Free Venom by Fiona Paul Page A

blank page, her knuckles whitening as her hand gripped the quill tighterand tighter. She squeezed her eyes shut. She was frozen. Locked up. Imprisoned. When she opened her eyes, she saw that she had managed to scrawl something on the ivory parchment—a repeating series of Xs slashed across the page. She slammed the book closed in disgust.
    It was hopeless. She couldn’t stop thinking about the note, and Livi’s missing corpse. She couldn’t just sit there. She had to go back to the graveyard. Maybe she could find a clue, some hint of what had happened to Liviana’s body.
    Cass twisted her hair back and pinned it up with a tortoiseshell hair clip. She grabbed the note from the top drawer of her dressing table—where she had been keeping it locked up, as though it might fly out and bite her—and stole quietly down the stairs. She went to grab the lantern off the side table and then remembered she’d left it in Liviana’s tomb. She headed into the kitchen to get another lantern and saw Siena’s cloak hanging on a polished brass hook beside the pantry. She wrapped the rough woolen garment around her nightgown. She’d draw less attention in a servant’s cloak than her own. Now that there might be a murderer lurking, she would take no chances.
    As she passed back through the room, she noticed a small knife on the far counter. The cook must have forgotten to put it away. She tucked the knife into the pocket of Siena’s cloak.
    Moving quietly through the house, Cass stepped out into the night without even glancing at Luca’s still-sealed letter. Once outside, she lit the lantern and headed straight for the graveyard.
    The wind off the water was brisk, and the smell of salt stung the inside of Cass’s nose. Passing over the rough, uneven ground, Cass slipped through the creaky gate and gazed around, wondering whereto start investigating. There had to be some clue about what had happened to Livi’s body, if she just knew where to look. She headed back toward the Greco family tomb, but stopped halfway there. She wasn’t moving toward Liviana anymore. No, that crypt now belonged to another, to a stranger. Cass felt herself pulled away, drawn toward the section of the graveyard closest to the old chapel, where there were more underground graves than tombs.
    She let her intuition guide her. The combination of the warm day and cool night wind had brought on a thick mist, and she couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her. The gravestones disappeared and reappeared in her line of vision like faceless ghosts.
    Someone or something disturbed the haze close to her. Cass froze. She squinted through the swirling fog. “Who is it?” she cried out. No answer. “Is someone there?” Her voice sounded thin and terrified. “Show yourself!”
    A sleek black cat materialized from the mist. It glowered at Cass with yellow eyes, and then crossed in front of her before dissolving back into the fog. Cass took a couple of deep breaths. Her eyes began adjusting to the gloom as she crept past rows of headstones, pausing at one that lay flat on the ground, cracked in half. Cass felt a chill run through her. Anyone, or anything, could be hiding nearby.
    Anyone, or anything, could be hunting her.
    Cass swept a hand out in front of her, trying to clear the haze. She held her lantern high. A branch snapped. She spun around, her heart thudding in her ears. The path behind her seemed less foggy than what lay in front. She could almost make out the jagged tips of the iron fence that separated Agnese’s property from the land of the dead. Just as she decided to turn back and give up, the mist parted, and she saw him.
    Falco. He sat cross-legged on the damp ground, his hair blowing in the breeze. He was facing away from her, focused on the gravestone in front of him, a beautiful piece of gray marble carved into the shape of a cross with a pair of doves perched on the top. A dim lantern flickered next to him on the ground.
    Cass moved as