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draw down Venus’s influence, materials she rules on the terrestrial plane must be carefully gathered. The talisman must be made on a Friday, Venus’s day, and in her hour where it falls on that day, and she must be ascendant when it is consecrated.”
    “But sir, I have to leave tomorrow!” Giulia tried to control her panic. “I need it now, tonight!”
    “Then it will not have the proper strength. Unless…” He paused.
    “Unless?”
    “Unless I draw a spirit into the talisman. There’d be no need then to wait for the stars to be propitious.”
    “A…spirit?” Giulia had forgotten about the cold, but now she felt a chill. “What kind of spirit?”
    “A planetary spirit, a spirit of Venus. The celestial realms are alive with such Intelligences. The great ones are beyond human understanding, but the lesser ones may be called and bound by those on Earth whohave the skill.” He smiled a little. “Many people, like your master Bruni, fear such magic, and call it daemonic. But nothing exists except by the will of God. Not magic, and not spirits either.”
    “And…the spirit…would make the talisman strong enough? To bring me a husband?”
    “Spirits cannot be compelled to such narrow purposes. But I will bind it to your heart’s desire. If your heart’s desire is marriage, then that is what it will give you.”
    Giulia swallowed. She thought she had been prepared for anything. But a spirit…something
alive
inside the talisman…. Yet why was she surprised? Maestro had warned her.
    “There’s no other way?”
    “Not if you must have the talisman tonight.”
    He waited, holding her in his crystal gaze. Giulia felt breathless, as if she were running much too fast down a too-steep flight of stairs. But this was her plan, the only one she had. Without it, there was nothing but lifelong imprisonment in the convent.
    “Very well. Yes.”
    “It will cost more. Have you something else to pay me with?”
    Not giving herself time to think, Giulia fumbled off her mother’s necklace. She held it out, the honey-colored topaz gleaming, the silver links spilling from her palm.
    “That should do.”
    She experienced an almost physical pain as he took it from her. She closed her hands into fists andput them behind her back.
    “It will take some time,” the sorcerer said. “I’ll sing my incantations at the hour of Venus, and it comes late this night.”
    “The tenth hour,” Giulia said. “I know.”
    “Ah yes. You did say you were Bruni’s pupil.” He took up his candles again. “You must be hungry. I’ll tell my housekeeper to bring you something.”
    The last Giulia saw, as he passed behind the curtain, were the links of her mother’s necklace, swinging from his hand.
    Giulia woke with a start. She thought she’d heard something—a clanging, as if of enormous cymbals. But the air was silent now.
    She lay against the wall, where she’d finally fallen asleep, wrapped in the blanket the old woman had brought along with the food. It had been a long night. The hours had stretched like pulled sugar, and the candles hardly seemed to burn down at all. Now and then, in the distance, came a thump or a thud, the sound of a voice rising in chant or song. There were smells too—charcoal smoke, hot metal, and once, briefly, an overpowering burst of sweet perfume, as if all the flowers in the world had bloomed and died in the space of a few breaths—although Giulia was not quite sure she hadn’t dreamed that.
    She climbed to her feet, pushing back her disheveled hair. The windows had been blue gray with twilight when she arrived; now they were blue graywith dawn. The candles, at last, had gone out, and the starry ceiling was dark.
    She heard footsteps. The sorcerer reappeared, as calm and immaculate as when she first saw him.
    “It’s done.”
    He placed a small cloth-wrapped package on a table. He pulled the cloth away, revealing an oval stone of the same lustrous blue as his robe. Inlaid upon it in some