The Demon Catchers of Milan #2: The Halcyon Bird (8 page)

“But Venice,” I went on, hoping I wasn’t being rude. “I’ve never been there. Are all the streets really canals?”

“Almost all of them. You can’t go everywhere by water. You need sidewalks.”

“It sounds amazing, though.”

“I suppose it is,” he said. “I grew up there, and so for me the remarkable thing was cities with stone streets; I’d never been in a dry city until I was seven, so I remember my first one
quite well: Sienna, with her Piazza del Campo paved in waves of stone. My father never really liked Venice, but then he was Greek, as you might guess by the name; he liked dry countries, and the damp was hard for him. He knew my mother would never leave her city, though, so he didn’t try to make her,” he added, smiling.

I thought about the things people do for love, and how everybody here seemed so wise about love. Everybody but me.

My eyes must have wandered, because Dottore Komnenos asked me politely what I was thinking.

“I was thinking about what people do when they love someone very much,” I said, feeling shy about confessing this to a stranger, even if we were related. Would my dad do what Dottore Komnenos’s father had done—stay in a place he didn’t like for the woman he loved? Dottore Komnenos turned his eyes on me, and I saw the family resemblance in them very clearly.

“Yes,” he said. “All kinds of strange things. Like writing bad poetry, or naming stars after them.”

“Or inventing a dessert,” I put in, “like that nobleman who supposedly created panettone for his baker girlfriend.”

At that moment, we realized that the others were listening. They gave their own suggestions.

“Sending a girl thirty pounds of foul-smelling German sausage that everyone has to think of ways to cook for weeks, months,” said Francesco, with a mischievous glance at his sister.

Anna Maria blinked her perfectly made-up eyes at him and shot back, “Or learning how to snowboard so you can follow her to Livigno and break your leg on an Alp.”

Her brother stuck out his tongue. Emilio and Dottore Komnenos laughed.

“Touché,” said Emilio.

“Oh, yeah?” retorted Francesco. “What about you, Emilio?”

“Oh, the antics of his women,” said Anna Maria, rolling her eyes. “You should see them.”

Dottore Komnenos seemed interested. “Really?”

“They all try to get him to chase
them
, and try to look like they’re not really chasing
him
. That girl who used to run into you at the baker’s by accident every single day.”

“The one who took a job at the bank,” said Francesco. “What did she say in that elevator, to put you in such a bad mood?”

“This isn’t nearly as funny as you think it is,” Emilio said, and I was surprised to see he seemed really annoyed. “They have hearts, you know.”

Anna Maria snorted. “So serious! They have more heart than head, from what I can see.” She turned to Dottore Komnenos. “They walk into lampposts looking at him. No dignity, that’s what I don’t like.”

“Is love such a dignified thing?” asked the doctor, looking her in the eye.

Now Emilio smiled, because for once Anna Maria seemed
to be at a loss for words. But after a minute, she said, “No, not really. But that’s all the more reason to keep your dignity as long as you can. Those girls should have some self-respect.” She turned to Emilio and went on in a kinder voice, “That’s the thing I notice about the ones who catch you; they have self-respect. You don’t go for the other kind.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” he replied with only a touch of sarcasm in his voice. He turned when his grandmother tapped his shoulder, and Francesco murmured in an undertone, “The current one has maybe too much self-respect,” which got a choking laugh out of both me and Anna Maria.

Dottore Komnenos raised his eyebrows. “The famous Alba,” he said. “Will I meet her tonight?”

“No,” Anna Maria shook her head. “She and Nonna don’t get along too well.”

“There’s someone who doesn’t get along with Nonna Laura?” He sounded as if he didn’t believe it.

Anna Maria shrugged.

“It is pretty unheard of,” reflected Francesco.

We went on to something else, and the antipasti arrived, accompanied by the owner of the restaurant, who wished Nonna a
buon compleanno
and then explained where each kind of sausage and cheese had been produced; some of them by a farmer my family knew. For a fierce moment, I wished I’d been born here, among my cousins, so that everything and everyone they were talking about would be ordinary and familiar to me,
and I’d know the names of all the dogs at that farm, and the way the hills looked behind it.

I was starting to share the national obsession with food, so the conversation kept my attention; on the other hand, my stomach didn’t care where the food was from. I watched the progress of the giant platter down the table with all the attention of a wolf, wondering when I had gotten so hungry.

“I could eat an ox,” I said. Emilio, looking up, smiled and said, “Catching always makes me hungry, too.”

“Catching?” Nonno asked softly, his eyes alert. He glanced at his wife.

“Tell me later,” he said. I widened my eyes at Emilio. Were we in trouble? He shook his head very slightly.

The dinner was delicious:
risotto alla Milanese
infused with saffron, its bright yellow color belying its subtle flavor; fried pork cutlets with a truffle sauce; a salad with radicchio and endive; and a custard dappled with cinnamon and scented with orange blossom water. I couldn’t get enough of the custard. Aunt Brigida gave me and Francesco the rest of hers to fight over.

After dinner, Dottore Komnenos walked with us. Apparently, he had a small apartment near the Porta Nuova he stayed in sometimes.

“You don’t mind the stone streets after all?” I asked, feeling brave enough to tease him.

He smiled. “Sometimes during the night, I wake up and
look down into the street, and wonder why it does not sparkle under the lamps.”

I wanted to visit Venice.

We walked along the canal for a little while, enjoying the evening. Later, heading back to the metro with everyone, I thought about Lucifero.

“He doesn’t seem to have reacted to possession the way I did,” I said to Anna Maria, who stopped texting to look at me. We’d wound up ahead of the others, who were arguing about the best way to cook the meal we’d just had.

“I mean,” I went on, “I really … it took so much out of me. I don’t think I really started to feel like myself until Christmas.”

She shrugged. “You were also learning a new language and living in a new place,” she pointed out.

“Still, I don’t think I’d have gone around setting demons on people,” I said. “Not after what I’d been through.”

“You weren’t dumb enough to invite a demon in,” said Anna Maria. “Maybe that’s the difference.”

I had been wondering about that, though. Why had my demon gone after me in the first place? He had crossed an ocean to find me, something he had not—as far as anybody seemed to know—done before. Before me, he had chosen and killed strong people, like Emilio’s father, Luciano. I wasn’t some practiced demon catcher, I wasn’t a Luciano, not by a long shot. So, if I wasn’t his usual kind of victim, why had he gone to the trouble to target me? Had I inadvertently invited him in? Was
there something about me that called to him?

I feared the answer to that question, but I had to find it. I set these thoughts aside, looking at Anna Maria. “What does Lucifero want?” I asked. “Nonno says quick power. But why? What happened to him?”

Anna Maria snorted.

“Don’t make excuses for him! He may be good-looking, he may be charming, he may have asked you out on your first date, but those aren’t reasons enough. I’ve been on several photo shoots with him, and he’s a diva, a pain in the butt … messing with the photographers or stressing out the makeup artists. What does it matter if he had a horrible childhood? People live through terrible things all the time, and still go on to live good, happy lives. They even use their experiences to help others. It’s no excuse, ever.”

I thought that was pretty harsh. But then she said, “Like you, Mia. The same demon possessed you, and instead of going crazy, or looking at how evil the world can be, you’ve already helped Signora Galeazzo and Signorina Umberti.”

“Signorina Umberti died,” I retorted, holding up a finger.

“Yes,” she said simply. “But then, even Nonno couldn’t save her. And you helped her get free. She didn’t die possessed, she died herself, her own self.”

We walked on in silence for a moment.

“And that is very, very important. We can’t lose ourselves,” she went on fiercely.

I stopped thinking about Lucifero and started wondering about Anna Maria. Had she always been like this? Emilio said that as a kid she’d badgered the family to let her learn to be a demon catcher, finally sneaking into an exorcism when she was eight. They gave up after that. Why did she want this so badly? She wasn’t born until a year after her uncle Luciano died, so she didn’t have Emilio’s motivation to become a demon catcher; but then again, Emilio had always wanted to be one, even before his father was killed. Since Emilio was a man, nobody had argued—no, his mother had, after she had lost her husband to the profession.

This family was complicated.

As we boarded the metro, Anna Maria and I melted back into the puddle of Della Torres. Nonna pinched my arm.

“Thank you for the book,” she said. “I’ll start it tonight.”

I leaned down to kiss her cheek, saying, “Happy birthday, Nonna.” I felt a pang of guilt that I’d hardly talked to her during the meal, but she’d been surrounded by us, by family, so maybe it was just fine.

When we reached Lanza Brera–Piccolo Teatro metro stop, we kissed Dottore Komnenos good-bye as we stepped off. I watched him wave at us through the window as the train pulled away. Emilio fell in beside me on the stairs and asked again to be told about Tommaso Strozzi’s visit to our candle shop. I’d already heard him talking to Nonno and Francesco about it, but he seemed to want my point of view, which pleased me a lot.

Emilio nodded thoughtfully as I told him what had happened; he raised his eyebrows when I told him about the candle, the stink of pond water, and my idea that this was a special trouble in banking families.

“Is that the first time you’ve noticed something like that, while a case is being discussed?”

“Yes, I think so.”

He pressed his lips together.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing. It’s just further proof that we need to keep training you, regardless of the risk that the demon may learn what he does not already know,” Emilio said.

“I’ve been meaning to ask about that, actually,” I said. “Why is everybody so worried about what he can learn through me, when he’s already learned whatever he can from—from your great-uncle and your …”

“From my father,” he finished for me. I gave him an awkward, sad grin.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be,” he replied tersely. After a moment, he went on. “Great-uncle Martino was Nonno Giuliano’s middle brother. The demon killed him in 1957, when he was twenty-four,” Emilio said after a moment. Neither of us pointed out that this was only a year younger than Emilio was now. “Martino was young, but when the demon possessed my father, he was attacking a far more seasoned exorcist. Now, if the demon had gained
all of my father’s knowledge, that would have been a problem. Indeed, we run that risk over and over when we face different spirits. So we have to sequester parts of our minds, and even our souls. You are already learning the foundation for that. My father, they tell me, was quite good at it. Though there’s no telling whether he broke down at the end.”

I could imagine breaking down. If I hadn’t been rescued by Nonno and Emilio, I would have. Emilio’s voice sounded awfully cold, especially considering what he was talking about. I had been looking up the street, paying attention to his words, but now I turned to see his face, his expression hard and tight, like he wasn’t letting anything out.

“Do you think he did?” I asked, keeping my voice soft, so that he could pretend not to have heard me if he needed to. He shot me a quick glance and one corner of his mouth turned up.

“No, I don’t,” he said, his voice full of pride. “The man I remember … no.”

Luciano: the root of his name was
lux
, light. I could see the light in Emilio’s face while he remembered his father.

We had reached the door to the candle shop. Even though only Nonno, Nonna, Francesca, Égide, and I lived in the apartment, the whole family had ended up walking together, because nobody had wanted the conversation to end. Now Emilio seemed surprised to find himself at the shop door.

“I was going to go home,” he said, laughing. “Never mind.
… No, wait.” He turned to Nonna. “My beautiful grandmother, I have a bottle of
sciacchetrà
back at the apartment. Should I run and get it, so that we can have another birthday toast upstairs?”

Nonna waved her hand airily, queen for a night: “Do as you will, my peaceful subjects!” Emilio turned and dashed away; I watched his bright head flicker in the streetlight from the Via Borgonuovo. The rest of us went through the shop and upstairs, me floating along in the middle, letting myself get lost in the rapid rise and fall of my family’s voices. When we were all settled in the living room, I asked Francesca, “What’s he getting?”

“The
sciacchetrà
.”

“The what?”

“Sciacchetrà,”
she repeated, pronouncing it like “shah-keh-TRA.” It had a beautiful sound. “It’s a dessert wine from the Cinque Terre.”

I had no idea what or where the Cinque Terre was, but sometimes I get tired of asking for explanations, so I let it go. Emilio returned, breathless, looking like a little boy as he held up a long, slender bottle of amber liquid. Nonno had already gotten out glasses for everyone. I watched as he poured, because I’d never seen wine that color. Emilio raised his glass and we all followed.

“To the best grandmother in the world,” he said, still looking like a kid. “A very happy birthday.”

Nonna shook her head. We all clinked glasses and drank. It wasn’t like any wine I’d ever had before. It was sweeter, and
thicker, and I could taste the grapes, and a sun like honey, and something else, a raisiny taste, if raisins came from the heavens.