Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

doubt about what it was she wanted? And why had she left the house?
    She walked in halting steps. Stopped. He saw her enter a doorway.
    He followed the sweep of her cloak.
    She turned.
    And she wasn’t Luciana.
    The girl’s face was paler than the living.
    “Who are you? And where is she?” Brandon said, grabbing for her arm. “Where’s Luciana?”
    He found himself holding a fistful of empty cloak, the fabric draped from his hand as the girl pulled out of the garment entirely. She looked at him with an astonished stare, ghostly eyes flickering with slight anger in the dim light.
    “If you’re talking about the baronessa, I have no idea. She went somewhere, but I don’t know where.”
    He looked at her closely, wondering why she had been inside Ca’ Rossetti.
    “What did they do to you in there?” he asked.
    She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is that I need to finish what I have to do. And then I will find the light.”
    “That’s right,” he told her. “You’ve got to go into the light. They can’t hold you, you know. If you did nothing to merit damnation, you are not the property of the devil,” Brandon said.
    “Of course I know that,” the girl said, pulling herself up proudly.
    “Let me help you. Tell me what I can do.”
    She stared at him, sending a chill through him. She opened her mouth to speak, as though she had gotten a flash of clarity, had realized something of great importance.
    Then she vanished into thin air.
    I hope you find whatever it is you’re searching for, he thought.
    God knew there were enough lost souls wandering the streets of Venice.
    Brandon headed back into the night, resolving to take care of some unfinished business of his own.
    * * *
     
    As Luciana prepared to exit the palazzo, she looked out the window and saw the girl fleeing through the side door. And saw Brandon follow.
    I don’t even need to flush that pigeon out of his hole, she thought. The girl has done it for me.
    Smiling to herself, Luciana waltzed right out the front door, stepped into her boat and drove up the Grand Canal to the Piazza San Marco.
    The trip was a short one, and as she navigated her way up the canal, she wore a little smile on her face. Even after two and a half centuries as a Venetian, she never tired of this square, its beauty as stunning as when she had been a young girl.
    Ah, yes, it felt good to be out in the open air again.
    Back on the hunt.
    She docked the boat at a mooring post and headed toward the action.
    On this balmy midsummer evening, every table was packed in the big open-air square of the Piazza San Marco, every caffè full to capacity, crowds entranced by the many small orchestras playing classical music that wafted into the air. The vendors were out in full force, hawking every sort of Venetian souvenir to the hordes of tourists.
    Finding victims in San Marco is like shooting fish in a barrel, thought Luciana.
    She ordered a Cinzano and settled in to watch the crowd.
    Across the pool of crowded tables, a tourist fixed his half-drunk gaze on her.
    Tourists, she thought nastily, are more annoying vermin than the pigeons we worked so hard to cull. So perhaps I’ll do my civic duty tonight and rid Venice of one more nuisance.
    She smiled, enticingly. Waited for the tourist to come over.
    Over the past two centuries, she had heard every pickup line imaginable.
    “Hai da fare per I prossimi cent’anni?” What are you doing for the next hundred years?
    “Fa caldo qui, o è perchè ci sei tu?” Is it hot in here, or is it just you?
    “Tu sei il mio sogno proibito.” You’re my forbidden dream…
    What came out of this one’s mouth was no better than she expected.
    “Was your father a thief?” he said in English.
    “Yes. He stole the stars from the sky and put them in my eyes,” she said with a roll of those eyes skyward, toward the stars from which they were allegedly stolen.
    “You, too, are a thief, belissima. You stole my line.”
    “We Venetians are thieves at heart,” she said, leaning forward to give him a good look at her ample cleavage. She widened her eyes as she looked up at him, and made her voice very sweet as she said, “Half our treasures are looted from religious wars. The facade of our most famous basilica of San Marcois a miscuglio… a medley of stolen columns taken from foreign temples. Inside, its altars are decorated with jewels filched from other cities, other churches. Even the famed Horses of San