"I could not tell anyone." I smirked. "For a price."
"Huh," he sighed. "That was good. Care to work for me?" he joked. "All right. All right." He waved his hands again and summoned the ferryman on his boat. "Skeliman! Would you please cross this woman over to Murano?"
"For free?" Skeliman sounded like an old, grumpy man. I couldn't see his face, as he was hiding behind the shades of night.
"It's a favor," the devil said. "Please?"
"Skeliman the Ferryman does no favors."
"All right." The devil walked funnily toward him, annoyed by the muddy ground on his new boots. "I will pay you myself. A golden egg. How about that?"
Skeliman agreed under one condition: that I didn't try to see his face. I said yes, as long as I sat in the middle of the boat so I was the farthest I could be from the water.
As I got to the boat, I turned to ask the devil a question I couldn't resist. "So selling one's soul to the devil is just a lie?"
"Of course not," Skeliman answered on behalf of the fashionably dressed devil. "A lot of people sell their souls to the devil. You should have sold your soul to him now, if you don't mind me saying. Better than selling it to…"
"Sell it to whom?" I asked.
"You don't want to know," the devil interrupted.
"There is someone else people sell their souls to?" I was curious.
The devil nodded silently, his hands behind his back. He seemed worried.
"You don't want to talk about H—" The Skeliman meant that mysterious someone, but choked on the last word. Was he going to tell me his name? "Only the sorrowful and unlucky have to sell their soul to Him. Let's call him 'Him' for now. I worry if I say his real name, actually."
"Why? Who is Him?" I asked.
"Darling." The devil approached and slightly pushed me into the boat. "It's better not to talk about Him. If you're ever miserable enough to sell your soul to him, then God help you." He stopped to consider what he'd just said with a grin on his face. "You see all those miserable people in the world around you? Most of them have sold their souls to Him." He gazed up at the skies. I thought it was hilarious. "Now have a safe trip to Murano." He waved farewell to me as Skeliman rowed away. "The land of mirrors." He spread his hands and nodded at me. "It was nice doing business with you." He shrugged. "I guess."
My heart sank as I gazed at the darkened horizons. I didn't know what was worse: the dark or the shiny mirrors awaiting me in Murano.
23
Murano Island was a flare of colorful two-story buildings. It had to be one of the most enchanted places on earth. The ground was painted with all kinds of colors, specifically orange and green, and so were the buildings. In some neighborhoods the island looked like a flaming eruption, balanced beautifully with the sky's eternal blue.
It turned out that Murano was where glass was invented. In fact, the art of glassblowing had been a centuries-long secret, only concealed behind the hands of Murano's talented artists, all before those artists were wrongfully exiled from the island due to the catastrophes they had caused with the fire they used for their art. Glass only came from fire and sand.
Everywhere in Murano people blew glass into vases, artifacts, cups, and all kinds of souvenirs. It startled me how the beauty of transparent silver glass was born from the pits of the deepest and hottest fires, something I hadn't known or seen in Styria. It seemed like a beautiful paradox, how the world could give birth to good from evil and the other way around.
Sadly, my fascination was short-lived.
Everywhere I went mirrors shimmered in the sun, reflecting upon me. I wanted to shrink into myself and disappear. In the beginning, I thought I could just avoid the few places where they made those new and shiny silver mirrors, which hadn't been anywhere else in the word then, but I was wrong. There was no place to hide from the mirrors, and I couldn't take it.
I fought my way to Amalie Hassenpflug's house, hiding behind my veil, and realizing that I had begun to fear mirrors. It wasn't just a precaution or submission to what I had been raised to get used to. What started as a taboo had turned into fear. It seemed like the possibility of ever looking in a mirror was done for me.
I knocked on Amalie's door, and told her what Angel told me to say—that I was the love of his life, purgatory, and after.
Amalie was welcoming and very helpful. She explained to me how she was a vampire slave, half turned only to serve the vampires in Lohr as a blood vessel to feed on whenever they wanted to drink—she still suffered from the aftereffects, but didn't want to share them.