The Demon Catchers of Milan #2: The Halcyon Bird (22 page)

“Signora Strozzi said to me, ‘I will thank you for saving my husband when you have saved him.’ And Tommaso looked at her and said, ‘Mama, can’t you see that he is free of it? It isn’t there anymore.’ She told him, ‘Free of it, yes. But you can see that he is not free.’

“She looked furious and heartbroken, just as she did this morning. I think there is a great deal her husband didn’t tell her, and that was fine, while it worked. I think she didn’t mind until now.

“Before I left, I caught Tommaso alone and asked him, ‘If I could bring it back, would you want that?’ ”

Nonna sat down again. I looked at my coffee and made it ripple back and forth across the bowl.

“And what did he say?” asked Nonna.

“Nothing,” said Nonno.

“Ah,” she said. After a moment, she added, “As long as I have stood at that stove,” nodding toward the big gas range behind Giuliano, “hearing about these cases, I have never stopped feeling total amazement at the stupidity of human beings.”

She met her husband’s eye, and I saw an entire conversation
pass between them in a look. I tried to picture the moment when, a year and a day after his wedding, the young Giuliano Della Torre had told his wife what his true profession was. Had she understood what he was telling her, what it meant?

Because my grandfather had tried to make sure his descendants would never be involved in the family profession, my father had never had to have this conversation with my mother.

I decided that someday I would ask Nonna about what it had felt like when she found out she had married into a world of such danger and sorrow.

Or maybe I wouldn’t. She had, after all, lost a son to the family profession. Maybe she hadn’t known, not really, how sad our job could be, until that happened.
A family can get tired of the price
.

I thought of Signora Strozzi, never quite understanding the price of what her husband did, until now.

I looked up at them.

“How did it go, after all?” Nonna asked her husband. “The exorcism itself.”

Again, as on the day after the
San Valentino
exorcism, I thought I could hear another question behind her words, and I couldn’t tell what it was.

“It went well as can be,” Nonno said. “With something like that, you have even less of an idea going into it than you usually do.”

He wasn’t looking at her as he said this. He took another sip of coffee.

“Emilio and Anna Maria worked well together, Francesco caught the demon in the candle and didn’t drop it”—she smiled—“and Mia was a good observer, noticing things we would not have seen otherwise. And she didn’t get attacked, either.”

“I don’t think I was in a lot of danger. More than usual, I mean,” I put in.

“I thought you did well when he offered us a deal. The Strozzi demon offered us help with Mia’s demon,” Giuliano explained to Nonna. “I am proud of her for not taking the bait.”

I sat up. “Was that really all it was, bait?” I asked.

His eyes crinkled at the corners, and his mouth lifted in the one-cornered smile I’d seen so often on Emilio’s face.

“I do not know. Sometimes it is just bait, sometimes it isn’t,” he admitted. “But as we saw last night, it is wise not to make deals with demons. You never know what price they will exact.” He met my eyes. “And you can be sure that you will not escape without paying, one way or another. I think you did well,” Nonno added more lightly. “Do you feel you learned a lot?”

“I am still trying to make sense of it,” I said. “But yes, it was like a big puzzle. Scary, but intriguing.” I went on, “The clues we had weren’t that much help, because we just had to pull the demon out, like we were uprooting a big tree.”

“Yes,” said Giuliano. “And we had no idea that we were
uprooting the source of the family’s wealth.”

“If that’s true,” Nonna said. “Do you think maybe it’s just something they believed in?”

“Good question,” said Nonno.

“Perhaps they just believed it, and it gave them a reason to do all the bad things you can do in that profession. A justification. What if
they
really are the source of their own wealth and don’t owe it to some monster from the other world?” Nonna Laura asked.

I blinked. I hadn’t ever heard her put out her opinions like this. Giuliano frowned, but I couldn’t tell if he was offended.

“I can’t say,” he said. “We will have to wait and see. But I had not thought of that. My brilliant wife,” he added with a grin.

Nonna shrugged.

“If you’re married to this, you pick up a few things over the years,” she said.

Finishing my coffee, I thought more about the offer the demon had made. Then I realized that I had forgotten another detail about last night. Nonno looked so tired, I wasn’t sure I should tell him. I felt too worried to wait, however.

“There was something else that happened,” I said. “While we were in the Second House.”

Nonno and Nonna sat, expectant.

“I could feel my demon. We touched … we touched minds, just for a moment. He kept far away, because of my bell, and the
family. But we seemed to be examining each other.”

“Ah,” Giuliano said, raising his eyebrows. Nonna looked at me intently.

“I don’t know exactly what I learned. It just felt like,
there you are
. I thought he said that, or I did. But I was afraid, too, to enter,” I added, feeling ashamed.

Nonno nodded. “Emilio told me. Yet you went in.”

“With his help.”

“Yet you went in,” repeated Giuliano.

I accepted this. “Yes. And I don’t know what it was like for everyone else, but it didn’t feel like it did when I was possessed. It felt stuffy and strange, but not nauseating, and I didn’t have the same … powers. And I was there by choice this time.”

I had not understood, until the moment I told them, how entering the Second House had changed the fear inside me, the terrifying memories of possession, into something else.

I couldn’t read the expression in Nonno’s eyes. He seemed to be appraising this new knowledge, trying to put it together with what he knew. I thought of how it had felt, that moment of contact with the demon, over distance. I thought I had felt him wanting answers, too—what are you doing here? How can you come into my world?

“Can you feel him now?” asked Giuliano.

I shook my head.

“Did he remain throughout the exorcism?”

“No, it was very brief, and then he was gone; he … he
doesn’t like not being able to get close to me,” I said, unsettled by my knowledge.

Nonno took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair.

“We must think about this. Another piece of the puzzle … keep looking for that poem, Mia. I will bother Fernando and the crabby poet again,” he finished. Nonna gave me another grave look and then stood up, starting to clear the dishes. Nonno and I rose together. Nonna looked at her husband and said, “Go to bed,” with a slight smile on her lips. “Overworking idiot.”

He smiled back, and said, “Not too dumb to take your advice.”

I picked up a dishtowel and began to dry, still thinking. Nonna seemed wrapped up in her own thoughts, too.

I wondered what the Strozzi demon would have demanded in exchange for helping us with my demon. The price probably would have been too high—though if I was going to die anyway, maybe it would have been worth it. What sacrifices would I make to stop my demon? What sacrifices would I make for my family?

I felt my gut turn over when I thought about dying. I wanted to live so badly, now that dying would mean never kissing Bernardo again.

Of course, he might not call. But he had to, didn’t he? I had followed Signora Gianna’s advice, and he had chased me. Not the other way round. He had asked if he could call. He would call, right?

He didn’t call. After finishing the dishes I went down into the shop and tried to focus on finding the poem. Later, after lunch, I succumbed to a long nap. When I woke, I found Nonno downstairs in the shop, reading the paper. When he saw me, he remembered the crabby poet. Then he phoned Fernando at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. I heard the librarian’s cheerful voice on the other end of the line.

“
Buon giorno
, Fernando. I’m doing fine, thanks. Listen, this poet, he’s not talking to us.… I know.” He laughed suddenly at something Fernando said. I raised my eyebrows and he said to me, “He says that the artistic temperament can happen to anyone. Yes, Mia’s here,” he said, turning back to the phone. “That’s all very well, but most artists I’ve known are very professional; they have to eat. I’ve lived my life in the Brera district. Well, let’s just call it a dead end. I’m wondering if you have other ideas?”

He listened, nodded, made a few notes, and said at last, “Thank you so much. I will let you know how our quest goes. We will stop in on you sometime soon.
Ciao
.”

I looked at him over my barricade of books.

“He’s given me a few more names,” Giuliano said. “But I think we are scraping the bottom of the barrel, at least when it comes to poets translated into Italian.”

“Nonno,” I said, struck by a sudden thought, “I understood someone—oh, I can’t remember who—why can’t I remember?” I pressed my lips together, thinking. “Anyway, I understood
someone in the spirit world who spoke Italian, at least I think it was Italian, before I spoke Italian myself. Right when I arrived here. And I’m pretty sure the demon was speaking in Italian when he recited the poem to me at Peck; I remember the feel of the words. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was speaking, say, ancient Greek, and I just understood him like I did the other spirit?”

Giuliano gazed at me intently. “You understood a spirit that spoke to you in Italian?” He asked. “You’ve mentioned something about another spirit before, haven’t you. Why can’t
I
remember …?” He rubbed his forehead, then shook his head as if to clear it. “So you are saying you might have understood the demon no matter what language he was speaking, and you might have remembered it as Italian?”

“Maybe.” I looked at him in despair. “It just makes it harder.”

His eyes warmed. “Oh,
cara
. It’s always hard. We must just keep going. And it’s past time for us to enlist the rest of the family, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Very well then.” Nonno indicated my wall of books with a flick of his finger. “Though it may yet be in one of those,” he added.

“Not likely,” I said. “I’m still reading about the Visconti and the Sforzas.”

Giuliano smiled. “Our successors,” he said. Neither he nor
any other Della Torre had ever mentioned to me that our family had once ruled Milan. I had found that out from the history books. “I can’t say that they did a better job than we did, but then we didn’t do much of a job. I think we were better off out of it,” he said.

My phone buzzed with a text, and I jumped.

But it wasn’t Bernardo. It was Emilio, asking, “How are you doing?”

I put my phone down, disappointed, then picked it up again to type back, “Okay. How are you?” After all, it wasn’t Emilio’s fault that he wasn’t Bernardo.

Only then did it occur to me that as far as I knew Bernardo didn’t even have my number. Would he ask someone for it? What if he didn’t want to be bugged—which relative of mine could he ask who wouldn’t tease him mercilessly?

I couldn’t keep my mind on my books. I went up to see if Nonna needed help with anything, which she didn’t, and ended up meditating in front of my Madonna. Even with months of practice, I still found it hard to calm down and stop listening for my phone.

I envied her. Whoever had carved her had done a great job capturing the mixture of sorrow and joy in her diminutive features. Her face was framed by the fall of her blue robe, with golden stars hidden in its wooden folds.
A holy face framed by the sky
, I thought, and for some reason, the words gave me a feeling of peace.

Here I am again, talking to you about a boy
, I told the Madonna in my thoughts. I didn’t want to take a chance on anyone hearing me, especially since Francesca would probably be home soon for a nap before dinner, as she seemed to do a lot these days.
But not a Satanist like last time
, I added.
At least I’m pretty sure not. His family has known ours for a long time. Signora Gianna says they are good people
.

I wanted to ask her a hundred questions. I wanted to Skype with my own mom, too, and pour out the story of how I got to know him and ask, “Do you think he will call?”—and get annoyed with her if she didn’t say, “Yes.” I wanted to tell Gina about him, his translucent skin and elegant bones and red-brown hair, his kind voice and clear eyes.

As I sat there, though, I realized I wasn’t going to try to get in touch with Mom or Gina. I wasn’t going to ask the Madonna any of the hundred questions I had. I shut my eyes and saw the golden light all around the Madonna, and felt my heart beating slowly and steadily. I thought of Bernardo again and knew that nobody, not a statue or a parent, would be able to give me the answers I was looking for; there was only one way to get them. The idea didn’t cheer me, yet I felt calmer as I came down the stairs to the shop. Nonno was standing, his hands clasped behind him, examining the candles. He turned as I came in.

“Sometimes I just stare at them in order to think,” Giuliano said, smiling. I smiled back, and sat down at the desk, pulling a book at random out of the pile and tugging my notebook
toward me. He stood gazing into the candle flames for a while longer, then sat down at the table, making his own notes.

“Thank goodness for work,” I said.

Nonno nodded. “It helps, doesn’t it?” he said. “Studying, sweeping the floor, all of it. That wasn’t a hint,” he said, as I stood up and got the broom. “We had to go over it pretty well last night. Because of the glass.”

I’d almost forgotten. I began to sweep anyway. When I got near the door, I opened it, making myself look at the doorframe. I felt a rush of gratitude to whoever had cleaned up the blood. I came back in and shut the door.

“Has anyone checked? How is he?” I asked, letting the regular movements and the sound of the broom soothe me.

“Emilio. Bad,” Nonno said, and frowned, looking out the window.