The Demon Catchers of Milan #2: The Halcyon Bird (16 page)

I felt myself blushing yet again, and had absolutely no idea what to say.

Bernardo saved me.

“Don’t scare her off, Alberto!”

“Nonsense! I’m not scaring you off, am I?” the old man asked me. “You don’t look afraid.”

“I’m pretty brave,” I lied.

“You look it.” He turned to Bernardo.

“Keep her,” he advised him. “And you won’t get tired of looking at her, either.” He grinned. “That never hurts.”

I had thought I couldn’t blush any more deeply, but I found out I was wrong.

As we headed out to the van, Bernardo looked at me and said, “I hope you didn’t mind? It was just easier than all the long explanations.”

His voice seemed higher than usual. I made a last attempt to seem cool.

“No problem,” I said lightly, smiling at him, and walked smack into the passenger door.

I
ended up on the ground, more bruised in spirit than in body. Bernardo didn’t help me up immediately; he was laughing too hard. I wanted to sink all the way through the pavement. But then he offered me his strong hands, and pulled me up.

“Are you okay?” he asked, looking me over.

“Yeah.”

He was still smiling when he opened the door of the van for me.

“I used to trip over my legs all the time,” he confessed, starting the engine. He seemed to realize that hadn’t helped, because he added, “You know, one day everything will stop being embarrassing every single minute.”

That didn’t help, either, at least not right away, but I asked, “Really?”

“Really,” he said.

I wanted to cry. He thought of me as a baby sister after all.

“What do you think of Anna Maria?” I blurted out.

He shot me a quick look, eyebrows rising.

“I like her,” he said mildly. “She’s feisty, and funny, and smart. I think most people would find her too blunt, maybe a bit obnoxious, but I’ve known her a long time, and I think she simply has a strong sense of justice.”

“I think so, too,” I agreed. He didn’t seem to be talking like he was in love with her. “Sometimes she blows me away.”

“That’s her mother in her,” he said. “A powerful personality. I hear her grandmother was the same.”

I looked over at him, and thought that I would probably never have had a conversation like this with a nineteen-year-old guy in the States. I tried to picture actually talking with Tommaso d’Antoni, our neighbor back home, about anything but cars.

“Italian guys think a
lot
about women,” I said before I could stop myself.

Bernardo looked surprised. Then he laughed.

“What else is there to think about?” he asked.

“No … no, I mean, you were talking about Anna Maria’s mother, and how she’s the reason Anna Maria has such a strong personality. You were analyzing.”

He looked at me oddly.

“So?” he asked. “There is something wrong with this?”

“No! I just don’t remember ever hearing an American guy talk this way.”

“I haven’t met a lot of American guys,” he said. “We had a couple of them in our school; their parents worked over here. They were okay, but they tried to be more Milanese than the Milanese. They didn’t even want to be friends with each other; they both seemed embarrassed to be American.”

“I feel that way sometimes,” I said.

“Really?”

“Sure. We’ve done a lot of idiotic stuff. I didn’t really know until I came over here.”

Bernardo laughed.

“Oh, you are such a young nation, though! You’ve accomplished a lot in a short time, but you haven’t had a chance to go at it for centuries, like the Romans. Give yourselves time to really screw things up,” he teased.

“Every country does stupid things,” he went on. “Italian politics are the laughingstock of Europe; the only people who are funnier to read about are the Greeks and the Spaniards. But that does not make me sorry to be Italian. I belong to the nation that has the best food, the best art, the highest intellectual tradition, the finest design, the most beautiful cities, the loveliest countryside, and by far the most gorgeous women,” he finished cheerfully. “I’m never sorry to be Italian. That’s what’s strange about you Americans.”

“It is strange,” I agreed. He’d given me quite a lot to think
about. We’d finished the conversation in the bank courtyard. My cousins were sitting in a row on the scaffolding, dangling their legs, sharing a cigarette, and looking down at us.

“What a bunch of lazybones,” Bernardo said, looking up. “Or they’ve run into a problem. Come on, let’s go.”

At least I can be his friend
, I thought as we got out of the van.
That’s something
.

I tried to console myself with that thought over the next two weeks as we worked. I did have days to study, when nobody was free to work on the Door. But I would always look out over my books and wish I were in the Via Vincenzo Monti.

The day we finished the Second Door, though, I still felt like I would die, because now I had no excuse to see him again. Emilio took me over to the Strozzi apartment building when he got home from work, and he, Bernardo, and I finished applying a quick coat of all-weather varnish, just in case the balcony had to last longer than expected. The very last thing we did was fit the door with a tiny, ornate lock that came with an old-fashioned key. The lock was so small it looked like a lock for a dollhouse. I knelt down to examine it. Nestled in among the cast silver scrollwork and flowers there was a bird. It was the same bird that sat over the door to our shop, and was etched on the bell around my neck. I stood up.

“This is completely impractical, as well as insecure,” Bernardo was saying to Emilio. “Do not, I implore you, let Signora Strozzi see the key.”

Emilio laughed. “Certainly not.”

“I wish I understood your family’s trade better,” said Bernardo.

“No, you don’t,” Emilio replied shortly. “Now you two go away. I can drive four screws on my own just fine, thank you.”

We didn’t move for a minute, not just because Emilio seemed unusually crabby, but because this was the end of the job. Didn’t we have a right to stay and see it through? But then I noticed that Emilio, using his body as a screen, was tracing a pattern around the outside of the lock. Finally getting it, I turned to Bernardo.

“If he strips them, we can always use new ones,” I said helpfully, smiling.

“True,” said Bernardo. “Let’s go clear some space in the van for the scaffolding.”

“Okay,” I said. I felt torn between wanting to see what Emilio was going to do, and spending a last few minutes with Bernardo. Even if Emilio hadn’t been acting surly, I’m pretty sure Bernardo would have won.

We climbed down and went to work on the van. After a moment and a few whirs of the
cacciavite
, Emilio came down and said, “It’s done.”

“Wow,” I said.

“This has been a good job,” said Bernardo.

“It has,” Emilio agreed. He looked up at the balcony.

“The scaffolding can wait,” he said. “Nonno will want to check everything. But I think he will say we’ve done fine.”

“He will,” said Bernardo. He gazed upward at the balcony, the tiny lock winking in the dusk. I heard the utter confidence in his voice, saw the calm in his face.

“You know him that well?” I asked.

Bernardo laughed. “No. I know my work that well.”

One day
, I thought,
I will look like that and sound like that, about my work. I will
.

Emilio broke the silence. “Let’s go get an
aperitivo
to celebrate,” he suggested.

This time, when we walked into the wine bar, the girls behind the counter said, “
Ciao
, Mia! What can we do for you?”

Bernardo took a while to decide what he wanted to drink, so Emilio and I took our prosecco and found a table, eyeing the plates full of food thoughtfully, starting to make choices, enjoying the wait.

“What happens now?” I whispered to Emilio.

“Now?” He blinked, looking from me to Bernardo.

“I mean with the Second Door,” I explained, and he looked at me and chuckled.

“That’s not what I thought you meant.”

“I see,” I said, wondering when Bernardo’s promise would come true and I would stop being embarrassed every other second.

Emilio looked over at Bernardo again, but when he spoke, he said, “What happens next is that Nonno will tell us what incantation he’s chosen to open the Second Door. And then we go in and see what we find. If we’re lucky, we only have to go in once.”

We both watched Bernardo, picking his way among the dishes by the bar.

“You could just ask him out,” Emilio said. “Will you die if he says no?”

I almost told him that a dead relation of ours kept insisting that I let his friend make the first move. I don’t think it would have surprised him. The thought faded even as I opened my mouth.

“No, I wouldn’t die,” I said. “But I’ll never know if he would have asked me out, then.”

Emilio’s eyes widened, and he laughed out loud.

“Wise,” he said. In response, I kicked him under the table as Bernardo joined us.

“Who’s wise about what?” asked Bernardo, setting down a plate full of the salami he so loved, along with the first fresh asparagus of the spring. When we’d started nearly a month before, there’d only been pickled asparagus up at the bar.

“Mia,” said Emilio. I kicked him again and he laughed. I wanted to shake him for acting like a little boy just when I needed the serious, mature Emilio.

Bernardo lifted an eyebrow and smiled for the first time since we’d come down the scaffolding that day.

“Your cousin
is
very wise,” he said to Emilio. “I noticed that from the beginning.” He smiled at me. “What are you being wise about?” he asked.

I opened my mouth like a fish. I thought I had nearly gotten
used to Bernardo’s pale blue eyes and his smile, but I hadn’t.

“Nothing, at the moment,” I said with perfect truth.

Bernardo shrugged. When Emilio and I brought our full plates back to the table, we all ate quietly for a while. Then Bernardo said, “We did a good job on that balcony. Even with all the odd things you have to do,” he added, shooting a look at Emilio.

“Yes, we did,” Emilio replied, his eyes distant. I said nothing.

“Fair enough,” said Bernardo. He smiled at me. “So, now, you go back to your books?”

“I do,” I said. “This was more fun.”

“I can imagine.”

“And you …?” I asked.

“I go back to the project we’re doing for the university,” he said. “This was more fun for me, too. I like working for your family.”

Bernardo dropped us off at the candle shop.

“
Ciao
, Mia,” he said to me. “It was a pleasure. I’ll see you around.”

“
Ciao
,” I said. I tried to find something casual to say, something with just enough mystery to it that he would stay a moment longer, and maybe even ask me out. Emilio had already gone inside the shop.

We stood for a moment.

I could have said, “See you around, too.”

Or, “Thank you for teaching me which way to hold a
cacciavite
.”

Instead, I said
ciao
again and went inside feeling like someone had filled me with sawdust and metal filings. At least Emilio didn’t raise his eyebrows when I came in; instead, he asked me if I wanted any wine, and Nonno poured a glass for me before I answered. I sat and listened to the van starting up and driving away.

“So! I hear you have finished. I will go look, but I’m not worried. Now we can begin,” Nonno said, sounding pleased. He didn’t seem to notice my mood at all. “It looks like everyone can make it tomorrow evening, which would be best. We should wait until the Strozzi family is asleep if we can.”

I remembered the story Anna Maria and I had dug up, about our ancestor G. Della Torre entering the palace through the Second Door he’d built. How he’d walked in on Prince Georg and his noble lover. I hoped we wouldn’t interrupt anything. The thought grossed me out.

Emilio set his glass down and asked to be excused so he could phone Alba. Nonno turned to me.

“I will explain more fully to everyone tomorrow, before we go, but I want to go over the ritual with you, since you won’t be familiar with any of it.”

He pulled an old, leather-bound book out of a pile on the shop table. It wasn’t a notebook, but a printed tome with thick pages and detailed engravings. I was still thinking about
Bernardo, but as he paged through it, I found myself trying to make out the illustrations.

“Everywhere you walk around the city, you can see signs in shops that look like ours,” he said, pointing to the shopwindow, where the gilded letters read
CANDELERIA DELLA TORRE, DAL
1733.

“Now, in our case, we have been on this spot, in this shop, since 1733. Sometimes we’ve closed our doors for a while, because of a plague or an invasion or some other nuisance, but we’ve always had a shop here. On the other hand, some restaurants, they claim to be far older than they are. Even universities do that! But the point is, all those centuries seem to matter to people. They want to feel connected to the past, and older things just seem holier, stronger. Maybe that’s why we learn to respect our elders.

“A man came to me a while back wanting to study with me,” Giuliano continued. “He called himself a witch and claimed he came from a long line of Italian witches.

“Now, there are some who really do come from such a family. You have met one.”

He waited, and after a moment, I heard a voice saying in my head, “I untie knots, and I tie them.” I thought of a woman’s stern face, and of stepping outside the candle shop, over and over, with some object in my hand, as she and I struggled to find a way to protect me from my demon.

I said, “Signora Negroponte.”

“Yes.”

“And you, yourself, come from such a family, with a long tradition in a dangerous, occult profession. But this young man, he didn’t come from any such tradition, and he wanted the ancient ways to be his own.

“I am rambling like this for a reason,
carina
. The funny part about that young man, who said he came from a long line of witches?
He had power
. He had a real gift. He didn’t need fifty ancestors who’d done the same thing over and over to be good at what he was doing.