“We are meant to be together,” she says casually. Her accent isn’t as thick as Giovanni’s, but it’s there, smoothing the edges of her words and turning her r’s to velvet. “Slutty tourists like you distract him for the summer, but he always comes back to me in the end.”
I swallow and look into the faces of her two friends. “I won’t go near him again, okay? I promise. Just let me go.”
The girls look at each other. For a second, I think this might be over. They already took me on a joyride in the trunk of their fucking car. They have to realize that’s enough to scare anyone away from some guy.
Francesca turns back to me and licks her lips. “I already told you. You are diavolina.”
The word sends a chill down my spine. “Is that what you call sluts around here?”
“You must pay for your sins,” Angelica says, her high bird voice sounding almost nervous. She tilts her head to the side, lips on the verge of a smile. “You are lucky we are here to help you.”
Elyse snorts. “Yeah. Lucky.”
“Let go,” I shout as Elyse grabs for my arms. I back up against the car, jerking away from her. “This is insane. You’re going to beat me up over a few kisses? I already told you I’d stay away from him!”
“Quiet,” Elyse snaps. She twists my arm behind my back, sending pain flaring through my joints. “Do not make me punch you again.”
She pushes, and I lurch forward, cringing. Angelica falls in line beside us, that eerie almost-smile still plastered across her face. I notice that she’s humming, lightly, beneath her breath.
I press my eyes closed, fighting against the tears threatening to spill onto my cheeks. The feeling inside me is a low, static buzz. Pure adrenaline. It’s the only thing keeping me from completely freaking out.
This will be over soon, I tell myself. They’ll get bored of slapping me around soon enough. I just need to stay calm.
Angelica brushes a sweaty lock of hair out of my face and says, “Aiutati che Dio t’aiuta.”
She draws a cross between my eyebrows with her thumb. Like she’s giving me a blessing.
* * *
• • •
They don’t take me inside the church. Instead, they lead me through a small, overgrown courtyard to the side of the building. Stone archways block out the sky, and weeds grow past my knees.
I focus on the adrenaline buzzing through me to keep from falling apart. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise,” Francesca says. There’s a hole in the wall at the side of the church. The grass in front is trampled flat, and someone has placed a few wooden boards over the jagged bricks along the ground.
Elyse lets go of my wrist. “Go,” she says, jerking her chin at the hole.
I curl my arms protectively around my chest. Through the hole, I see only yawning black darkness. I think of the catacombs Giovanni showed me: wall after wall of yellowed skulls, empty eye sockets staring out, teeth bared in matching grimaces. I shake my head. No way in hell.
A slice of a laugh. Elyse says, her voice booming, “You think you have a choice, diavolina?”
Two hands slam into my back. I hit the ground knees-first, smashing into packed dirt instead of cobblestones. I lurch forward, digging my fingers into the earth to keep them from trembling. Angelica says something in a high, panicky voice while Elyse and Francesca laugh terribly.
I should run. Get the hell out of here, while they’re distracted. My eyes twitch from side to side, but it’s too dark here to see anything. The ground slopes downward, and I can feel walls pressing in around me. The air feels thin and close.
A foot nudges my shoulder. “Get up.”
I don’t know what’s down there, in the darkness, but Francesca and her friends stand behind me, blocking the only other way out. I push myself to my feet and take a tentative step forward.
Stay calm, I think, like a mantra. This will be over soon.
But I can’t help the desperate thought that runs through my mind on repeat. Why me? Why is it always, always me?
There’s nowhere for me to run. Nowhere to go. One by one, Francesca, Elyse, and Angelica climb into the hole after me. Together, the four of us make our way underground.
* * *
• • •
The tunnel twists and dips until, finally, I see candlelight sparking in the darkness, flames like trembling wings. Something about it makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.
They’ve been planning this.
The candles illuminate an arched doorway. Packed dirt falls away in clumps to reveal ancient rock walls below. My breath catches in my throat. Someone built a room down here, deep below the church. I make out the edges of hulking shapes beyond the doorway. Gold light dancing over flashing metal and dark wood and leather.
I stop walking, focusing on the static spikes of adrenaline shooting through my veins. I don’t want to go into that room. I don’t want to find out what those shapes are.
A jab in my back. “Move.”
I slide my foot forward even as everything in my body screams not to. There’s nowhere to go but in.
We move through the arched doorway, and the underground room comes into clearer focus. I notice the crosses first. There are dozens of them nailed to the walls, some gold and gleaming in the candlelight, others crude, no more than two pieces of wood roughly nailed together, and still others are intricate and polished to a deep shine. They make the small space feel hot and airless, the walls boiling with hidden power.
My knees buckle—I almost fall—but Elyse yanks me up with a hard jerk on my arms.
The room isn’t big, maybe ten or twelve feet square, with a low ceiling. The walls themselves look ancient beneath the crosses: brick covered in layers of dirt, patches of paint gone brown near the ceiling and doors. Thick white candles have been lined up around the edges of the walls.
I should try to escape. Elyse’s grip has loosened since we got underground. If I pulled away now, I could catch her off guard. Shove Angelica aside, reach the tunnel, and race back up to the street. Scream for help.
The image is clear in my mind, so real that I can almost feel Elyse’s hands falling away from my wrists, the kick of adrenaline as I push Angelica to the floor. I curl my toes into the dirt, calf muscles tensing.
But I can’t make myself do it. The drugs—or the fear—have left me paralyzed, weak. Exhaustion seeps into my muscles, freezing me in place. I let Elyse push me the rest of the way into the room, cursing myself for being so weak.
“These rooms weren’t discovered until the eighties.” Francesca is saying. “Father Nicola thinks they were used during the Inquisition.”
I see something dark move at the corner of my eye and whip around, but it’s only the shadows moving in the candlelight. Elyse snickers, cruelly.
“Dumb American slut,” she mutters.
“Don’t be mean,” Angelica whispers, shooting her a look. “We’re here to help her, remember?”
A cruel twist curls the corner of Elyse’s mouth. “I remember why we’re here.”
I feel the hair lift off the back of my neck. Help. It’s clear that word means something different to Elyse than it does to Angelica.
I look around the room, trying to figure out what type of “help” they plan to give me. There are only three pieces of furniture in the room: a chair with a leather seat, a long wooden table attached to some sort of lever, and a tall stool holding a stone object shaped like a small pyramid.
A shiver moves through me. “What was it for?”
“Torture,” says Francesca, deadpan.
“This room is called the Tribunal of Inquisition,” Angelica says in a delighted whisper. Her dark eyes twitch back to Francesca, like she’s asking for permission to continue. Francesca nods, and Angelica adds, “It is where they put heretics on trial.”
She finds a canva
s backpack slumped next to the door and reaches inside, removing a battered black book. The spine reads La Sacra Bibbia. The Holy Bible, I translate.
I taste acid at the back of my throat, that same intense beat of fear I felt back at the festival when I realized Angelica smelled like incense. I find some last store of energy deep inside and jerk away from Elyse.
She swears in Italian and lunges for the exit. The energy drains out of me as quickly as it came. Seeing no other option, I push my body up against the wall, as far from Elyse as I can get. Candles flicker next to my feet, but at least I feel a little safer with my back against something solid. Elyse laughs, the sound sharp and sudden as a bark.
“You actually think there’s a chance for you to get away?” She blocks the exit with her body, something dark flashing through her eyes. “Go on. Try it.”
“Stop,” Francesca snaps. “This isn’t a game. We’re not chasing her through the tunnels. We have work to do.”
A flash of anger darts across Elyse’s face; she looks like she’s been denied a treat.
Angelica lowers her arm, and the backpack slides to the floor at her feet, upsetting a small cloud of dust. “I have been practicing,” she says, casting a shy glance my way. “I am almost as good as a real priest now.”
I’m still looking at the chair on the far side of the room. Restraints hang from the armrests. Thick leather ones.
Mouth dry, I ask, “Practicing what?”
“Some of us think you deserve a chance to repent.” Francesca’s voice twists around the word some—making it clear that it doesn’t refer to her—and glances at Angelica. “Even if you are diavolina.”
Angelica’s shoulders have gone stiff. She says, staring down at the Bible, “All God’s creatures deserve a chance to repent.”
Francesca and Elyse share a smirk behind Angelica’s back. Francesca says, “Of course they do.”
I don’t like the way they’re talking. Repent and God’s creatures and priest. I dig my fingers into the cracks between the stones, my arms weak and shaky. Heat rises up from the candles, but it feels like it’s coming off the crosses. Like the crosses are burning me.
“What do you mean, repent?” My tongue feels thick and clumsy in my mouth.
Francesca lifts her chin. “No more questions.”
She kneels beside the backpack and removes a small glass bottle with a white cross etched on the front. Holy water.
My eyes move over the room, landing on a rope attached to the ceiling via pulley, one looped end pooled on the ground near the stool holding the stone pyramid. I shiver, hard, like a cat, and avert my eyes before I can think about how those objects might’ve been used during the Inquisition. How they might be used on me now.
The sharp tip of the pyramid looks shinier than anything else down here. Like it’s been polished.
“Elyse,” Francesca says, her black eyes still on me. “Get her on her knees.”
“Kneel,” Elyse says, sounding bored.
I press myself further into the wall. It starts to crumble beneath my weight, chunks of dirt sticking to my sweat in patches.
Elyse’s small white teeth flash between her lips. It’s a small movement, just a twitch of her mouth, and I’m reminded of a dog looking at its prey. She grabs me by the shoulders and jerks my body down, slamming her knee into my stomach.
My internal organs seem to shift, making room for Elyse’s bone and muscle. All the breath leaves my body in a gasp of air, and my eyesight blinks out, like someone flipped a switch. Pain rolls over me, thick like nausea.
I double over. Sink to my knees.
“Better,” Elyse says. She doesn’t sound bored anymore. Now she sounds excited.
I grit my teeth, forcing myself to breathe through the hurt. After a moment, I’m able to lift my head.
Angelica is staring, expression horrified. For a second, I think she’s going to step in, do something, but then her free hand flutters up near her hair, anxiously adjusting her veil. “Should I begin?”
Francesca nods. “We are ready.”
She’d been standing farther away from the other two, letting them do her dirty work while she watched, but now she moves closer. I hear her uncork the holy water with a pop.
Angelica holds up the Bible, letting it fall open to a page near the middle. She clears her throat. “Exsúrgat Deus et dissipéntur inimíci ejus,” she recites in a voice clear and high as a bell, “et fúgiant qui odérunt eum a fácie ejus.”
I let my head drop, still gasping for breath. My insides feel bruised. Every inhale burns. I press a hand to my stomach, cringing.
Something cold and wet hits the top of my head, and I give an involuntary flinch.
“Have you heard the story of our Lucia?” I see the pointed toe of Francesca’s leather flats slide closer. A moment later, she crouches in the dirt.
I swallow, trying to remember the story Giovanni told me. “She was a girl,” I choke out. “A sacrifice.”
Francesca lifts my chin with her finger, eyes searching my face. Behind her, Angelica continues reading.
“Sicut déficit fumus defíciant; sicut fluit cera a fácie ígnis.”
“Long ago, Cambria was a very poor place. Our crops would not grow. Our wells ran dry.” Francesca taps her temple with one finger. “But our priests were smart men. They realized that the townspeople were sinners and that was why God cursed us. So they chose a girl to be made into an example. A diavolina. One who is possessed.
“Lucia was chosen because she was always sleeping with new men and because she was not a believer, like us. After she died, the town became good again. It rained. Crops grew. The priests, they thought if just one demon was exorcised, the others would follow. They were right.”
Francesca lifts her eyes to mine and smiles. For a moment I’m reminded of the girl with the Lucky Charms tattoos and wicked smile, the girl I could imagine being friends with. She seemed so normal, not like Angelica, pious to the point of madness, or Elyse, who seems to actually like causing pain.
I gasp, “Please . . . why are you doing this?”
Francesca says, “We think now it is the same. If we perform an exorcism on one slutty American girl, the other slutty American girls will all leave, too. Just like Lucia.”
Somewhere deep inside me, something begins to hum. I feel it vibrating in my palms and at the base of my spine. I jerk my head from side to side, looking at the chair with the leather restraints, and the sharp stone pyramid, and the table. Panic rattles up my chest.
They didn’t bring me down here to hit me a few times, scare me away from their boyfriends.
They brought me here to sacrifice me.
I dig my fingers into the dirt, focusing on the hard press of earth beneath my fingernails. “You’re crazy,” I spit. A glob of saliva lands on the dirt between my fingers. “All of you. You’re sick.”
Francesca’s lip curls. “We will see who is sick.”
CHAPTER 17
Before
Blearily, I open my eyes.
Plaster stretches above me, cracked and discolored from years of water damage. It’s not the ceiling in my dorm room—I notice that right away. The cracks are different from the ones I’ve memorized over the last six weeks. Unfamiliar.
I turn my head to the side, releasing a groan. This small movement feels impossibly difficult. The room looks like my dorm room, except there’s only one bed and no windows. None of my stuff is here. I’m alone, lying on my back.
I try to turn, to study the rest of the space, but I’m still under sedation. My head feels too heavy, the muscles in my neck not strong enough to lift it. I try to push myself to a sitting position, but thick fabric cuts into my wrists and chest, holding me. Restraints.
I was in solitary for a month, I remember Sofia telling me. That must be what this is. They’ve deemed me too crazy for the crazy hous
e, so they dumped me here.
Just a few hours ago, I thought I was going home.
Tears form in my eyes, but I blink them away. I want to be unconscious again, to drift back to whatever drug-induced dream world I was in before. Anywhere is better than this strange, empty room.
I clench my eyes shut—tight—and wait to fall back asleep.
* * *
• • •
You don’t spend a lot of time awake when you’re this medicated. I learn this over the next few days, in the brief moments when I’m able to keep my eyes open for more than a minute or two.
Tayla and I got mono in seventh grade, one after the other. The doctor thought we both caught it by drinking from the same soda bottle. That was the only other time in my life when I’ve spent full days in bed, too tired to lift my head, staring up at the ceiling. Only then, I had Tayla going through it with me. We’d FaceTime when we were both awake for more than a couple of minutes, tell each other about all the dumb things we’d dreamed, complain about how boring it was to be sick, or wonder whether Jackson Phillips (our mutual crush) noticed that we weren’t in school. When we started feeling better, we’d watch the same crap TV—her in her bed, me in my own, phones pressed to our ears so we could hear each other laugh.
There’s no one with me in this cold, dark room. Tayla is dead and gone. The flickering overhead hurts my eyes. The voices echoing from the hallway make my head pound. Those are the worst parts—when I’m awake.
Sleep is a luxury. Black and dreamless.
* * *
• • •
They remove the restraints from my wrists after twenty-four hours, but I’m not allowed into the cafeteria or any of the other public areas. Food is brought to me on a cold metal tray, and I don’t know what it is, exactly, only that it tastes like mush and I have to work hard to keep it down. My mom used to make me pancakes when I felt sick. Waffles. French toast drenched in real syrup. She’d make faces with berries and whipped cream. The medicine makes my mouth feel numb. I don’t even know if I’d be able to taste the sugar in the syrup.
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