Oriana realized that meant their interview was over. She set down her cup, folded up the sketch, and tucked it into her notebook as she got up. She opened her handbag to dig out her payment. “We agreed . . .”

Nela laid a wrinkled hand atop Oriana’s mitt-covered ones. “Don’t bother. Consider it a favor, for your grandmother’s sake. You look like you need it more than I do.”

“Thank you,” Oriana mumbled. She took in the shabby apartment one more time. “If there’s anything I can do for you . . .”

The old woman pushed her gently out the door. “Go on, child. If there’s a necromancer out there, he needs finding and killing.”

Oriana nodded helplessly as she went down the stairs to the building’s front door. She paused at the landing, her stomach churning. Was that what she was doing? Hunting a necromancer?

If so, she had wandered into a shiver of sharks.

On the southern shore of the Douro River, Duilio waited on a low wall in the shade of an old olive tree next to one of the wineries that crowded Vila Nova de Gaia. The vintner had sold him a case of brandy, giving him ample reason to sit in the shade and sample a leisurely glass. He gazed across the river at the Golden City, tapping one foot against the wall.

He wished his contact would hurry. If this appointment hadn’t been set the previous week, he would have put it off. He had a woman to find. Despite having a couple of friends in common with Marianus Efisio, it had taken Duilio the better part of the day Friday to find someone who knew what hotel the man was fixed at in Paris. He’d sent a telegram to Mr. Efisio, explaining briefly that Lady Isabel was missing. He hadn’t revealed what he suspected, not wanting to cause the man grief until he had proof. He hoped he would find Mr. Efisio’s response waiting when he got back to the house. He’d spent much of Saturday hunting down every boarding house on Joaquim’s list, scouring the old town for the elusive Miss Paredes, to no avail.

On the opposite side of the river, the painted walls of the Ribeira rose above the quay, a jumble of reds and yellows, creams and grays in the afternoon sun. Houses had been crammed into every inch of space, sometimes at odd angles, on the ancient riverbank. The red-tiled rooftops rose layer after layer up the hills. From his vantage point, Duilio could see the Clérigos tower crowning one hill and the fanciful palace topping another. The tower had been the higher—as had been the power of the Church—until the current prince’s grandfather, Sebastião II, built the ornate palace. To ensure his structure would be the taller, the second Sebastião had the hillside built up, an effort to put the Church in its place, no doubt.

Duilio had always loved the city. It had changed since he was a child, but not as much as it should have. Part of that was the stultifying influence of the Absolutists so powerful in the north, but even normal progress had ground to a stop here.

Prince Fabricio had halted all his father’s and grandfather’s plans for modernization. Many projects started in the 1880s had simply been abandoned or had idled for the two decades since he ascended the throne. The new port north of the city at Leixões was left half-built, accessible to the navy but not practical for shipping. The funicular at the base of the Dom Sebastião III Bridge had never been finished. The trams that climbed the city’s steep streets had been electrified only through private funding.

Prince Fabricio’s refusal to change had left Northern Portugal and the Golden City behind its contemporaries, with Liberal-led Southern Portugal becoming more powerful every day. The current prince of Southern Portugal—Dinis II—had made many improvements there, and Lisboa had become a destination for vacationers. Just in June, the city had announced that all Lisboa now had electricity. In the north, the Golden City’s infrastructure had begun to fall into disrepair. Duilio had never taken much interest in the politics of the country, but he found he sided more with the Liberals and their desire for progress than he did with the Absolutists, who wanted everything to stay as it was.

He turned his eyes toward the Dom Sebastião III Bridge, an elegant creation of iron that stretched between the Golden City and Vila Nova de Gaia. Two levels of traffic moved over the river there, one atop the grand iron arch coming from the heights of the city to the mount on the far shore. The other traveled across at the level of the quay. And from that direction, a tall and gangly Englishman approached Duilio’s perch on the low wall, striding up the lane under the shade of the olive trees.

Duilio held out the bottle when he got closer. “Would you like a taste?”

The Englishman, one Augustus Smithson, took it and downed a healthy drink before he folded himself onto the wall. “I’ve made inquiries, Mr. Ferreira,” he said in English, “but I can’t find any information on your footman, Martim Romero.”

Smithson was the fourth investigator Duilio had hired in the past year, hoping an Englishman might be able to bring fresh connections to the search for his mother’s pelt. Duilio answered the man in his own tongue. “Any idea who hired him?”

“None,” Smithson rumbled, shifting as if the stone wall was digging into his bony backside. “There are people who collect magical artifacts. Most of them are secretive about it. They don’t want the others to know what they have.”

Duilio didn’t actually believe that his mother’s pelt was in the hands of a collector, but it was a possibility he had to consider. “Do you have any names or not? I’ll pay what you want.”

Smithson’s shoulders hunched as he leaned closer. “What I have is a neatly worded note, Mr. Ferreira, left on my desk in my own sitting room, informing me I was to drop the matter. Whoever left it easily entered my home without leaving any trace behind.” He glanced about nervously. “A witch. It had to be. That means I might wake up dead one morning.”

Duilio had never seen evidence that a witch existed who could transport himself into a locked room—it was the stuff of fantasy. However, he’d met plenty of thieves who could get in and out without leaving a sign. Either way, though, Smithson wasn’t going to be any more help to him. Duilio sighed and pushed himself off the wall. “Please send your bill to my man of business, Mr. Smithson.”

Smithson rose and shook his hand, his expression sheepish, likely embarrassed by having been frightened off. Duilio headed back to where his driver waited with the carriage in the vintner’s front court. He climbed into the carriage and settled back against the leather seat. The ride across the bridge and up the steep streets to his own home gave him time to think.

It was interesting that the man was so determined to keep the pelt that he chose to interfere with the investigators Duilio hired . . . and to do it in such a dramatic way. He could have bought off the investigators rather than writing cryptic notes. That spoke of an obsession with secrecy . . . or a childish streak of melodrama.

Duilio hadn’t been able to prove who’d hired Martim Romero, the fake footman, but he had a good idea. There was one man who’d disliked Duilio’s father enough to strike at him by hurting his wife: Paolo Silva. It wasn’t for anything Duilio’s father had done, but because Duilio’s father had been the legitimate son, whereas Paolo Silva was merely his bastard brother, gotten on a housemaid. Silva had spent his first ten years in the house that Duilio now owned, kept out of sight of the Ferreira family. Then his mother had died of a fever and young Paolo had been shunted off to a distant relative out in the countryside. Alexandre Ferreira, only seven at the time, hadn’t even known that the boy who lived in the servants’ areas was his half brother.