He dangled the bait in front of her. “That you would like to be her new companion, of course. She’s sure to like you.”

Miss Paredes carefully tucked the card into her purse. “Thank you, sir.”

Ah, now he had gone from annoying gentleman to potential employer. As he didn’t want her to flee, he set about making inane conversation, one of the skills he’d found terribly useful in his work. A large number of the Golden City’s social elite believed him only half a step away from idiocy. They would say almost anything in front of him, never realizing he was listening. Rather like a lady’s companion. “So, Miss Paredes, have you read yet of Prince Fabricio’s new coat? It was in the Gazette this very morning. A gift from the ambassador in Goa, they say. India, you know. Very exotic.”

She didn’t protest the new topic of conversation. She patiently let him tell her all about the new coat as if she were accustomed to gentlemen blathering on about trivial things. He’d read the bizarre news item that morning and recalled most of the details. Those he didn’t, he simply fabricated. She continued to nod at polite intervals, the tension in her shoulders slowly easing.

He was relieved, though, when the submersible came up next to the quay, and not only because he wanted to breathe fresh, nonpressurized air again. It had been difficult to maintain his facade of absurdity when there were so many questions he wanted desperately to ask this woman. This wasn’t the right time or place, though, and Miss Paredes clearly wasn’t the confiding sort. If he pressed her, she would likely run in the opposite direction. No, he needed some leverage to get her to talk to him, and he had an idea what might work.

For the moment he settled for helping her up the wide plank leading from the door of the submersible to the quay. “Remember, Miss Paredes, my mother will be expecting you.”

She nodded, whatever she felt about that offer hiding behind those dark, now-opaque eyes. Then she was gone.

CHAPTER 9

Isabel Amaral’s eyes were wide in the pale oval of her face. One lock of hair had come loose and streamed across her cheek, up to her lap. The air was slipping away, leaving them with the water that would kill Isabel. Her eyes pleaded for help . . . and then her lips opened and a flood of bubbles streamed from her mouth, the last of her breath.

Her body jerked convulsively against the ropes that bound her there. Oriana tried to reach her, tried to do something, anything, but she failed.

Isabel went still. Her head began to sway loosely with the motion of the water, that single strand of hair floating past her open mouth and snagging against her lips. And an eldritch glow began to fill their watery prison, the table with its spells and death.

Oriana turned her eyes toward it, but it blurred, none of the letters or words containing any meaning. And if she didn’t figure it out, she would have to watch Isabel die over and over again.

TUESDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER 1902

Oriana sat up abruptly in her narrow bed, her gills agonizingly dry. She pressed her hands hard against the sides of her neck, putting pressure on her gills to force the pain to subside. Tears slid down her cheeks, a reaction to the terror that had pursued her beyond her dream.

After a moment, she wiped her tears away and covered her face with her hands. Instead of figuring out some new method of hunting Espinoza, she’d spent the whole evening curled on the bed in her rented room, crying. Not just for Isabel, but for everything she’d lost, all the pain and regrets of her life catching up to her at once.

She needed to pull herself together. She took several deep breaths, praying for strength.

And she did feel better then, as if her night’s misery had floated away on her breath. The sun had already risen. Her windows faced west, so it was still dim in the room, but she forced herself to get up and lay out the cleanest of her remaining garments, a black suit that flattered her pale complexion. She’d sewn blue ribbons around the hems of the skirt and the jacket’s bodice to smarten it up. The seat of the skirt was shiny with wear, but no one would note that unless they were seeking to find fault. She hoped it would be good enough; she had an interview this afternoon.

The decision had been an easy one. If she wanted to stay in the city long enough to find justice for Isabel, she had to get money somewhere. Should she secure this position, it would give her both an income and a place to live without the threat of Carlos and Heriberto finding her. She didn’t have time to deal with either of them as they deserved.

All the same, she couldn’t be certain Mr. Ferreira wasn’t after the same thing as Carlos. Women usually made the decisions in the home; if a gentleman offered a position, that hinted at seduction. The fact that he was a gentleman didn’t make any difference. She’d had more than one improper proposal from among Isabel’s circle of suitors, all of them gentlemen. She didn’t think Mr. Ferreira intended the same, though. He’d involved his mother in his offer, something that went beyond the realm of acceptable behavior if he planned a seduction. A gentleman did not include his family in his transgressions.

And she was qualified for the job. She had, after all, been Lady Isabel’s companion for more than a year. Although she had no letter of recommendation from Isabel’s family, she must be considered experienced. She also had her abilities as a seamstress to offer, which had helped convince Lady Amaral to hire an unknown woman as a companion in the first place.

Oriana looked at her pale face in the spotted mirror and nodded sharply. She had to take the chance. Having made her decision, she drew her hair down about her shoulders and neck to hide her gill slits, picked up her pitcher, and headed downstairs to the kitchen to fill it.

It wasn’t the same as a bath, but it would ease the ache in her gills. After days without being able to bathe properly, her skin was beginning to feel dull and dry. And she should sponge off her skirt as well. If she was going to ask after a position in a fine lady’s household, she had better be presentable.

The Ferreira family lived near the end of the Street of Flowers, not far up from the Church of São Francisco—an indicator of the family’s social status. When the aristocrats had built along that street, the most influential located nearer the palace, closer to their prince. The lesser nobles and the gentry had been relegated to the far end near the river. When she’d lived in the Amaral mansion, Oriana would have had to travel some distance downhill to reach the Ferreira household.

Of course, to get from the boarding house to the Ferreira home, she had to go up the steep hills. Climbing had never been easy for her. She’d been told once that the air bladders on the outside of a sereia’s lungs were vestigial. That didn’t matter; they took up space. Her smaller lungs made the steep streets hard going. She might have taken the tram, only she didn’t want to spend what few coins she had—not when she didn’t yet have a position.

So Oriana headed up the Street of Flowers, carrying her portmanteau, her heels clicking along the cobbled edge of the road. When the cool wind tried to pluck away her plain straw hat, she held it with one mitt-covered hand as she walked. Glancing up at the sky, she saw that clouds were rolling in, rain in them. She hoped she would have a place to spend the night.

She felt a sudden pang of homesickness for the house on Amado where she’d grown up among her father’s family. She missed her grandmother’s tile-roofed home with its terrace where she and her sister would sleep under the stars. She missed the beaches and the red-sailed fishing boats that cluttered them. She missed the heady smell of flowers on a summer breeze. Amado was, of all her people’s islands, the most similar in culture and architecture to Portugal, but it wasn’t crowded and formal and stuffy like the Golden City. For better or worse, she’d left it behind long ago. Now she had to make the best of the situation she’d landed in.