The Demon Catchers of Milan (27 page)

They were tiny and fine. The artist who had made them had carefully tapped a design into them some time after they were cast, I thought, not surprised to see the same bird as that I had seen on Giuliano’s bell, on the shopping bags, on the stone lintel above the shop door. The clappers looked like raindrops cast in bronze. I loved the sound of them.

“Hey,” I said, “what about one of these?” and lifted the strand to show Signora Negroponte.

She frowned, making herself look like a frog.

“It would be odd, considering,” she said.

“Considering what?” I said, dropping them and coming to sit at the table.

“Considering that in your family’s profession, bells are used to
summon
demons,” she answered shortly.

“Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten.” I really had, though how, I don’t know, after all the bell-ringing I had done recently.

She snorted. “However,” she added, “why not? We can at least try it.”

As we were prying open the small brass ring that held our chosen bell to the chain, I asked, “Do you think they’ll mind, Giuliano especially?”

“I think they will be much happier to know that we have solved the problem, if this is the solution. Otherwise, we just put the bell back and don’t say anything. Right?”

She gave me a bad grin. I could see her much younger, giving her parents all kinds of trouble. I said so. She laughed loud and hard. “Oh, I did.”

We put the small, brass bell on a leather thong that had held any number of hazel knots and bits of jewelry that day, and I stood before the door, taking a deep breath. I looked back at Signora Negroponte.

“I think this is the one that’s going to work,” I said, surprised at my confidence. I felt the solid wood floor beneath my feet, and I was not afraid.

I stepped outside, into the street full of weak January sun, and nothing happened. Finally after ten minutes of wandering around in view of the shop, counting cobblestones, and looking at the beautiful, totally useless fancy journals in the window of the gift shop a few doors over, I saw Signora Negroponte come out and join me. She put her hand on my shoulder.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just open space. And somewhere out there—but he can’t get in.”

She smiled. “It is well done,” she said. “I think this calls for a coffee and a bite of something sweet, don’t you? What about that little place in the Via dell’Orso, the Brera something?”

“The Caffè Vecchia Brera,” I said, translating in my head:
the Old Brera Café, in the Street of the Bear
. “They do great crepes, but there’s better coffee at the Cafè Fiori Oscuri if that’s what you want—I mean it’s still good, just not the best.”

“Crepes would be just the thing,” she said, looking happier than I had ever seen her. “Just the thing.”

We both ran back inside for jackets, scarves, and purses. We left the notes on the table and didn’t even tell anybody the shop was unattended. We walked quickly up the street, my tiny shop bell jingling under my coat—and my case in my coat pocket, because no demon catcher ever travels without one.

When we were full of crepes and coffee, Signora Negroponte said, “Off back to the shop?” as if she knew what my answer would be. I looked out the door of the café.

“No,” she said, and smiled her hard smile. “You want to run around Milan alone, eh? What would your family say?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I think I’ll be okay. Will they be mad at you if you let me go?”

She shrugged. “Let them be, if they are. But I think they’ll understand. I’ll go back and look after the shop.”

“Thank you,” I said, and kissed her on the cheek. She hugged me like family, and said, “You might come to me to study some time, when your task is finished.”

I couldn’t tell whether it was a statement or a question. I said I would like that, which made her smile, and then I got it: she had given me a huge compliment. I smiled back. We parted in the street. I watched her walk up the Via dell’Orso. She didn’t look back.

Then Milan and I had a date, and I have to say it beat the heck out of my last one. For about the first ten minutes, I missed having some random relation beside me, especially when guys started to catcall, but frankly after what I’d been through they just didn’t get to me that much, and I began to revel in being alone. Even with the maps I had memorized during months of confinement, I got lost three times. I walked through the Castello Sforzesco and rambled in the leafless, brown gardens, watching the Milanese walk their dogs. I took myself to Peck for an early dinner (you save a lot of money when you aren’t allowed out alone), where one of the cute deli guys took me under his wing and chose me a “perfect winter menu”: tiny, stuffed onions for an antipasto; buckwheat polenta with butter (tastes way better than it sounds);
polpette
(special Milanese meatballs); braised winter greens; roasted chestnuts; a glass of
good, red wine; polenta and elderflower cake with Vin Santo for dessert.

I took my tray to a table in the back, pulling a chair up next to me, so that I could finally take a look at my case in peace and relative quiet, since the family next to me had gotten into one of those conversations in which one joke tops another, and everyone keeps laughing harder and harder. They were loud, but I didn’t mind; it made good cover.

The column of gilded names on the lid started with
G. DELLA TORRE
and ended with
STEFANO MARTINO D. T
. Was that Martino, Giuliano’s brother? I thought Martino was his first name. In any case, the lettering looked like it came from much earlier than the 1950s. When I opened it, I got a better idea of when the case was last used, because the yellowed box of matches inside proudly advertised the miracle of sulfur—no more flint and tinder! There was also an old dipping pen and a dried-up bottle of ink, as well as eleven very tarnished silver nails. I guess when you got an old case you also got to clean out your dead relation’s junk. Or did you do something special with it all? I thought I should ask. The straps for the notebook and mirror were empty. Tucked away in the top corner, beside the ink bottle, was a little brass bell with a pale green patina. I took it out and turned it over. A tiny bird was chased on the side. I pulled out the bell around my neck for comparison; they were identical. I laughed to myself for a long minute, wondering about this Stefano. He and I had shared a thought, maybe a century apart—and I had thought I was the first one
to use one of those bells for anything but the shop door.

I ate my food slowly, touching each object in turn, the bell from the case more than once. The big family got even louder. Then one of the sons at the table turned around, leaned across his chair, and began reciting poetry to me. I thought it was a joke at first, that he was drunk or he thought I was cute. But it wasn’t love poetry. At least my Italian was fast enough now to translate.

No, brothers, when I die I will not feel

cool coins on my eyes, nor the Trojan bronze

that pulled my breath with it when it withdrew—

but brothers, by Hera I beg of you:

no soldier’s songs when the gluttonous fires

lick at my corpse on our sandy pyre
,

no “he died for our cause,” no show of spears—

for I will feel those lies, those words that praise

this waste of men and boys and harvest days
.

Better for me if this vast field of spears

had been spears of wheat in my Sparta’s fields
,

and far better for us to outlive our fame
,

for mouths are not fed by a hero’s name—

better my firm sword arm should only wield

my cup—let it shake as I gray and die
,

at peace with men—with gods—with soil and sky
.

I thought it was beautiful and sad and the weirdest thing that anybody had ever said to me (besides being the first piece of poetry anybody had ever recited to me, that I could remember).

Everybody at their table had fallen silent while he spoke.

Only when he was finished, did I hear my tiny bell ringing.

I looked down.

“Molon labe,”
I whispered. “Come and get them.”

That’s when I realized I’d said nearly the same thing as the demon, when the possessed body of Lisetta floated towards me in the church. I’d said, “Come and get me.” Did anyone else remember? Did anyone else know?

I was born for this
, I thought.

Then the boy blinked and shook himself. He looked at me and then down at himself, and he turned in his seat. “What …?” he said.

His family was already forgetting; I could see that in their eyes—all but one little girl, who looked at him thoughtfully. I’ve noticed more and more that most people don’t seem to notice the things that don’t fit into their world, at least when it comes to the supernatural bizarreness that happens around us Della Torres.

I put my hand on top of my new case.

“Not tonight,” I whispered. “You’ll have to wait. But I’m coming. Believe me, I’m coming.”

I got home well before anyone else, even after roaming the streets for so long. I went to my room, sat down at my desk, and
pulled out my case from my coat pocket again. I ran my fingers carefully over the list of names embossed in the leather.

I thought of the woman of Signora Galeazzo’s house. I thought of the vast plain of bodies: had I seen something real, or had it been a vision alone? I kept my fingers on the case while I let my mind dwell for a moment on the horror of it all. I remembered the hours we had spent at Signora Galeazzo’s house, watching as Giuliano patiently helped the woman find her way. Had she ever come to the end of her grief and rage? Had anyone ever, the survivors and the ghosts alike?

I didn’t want to do this job only to avenge Lisetta or save myself. I wanted to do it for the others, like the woman of Signora Galeazzo’s house—and Signora Galeazzo, too. I wanted to help both the quick and the dead. I wasn’t quite so afraid of either anymore.

I stepped out on the balcony, hugging myself in the chill air, and looked down into the courtyard, still thinking. The two guys who lived across from us and fixed cars were down on the cobbles again; one of them—as usual—only visible as a pair of legs sticking out from under his tiny, battered Festiva, calling out what he was seeing to the other, who smoked a cigarette steadily and responded to each new remark with, “
Sì
,” or, “I thought so.”

I leaned against the railing, and the movement caught his eye; he looked up and grinned.

“Ciao, bella!”
he called. (Was he really saying “Hey, gorgeous” to me?) “How’s your grandma? Tell her thanks for the panettone!”

I almost stepped back from the railing and didn’t say anything, but then I thought, really, what was there to be scared of? I had just been rejoicing that I wasn’t so frightened of people anymore, and boys were people, weren’t they? Mostly, anyway?

“I’ll tell her,” I said. “I helped make it, actually.”

He widened his eyes theatrically.

“Did you? Good job!”

“Hey! Stop talking to the women!” shouted his friend from under the car, and he laughed, waved his cigarette at me, and went to squat beside his friend’s legs.

I went inside and put my case back in my coat. Then I took it out and moved it to the top drawer of my desk. After that, I decided I should put it in my fabulous Anna Maria purse; then I tried under my pillow, on the shelf above the desk, hidden behind some of the bad romance novels on the bookshelves, in a shoe box under the bed—before returning it to my coat pocket. I decided to ask the others where they kept theirs, then changed my mind and decided to watch and find out for myself.

“Signora Gianna?” I said to the ceiling. She didn’t reply. They were probably out doing whatever incorporeal house spirits do; I knew they’d be back. I went into the living room to e-mail Gina the news. I’d mentioned the cases before. I wondered if she would understand what it meant to me. So much had happened, so much she hadn’t shared.

I heard the front door to the apartment slam, and Francesca’s voice: “I’m home!”

Exactly
, I thought.

Acknowledgments

When I was a kid in Palo Alto, most parents believed that without a billion hours of piano lessons, German, and so forth, their children wouldn’t get into Harvard. My parents, Ann and Karl Beyer, felt such a crowded childhood would not be healthy for me and my brother. I suspected this, too, so when I was nine, I asked my parents for an hour of solitude after school. They gave it to me, and the stories I made up during that time lie at the root of the stories you read from me now. My parents also took us to Italy for the first time, when I was fourteen.

Sure enough, I didn’t go to Harvard. I went to the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and I would like to thank my professors in the Department of Medieval History, who taught me how to dig deep into the past, and to take time to go to the pub afterwards. In particular, Dr. Crawford, Dr. Magdalino, Dr. Hudson, Dr. MacDougall, thank you.

I would also like to thank my friends Gay Bordin and Michele Konrad, who introduced me properly to Italy, through the dinner table, the family—and the snowboard, naturally.

My brother, Jon, has listened to, and read, my stories from
the beginning. My stepdaughter, Rain, kept me in touch with my readership. Jed Hartman sent me to WisCon to learn my trade. Sarah Prineas and Jenn Reese demanded to know when I would finish the rewrite; Sarah helped steer me down the tricky road to publication with advice and faith. Millard Knepper taught me truths about heroism while caring for my dying mother.