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This girl, a popular travel blogger, had ended her career, and her life, inside Villa Taccola.
It knew that she knew. She could feel it looking at her. Daring her to go inside.
“Thought the house ate you.” He smiled, to signal he didn’t really mean it. To reassure himself. Anna took the shoes he offered. Didn’t smile back. “Not yet.”
“We’ve lost! A day!” Anna shouted, swiveling in her chair so hard her ribs wrenched. “No one remembers Thursday—don’t you think that’s a little worrying?”
Anna stared down at the spreading stain. And she remembered another red stain, a dreamed one, spreading too fast to be real, making crimson patterns on white fabric, seeping into the grout between the tiles. She remembered Christopher not smirking. Not talking. Only gasping like a banked fish.
“New owner came in, not the British man, the one before, Genoese. He fixed it up, did a good job. You like it, the new section? I worked a few weeks on that job. We all did. Everybody.” “Everybody? Like everybody in Monteperso?” “Villa Taccola, yes, it is very important to the town. Better that we use tourists.”
I heard stories. People stay there too long, they get confused. And there were many little accidents while building. Things breaking, tools left on all night.” Sweat was dampening his curls. “Nothing too dangerous until he died.” Anna’s finger hovered over the seat-belt button. “Died?” “The owner. Il Genoese.”
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
“They don’t want to know. She wants us to be confused but nobody wants to know anyway. You can’t look right at it so they pretend it’s all pretty and normal but it’s not, Anna, it’s not!”
The bathroom mirror had begun to fog up, but not so much that she couldn’t see it standing behind her. Piss-yellow hair, coiled and stringy, sweat-sodden sleeves, face obscured. “Well,” Anna said. “Shit.”
Naples yellow. Had Caterina actually dyed her hair with a lead freaking oxide instead of dipping her head in piss like all the other well-turned young ladies? She’d wanted to stand apart, Anna sensed.
she’d found a way to do so, and to go completely insane in the process—but
there it was, in the exact center of the bed. Anna picked up the key with the tips of her fingernails and dumped it back into her bedside drawer. “Worth a try,” she said. She could have sworn the drawer laughed.
“You understand me now,” Caterina said, and her voice was just as sweet as her touch. She whispered into Anna’s ear. “My mind is your mind, my thoughts your thoughts, my language your language. When I speak, you listen. You understand. You obey.”
Control was antithetical to life. To be alive is to be battered about. To endure and adapt and keep stumbling onward despite it all.
I’m not a lost lamb. I’m a black sheep. These are two very different things.”
“Sciolgo il tuo incantesimo. Il tuo nome è dimenticato. Il tuo lavora è dimenticato. Il tuo potere è andato.”
He had reappeared beside her, eyes frantic, blinking and blinking, a sick gurgling issuing from his throat. Before Anna could reach for him, Benny’s foot stepped between them and then onto Christopher, crushing his neck. It sounded like tearing a wing off a roast chicken. The light left Christopher’s eyes, but everyone kept kicking, stepping, crushing. Everyone. Even the little girls. Even Anna.
She let out a furious laugh. “You blame me for this, Christopher? Seriously? You and Benny really did belong together! You want to blame somebody living, blame your boyfriend. This was not my fucking fault.”
