by Nichole Van
“And you, Lady Sofia? Would you do me the honor of being my wife?”
“Yes.” Softly. Quietly. “I do believe I would, Jack.”
Their voices faded away. I sucked in a long breath.
Atta boy, Jack.
At least someone had been lucky in love.
Thirty
Florence, Italy
2016
Branwell
Do you think Jack and Sofia married?” Lucy asked. “Nothing I’ve ever read indicates that Gruncle Jack married.”
We were in the car, driving back to Florence, and I had just caught her up to date on everything I had heard.
“True, but if he married in Italy and died shortly thereafter, the news may not have ever made it back to England. That said, the D’Angelo family records should list who Sofia married, so we’ll get an answer.”
Lucy sat back, staring out the window at the tile rooftops and sunflower fields whizzing past. Her frizzy curls fluttered in the blessedly cold AC.
“Do you think you and I are related?” She gestured between us with a green gummy bear. “If my uncle married your aunt . . . what would that make us?”
“Connected through marriage around two hundred years ago. There would be no blood tie.”
“Whew. That could have been awkward. I was thinking I would have to start calling you Cuz.” She popped the bear in her mouth, but I still caught her teasing smile.
We arrived back in Florence to an empty palazzo, everyone else out for the evening.
I let us into my mom and Chiara’s apartment, the evening sun pouring light through the tall windows along one side of the great room. The air conditioning bathed us both in welcome cold air.
Lucy wandered over to the couch, massaging her scalp while dropping her purse and shedding her shoes. She sank into the couch and raised her head, noting my stare. She smiled and patted the cushion next to her, a not-so-subtle invitation.
Why did being with Lucy have to feel so normal? So natural?
I toed off my own shoes and sank beside her. So close that the warmth of her body washed over me.
Lucy rested her head against the back of the couch, inches from my bicep. “Why do I feel like we keep finding more questions than answers?”
“Because we do,” I answered her.
“True.”
Her emotions roiled through me. Worry for Grace tempered by Lucy’s own native optimism. Happiness because I was near. I sensed that she wanted to curl into my side, lay her head on my shoulder. But, controlling the impulse, she merely scooted a tiny bit closer.
How was it possible for me to be even more attuned to her in just the past twenty-four hours? How was I ever going to watch her walk back out of my life?
But . . . I had no other choice.
I could do this. I could be her friend and somehow, someway force myself not to reciprocate.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and texted Chiara with gloved fingers, intent on distracting myself. I caught my sister up to date about what I had heard and asked if she could find any info about Sofia’s marriage to Jack.
Chiara texted back within two minutes.
Jack and Sofia, eh? That would be a turn of events. I’m on it.
Thanks, sis.
Also, heard from the police. It’s a no-go getting a finger on the stuff taken from Grace’s bedroom and not just because Inspector Paola’s a control freak. Turns out, the Little Mermaid music box was given to Grace by Roberto. He apparently showed an interest in her. People say he was like a doting uncle, but that all changes once the kid goes missing. Still no sign of him. The police put out a warrant for his arrest this afternoon.
My heart sank.
Damn Roberto. What had the man done? Where was Grace?
Chiara continued texting.
I found out that the police have been questioning Cat Lady again, but she doesn’t seem to know anything more. I also got a call from Inspector Paola herself. She made it very clear that we need to back off and let her do her job. She’s shutting us down. No more American hero crap.
She said that?
Her exact words.
I clenched my jaw, swallowing back the acid taste of frustration. Lucy leaned in, pressing her cheek against my arm. I angled my phone so she could read Chiara’s texts.
Lucy sat back with a huff, irritated. “Stupid Inspector Paola. A little girl is missing. The prime suspect has vanished. It’s not rocket science to put two-and-two together here.”
“If only they could locate Roberto.”
“Yeah. Or better yet, let us help find him. He is clearly a weirdo involved in some dangerous occult stuff, and it’s not a stretch to think he has dragged Grace into his woo-woo world. Not to mention Chucky.”
I stared at my phone, tilting it, trying to see anything shadowy in its shiny surface.
“Chucky is infecting things somehow. I still am not quite sure how he ended up in the pool yesterday.”
“You said you thought it was the medal?”
“Yeah, because it was shiny and had been given to you by Roberto and Cat Lady.”
“Well, Paola may have shut us down in some ways, but she can’t control this. Let’s test the medal for Chucky.”
With a determined lift of her chin, Lucy uncurled from the couch and disappeared down the hallway, returning a moment later with the Saint Christopher medal.
She held it out to me, flat and sparkly against the palm of her hand.
Tentatively, I set my phone down on the coffee table and pulled off a glove. I paused and then rested a single fingertip against the medal.
Roses. Musty things—
I snatched my hand back.
“Chucky?” Lucy asked, setting the medal down on the coffee table beside my phone.
“Yeah,” I sighed, pulling my glove back on. “It’s like everything I come into contact with suddenly has Chucky in it. I’m a demon-generating Typhoid Mary.”
“So you think you’re the infectious agent?” She sat down next to me again. “You’re the only one who can interact with Chucky, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’re the one transferring the Chucky infection. Correlation isn’t causation and all that.”
I sat back, tapping my fingers against my leg. “Alright. I’ll buy that.”
“The infectious agent is just as likely to be Roberto, to be honest. Your family is cursed, so it’s possible that other bloodlines are cursed, too. My Gruncle Jack decides to go excavating some treasure that the ancient Etruscans felt compelled to hide. He mysteriously disappears.”
“And then two hundred years later, Roberto develops a similar obsession and, bam, Gruncle Jack’s niece disappears. Then Roberto himself disappears.”
“Exactly.”
“So where is Chucky in all of this?”
Lucy shrugged. “Roberto gave me the medal. Well, Cat Lady, technically but Roberto handled it too. And we’re fairly confident that your phone became Chucky-infected while in Roberto’s office.”
“True, but again, correlation isn’t causation.”
She chewed on her cheek. “All we know about Chucky is that he likes to inhabit shiny things, correct?”
“Correct.”
“And there’s no consensus on the size or shape or even the medium of these shiny objects?” Lucy twisted her lips, thinking.
“Again, correct. He first attacked me at the age of thirteen out of a silver teapot.”
“A family heirloom you said?”
“Yeah.”
Lucy paused, eyes wide as if something just occurred to her. “Any chance that heirloom could have been in the family around 1820?”
A thrill chased my spine. I stared into Lucy’s intense blue eyes. Mischievous curls bounced around her face.
“You are incredibly smart, you know that?” I grinned at her. “The teapot dates from the late eighteenth century.”
“So it’s something Sofia D’Angelo might have used?”
“Extremely likely, particularly if
someone important came calling—”
“Like a British nobleman Sofia had betrothed herself too?”
“Precisely.” I shook my head, pieces of the puzzle slotting into place. “That’s a little too much coincidence to be entirely chance, I think.”
Lucy sat back, a smug-satisfied look on her face. “Over the years, there have been other objects with Chucky?”
“Yeah, he’s been in small and large things—metal, plastic and glass. The only thing he doesn’t inhabit are objects with a matte surface. In fact, the more shiny something is, the more likely it is to house Chucky. But I can’t see an obvious connection to Gruncle Jack or Sofia D’Angelo with other past Chucky-infested objects.”
Lucy stared at my phone on the table and then surveyed the room.
“Without knowing how Chucky infects things, it’s hard to trace the connection. Are you up for a little experimentation?” she asked. “Let’s see if we can’t deduce how Chucky contaminates things.”
“I’m game.”
“I’ll start by removing this from the equation.” Lucy picked up the medal and dropped it inside her purse. “From there, we know your phone became infected somehow, most likely while you were in Roberto’s office.”
She snagged a towel from the kitchen and wrapped up my phone without touching it.
“Just as a control, will you touch the towel?” She angled the little bundle toward me. “We’re confident it doesn’t work on fabrics and things that aren’t shiny—”
“Because I’ve been holding my phone all day with my gloves without any problem?”
“Exactly.”
I peeled off my right hand glove again and touched the towel.
The thrum of factory machines. Someone calling in Chinese.
Nothing else.
Lucy nodded in confirmation.
“Now, just to be sure again, would you mind touching the phone with your bare finger?”
She carefully unfolded my phone and stretched it out to me. I placed a single finger on its glossy surface.
Instantly, it swamped me.
The smell of musty roses and things long dead—
I snatched my hand away before the mist could engulf it.
“I take that as a ‘Yes’?”
I bobbed my head.
Lucy wrapped up the phone again, placing it on the large central island in the kitchen. She then proceeded to walk through the room grabbing shiny items. An opaque glass vase. A metal cake pan. A spoon. A shiny plastic bowl.
She surveyed the items on the counter. And then frowned.
“The marble is shiny too.” She swept a hand over my mom’s gorgeous counter top. “Let me fix that.
Five minutes later, the entire counter was covered in bath towels, Lucy’s collection of random items on top of them. Me on one side of the counter, Lucy on the opposite.
“Would you mind?” She pointed a finger, indicating I should touch everything.
I did, gently pressing a bare finger to each object.
Nothing.
Well, nothing out of the ordinary.
“Okay. Let’s do it one more time, just to make sure that you’re not the infectious agent. Like the first touch was priming the items somehow.”
I touched everything again. And then did it a third time.
No Chucky.
“Alright,” Lucy said, “I’m willing to say that you, in and of yourself, are not the infectious agent. So let’s bring out the phone.”
Tentatively, she unwrapped my phone.
“If Chucky acts like other infectious agents, then touch would be the method of transfer.”
“I agree.”
Gingerly, Lucy touched the surface of the phone to the opaque vase. She wrapped the phone again and motioned for me to touch the vase.
Carefully, I did.
Machines whirring. Voices chattering in French.
Nothing came at me.
Lucy popped a hand on her hip.
“That seemed straight forward,” she said. “But apparently, it’s more than touch. Let’s try again, just to make sure.”
We repeated the process with the vase, touching it to my phone.
Nothing.
“Weird. Let’s try the spoon.”
Lucy unwrapped the phone again and reached over the plastic bowl to touch the phone to the glossy serving spoon.
“Try that.”
Feeling more confident, I touched the spoon for the fourth time, expecting nothing more than the clanking of large machinery.
Death. Roses. Fear. Something reaching for me—
I snatched my hand away, staggering back.
Lucy’s eyes widened as she hissed in a breath. “Chucky?”
“Bingo.”
Lucy frowned, studying the spoon.
“Obviously, we’re missing something here,” she said. “But he’s still not in the vase?”
More hesitantly, I touched the vase again.
Nothing.
“Weird.”
Curious, I touched the cake pan.
Nothing.
I touched the plastic bowl.
Roses. Hunger—
I darted back.
“Crap. He’s in the bowl now.” I wiped my finger on my jeans.
Lucy and I stared at the items. Totally puzzled.
“So . . . touch isn’t necessary because until the phone got near the bowl, it wasn’t infected.”
“Agreed. It’s something else.”
“But what? A specific series of touches? Like you have to touch an infected object and then touch something shiny and then touch the object again—”
“I haven’t done that here.”
“Mmmm.” Lucy bit her lip.
We both stared.
“So let’s continue to assume there is some logic to this,” I finally said. “Everything infected is glossy. That’s the only common denominator—the shinier something is, the more likely Chucky is to inhabit it.”
Lucy thought for a moment.
“So what are the unique properties of glossy things?” she asked.
“Things don’t stick to them well.”
“They bounce light.”
“Yes. They’re reflective.” I paused. The simplicity of the answer thrumming through me. “That’s it! They’re reflective. Like tiny mirrors.”
I touched the vase.
Still no Chucky.
“This vase is shiny, but not super shiny like the spoon. It’s not quite mirror-like. But take my phone, Luce, and angle the vase until you can see the reflection of the phone in it.”
“You’re a bit of a genius, Bran.”
Lucy snatched up my phone and rotated the vase, angling it this way and that until we both clearly saw the reflection of the glossy phone in the shiny glaze of the vase.
“Moment of truth.”
I lifted my finger above the vase and then gently touched it.
Darkness. The smell of roses. A voice rising—
I yanked my hand away, grinning.
“I think we have it. Reflection might be the method of infectious transfer.”
“And once something is infected, can it transfer the infection via reflection to something else?” Lucy asked.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
I touched the cake pan again.
No Chucky.
I motioned for Lucy to pick up the infected spoon.
She lifted it and angled it over the cake pan, again maneuvering both until we clearly saw the reflection of the spoon in the cake pan.
She set it back down, gesturing for me to touch it.
I placed a finger on the edge of the pan.
It swamped me quickly. Fast. Hard.
Death. Roses. Fear. Mist coming.
“Yay! I found it!” A little girl’s voice. Distant. Echoey.
Grace!
I snatched my hand away, my heart instantly clawing its way out of my chest.
“What?” Lucy reached for my hand across the islan
d.
Panicked, I shook my head, touching the metal pan again.
This time, there was no hesitation.
Mist and a dark claw surged out of the pan.
Grace screamed.
Thirty One
Branwell
Grace’s scream ricocheted through my mind.
Wait . . . or was it a squeal?
“Dammit.” I jerked away, staring at the back of my hand, scratched but not bloody yet.
“What’s up? What happened?” Lucy came around the island, grabbing my left elbow.
“Grace,” I whispered. “I heard Grace. It could only have been her voice.”
“Grace?!!” Lucy shrieked, staring around the apartment and then coming back to the cake pan. “How?”
“I don’t know. Her voice was wrapped up in the sensation of Chucky somehow.”
I grabbed dish towels out of a drawer in the island.
“Protection. Smart.” Lucy came around and helped me wrap the towels around my arm, over my shirt, until I had a solid level of protection extending from my shoulder to my fingertips, leaving only a strip of my pinkie finger exposed.
It would have to do for now. I faced the cake pan. Lucy watched on, intent.
In any other situation, I would have laughed at this scene. Two normally sane adults, one swathed mummy-like in towels, staring down a helpless cake pan like it housed a bomb.
But a little girl was lost, and this was the first definitive evidence we had of her.
“Thank you.” Lucy shot me a watery smile. Fear. Hope. Worry. “Your willingness to face Chucky’s claws to help Grace . . . it means a lot.”
I managed a wan smile of my own, though it probably came off as more of a grimace.
How long would I be able to hang on once Chucky came at me?
Gingerly, I placed a finger on the pan.
Roses. Damp. Dust. Hunger.
Need.
Darkness rushing toward me.
“Grace!” I yelled. “Can you hear me, Grace?”
I had never tried to talk into something before, but if Chucky and sound could come out for me, maybe sound could go in, too.
“Gracie!” Lucy chimed in. “Gracie Pie, it’s Aunt Lucy. Can you hear me?”
Chucky surged, clawing his way through the towels. Darkness engulfed my arm.
