He’d been hunting her all along, she realized. Mr. Ferreira had to be the one who’d been inquiring about her by name on the streets, the one Heriberto had mentioned. She sat down on the edge of the full tub and tucked her overlarge feet behind its clawed foot, debating internally. Then she lifted her eyes to meet his. “Isabel Amaral died there.”

He didn’t flinch.

“She and I left her home disguised as housemaids, but we were apprehended in the street. I was drugged. When I awoke, I was tied to a chair, upside down, inside a tiny dark room. Isabel was across from me, bound the same.”

He looked neither surprised nor horrified. “And then it was dropped into the river.”

“Yes.” She gazed down at the bruises that discolored her arms. If she kept to the facts, she could keep the pain at bay. “I heard chains rattling. Then we hit the water and started sinking. The water kept coming in. I chewed at the ropes, but Isabel was dead before I could get free.”

His expression remained solemn.

She took a steadying breath. “You knew.”

He pressed his lips together, stalling perhaps. “I suspected. Can you tell me what happened then?”

Oriana told him everything—about trying to save Isabel, about the glowing letters on the table, and the taste of death in the water once she’d escaped. Her description of the two men in the rowboat drew a scowl from him. She quickly listed what she’d learned since, including Carlos’ revelation that Mr. Efisio’s coachman had searched for them, her research taken from the newspapers, and the sketch she’d made of the table. She left out only her meeting with Nela, as she was unwilling to endanger another sereia. Mr. Ferreira listened solemnly, asking pointed questions in places, but he never questioned her veracity. “So, this might be necromancy of some sort,” she said, “although I don’t know what purpose it serves.”

“Magic is not my forte. I know whom I would ask if we were in Paris, but here . . . here the Church holds more sway, so no one practices openly.” He shrugged ruefully. “In any case, you’re the first victim to escape, so what you know far outweighs what the police know.”

She sat up straighter. “Are the police investigating this? How long have they known?”

“It took them some time to see the pattern,” he said. “A couple of servants would disappear from a household on the Street of Flowers and, a day or two later, that corresponding replica would be found in the river. The police only figured it out a few weeks ago. Most of the missing servants were never reported to the police, and those who were reported were treated as missing. No one believed they might be dead until Lady Pereira de Santos started pressing the police to find her two missing housemaids. Since the houses aren’t being placed in the river in an obvious order, the relationship between the two factors was difficult to discern.”

Oriana covered her face with her hands. Servants came and went, generally unimportant to their masters, but she recalled Lady Pereira de Santos herself coming to the Amaral house to speak to the butler. Even if Oriana hadn’t known the girls, it made her stomach turn to think that they and so many others had died the way Isabel had. She drew another calming breath and laid her hands in her lap again. “Espinoza has taken someone from each household?”

Mr. Ferreira nodded ruefully. “All of the houses have confirmed the abrupt ‘departure’ of a pair of servants.”

And she and Isabel had been disguised as housemaids. Oriana laid one hand over her mouth, suddenly wondering if Isabel’s silly whim had gotten her killed. She was not going to cry. She turned her eyes to the floor so he wouldn’t see. “How many have died?”

“We can’t be sure, but there are now twenty-five houses in the river.”

Oriana shuddered. That meant fifty dead servants out there. No, forty-nine. It was a huge number to have slipped past unremarked, showing a damning disregard for the lower classes of society. “That means we only have about a week left to stop him before he kills again. I should have gone directly to the police. I didn’t realize . . .”

“No,” he said softly. “Turning yourself in wouldn’t have benefited anyone. When we went to the commissioners for permission to pull up one of the houses and open it, we were ordered to drop the investigation altogether.”

She licked her lips, wondering at his use of we. “You work for the police?”

He smiled sheepishly. “Surely you aren’t suggesting a gentleman would work for money?”

She preferred a direct answer. “Do you?”

“I consult for them,” he said, dipping his head.

Semantics. “In what capacity?”

He shrugged. “I have access to levels of society where the police are not welcome.”

Ah. The police were using him to access society, just as she’d used Isabel. “But if the investigation was stopped . . .”

“As a private citizen,” he said, “I can ask the questions now forbidden to the police. We’re hoping that, given enough evidence, we’ll be allowed to reopen the investigation. Right now we have no proof. We can’t even get the newspapers to investigate. They fear being accused of spreading conspiracies by the Ministry of Culture, and supposedly the prince likes the artwork. They don’t want to offend him and get shut down. However, the fact that someone other than a mere servant was killed might prove the tipping point.”

Far too late to do Isabel any good. “So you sought me out. Why ask me to come here, if you could simply ask me your questions and send me on my way? You could have had them arrest me.”

“You are a victim in this,” he said, actually sounding regretful, “not a criminal. And you’re the only witness we have, the best lead we have in finding the man who’s doing this.”

“And when we have stopped Espinoza, will you then turn me in to the Special Police?”

He smiled wryly and shook his head. “No. You’re safe here. I have never found it reasonable to fear any of the sea folk. And I do not intend to reinforce the prince’s fears by exposing an actual spy. Heaven forfend.”

He made it sound light, but he could easily send her to her death. “Thank you.”

“You are a spy, aren’t you?” he asked, as if needing verification.

“Yes,” she said. “I am a spy.”

He nodded once. “I assume you have a master to whom you report. Do you need to do so?”

No, she wouldn’t tell Heriberto. He would not like this development at all. Oriana shook her head. “I’m avoiding him for now. I will find Isabel’s killer first and face him later.”

One of Mr. Ferreira’s dark brows quirked upward. “That’s brave.”

“I have my reasons,” she said. “So, what do I do now?”

“Well, to start, try to entertain my mother a little, which will be harder than you expect.”

Given her earlier interview with the woman, she did expect that to be difficult. “Should I not speak to the police? The actual police, I mean.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think it would be wise for me to drag you to one of the police stations. If you don’t mind, I’d like to sit down tomorrow, perhaps after breakfast, and go over everything you can remember. I need every detail you can dredge up. Then I’ll talk to my police contacts, find out what we need, and we’ll go on from there.”

“Is that all?” She suspected her frustration came through in her tone.

He pushed away from the vanity where he’d been leaning and added, “I intend no slight, Miss Paredes. I believe you will be key to stopping Espinoza and his cohorts. But we need time to assess your information. Give me one day, please.”

He took her free hand—the one not clutching the towel—and pressed two brass keys into her palm. The sight of the webbing between her fingers didn’t seem to give him pause. “The butler’s copy as well, so you can have some privacy here. And one of these tins,” he added, gesturing toward the jumble of gilded boxes on the vanity table, “probably has sea salt in it.”