The Demon Catchers of Milan #2: The Halcyon Bird (29 page)

“Coming,” he said.

I knew the tone of my voice told him what he needed to know. I closed my phone and made myself meet the eyes of the couple. “I’m fine,” I said. Then I headed back where I’d come from and stood still, panting, trying to calm my mind.

Something was drifting up the path. My beautiful Bernardo, moving through the dappled shadows beneath the trees, his feet a few inches off the ground. And behind him, like a lost army, four people, their feet dragging in the air. I understood then more clearly than ever why we could not allow this demon to take hold on this plane.

The frightened part of me thought of running again. They were not moving all that fast. But I had to figure out how to save Bernardo, though I couldn’t see a way to do that. And now, I had some help coming, even if it did not arrive soon enough. I stood and planted my feet firmly in the road.

The raging part of me didn’t want Emilio or anyone else to arrive soon enough.
This is my fight
, I thought.

I waited, letting my demon and his followers float closer. I tried not to think about what would happen if some passersby
turned down this path. I took a deep breath, and pictured my Madonna. All my frantic thoughts fluttered and settled like an audience quieting for the second act.

I lifted my chin and looked my demon in the face, feeling a shudder of fear and sorrow.
Oh
, caro,
Bernardo
. I took another breath. I could feel my demon gathering his strength as he came steadily closer. I could see his smile on Bernardo’s stolen face.

Words came to me. The simplest magic of all, perhaps.

“Tell me your name,” I said to my demon.

He stopped midair.

“My
alcione
, you always surprise me,” he whispered. I could hear him, even over the drone of traffic circling the park.

“Tell me your name,” I repeated. I tried to sound like Nonno, perfectly calm.

“Why?”

“Why?” I said. “Because I am your
alcione
.”
Whatever that means
, I thought, but I didn’t want to remind him and lose whatever power that word held over him. “Because I want to know the name of the poet who wrote the only sonnet I’ve ever memorized.”
And because if you kill Bernardo, I will not rest until I have had my revenge on you
.

He raised both of Bernardo’s hands upward, weighing my words.

“You loved the poem?”

I almost laughed at the hope in his hideous voice. This was
not the first time I had been struck by the bizarre vanity of demons.

I opened my mouth to lie, since the truth was complex. Then, suddenly, all those days of looking through books of poems and reading collections of letters came back to me and I had an idea.
Just give me one lead
, I thought.
Now that I know that you wrote it, tell me how to find you
.

“I did love it,” I said. “But I hear your critics weren’t that impressed.”

He snarled, remembering. Again, it would have been funny, if it hadn’t been my boyfriend’s distorted voice.

“Monks and frauds—everyone writing of heaven and hell, as if we did not have enough of both here on Earth. They couldn’t see beyond the walls of palace and cloister,” he sneered.

I stared at him.
You have changed a lot since the night you first attacked me
, I thought.
What is happening to you? Just give me one name …
I wished we’d been able to decide which era the poem had come from, now that I was reluctantly familiar with so many poets.

“It is true,” I said. “We can make heaven or hell here on Earth. That one monk, for example, the one who hated your work …”

“Which one? The idiot from Verona, or the one from Lodi?” he asked, laughing harshly.

“The one from Verona,” I hazarded.
Just one name …
It felt surreal to be using my wits to find a way past his defenses, to
be standing here talking about poetry in the moonlight. But it was working. I felt a surge of elation, surprisingly like the one I’d felt when filled with the strength of the bear. I felt as if that power were still nearby, as if I could call it up again. I saw his face change. Had he guessed what I was thinking?

Then I heard feet pounding along the gravel path, shouts fading in the open air. I didn’t dare look away from my demon. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my cousins come up beside me.

The demon leveled his eyes at me.

“You bitch,” he said.

I heard one last set of footsteps on the path, slower, firmer: Nonno.

“Take him,” my demon whispered as he brought Bernardo’s fingers up to his chest. Then he made Bernardo’s hand sweep outward and behind toward Lucifero and his friends, motionless in the air. “Take them all … more casualties of your beauty.”

Bernardo’s body jerked in the air; his jaws opened impossibly, a long, harsh sigh flying out of them. I screamed. Then his body, and the bodies of Lucifero and his friends, dropped to the ground as if pulled from below. They lay still, so terribly still.

I ran forward and fell to my knees beside Bernardo. His face was his own again, his own sweet proportions. But there were shadows under his eyes, and he did not move. I wanted to touch him, yet the memory of what his arms had been made to do, his lips had been made to say, made me pause, searching his features, just to be sure.

Please just open your eyes
, I begged him in my mind.
And let them be
your
eyes. Please don’t be dead
.

Someone knelt beside me.

“Mia,” said Emilio. The kindness in his voice made the tears start in my eyes.

“He isn’t dead,” I told him. “He isn’t.”

Emilio reached out a hand to touch Bernardo’s neck. I slapped his hand away.

“Don’t touch him
,” I cried. “He isn’t dead!”

“Mia, I only—”

“Don’t!”

I leaned forward then and put my hand on Bernardo’s chest.
Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead
.

I wanted to feel his heart pounding under my fingers. Was it? I couldn’t tell.

“My hands are shaking,” I said in amazement. “Oh, no, no. He can’t be dead. He can’t be dead …”

I didn’t stop Emilio when he reached out again, sliding his hand under his friend’s head and nodding. “No injury,” he said. Then he placed two fingers against Bernardo’s neck.

“He isn’t,” he said at last. I lowered my head to Bernardo’s chest, sobbing too hard to hear the blessed sound of his heart. I heard voices around me, gravel underfoot. I smelled Emilio’s pinesap scent and knew he remained beside me. He didn’t move or speak; he just waited while I cried some more and then began to breathe more evenly again.

“I’m getting his shirt wet,” I told Emilio.

“It’s probably okay.”

I didn’t move. I could hear Bernardo’s heart now, beating steadily against my ear. Other truths were sinking in. What would I say to him when he woke up?

“Who came?” I asked softly.

“Everyone,” Emilio said. And after a moment, “Mia, I am sad, too. Will you let us help him? Will you?”

“I’ve already called,” said a voice above us—Anna Maria. I jumped. I raised my head slowly, and saw Uncle Matteo and Francesco stooping over the other bodies in the moonlight. Nonno stood off to one side, surveying the pale road, the dark bodies.

“The police will be here soon,” Nonno said. “We should prepare.”

I shut my eyes for a moment; any energy I had left seemed to drain into the ground. In the distance, I could hear a siren, wailing closer.

“I think the danger is past, for the moment. What do you think?” Emilio asked me.

“My demon is gone. I don’t feel anything, my bell isn’t ringing …”

“Your bell,” he said.

“My bell,” I repeated, and looked down to where it rested on my collarbone.

It was dented, as if someone had pressed it with his thumb. The clapper wasn’t moving. I shook it, and it made only the faintest whispering sound.

“Oh,” I said, dumbfounded.

Emilio looked up, and I remembered something else.

“Oh, no! My case,” I sobbed. “My case!”

I stood up quickly, stepping around Emilio’s and Bernardo’s prone form.

“Mia, wait. Someone should go with you,” called Emilio. I was already halfway back to the bench when he caught up with me.

By now the sun was behind the trees, so we had to search in the shadows. We found it among the leaves by the bench. The two halves were torn from each other, the leather burned through to the wood in some places, the ancient hinges twisted and broken. A silver nail gleamed in the dusk, and I found my mirror, its face shattered, shining up from the ground like a miniature broken moon. Using our cells as flashlights, we found almost everything precious, except my small notebook. I wept with rage.

We got back in time to watch the medics lift Bernardo onto a stretcher. I went to his side; they didn’t stop me from touching his cheek as they loaded him into the ambulance. I thought I saw him try to lift his head as they set him down, but I couldn’t be sure. I stood waiting until the flashing lights came on and the sirens deafened us. As they drove away, I started to follow. Emilio caught my arm.

“I have to go with him,” I said.

“I will find out where they are taking him,” he replied, his grip on my arm very firm.

Off to one side, Nonno and Uncle Matteo were talking to the police. Two more ambulances were grinding up the gravel toward us; I saw Francesco directing them. Anna Maria was nowhere in sight. I heard a garbled cry and saw that one of the Satanists that I didn’t recognize was waking.

“I didn’t even check on the others,” I said.

“To hell with them,” Emilio growled. I blinked at him, startled by the hardness in his face. “Let others worry about them. They followed you, didn’t they?”

“They must have.”

“For their own cruel purpose.” He touched me lightly between the shoulder blades. “Come on,
carina
,” he said. “Let me get you home. You must sit down in a safe place and rest.”

“But there are still things from my case we haven’t found,” I said.

“I sent Anna Maria to go over the ground; she knows to look,” he said.

“I want to go to the hospital,” I said.

“In time,” Emilio said, taking my arm again. “Let’s go.”

It only takes maybe ten minutes to walk from our apartment to the park. I stood still, swaying, wondering if I could walk half the distance. Every step without Bernardo.

Because I knew then that even if he survived, I’d lost him. I couldn’t quite believe it or bear it, just yet. But I am sure I knew, then.

We were passing our metro stop before I could speak again.

“Emilio,” I began. I had to know. “How do you do it? How
do you—do we—spare our girlfriends and boyfriends, wives and husbands, the danger? Do we?”

He looked straight ahead and walked in silence for a while.

“We find another way to love,” he said at last. “Just as we find another place to keep certain knowledge when we work. It’s something like that.”

My throat felt too tight for words. I forced them out anyway.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We didn’t see it coming,” said Emilio. “I feel like the fool I am. I suppose we thought we had more time.”

I heard the humility in him then, and felt my heart soften.

“I didn’t see it coming, either. I did that to Bernardo,” I whispered. “I did. It was all my fault.”

“No.”
He surprised me with his vehemence. “You might have laid him open to it, yes, but your demon did it. This is important, Mia.”

He sounded like Anna Maria, blunt and fierce. I knew she was busy back in the park, going over the ground, learning what she could learn, and maybe finding the last few missing items from my case, like my little notebook. But I knew that she could search all night for what I’d really lost, and she’d never find it. No one would.

B
ack at the shop, I sat down at the desk. I rested one hand on the smooth wood.

Emilio said, “Can I trust you to stay where you are?”

I looked up at him, frowning. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“Upstairs. To get you something to drink. Will you stay?”

“Where would I go?” I asked.

He waited, watching my eyes. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

I listened as his footsteps pounded up the wooden stairs. I noticed that my hand was trembling. I lifted it off the desk and cradled it in my other hand. I could feel stinging tears rolling down my cheeks. I heard Emilio returning through the office with a lighter, stiffer tread.

It wasn’t Emilio; it was Nonna Laura. She set a tray holding a bottle and several glasses on the desk. Emilio emerged behind her.

“Sit,” she told him.

With a penknife, she scraped the wax seal off the bottle, then drew the cork and poured out three glasses.

“Let it air a moment,” she ordered.

We sat in silence. I could smell wine and spices—cinnamon, maybe, and aniseed. I thought absurdly,
I can’t drink it, it smells of cinnamon
. I could tell from Nonna’s expression that I would have to drink it no matter what.

When Nonna raised her glass, Emilio and I lifted ours. The liqueur burned, the fumes making me cough. But it had a sweet aftertaste, spiced with cardamom and nutmeg as well as cinnamon and aniseed. I felt the heat from it spread through me. Nonna felt in her pocket and passed me a handkerchief. I took it and wiped my face.

She didn’t ask for any explanations; she let us sit. We finished our glasses, and when we set them down, she took me upstairs and put me to bed.

“I won’t be able to sleep,” I told her.

“Sit up in the chair by the window, then,” she replied. “But rest. There will be time enough to think, to go to the hospital, all of that. Right now, look at the Madonna, meditate, sit, and sleep if you can. I’ll bring you a glass of water.”

I slumped in the chair by the balcony window. I’d left the
long French doors open to catch the spring air, and the gauze curtains lifted and fell slowly, bright with moonlight.

I woke up slumped in the chair, blinking in the sunshine, a glass of water on the table beside me. I had one blessed moment free of memories of the night before. Then I heard voices in the kitchen. My stomach turned over. I made myself get up.