Free The Visitant: A Venetian Ghost Story by Megan Chance

has happened again?”
    There was an avidity in her that startled me. “H-he . . . the other night, he was singing, and I would like to know how often you’ve heard him do that. And if . . . if there was anything odd after.”
    “We first saw it the second night he was here. Giulia witnessed it.”
    “Did anything strange happen?”
    “You do not think singing in the middle of the night strange enough?” Spoken so dryly there was not a speck of humor.
    “Yes, but—”
    “She tried to dance with him and he woke from his dream and threw her to the floor. When Giulia told me of it, I asked her to inform me if it happened again. Which it did, four nights later.”
    “You saw it?”
    She bowed her head in acknowledgment. “He was a man in ecstasy.”
    Just as I’d seen before he’d seized. “And then?”
    “He sang ‘ Un Ziro in Gondola ,’” Madame Basilio murmured, her voice soft with memory. “A favorite of the gondoliers. My daughter also had a special fondness for it.”
    “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”
    Madame Basilio blinked as if to put the memory away. “She has been gone some time.”
    I thought of the handkerchiefs in the drawer. Perfumed and monogrammed. But just now I cared only for what Madame Basilio had seen that night in Samuel’s room. “You said he spoke of an angel.”
    “Yes, that is what he said. Did he tell you the same, mademoiselle? Was there an angel in the room? Did he talk of her?”
    The oddly gleeful light in her eyes unnerved me. “Not really,” I said uncomfortably. “Did . . . was there anything after? I told you what his injuries might cause.”
    Madame Basilio shook her head. “He calmed and Giulia put him to bed. He seemed confused.”
    It was all I needed to know. Perhaps Samuel had been hallucinating, or perhaps he’d had a petit mal seizure on one of those nights, but if so, neither Giulia nor Madame Basilio had interpreted it as anything more than dreams and sleepwalking. “Thank you, Madame. You’ve been most helpful.”
    She nodded and opened the door to show me out. Once I’d stepped onto the landing, she said, “You should be careful of him, mademoiselle, as I said before. I could send Giulia to help you tend to him.”
    “Please don’t. I’m not afraid for myself. The medications I’m giving him need time to work, but once they stabilize him, I think you will see no more singing with angels.”
    Madame Basilio looked surprised, and displeased, which confused me. “A pity to destroy such beauty.”
    “It’s illness,” I said.
    “Is it?” she asked, and the way she said it was needling, as if she knew a secret and meant to keep it from me. I was still wondering uneasily about it when she closed the door.
     
     
    Two days of bright, cold sun passed without incident. Already December 10—time was moving more quickly than I liked, but at least Samuel was as tractable as he’d promised, although still not sleeping well.
    Now, it was snowing; heavy wet flakes that melted the moment they hit the carved stone of the balcony’s balustrade, a whirling cloud obscuring the buildings across the canal and masking the black shadows of the gondolas, the whole world muffled and cloaked. It was not like snow at Glen Echo on the Hudson, icy, hard pellets that sparkled over the ground, everything pointed and sharp, icicles and jagged ice forming over the river. As with everything in Venice, even the snow felt as if it held ghosts within it, a lacy shroud hiding indiscretions and secrets.
    I’d never had such morbid thoughts before, and I didn’t like them now. This place preyed upon the mind. Behind me, I heard the splash of Samuel rising from the bath, the heavy slide of his hand on the metal side of the tub. He said, “I’m decent.”
    He had dug a dressing gown from his trunk. It was heavy, lined with blue satin, paisley patterned in blues and deep maroons, and as I turned from the window, he was securing the belt tightly. His hair curled