The Demon Catchers of Milan (3 page)

My sister sat on the floor beside me and held my hand.

“Gina,” I said. She looked up. “I’m so thirsty.”

“I’ll get you water,” she said, standing up. Her voice was shaking, and there were tears in her eyes. She looked exhausted. I realized the morning sun was shining on her face. The last clear memory I had was of the evening shadows; how long had it—had I—?

The old man came in with a bowl. He passed it to my mother, and she knelt beside me and said, “This will help with the thirst. Plus you need to eat, sweetie. You haven’t eaten properly for four days.”

“Four days?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my sister duck her head quickly. My mother smiled, the saddest smile I’d ever seen.

“Eat, and rest, and I promise we will explain. I promise.”

I opened my mouth, and my mother fed me beef broth. Suddenly I remembered sitting on my high chair—or maybe I remembered seeing my sister sitting in the high chair?—opening my mouth for the baby food and turning my head away sharply when I didn’t want any more. I remembered my mother used to make little airplane sounds and fly the spoon toward my mouth.

She didn’t make little airplane sounds, thankfully. I was embarrassed enough. The broth was not too hot and had small bits of pasta in it. After one mouthful, I thought, like a baby,
I like it!
and I ate as much as I could.

“Piano, piano,”
cautioned the old man, Giuliano, and Emilio echoed him, “Slowly, slowly. You haven’t eaten. You must not get sick.”

After a few more mouthfuls, they carried me back to the bed, and I slept.

THREE

My Grandfather’s Choice

“Y
ou want to do
what
?” My father was saying as I came down the stairs that evening, thinking that someone had replaced my legs with Jell-O. I wondered where all the photographs in the stairwell had gone. “Hi,” I said unsteadily as they all looked at me.

“Gina!” my mother called sharply. Gina’s head appeared around the kitchen door. She saw me and started guiltily. “You were supposed to be watching your sister,” my mother said.

“She can watch me from here, Mom,” I put in, and lurched my way to the couch. “You were all talking about me, I can tell.”

Emilio was watching me, and I thought maybe he seemed pleased.

“Go back to your bed,” said my father, and normally when he used that tone of voice I would have immediately done what he said. But something inside me was awake.

“Someone will have to carry me,” I said. “Anyway, since you were talking about me, you should tell me what you were saying.”

I saw him start to swell up, as if he were going to shout, and said quickly, “Come on, Dad, I’ve had a really hard couple of days.…”

Suddenly everybody started to laugh in a painful, edgy way. Gina came into the room and plopped down on the couch across from me.

“She’s got a right,” said Mom.

My dad gave in, deflating, but it was Gina who spoke.

“They want to take you back to Milan,” she said.

“Uh?” I said.

“Over my dead body,” said my father, speaking at last.

Emilio stared at him, but it was Mom who said, “Matt! Please don’t say such a thing. Don’t you think it will hear …?”

Emilio nodded vigorously.

At this point, Giuliano snapped at Emilio.

“Ancora non siamo stati presentati,”
he said, leaving us staring. Emilio nodded.

“My grandfather wishes us to be formally introduced to you, Signorina Mia. I believe he feels that our first meeting was …” He shrugged, and I thought I knew what feelings he was trying to express.
Awkward as hell
, maybe? I turned to Giuliano.

Emilio said, “May I introduce to you my grandfather, Giuliano Pagano Della Torre, your first cousin twice removed. And I am Emilio Roberto Della Torre, your third cousin.”

My what? I wasn’t really surprised that they were related to me; that explained why they both looked oddly familiar.

“Piacere di fare la Sua conoscenza,”
said Giuliano gravely, holding out his hand. I shook it, conscious of his powerful, blunt-fingered grip. I looked at Emilio, not sure what to say. He smiled, and I almost forgot everything but his eyes.

“You can just say, ‘
piacere
,’ ” he offered.

I tried, but it didn’t sound right at all.

Emilio held out his own hand, with the same blunt fingers but smooth, golden skin, his grip warm and nearly as strong as his grandfather’s.

“Pleased to meet you. We’re … cousins?” I tried to remember what he had said.

“Yes. It’s complicated.”

At this point, my dad decided he’d had enough.

“I’m telling you, she’s not going,” he said. “My father is turning in his grave right now. He never let us forget that he left Italy to get away from you. Now, I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for Mia, even though I still don’t understand what went on in that room. But we will do what we need to do to take care of her, even move if we have to.”

“Did your father ever explain to you why he left us?” Emilio asked.

“No. But I know something happened that made him really angry. I don’t know what it was, and I don’t think I want to, but
you must be crazy if you think I’m going to let my daughter go back with you.”

He looked around at all of us, then spoke directly to Giuliano.

“Before you came, our parish priest, Father Amadoro, tried an exorcism. It didn’t work. He didn’t say this, but I don’t think parish priests are supposed to conduct exorcisms. I think it’s against the rules.”

“You told us that,” Emilio said with grave politeness.

“I know. But that is not all that happened. I think I told you also that he sent for the diocesan exorcist. So this old guy came up from Albany with his team, and he did all these tests and said, yeah, this is a possession, not just some—your daughter isn’t crazy. He also tried an exorcism. It didn’t work. So he called some colleague of his in Rome, because he didn’t think there was an exorcist in the United States who could handle this—this demon, or whatever it is. I didn’t tell you that.”

Emilio shook his head and murmured to his grandfather, who kept his eyes on my father and leaned forward to show he was listening very carefully. Judging from my mom’s face, Dad hadn’t told her that last part, either. Gina and I caught each other’s eyes.

“You know what the guy in Rome said? He said that under no circumstances was an exorcism to be performed on a Della Torre.”

I blinked.

Almost before Emilio translated, Giuliano nodded, his eyes narrowing. He seemed about to speak, but my father wasn’t finished.

“So you tell me why the head guys in Rome are denying my daughter the rites of her Church.”

I should mention that this is the most Catholic I had ever heard my father be. I don’t think we had been to Mass since Easter. As far as I can tell, Father Amadoro, our parish priest, performed his illegal exorcism on me out of love for my grandfather, Roberto Dellatorri, one of his most faithful parishioners.

After my father finished speaking, we had to wait while Emilio translated for his grandfather, and all I could hear was his pure tenor, changing my father’s words into rhythmic, poetical, meaningless sound. Giuliano nodded seriously and then began to speak. When Emilio translated, he echoed his grandfather’s solemn tone.

“We should have been here sooner. We didn’t get the warning in time. Rome doesn’t like us, and it’s better they don’t know.”

Giuliano seemed to realize this was not going to help his cause, and he thought for a moment. Then he spoke again, gesturing at me. “Matteo Delatorri, your father was a brave man, a good man, with a strong sense of justice. But you must understand: in our work terrible things happen. You have seen what happened to your daughter. Mia is very lucky to have survived such a powerful attack. We …” He paused, Emilio pausing also in his translation, and they looked at each other. Even without knowing Italian, I could read their eyes plainly—“How much do we tell?”

“I don’t know how to say it.” Giuliano went on at last. “Sometimes we have to take desperate measures. We are like doctors who have to decide—save the mother or save the child?
We had to do that with … with someone your father loved. We had to choose between the life of that person and the life of many people. Pray, Matteo Dellatorri, that you never have to make that choice. Pray.” Giuliano’s eyes had gone dark during this speech, and his voice sounded like the voice he had used during my exorcism.

“But you, and yours, you are still Della Torres, whether you like it or not. Roberto could cross the ocean but he couldn’t change his …”

Here Emilio paused, frowning up at the ceiling, then went on, “What is the word—
genetica
? Is it the same?—He couldn’t change his genetics.

“You could move house, you could fly over the sea, you could change your name—or misspell it in a new country—whatever you like, but you would still be Della Torres.

“The demon will still come for Mia. And the next time, we might not be able to find you in time to rescue her.

“We are having to revise much of what we thought we knew about this demon. We do know that it has come before, and that … that Mia is the first one to make it out alive.”

We all sat silent for a moment.
You haven’t answered the question about Rome
, I thought.
Why did they say no exorcism on a Della Torre?
Giuliano began to speak to his grandson again, answering as if he’d heard me out loud.

“As for Rome, of course they don’t like us,” Emilio translated. “You have seen how dangerous this work is. They think we are amateurs, that the work is too dangerous for us.

“We have one or two friends in Rome, and they help ensure
that the Vatican doesn’t notice us. We have done our best, for centuries, to make certain that Rome doesn’t notice: even now, they are perfectly capable of ending the lives of those they do not like. I wish we had gotten here sooner.

“You must understand. Mia is in danger here. We must take her back with us. Our home in Milan is very well protected. We must keep her safe there and prepare for the next assault.”

“How did you find us, anyway?” Gina asked. “I thought Grandpa just left Italy and that was it. He never even wanted to talk about you guys.”

Emilio surprised me by chuckling. He translated briefly for his grandfather, then turned to us and said, “I can answer this one. We used an extremely magical tool: an address book.”

We just looked at him. None of us thought this was as funny as he did. I wondered how long I was going to have to live with these weird people, if my dad let me go. Emilio stopped smiling and continued, “Your grandfather wrote his family out of his life, but the family did not do the same. Many who left sent letters home to Milan, and those who stayed in Italy wrote back. I have seen the letters about your grandfather. I have seen the letter that announced your birth, Mia.”

He held my eyes for a moment. I was the one who looked away.

“You’ve been spying on us this whole time?” my father snapped. “On top of everything else.”

Emilio looked sharply at him but took a breath before answering in an even voice. “Not spying. We only knew what
your names were, how to find you, and … who was still alive.”

We were all pretty quiet after this.

“Wait. You knew how to find us, but how did you know that Mia was in trouble?” Gina pressed.

Emilio smiled at her. He said to Mom and Dad, “You have raised very clever children, I think. I can’t tell you everything, but I will tell you that one way we found out was that a friend of ours told us that your bishop had called Rome in quite a hurry. So we hurried, too.”

Gina nodded. “I wondered if the priest had told you. He was a good friend of Grandpa’s.”

Emilio shook his head. “No, not the priest. Most of them can’t afford to associate with us.”

He looked like he didn’t want to tell us any more. After a moment, though, he chose to go on.

“This whole experience, as terrifying as it has been for all of you, frightens us for another reason: it’s the first time this particular demon has attacked someone outside of Milan. We didn’t even know it could. We have been struggling with it for so long,” Emilio went on, and I could tell that he had meant to say something else, “that we thought we knew its ways. Now we find ourselves in the dreadful situation of knowing far less than we thought. That’s another reason to bring your daughter, our cousin, back with us.”

We just looked blankly at him. What was there to say? I could tell my father wanted to make some serious head-of-the-family pronouncement, but even he had to hold back and think.

Giuliano asked the next question in such a serious voice that I thought he was still talking about Milan or Rome. He wasn’t.

“Perhaps we could take a break for dinner?” translated Emilio.

Emilio told me over dinner that Italians usually eat later in the evening than Americans, but that he and his grandfather had both been hungry, very hungry. We went out because my father could tell my mother was too tired to cook (that’s my dad for you, right there—didn’t offer to cook, even though he’s perfectly good at it). I had expected them to want Italian food. But when my father asked, Emilio said, “We noticed an interesting-looking Chinese place on the way from the airport. Is it any good?”

So we went to The Unusual Luck, and I got to order my two favorite dishes even though I could tell my dad was still angry—at me, maybe—or afraid of me? Odd, anyway, about me. We were pretty quiet up through wontons and egg rolls, but then everybody started to look less shocked and tired right around General Tso’s chicken. I was surprised to see that both Giuliano and Emilio could use chopsticks, and Gina asked, “So you have Chinese food in Italy?”

Emilio laughed.

“We have everything in Milan. My grandfather only started learning how to use chopsticks a few years ago, though. He’s still very proud that he can, can’t you tell?” he added, giving us the world’s most beautiful one-sided grin.

We giggled and all three of us looked at Giuliano, who
frowned with his eyebrows, smiled with his eyes, and clacked his chopsticks at us affectionately.