Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

champagne. He could see it on their faces—they were undoubtedly thinking of the brothel keeper’s hospitality. The phrase she did not deserve this probably floated through their minds.
    Corbin didn’t care.
    “Get rid of the corpse,” he said. “In fact, help me get rid of them all.”
    “What, there are others?” one of the Gatekeepers grunted.
    “Not yet,” said Corbin. “But there will be when we’re done here.”

Chapter Thirteen
     
    C hiuso— Closed.
    That was what the glass gallery door sign read when Luciana and Massimo arrived the next morning. At ten o’clock on a weekday.
    “How strange,”Luciana murmured.
    Yet when she twisted the doorknob, it was unlocked and the door swung open easily. The bell above the door tinkled. Inside, the shop stood silent and empty. The colorful rows of blown glass stood on their pristine shelves, sparkling in the morning sun.
    But no salesgirl manned the shop. No customers perused the displays.
    She looked back at Massimo, who merely shrugged as he followed her in. She led him into the back room, through the door and up the dark passageway.
    “Girls? Carlotta?” she called as she climbed the stairs. “It’s me, Luciana.”
    Nothing.
    No horrible nicknames shouted down from the floor above. No sound of women’s laughter rang through the large rooms, no raucous celebrations like the other evening. No soft murmuring of whores to their clients. Not even a whisper.
    “That’s odd,” she commented. “It’s very quiet.”
    Too quiet.
    At the top of the stairs, she stopped so suddenly that Massimo almost bumped into her.
    The brothel was a disaster. On the floor, debris lay scattered, the aftermath of a wild party. Empty bottles lay discarded, glasses broken and ground into the carpet. Tables were overturned, chairs broken. Bits of clothing were flung everywhere, even dangling from the banister above. The chandeliers lay shattered; their crystal prisms littering the floor like the leftover wreckage of a plundered treasure chest.
    But there wasn’t a person in sight.
    Not a body, not a limb, not a digit. Not a single hair remained of any of the girls.
    Not even a hint of ghost lingered, no scrap of a soul left behind.
    “Perhaps there’s someone upstairs,” she said, clinging to her last vestige of hope as she mounted the curved staircase. In Carlotta’s office, she made her way among more strewn bottles, navigating the upended furniture and the half-eaten trays of delicacies.
    In the middle of the lush carpet was a deep red stain.
    In the center of that stain lay a ripped silk garment, soaked in crimson.
    In the folds of that garment rested a single emerald earring, a bright green teardrop still wet with blood.
    Luciana took a handkerchief out of her pocket. She bent and picked up the earring, tying it carefully into the fabric. Pressed her fingers closed around it, as if she could squeeze some remnant of Carlotta out of that hard, old gemstone.
    A tear slipped down her cheek.
    “I wanted these earrings back,” she muttered aloud. “But not like this.”
    As horrible and backstabbing as Carlotta had been, she had not deserved this.
    Luciana slipped to her knees, bracing herself against the floor to keep upright. The urge to vomit washed over her in a wave, almost tipping her over.
    “Let’s get out of here,” said Massimo, lifting her up by the arm. “We can’t risk becoming victims of whoever has laid waste to this whole establishment.” But there was no question in either of their minds. This was the work of Corbin Ranulfson.
    Luciana leaned against him to stand, shaking on her feet as she tucked the earring into her pocket. Massimo was right. She could not afford to stay here and mourn. “I will bury the only thing that remains of her. And remember her as she should be remembered.”
    They waited until after sunset, when the cover of night would help conceal their movements. The salt spray of the Adriatic misted Luciana’s face as Massimo chauffeured her to the outlying islands once again.
    Not to the wild, haunted dumping ground of Sant’ Ariano this time. But to the more civilized place Venetians took their dead. Where Venetians had been ferrying corpses since Napoleon had invaded and declared their traditional practices unclean, shocked at the habit of burying the dead within the city itself.
    Instead, the dead were brought here.
    To the island of San Michele.
    Named for the Archangel Michael, this cimitero had not existed when her