The Demon Catchers of Milan (9 page)

“Nothing you can spare,” the man answered. “I bid you good evening.”

“Thank you very much for your help. Good evening.”

Emilio stood until the stranger left, then looked down at me.

“Did you catch all that?” he asked, sounding odd.

“I think so,” I said. “There weren’t really any hard words. Unless
Galeazzo
is a word? It sounded like a family name.”

“It is,” he said.

“That guy didn’t really want me here, did he?”

“Not really. But that’s all right.” He smiled suddenly. “I think they are going to have to get used to you.”

I smiled back.

“I think I would like that,” I replied.

I was too caught up in the mystery of what had happened to actually ask about it, and Emilio didn’t bring it up with his grandfather at dinner. I fell asleep wondering who this person was, this woman who would take weeks to travel a few streets, and whom the Della Torres had been warned about—by the candles?

In the middle of the night, I got up to go to the bathroom but had hardly opened the door when I heard my name from across the hall, in the kitchen. I stopped still. Giuliano and Emilio spoke just above a whisper. I strained to listen. They hadn’t heard my door open, I guess.

“Mia saw him?” said Giuliano.

“I’m not kidding, Nonno,” Emilio replied. He sounded fierce.

“You’re sure?”

“She saw him. She heard him, too. She’s got enough Italian now; I think she understood most of what he was saying. She asked me if
Galeazzo
was a family name or a word. That’s pretty serious comprehension, by the way.”

“You are proud of her.”

“I am. But I haven’t done much—she’s been studying very hard. I think she understands that it may be a key to survival.”

There was a silence. Then Giuliano said slowly, “Emilio, she’s not going to survive. Not if …”

Another long silence, during which I felt my pulse pounding very clearly against the brass door handle. I didn’t breathe. The funny thing was, I thought in Italian.
“Santa Maria, proteggimi, ti prego
.…—Santa Maria, protect me, please.
…”

“You know I still don’t agree.”

“It killed your father, and you don’t agree.”

They sounded like my mom and dad when they were trying not to fight. My demon had killed Emilio’s father? What else hadn’t they told me or my family?

Someone tapped his fingers against a wineglass, I couldn’t tell who.

“We both know where we stand,” said Giuliano. “You know I hate it—hate this. But there are so few choices.…”

“She should have choices, too, shouldn’t she?
She saw him. She heard him
. She has it. She’s one of us, through and through, even if she was raised in a mad country. Roberto’s granddaughter, Nonno: this may be our one chance at his branch of the family, his powers. Can’t we at least train her a little?”

“How can we be sure that these powers are not conferred by the demon?” asked Giuliano.

This seemed to stop Emilio, but only for a moment. “How can we be sure they are not her own? You tell me that when I was a baby I could see them and hear them. When I was a baby.
Before I’d ever even been present at an exorcism.”

“Well then, if we do, who will decide which secrets to keep from her, my grandson?” said Giuliano. “Who will decide what the demon should not know when he comes for her again, as you know he will? Who will decide what he cannot hear?”

Giuliano sounded like he was taunting Emilio. He sounded cold, which was strange to me, because I thought of him as such a warm man. Emilio answered, “You will, of course, Grandfather.” But there was an edge to his voice.

I heard them stand up and stepped back into my room as quietly as I could, hoping they didn’t hear the door click. I tiptoed to my bed and sat down, resting my palms on my knees, and stared at the shelves of books in the dark. There was a lot to think about.

I wasn’t going to survive. I saw the carpet on the floor of my room back home floating beneath my dangling feet, my heels hitting each other. I felt the power that had sent me floating into the air. I wanted to choke, to throw up. I wanted to rip every book from the shelves. I wanted to walk out into the hall and scream at them both until my throat was sore.

Instead I sat on my bed, palms on my knees.

They were thinking about training me, but they couldn’t. Everything I might learn, the demon would learn. Something had happened today that had made them think. What did they mean, I had seen him? Of course I had seen him. He had come in and talked to Emilio just like anybody else walking into the shop.

Except he didn’t, did he?
said a voice in my head. That was when I remembered I had never heard the bells ring on the shop door, and then it all came together, somehow. He had come to the table, but I had never heard the scrape of a chair. Emilio hadn’t offered him food, a breach of manners I couldn’t imagine a Della Torre guilty of, even though I had only known them for about five weeks.

Our eyes see what we expect to see. I wondered what else I had thought I had seen. I had heard them talking. But had I seen them talk? Could I remember seeing Emilio’s mouth move? I could very clearly remember how surprised he had been, when I had asked if it was okay for me to stay. He hadn’t expected me to be able to see this person or hear their conversation, so of course it was all right if I stayed.

I kept staring at the wall.

Maybe the demon did give me these powers. I remembered the thrill of being able to hear inside people’s heads. I remembered the horrible, sick thud of my sister against the wall.… What did Emilio mean, when he spoke of my grandfather, my branch of the family, our powers? I knew they were talking about me, but what about Gina? And what about my dad? I wanted to know, but the other thing Giuliano had said sent the rest of my thoughts into the shadows.

I wasn’t going to survive.…

I sat on my bed, palms on my knees, and let the tears roll down my cheeks.

EIGHT

The Case of Signora Galeazzo

“T
oo many words,” I wrote to Gina the next morning, in an e-mail. I was in a foul mood.

Dear Gina,

They wear me out. Learning a new language makes me hungry all the time. Trying to write you an e-mail in English is like this colossal task. I wish I could do what Emilio does, switching back and forth as if he’s done it forever.

I wonder if I’ll ever feel better. I’m starting to be able to imagine what it would be like to be normal again. Especially like I was before I met our bizarre Italian family, with their food obsession and their weird demon job and their house full of old stuff.

You asked me whether I have seen the demon again, since the plane, but I haven’t. I don’t want to see it ever again. Sometimes I think I can hear it, way out beyond where anyone should be able to hear.

Plus there are uncanny voices that float in the room, and miserable midnight conversations between a cousin I had a crush on and an old man I wanted to trust. But I didn’t feel like telling Gina about those things, even though I wanted more than anything to talk to someone who would understand.

I miss you. Make Dad and Mom save enough money so you guys can come over soon.

Love and good luck with the twenty-minute makeup job and the Duke of Naples,

Mia

When I finished I put my head down on the keyboard and cried, so my sister told me later that she got an entire page of random letters, mostly
G
s, at the end of my e-mail, which I didn’t notice because my eyes were too blurry when I clicked on the
SEND
button.

Eventually I lifted my head, went to the bathroom before anyone could see me, and washed my face. What else could I do?

I stayed in my room for most of the day. I didn’t want to see Giuliano or Emilio, or anyone else for that matter. These people, who were so kind to me, thought I was going to die. My
story was already written, and worse, they’d already flipped to the last page to see how it was going to end. Screw them. Screw everything.

I lay on my bed and thought about Grandfather Roberto. Maybe he’d been right to leave. Looking at the faces of my relatives, hearing their voices, noticing their mannerisms, stirred so many memories of him. I thought of how he had looked at Gina and me sometimes, with a frown on his face. I’d always assumed he was angry at us, even though he’d never said anything or treated us badly. Now I wondered if he had been thinking of the family he’d left behind. Had he seen echoes of them in us, the way I saw echoes of him in them?

I remembered one Sunday dinner. I must have been six or so. My father had told him about something odd that had happened on a job site. It was the first year after the factory closed, and Dad was proud of the fact that he’d found work right away as a carpenter. Dad thought I couldn’t hear him over my mom and grandmother’s conversation, but I could: how he’d gone into the dining room of the house his boss wanted to work on, and he’d felt someone—or something—there. He’d told his boss not to take the job. Marco hadn’t listened, and sure enough, strange things had happened in that room. Tools had gone missing, and a saw blade had come loose and gouged Sal Manzetti’s leg so badly he had walked with a limp ever since.

Grandpa had stood up from the table, thanked my mother for the food, and gone out to the porch to sit. Mom had asked Dad, “What’s wrong?”

Dad had looked at Grandma as he answered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize he still felt that way.”

Grandma had just sighed. “That won’t change,” she had said.

After dinner, I had gone out on the porch to sit with Grandpa. He was staring at nothing, and I came up beside him and climbed into his lap. We didn’t talk; he put his big arms around me, and I looked at his broad, strong-fingered hands and rested against him. For a moment, he had hugged me to him, so tightly I couldn’t breathe; but whatever he felt, he always thought of us, so he had loosened his hold right away.

I’d forgotten all about that. I missed him so much right then, and Grandma too, even though she’d died six years ago, not too long after him. Why do we have to lose anyone?

After a while, I got up and went to the window.

The weather fit my mood. It was pouring, cold, miserable, late-October rain. What would Gina be doing? She’d decided to go as Ariel for Halloween and had charmed Mr. Berenstein into letting her borrow her costume from the play. The courtyard looked stained and drab. There was a pool of water in the seat of my metal chair on the balcony. Raindrops splashed into it; even the stupid pool of water never got a rest.

Instead of reading history or grammar, I pulled out my Harry Potter book from my shirt drawer and curled up on the bed, as far over in the corner as I could go. I read for a long time. Gradually, like the volume being turned up on a radio, I could hear Pompous and Gravel. They were arguing about the weather.

“It never used to rain like this,” said Pompous.

“Yes, it did,” said Gravel. “People always say that. According to humans, things are never like they used to be.”

“You never paid attention to the weather.”

“Yes, I did. I still do.”

“No, because if you paid attention, you would know that the drops are much bigger now. I can hear them. It’s like somebody throwing a bunch of coins on a tile roof. It’s this global warming everyone’s talking about.”

“If by ‘everyone,’ ” said Gravel, “you mean that man who stayed here last year, well, I read an article over his mind’s shoulder.”

“That’s everyone, isn’t it, including the people who wrote the article and the people who read it? That qualifies, enough, doesn’t it, Mr. Pedantic?”

I shut Harry Potter.

“Do you guys have to argue all the time?” I asked.

There was silence, and the feeling of extra air in the room that I now knew meant they had gone back to wherever they went. I called after them, anyway, “How come you never talk to me? You only ever talk about me or just argue. We should talk sometime.”

For the first time, I wondered how I’d always understood them. I had spoken to them just now in Italian, but I’d heard every word they’d said
the first night I’d been here
. I made a mental note to ask Giuliano or Emilio.

I got up and walked over to the balcony. The rain had finally
stopped, and the pool in my chair reflected a small break in the clouds. I opened the door, sticking my head out to smell the washed city: the clear, wet, brisk air; the last leaves on the basil plant one balcony over, where the quiet man often sat reading the paper and stubbing out cigarette after cigarette in a lime-green glass ashtray. I could smell the sodden butts and ash, and the last gasp of fumes from someone’s
motorino
—moped—that had just driven out through the echoing gate underneath the street apartments, and the gorgeous rush of cooking garlic from the apartment where the young guys who liked to work on cars lived with their mother and sister.

My stomach rumbled. My bad mood was gone, and I didn’t feel scared to see Giuliano or Emilio anymore. I didn’t even feel particularly angry. I went downstairs to the shop, where my best chance of a pre-eight-o’clock-dinner snack lay, since Laura always frowned when I came into the kitchen to raid the fridge after she’d already started cooking. It was around wine-pouring time.

“Ah, Mia,” said Giuliano, too cheerfully, as I entered the shop. So much for my new, good mood. I had something I wanted to ask him, but I couldn’t remember what it was, something to do with my room. Emilio was standing, facing one of the candle shelves, with his hands clasped behind his back. He turned around when I came in and walked slowly to the table, where the bottle and glasses sat.

“We’re just waiting on Égide; he’s going to take over here so we can run some errands,” he said, and his smile seemed much
more real to me than his grandfather’s.

“I can watch the shop for you,” I volunteered, even though I wanted to go with them.