The Demon Catchers of Milan (14 page)

She got up, took a couple of glasses off the shelf, and poured until I said,
“Basta, grazie.”

We drank in silence. Francesca pushed her briefs away, leaning back in her chair and straightening her chignon. The pool of kitchen light around us felt like a spell I didn’t want to break. She’d let me say
basta
instead of deciding how much wine a young girl should get; I liked the feeling that gave me, of being an adult, an equal, casual and cool. I wondered if adults felt this way all the time, or even most of it.

“What did you think of her?” she asked at last.

“She’s gorgeous.” I hadn’t meant to say it, but it snuck out before I could stop myself. All that casual cool evaporated.

Francesca snorted, a very unladylike sound that I didn’t expect from her.

“Gorgeous is not significant with Emilio. Gorgeous is everyday. Since he can have anyone he wants.”

I looked down at the table.

“Yes, that’s true,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “It’s funny walking down the street with him, all the women looking. They never stop, do they?”

“They never did.”

We each took another sip of wine. Then she said, “Alba hates me.”

My head shot up.

“Really?”

“Yes. Does she hate you, too?”

“We only met for five minutes, but I didn’t get the feeling she was that into me.”

“It would surprise me if she was. Don’t take it personally. She hates Nonna, too.”

“She hates Nonna? But why? Who could possibly hate Nonna?”

This time Francesca gave me a truly warm smile.

“I know, it’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

“I don’t get it. I don’t understand anything here. Speaking the language does not help.”

Francesca reached across the table and touched my hand lightly.

“So young,” she said.

I scowled. That was so not what I needed to hear.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said. “I forget; it’s just the most awful thing to hear at your age, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much,” I agreed. We both smiled.

“Think about it,
cara
. If Alba doesn’t like me, doesn’t like Nonna, probably doesn’t like you, doesn’t that tell you something?”

I bet in the Stone Age, while facing some rampaging mastodon, our Della Torre ancestors said to their kids, “Work it out for yourself.” Argh!

“Um, no,” I said. “I just can’t figure it out.”

Francesca rested her chin on her hand, the kitchen light picking out red gleams in her smooth, dark hair.

“Hmm. I think there must be some things Italian girls just know—and some things American girls just know. But Alba. The way she hates us all, it tells you not to take it personally. It’s the women in Emilio’s life. She’s jealous, Mia. See?”

I could relate to that, remembering how I’d felt the moment I’d seen Alba.

Francesca went on, “She’s really horribly nice to my grandfather, to Francesco, to Égide—God, it’s so annoying!—Égide is normally so perceptive,
so
perceptive about these things. He acts like a fool around her.”

“Yeah,” I joined in. “She smiled at Nonno in this icky way. It made me really uncomfortable.”

“Yes! So don’t you dare feel bad about it, if she comes to dinner and gets to you, somehow. She’s just awful, that’s all.”

I looked down at my wineglass. Alba stirred up such scary feelings in me. I raised my eyes to Francesca.

“You know,” I said. “Granted, demons are unbelievably terrifying. But sometimes I feel like actual living human beings are so much more frightening.”

She laughed, nodding.

“I know what you mean,” she said.

“Could I ask you a really personal question?” I said shyly. “You don’t have to answer it.”

Again she gave me the smile so like her brother’s, her eyes friendly but a little guarded.

“Give it a try,” she said.

“Can you tell me about your mom? I know your dad is—gone, but what about her?”

The smile went out like a candle. She gazed far beyond the kitchen walls.

“My mother,” she said, and her smile relit. “She is still alive, Mia. Don’t worry about being tactful about that at least, although it’s probably best not to talk about her too much, especially with my brother or my grandfather.” She paused. “Let me tell you about her,” she said, but she didn’t start by doing that.

“I was nine when my father died, my brother was five. You’ve seen a photograph of him, on the wall of the living room; you asked who he was, and nobody said anything right away.”

“I was so embarrassed,” I said.

“You couldn’t know,” she replied simply. “That’s not the best picture of him. There are some where you can see the light coming out of him. Luciano, like
luce
, light. He was so loved, Mia. My grandmother tells me that half the girls in Milan ran after him, and that he was too good-natured to turn them
away.” She gave me a naughty grin. “No, though. I heard from my great-uncle that he never played with anybody’s heart—he wasn’t a Don Juan, just a very handsome man with a good heart that shone out of him, irresistible. Uncle Matteo says he walked out with this beautiful girl, then that beautiful girl, and the neighborhood said, maybe he’ll marry this one, that one, every time. But then one day he started walking out with Giulietta Murano, a medical student at the university, and everyone was so surprised when he asked her parents’ permission to marry her.

“For one thing, she was a foreigner—from Rome, you see. For another, you can see from that photo of her with us that she’s not—she’s not like him. She doesn’t blind you. But if you ever get to meet her, Mia, you’ll see why each one of us looks sad, then joyful when we talk about her. I miss her so much. I see her about once a year; Égide and I go to Rome. Emilio always says he’s going to join us, but he’s only come once. I think it was too hard for both of them. He looks very much like my father.

“Everybody always thought that whoever married Luciano would be so lucky. But when our family got to know my mother, they realized
he
was the lucky one. He had finally found a woman whose light matched his own. You can’t see it in photos—her smile, her light.

“Her heart broke when my father died. She tried to stay, to keep going, to raise us. But for years, there were days when she could do nothing but weep. And she was angry, too. At my
grandfather, at the family trade, at everything. The most peaceful and loving woman I had ever known, weeping with rage. I often wonder, Mia, how many wives of demon catchers have their hearts broken.

“And then, when Emilio was thirteen, he told her that he wanted to become a demon catcher.”

“To avenge his father?” I asked.

“Yes. But it was more than that. I think we always knew he was going to be a demon catcher, long before our father died. It was like it was written on his forehead when he was born. Back in the old days, you know, most families had a trade, and you just grew up in it and went on in it. Our family has just stayed like that, so that even in my generation it hasn’t really been discussed. If you’re a man, you go into the trade. If you’re a woman …”

She pressed her lips together.

“Did you want to?” I asked carefully.

She shook her head quickly.

“I watched my father die after the possession,” she said. “Besides, I wanted other things.”

She didn’t say what those were. But watching her work in the evenings, I thought that maybe her quest for justice, her fascination with the law, was just another kind of demon-catching, whether she admitted it or not.

“Anna Maria—” I began to ask, and Francesca interrupted with, “Pushed and nagged and followed along and even snuck into an exorcism when she was eight. They finally just gave up
and let her. It’s all terribly sexist, I know. And it’s curious to me that most possession victims are women—not all, by any means, but most. I don’t think that’s just nature.”

I thought about this. “What if it’s the demons? I mean, the one attacking me sounds and looks male. Are they mostly male?”

She shook her head.

“No, there have been some quite famous female demons. They say that Lilith was one, you know, Adam’s first wife. Of course, one of my professors used to say she was a goddess who got a bad rap, so I don’t know. But our family has dealt with several female demons, they tell me.”

She didn’t look like this conversation was annoying her, so I kept on, partly because I was enjoying talking with her about deep subjects for the first time, and partly because I just felt more comfortable asking her some of these things, rather than Giuliano or Emilio.

“So maybe there are just more male demons, and they are more likely to pick on women?”

“I don’t think so,” she answered thoughtfully.

She poured us each more wine and went back to her story.

“So, at thirteen, Emilio announced his intentions. Giuliano gave him the case he still carries, the one from G. Della Torre, our ancestor who opened the shop. Our mother just fell apart. She had such mixed feelings, you see. She was a doctor. She knew how we helped people. She had always known where Emilio was headed. But then when it happened, it was still unbearable. She went back to her parents in Rome, got a job in a clinic there, and
left us to finish growing up in our grandparents’ house.

“I knew that it was best for both of us, in a way. I was finishing my examinations, and I already wanted to go study the law. We wouldn’t have to sit under a cloud of anger and grief at the dinner table. But how we all missed her, Nonno included—especially Nonno, even though he had to bear her anger for so long.

“He loved her for her own sake—who wouldn’t?—but he also loved her because the light that shone out of her reminded him of the light that had shone out of his son. The light that was put out.”

She fell silent. I nodded. “Put out by my demon,” I murmured.

She looked up sharply. “Who told you that?”

Too late I remembered that nobody had—I had overheard it in the dark. I had to think fast, and I had to lie.

“Nobody,” I said. “I just guessed it. It’s not too hard to figure out, the way everybody acts, you know,” I added.

She looked at me carefully. “You seem to think you’re slow, but you’re not.”

“I am about most things,” I countered. “Like other girls, other women,” I added, thinking of Alba again.

She shook her head. “That’s different. There’s always more to learn about other people. My grandfather says that about demon-catching, too. Incidentally, there’s the answer to that question you asked: we know at least one male demon has attacked one man.”

“Yes,” I said. That silenced us for a moment.

I went to bed not too long after that, though I took quite some time to fall asleep.

I woke up to the sound of voices—which, frankly, happened much too often. Unlike some of the others, these sounded urgent, and embodied.

“
Carino
, do you need anything to eat before you go?” Nonna Laura stage-whispered.

“No, thank you, I’m just back from dinner,” Emilio replied.

“Have you seen my turtleneck sweater?” Giuliano asked.

“No. I’m fixing you both sandwiches,” Laura said from the kitchen.

Emilio laughed. I crept from the bed.

“Anna Maria picked a hell of a time to turn off her phone,” Giuliano grumbled as he came into the hall.

“It’s the new collections,” Emilio reminded him.

“More likely a new man,” Giuliano replied. I heard the rustle of his coat. “Ah! I’m just waking up. Have you pulled the notes yet?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll read them in the car. I think, though, that we’re looking at a combination, like the Albertinelli case, with some aspects of the old Roman problem. Did the candles tell you anything?”

“Only what you’ve already worked out,” Emilio answered with a smile in his voice.

“Ah? Let’s see. One, two, three, four—I must have left my matches at Signore Sforza’s, can you grab me a book? Thank you. And a second stub, this one’s nearly burnt down. We should bring a big one, too; this may involve imprisonment.”

“Nonno, we should go.”

“All right, yes, yes. We’ll still get there in time,
carino
.”

I decided to go ahead and show myself, hoping it wouldn’t bug them, so I opened the door and stuck my head out in the hall. Giuliano saw me first.

“Mia? Did we wake you?”

“It’s okay,” I said, since he sounded apologetic. I noticed that neither Francesca nor Égide had emerged. “Are you going out on a case?”

“Yes.”

“Cool,” I said, then realized that must sound unbelievably inappropriate, and quickly added, “Good luck. Hope it all goes well.”

Emilio’s mouth twitched, but Giuliano bowed and said, “Thank you, Mia.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I stood stupidly while they said good-bye, then hurried back to my balcony to watch them go. Emilio stood in the courtyard, muffled in his long coat, breathing frost, his golden head gleaming in the darkness, waiting as Giuliano made slower progress across the cobblestones. Francesco hurried toward them from the big archway. He asked softly if he should call his father, and Giuliano nodded and climbed into the passenger side of Emilio’s Audi. Even though it was cold, I stayed outside, wrapped in my bathrobe and a sweater.

I hated them all for a minute.
They
could go out in the middle of the night and save people. They could go out
anytime
they wanted. They could stand down there, by the car, without
waiting to hear the whisper of angry voices overhead; they could leave the stuffy apartment, could go and just get a coffee at the Café Fiori Oscuri—
a coffee, damn it!

My hands gripped the ice-cold railing so hard they hurt. I waited until the Audi had growled through the archway before I went back inside and started throwing the history books at the wall.

After six books, I realized that the noise might wake Francesca and Égide so I stopped, sitting down on the bed, thinking about tearing the sheets. I heard the light, careful tread of Nonna Laura in the hall, and I held as still as I could. I heard the rustle of her bathrobe, and after a moment, she went back to her own room.