The Demon Catchers of Milan by Kat Beyer Read Free Book Online Page B

Giuliano had the same eyebrows, too, though they were finer and grayer. When Anna Maria got a funny text on her phone, she laughed with a single, sharp bark, just like my grandfather had. Giuliano’s face had the same expression when he was in repose: sad, a little angry, but with a measure of peace as well. I had always wondered how a face could spell out so many differing emotions at once, using the same alphabet of muscle and nerve.
    I tried to pay attention to Emilio’s story so that I could repeat it to Gina, but the sounds that had been scraping around the edge of my hearing grew too loud: a terrible clamor of voices snarling overhead, one of which I already knew too well. The horror snicked into my skin. A breath of freezing air spread between my shoulder blades, as if a path had been opened for frost to spill down into my body.
    “Mia?” Emilio asked from somewhere over me. I looked up. I was squatting on the ground. I couldn’t figure out how I had gotten there, but I knew I had to try to work my fingers in between the cobblestones. I had to keep hold of this world.
    “Nonno!” he said, turning to his grandfather, but already Giuliano had seen, and when I could raise my eyes I could see various pairs of Della Torre legs rearranging themselves around me. I thought they wanted to hide my bizarre behavior from passersby. Probably this was true, but it took me a moment to notice that all of them also seemed to have a job to do. Some were looking up, some out. Some were speaking softly under their breath. Anna Maria had hurriedly put away her cell phone, but I caught a nod between her and Uncle Matteo, and saw her pull her phone out again and begin talking nonchalantly to no one. Laura and Francesca had drifted to the edges of the cluster, while Égide and Brigida stood quite close to me.
    I heard myself saying to the ground, “He’s coming back, he’s coming back, he’s coming back,” like some choking mantra.
    Above me, the shouting, snarling voices, threaded through with the deep, gravelly voice I feared the most, were joined by others, some high and light, some low and fierce, rising to a pitch so loud I thought everyone on the street would cover their ears; yet people just walked past, carrying their shopping. They didn’t even seem to see me, on my hands and knees in the middle of a fashionable Milanese street. The circle of family tightened above me; I heard Giuliano chanting the way he had on the plane.
    Then that was all the sound there was, just the noise of people’s shoes, clattering by on the street. The terrible, invading voices were gone. In the silence, I realized I was glad that I had recognized only one of the voices; the people who had been talking in my room back at the apartment hadn’t been among those snarling overhead.
    I glanced up, still squatting where I was. Emilio was looking up into the evening sky between the buildings. He looked down at me.
    “We drove them off, for now,” he said in English.
    He and Égide helped me to my feet. Égide asked if I was all right—I didn’t need to know the words to understand them.
    “Sì, sì, grazie,” I said.
    “You are all right?” Emilio asked. “We didn’t expect that so soon, or we would have been even better prepared. But we did expect it.”
    Still fighting back the nauseating fear, I thought but managed not to say, I wish someone had told me what to expect . Instead I just walked on with Emilio, Francesca, and Égide close by to make sure I kept my feet.
    I had so many questions I didn’t know where to start. I felt so tired I didn’t ask any of them.
    What I did notice was that everyone seemed pretty shaken, and that they were trying to hide it from me, talking loudly to one another, even cracking jokes that sounded like they had to do with what had just happened. Then we arrived at the restaurant, and the mood seemed to get lighter. I felt safer than I hadon the street. Maybe it was just an illusion, but it was very nice