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There was something careful about the energy here. Not calm, exactly. More … preserved in amber.
Just before she drifted off, in the in-between between consciousness and oblivion, she realized what had bothered her about her nieces whispering in the hall. They’d been speaking Italian.
Vacation required vacancy. The abandonment of all scraps of everyday life.
“You know, you’re supposed to put money in the tin for every candle. This is the Catholic Church, Anna, prayers ain’t free.”
They were alike, Anna and her father, but often in the wrong ways. They were identical magnets, she thought, turned to repel.
“Listen, there’s nothing wrong with anybody, is the truth. We’re all just doing our best at being ourselves. And who you are and you are…” She turned to Mia. “… is amazing, so just keep on being you and forget about everybody else. And also go to bed and no talking.”
She felt acutely aware of the absence of breath on her back—not a reassuring sensation. It felt like this thing was simply waiting. Anna muttered, “My turn, huh?” In one violent swipe, she smeared her hand across the mirror, clearing the steam.
“And I’m not that either, but … no. I’m not a believer or a disbeliever. It would be laughably arrogant to say that anything is impossible, that any human can know the secrets of the universe. Even one secret of the universe, even that the universe as we think we know it exists. We’ll never understand enough to be able to say anything so absolute as ‘I don’t believe—’”
La dama bianca. Ricca, potente. Vinaio. Infedele. Ossessiva. Colture avvelenate. Il figlio. Veleno, tutti avvelenati. Attacchi ai vivi. Allucinazione. Esorcismo. La chiave. La chiave del male. La chiave del torre. Mi dispiace. Perdonami, perdonami, perdonami …
She kicked, but it only made the fingers slide higher, up into the leg of her jeans, all the way to the inside of her thigh. The fingers curled. She felt its nails start to scratch. And then the tongue. Running along the arch of her foot.
The truth was, Anna was still on the run—fleeing the villa, the vacation, all of it. All of them.
“You know, I was going to lay into you for not answering your emails, make some joke about how you’d gotten lost in the Alps, but now it feels like a cheap shot,” Tim said. His voice had gotten louder. Anna could feel her colleagues perking up, clearly expected to watch. Open plan, open company, open communication. “We did wonder where you were, you know.” “Did I not tell you I was going to Italy?” Anna tried her best to sound confused, not insolent, but oh was it hard today. “Is there no internet in Italy?” Tim grinned like a chimp, rocking back onto his heels. “Been a while since I’ve gotten
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This here. Jobs act like your life is to 100% revolve around them. She is in on vacation. NOBODY should be checking their emails or work voicemails while on vacation. I was just on vacation for the past week. I have some big claims going on. I didn’t check with management once while I was out.
Nicole had told Mom and Dad about the abortion. As ammunition, as revenge, for literally nothing. Or Benny, but Anna wouldn’t look directly at that possibility.
As she heaved again, gripping the porcelain, she felt her hair being held back from her face. Its fingers were cold. Helpful at the moment, while Anna retched, but even so, not exactly gentle.
“Where was I? Oh right, so here’s the thing, Cat. You were looking for the weak one in the flock, right? The one you could draw aside and push over the edge. Isolate from everyone and feed upon, but see, that was the first flaw in your logic: I’m not a lost lamb. I’m a black sheep. These are two very different things.”
Whether the spell worked or not, she would make Caterina’s afterlife an un-living hell. However bad La Dama got, Anna would be worse.
She can think of few more beautiful things than the mess it makes.
