Free The Visitant: A Venetian Ghost Story by Megan Chance Page A

wetly at the ends. He shivered, glancing past me to the snow, saying, “I dislike it here in the winter so much I’m not tempted to try any other time of year.”
    “I hear the summer’s quite fine,” I said.
    “Dreaming of romantic rides in gondolas and serenading Venetians?” he asked. “Perhaps mosquitos and stench would be more accurate. Nero avoids summer here like the plague. Perhaps because of the plague, for all I know.”
    I ignored him, taking in the way he stood, a bit straighter now, as if the pain was not so much. I wondered if he was yet able to manage the burning liniments and massage.
    “I can see you’re debating new tortures for me.”
    “Only if you can bear them,” I said.
    “You mean I have some say in it? Then please, not yet. But I’ll tell you what I would like, if you wouldn’t mind.”
    “If I can provide it, and I think it won’t harm you.”
    “A long list of no s, it sounds like. But what about chocolate? Something warm.” He wrapped his arms about his chest and shivered. “I’m cold to the bone. Deeper than bone, if you want to know the truth.”
    “What about some mugwort tea?”
    “What about something good ? And sweet. I’ve obeyed your every command, and I haven’t once asked for laudanum, though I suspect you have some and I’d give a substantial reward to anyone who could procure it for me.”
    “You’ve promised.”
    “And I’m not breaking my vow, am I? Even though I think you are not quite heeding yours. How much of The Nunnery Tales have you read, hmmm? Ah, not much, I see.”
    “I’ve been too busy.”
    “Or perhaps too frightened.”
    “I’m not frightened.”
    “Aren’t you? Be honest, Elena. You’re afraid you’ll like it. That it will make you . . . want things.”
    “I think you’ve mistaken me for a different kind of woman.”
    He grinned, the healing scar on his cheek creasing like a dimple. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
    I hastened to change the subject. “If I were to allow you something warm and sweet, what would you like?”
    His grin grew, and I realized what I’d said, and how he meant to take it.
    I amended it hastily. “To drink, I mean.”
    “How virtuous you are,” he said with a sigh. “The things you make me want to say—”
    “If you say them, I’ll leave. Now tell me what you wish to drink.”
    “Wine or chocolate. Either would suffice.”
    I didn’t see how chocolate could hurt, and I had no reason to deny it, so I nodded. “Very well. I suppose they must have some chocolate in the kitchen. God knows there’s everything else.”
    “My parents are paying well for my upkeep,” he said wryly.
    So he knew. I felt a modicum of ease over the fact that he wasn’t being fooled. It meant I didn’t have to worry. If he knew he was feeding Giulia’s entire family, and did nothing about it, then I no longer had to concern myself.
    I left him and went down to the kitchen, huddling against the snow that fell on my exposed neck and melted to trickle cold and wet down my collar. There was no one in the courtyard, and the kitchen was empty too, not even a pot of polenta or steaming water on the stove, though the table was laden with food: peppers and onions and garlic, raisins and eggs, cheese and sausage and a tangle of slippery purple octopi gleaming wetly in a bowl.
    But no chocolate, though there was a pitcher of milk capped with a heavy layer of cream. I poured some into a pan and set it on the stove to heat, and then I went in search. I found cornmeal, beans and vinegar, flour flecked with bran. No chocolate anywhere.
    I heard a hiss, and turned to see the milk boiling over. I caught it just as the scorching smell filled the air, along with smoke, and without thinking I grabbed the handle with my bare hand, crying out and dropping it, clattering, to the floor, steaming milk spattering everywhere.
    I plunged my hand into a bucket of cold water. The burn was not bad, and the pain faded as I set about cleaning up the