Chapter 18: Not an Animal

The black phone rang in my hand before I had finished reading the text.

The screen showed the burned-ear man's number.

Adriano looked at me. I looked at the gate captain, who had stopped breathing.

I pressed the green button and held the phone to my ear without a word.

"Good evening, Doctor," said Silvio Orsini.

I had never heard his voice in either life, and I knew it at once.

It was smooth, warm, and utterly unhurried.

"I thought it would be you," he said.

"Your sister told me you would find her phone eventually. She said you were thorough."

"Where is she?"

"Safe. Warmer than the lake house, I'm told."

"Let me hear her."

"Of course. I'm not an animal."

There was a rustle, and then a long breath, and then Bianca.

"Livia?" Her voice was thin and wet. "Livia, it's me."

"Are you hurt?"

"No. I'm in a house on Staten Island, and a woman brought me tea."

"I gave them the books. I did everything they asked."

"I know you did."

"They said Paris. They said I'd have a passport by Friday."

She was crying now, quietly, with long gaps.

"There isn't any passport. There was never any plane."

I closed my eyes.

I had imagined this scene. In my last life, I had died before it could happen.

I had expected to feel something like satisfaction.

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