Normal paintings had people stiff-backed and posed and all dressed up. He’d done one of those of me last year, sitting primly in a chair, my ankles crossed, my nicest dress spread out around me. That was what paintings were, or else they were fruit or flowers painted on the walls, like I’d seen in some of the unfinished palazzos I’d poked through.
But this wasn’t any of those things.
It was me and some of the neighbor children, crouched below street level, at the base of a bridge, our bare toes gripping the barnacled rocks like the ones I’d seen on a street performer’s monkey, somehow staying steady while we stuffed our faces with ill-gotten goods. My eyes were shining, my hair was in my face, and a smudge of dirt or mud was on my cheek. More mud soaked the edge of my tattered skirts, the ones of the too short dress I’d grown out of. But that I kept for when Horatiu napped in the sun after lunch and I slipped out for dessert.
“Well?” Mircea asked, cocking an eyebrow at me.
“I like the water,” I said defiantly.
It actually was nice. He’d somehow managed to catch the ripples of our reflections without painting them exactly, by just throwing little splashes of color in between the waves. For some reason, it looked more real that way.
“Thank you,” he said sardonically.
He started washing out his brushes. They were the regular kind and hadn’t cost very much.
Not like the minerals he crushed to make some of the paints. But he was always very careful with them.
“Nothing else to say?” He prompted finally.
“You’re not supposed to be awake in daytime.”
“Oh, I see. This is about what I am not supposed to do.”
For a moment there was nothing but the small ping, ping, ping of the brush against the side of a water-filled bowl. It was making it hard to concentrate, to come up with a good story.
And it already wasn’t easy. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be running around with street kids. Horatiu would…well, he might have that heart attack he was always threatening if he knew. Mircea didn’t talk about the family much, but it seemed important for Horatiu that I knew who I was. And that I acted like a lady.
I didn’t know why. Like Mircea said, we weren’t that anymore, and it was fine with me. I didn’t want to be a lady and wear too many layers and learn proper Italian. I wanted to wear comfortable clothes and run around barefoot and make boats out of sticks and bits of cloth and race them on the canals.
And eat sweet things.
Mircea put the brushes on the windowsill to dry. “There is a reason the rules exist.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Against gangs of cutpurses and thugs, I’ve no doubt.” Clink, clink, clink. “You know they are not what concern me.”
I sighed. Because we’d had this conversation before. We’d had it a lot.
Sometimes I thought Mircea worried about vampires more than I did.
It was both the best and the worst thing about Venice. Being a port—being THE port—meant that the city wasn’t under any one court. It couldn’t be; there was too much wealth, and therefore power, flowing through it for any one family to be allowed to dominate. It had been named a free territory, meaning that any vampire could come here, regardless of family connection.
Or lack thereof, in our case.
And because any vampire could come, many did. But I wasn’t a fool; I stayed away from the parts of town they patronized. Not that they were usually active when I ventured out anyway.
“How many Others go out at noon?” I demanded, using our code word for the rest of his kind.
Mircea didn’t say anything for a long moment. He put away the painting things and then settled beside me on the bench. The breeze blowing through the opening was cool, but he was warm. His hand was still polka-dotted when he put it around my shoulder, drawing me in. But it was warm, too.
It always threw me. They weren’t supposed to be warm. Someone had told me that.…I couldn’t remember who. Some of the Roma maybe. But they’d been wrong.
They’d been wrong about a lot of things.
I put my head on his shoulder and looked at the painting. I decided I liked it. It wasn’t a proper painting, but then, I wasn’t all that proper, either.
And I did like the water.