabine folds her arms. “You have keen senses, for a mortal.”

“I know,” he says, dipping the brush. “Mateusz taught me well.”

“Mateusz?” she echoes, the name odd, heavy on her tongue. “I thought he was Matteo.”

A shrug. A small, half-private smile. “He is both. But Mateusz came first.

It was his name back in Staropolska. But if you ask him, he will tell you it belongs to another man. Another life.” Alessandro’s brush moves like an extension of his hand, gesturing across the canvas. “Besides, most Venetians can’t pronounce it. But I learned, because I like the way it sounds. Even more, I like how his face changes when he hears it, like a

pebble thrown into a pond.”

“So he prefers it to Matteo?”

Alessandro laughs. “No, he hates it. It drives him mad. But that can be fun, sometimes, as well.”

Sabine’s mouth twitches in amusement. “How did you know it was me, and not Matteo?”

“He makes sound,” he says. “I know he does it on purpose, to put me at ease. But I would know, even if he didn’t. There is an air to him. You have

one, too, but yours is . . .”

“Colder?”

“No,” he says, “just different.” He glances toward her for the first time, and the air catches in his chest. Sadness sweeps across his face, spills into the air around him.

“Ah,” he says. “I see you found my sister’s clothes.”

Sabine runs a palm along the skirts, wonders if it is the sight that upsets him or only the memory. “She is dead?”

A short nod. “Three winters back. So I fear they are a little out of season

now.” Then, recovering himself. “But of course, you wear them well.”

His gaze escapes back to the canvas, but if it’s meant as a dismissal, she ignores it. Drifts into the room, sinking into a chair against the wall, where the sun doesn’t reach, as Alessandro begins mixing a new color on his palette. From this angle she can see the canvas, and is surprised to find her own face staring back.

Not a perfect match—he has been painting her from memory—but still.

He has captured more of Sabine than she’d expect. A sense of movement in the eyes, the light behind them, the edges of her foxed just so, as if she is emerging out of shadow.

“It was just an exercise,” he says. “I can do far better, if you would sit for me.”

She knows he means another time, and yet, as she perches in her chair, he begins to glance from the piece to her and back again, making small adjustments to her jaw, her brow, the incline of her head.

There is something purposefully imprecise about the way Alessandro paints, as if the spirit is more important than the details. Layers of color transform, blend, contrast, and as Sabine watches, she finds herself enthralled. By the work, and by the way he’s lost in it.

His guard is down, the air around him tinted not with fear, or want, or violence, or any of the things Sabine has come to expect from mortals in her midst. Only a calm intent. A steady focus. If she listens, she can hear the soft pacing of his heart, and she is hungry, and he is right there, and the next time he pauses to rinse a brush, she muses, almost idly, “If I wanted to kill you, do you think you could stop me?”

He dips a small brush, then pauses, as if considering. “It is hard to know what one is capable of, until it becomes a matter of necessity. But I hope I’m not forced to find out.”

She studies him, perplexed, not by the arrogance in his words, but the absence of it. “You are not afraid.”

Those bright blue eyes find hers across the room. “Of death?” asks Alessandro. “Or of you?”

Sabine arches a brow. “Consider us the same.”

He hums thoughtfully. “I have no fear of death, nor any urge to court it. In fact, I am quite fond of living.”

Sabine props her chin on her palm. “And yet,” she says, “you are still mortal. Does Matteo refuse to make you as he is?”

“Not at all,” he answers cheerfully. “He has offered many times. But I refuse to let him.”

She frowns. “If you are so fond of living, why reject the gift of life?”

“Is it life,” he counters, “if there is never death to balance it? Or is its brevity what makes it beautiful?” The words spill out in such a practiced way, she’s sure he’s made the point before.

“Besides,” says Alessandro, raising his hand as if to cup the waning sun that bathes his corner of the room. “What good is an artist without his light?”

Sabine stares at the handsome youth, bemused. “You say this now, when you’re still young and life seems endless. But one day, your beauty will wither, and your flesh will sag—”

“And my bones will be buried in the family plot,” he says, returning to his work, “and if God sees fit, something good will grow from them. But it

won’t be me.”

Sabine shakes her head, exasperated.

“Don’t bother,” says Matteo from the doorway, and even though he’s just risen, he looks ready to take the town by storm, in his finely tailored vest, his polished boots, an emerald pin at the collar of his cloak. “He can be shockingly stubborn when he wants.”

Alessandro flashes him a grin. “And yet, you love me.”

“And yet, I do.” Matteo turns his attention to Sabine. “I’m glad to see you are still here.”

“Well,” she says with a shrug. “I was tired, and it was almost dawn.”

“Indeed,” he says, and thankfully, he doesn’t make her swear an oath, declare herself subject, run through his list of rules. Only says, “Follow me.”

At least there is no hand against her back, no will but her own. She rises, leaving the painter to his work as she trails Matteo into the hall.

“Your pet looks a touch unwell.”

He makes a dismissive wave. “He insists he paints best after I have fed.

Claims it makes him light inside. Lets his mind quiet and his fingers lead.”

Sabine cannot stifle her surprise. “You drink from him?”

“When he allows it.”

“And yet, you do not claim his heart.”

“No, Sabine,” he says impatiently. “It’s called restraint.”

She rolls her eyes. “How boring.”

It is then she realizes Matteo is not leading her up the stairs, or into one of the adjoining rooms, but to an outer door at the end of the hall. She slows.

“It is still light out.”

“And yet,” he says, reaching for the iron handle, “we are going out.”

Before she can protest, the door has been flung open, and she is assaulted by the sun. Orange shards leap off the water, send pain lancing through her head. She tries to retreat, into the shadowed safety of the house, but Matteo is there, one arm around her waist as he forces her forward onto a wooden dock, a gondola waiting below. A man stands at the prow, leaning on his pole.

“Why?” she growls, jaw clenched against the dizzy sickness that rolls through her as Matteo leads her down the steps to the waiting boat.

“Because,” he says, only the faintest strain in his own voice, “some things we do for pleasure, and others for purpose.”

A thin canopy has been erected over the back half of the gondola, but it does little to shield them against the setting sun. Still, she folds herself beneath it, clings to the meager shade as Matteo instructs the gondolier to take the route around San Polo, says he’d like to give his friend a tour.

He then joins her beneath the canopy, lets out a small sigh as he settles on the seat across from her. Sabine closes her eyes, her discomfort matched only by the anger at being subjected to it.

“A tour?” she mutters. “Is this really necessary?”

When Matteo speaks, his voice is low enough that only she can hear it. “It is important to be seen, so that you are seen as one of them. When the bodies go missing, the first suspects are the strangers.”

Pain radiates from her temples to her teeth, and Sabine struggles to think of anything, let alone Hector’s warning about keeping corpses in one’s wake. But after a moment, she manages. “That is why you leave before they’re found.”

“A fine strategy,” Matteo says, “if you’re content to spend your whole life running. But why run when you can put down roots and grow?”

As if to prove a point, he waves to a couple strolling by above. Exchanges pleasantries with a gentleman on a bridge just before they pass into the brief respite of the tunnel. Sabine wants to melt into the damp stone arch. The only mercy, she thinks, is the fact that dusk is quick approaching. But Matteo doesn’t even flinch when they emerge into the light again.

“How can you stand it?” she asks through gritted teeth.

“I am old,” he says simply. “I have had a long time to learn my limits.”

To every side, snatches of music and laughter fill the air, the streets packed for the first night of Carnevale, but the canals are glutted, too.

Gondolas passing close enough to touch, voices washing like fog around them.

Desperate for some distraction from the discomfort of the sun, Sabine continues talking. “What is old, to those who do not age?”

“Oh, but we do,” says Matteo. “It may not show in the luster of our hair, the smoothness of our skin, the strength of our bones. But do not be mistaken. All things are touched by time, and we are no exception.”

Sabine frowns. “I do not feel changed.”

“You are still young,” he says, and she snorts. She does not feel it, has by now lived far longer than a human ever would. Matteo registers her doubt.

“For them,” he says, gesturing at the busy city, “age takes its toll in decades. For us, it is the work of centuries. And it is not measured in wrinkles, or gray hair. Where others rot without, we rot within.” He raps his knuckles against his chest. “We are hollowed, bit by bit, as all that made us human dies. Our kindness. Our empathy. Our capacity for fear, and love.

One by one, they slough away, until all that’s left is the desire to hunt, to hurt, to feed, to kill. That is how we die. Made reckless by our hunger.

Convinced we are unkillable until someone or something proves us wrong.”

It has been decades since she thought of Hector. Now, she thinks of him for the second time that day. Standing at the altar in the church, a wolfish grin on his stained mouth, his stolen robes splashed red. Renata, assuring her it was nothing but a stormy mood, that it would pass. The sound they made as they were chained and burned inside their coffins.

“You say you’re old,” she says, forcing her mind back to the gondola, “yet

you still seem to have your senses.”

A rueful smile. “Give me time.”

At last, the sun slips behind the buildings, the sickness withdrawing in its wake. Sabine feels herself uncoil.

“Oh look.” Matteo leans back smugly, rests an elbow on the gondola’s edge. “You have survived.”

She shoots him a withering look. Matteo only chuckles, though she thinks she can make out the slightest strain at the corners of his eyes, the line of his mouth, even as it melts away.

“We are none of us immune to the nature of decay, Sabine. But I believe

its effects can be . . . delayed. With a semblance of control.” His gaze drops to her neckline as he says it, the baubles hanging there. “You kill too often and too easily.”

She shrugs, thumb skating over the tokens. “What can I say? My hunger runs deep.”

“Perhaps,” he ventures. “I’m sure it feels that way. The hunger lives inside us all. To some it is an empty bucket. To others, a yawning pit. And yet, no matter how shallow or how deep it feels, here is a truth that will either drive you mad, or bring you peace.” He sits forward. “There is no filling it. You will never be sated. It does not matter whether you drink a carafe or drain a city. The hunger will not ease.”

Matteo leans back, elbows resting on the gondola’s rim, but his eyes never leave Sabine. He stares at her with that gray gaze, as if she is a pane of glass, and he can see straight through her, all the way back to the frenzied night she nearly lost herself, the slaughter in the church. As if he knows what happened there, how the more she fed, the emptier she felt. How the hunger never waned, but opened in her like a chasm, so wide it nearly swallowed her as well.

“You must learn to master it,” says Matteo, “or it will master you.”

Sabine’s hand drifts to the charms around her throat. “Let me guess,” she muses. “You intend to show me how.”

The boat slows to a stop before the house again. Her host rises to his feet.

“I do,” he says, offering a hand. “And who knows. You might even enjoy it.”

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