ChapteR Thirteen
With some effort, I stop the panic attack before it can consume me. I have no idea why someone would want to kill me. I’m nothing special. Just a girl in high school. I press my eyes with my fingertips. Don’t cry.
Marek wraps a gentle hand around my forearm. “Hey, are you okay?”
I nod, and it’s a little too hard for someone who’s okay. Because I’m not. How could I be? Nothing makes sense, and everything is terrifying. And that doesn’t make sense, either. I think of Dad and what he’d say in a situation like this.
Stay strong. You can’t let your emotions take over.
I see his face. The day he died I teased him about his attempt at growing a beard. The hair was sparse, and there were patches of gray. I smell that awful cologne he got from Jane for his birthday that he insisted on using all the time because some woman at the Coffee House in her nineties said she liked it. I feel his hug. Warm and secure.
And I’m better. Thinking of him always brings me out of the dark. Always stops the demons from consuming me.
My hands fall away from my face, and I smile at Marek. “I’m okay. Just processing all this…whatever it is.”
He smiles, but it’s as if he’s not too sure he should.
I glance over our call list. “That’s twenty-five. We missed someone.”
His shoulder leans into mine as we study it together.
“Here.” I point out the notation next to Shona. The writing in the margin is long and goes onto the next line almost covering a name. “Joel Jackson. He wasn’t on your grandfather’s list?”
“No.” He gets up, retrieves the list from his bag, and reads it. “Yeah, he’s not on this.”
“I wonder why?”
He shrugs. “Maybe Antonia knew something my gramps didn’t. Let’s figure out the rest.”
“Okay,” I say, returning my gaze to the posters.
“So what do we know?”
“Well,” I start. “The numbers next to the pinholes on the map match the ones next to the names on the list. So D means dead, and M is for missing. Antonia registered the dates of everyone’s deaths or disappearances on the map. That means from the six we couldn’t understand or reach, judging by which letter she wrote next to their names, five are dead, one is missing.”
I let it rest in my head for a moment. I was right. But I’m not going to panic this time.
Stay strong.
Marek drops the list and photo album on the mattress beside him. “Whelp, at least we don’t have to travel the world to find these people.”
“Don’t you get it?” There’s no emotion behind my words. Am I numb? “It’s a hit list. And Shona and I are on it.”
“You should go back.”
“Where?”
“Home. It’s too dangerous for you here.”
“I’m staying. Nowhere is safe. If they want me, they’ll find me. My Dad. Antonia. They were home, and they died.”
He stares at his hands for several beats. “You’re right. You have to stay with me. We have to stick together.” His head turns in my direction. “It’s safer that way.”
Safer? I’m not sure I agree, but the way he’s looking at me makes me skip a breath. His eyes say it all. He cares about me. We haven’t known each other very long, but I feel the same way. I’m not sure what it means. I just know that this situation has put us both in danger and we only have each other right now.
And it’s overwhelming, so I decide to change the mood. Get us back on the topic of what we’re going to do about our predicament.
“Shona’s in danger, too,” I say.
“I’ll call her.” He removes his phone from his pocket and starts punching numbers on the screen. After a pause, he says, “Went straight to voicemail.” He ends the call and drops his phone on the bed.
Even though the girl is a bit annoying and maybe a bit out of touch, I want to find Shona. Make sure she’s safe. Tell her what we discovered. She has the right to know there might be a target on her back. Cain will protect her if it comes down to it, but I still want her with me. Safety in numbers. A sort of we’re-in-this-together kind of thing.
Marek leafs through the stack of papers. “These are in Italian, or maybe Latin?”
My hand grazes the album. It’s heavy when I lift it. I place it on my lap and flip the first cardboard page over. It’s old, the linen cover cracked and worn from use and time. The photographs are faded pink with age. Each page contains three rows, and each row has two pictures of the same person.
On the top row, the images are of a middle-aged man. In the first photo, his eyes are closed with the word deceduto under it, along with the date and time, 20 June 1937, 3:22 p.m. The image beside it shows the man’s eyes opened and has risorto, 20 June 1937, 3:24 p.m. with deceduto, 20 June 1937, 3:30 p.m. beneath that.
The woman in front of Wren’s apartment building used deceduto when we asked about Antonia. So it might mean dead or something like that. “Can you get a translation on your phone for these?” I tap my finger on each word.
He checks the translations of them and confirms their meanings—deceased and resurrected.
Marek scoots closer to me, the mattress sinking a little under him. He looks over my shoulder, his breath tickling my collarbone. “What’s this? Some sort of death log?”
“I don’t know.” I toss page after page. Faces flash by, men and women, the photographs less aged the further into the album I get. “Why is there a photograph of each person alive then dead?”
“Correction,” he says. “They’re dead then alive. Look at the times.”
He’s right. I stop flipping pages and choke on my breath. On the chest of one of the men sits a death’s-head hawkmoth. Its yellow-and-brown wings perfectly spread apart, the skull on its back almost mocking. A shiver runs through my body, the album shaking a little in my hands.
It’s a coincidence. That’s all. It can’t be related to the moths that appeared during the freaky frog incident at school. I shake the thought away.
I remember just then what Shona told us about Cain.
“Cain.” I can’t seem to form a complete sentence. Air is rushing too quickly into my lungs.
Marek rests his hand on mine. “Breathe. It’s okay. What about Cain?”
“Shona.” I take a breath. “She said he died and she brought him back. Could it be true?”
“I don’t know. None of this seems possible, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
“So what do we do?”
“What sick person puts together something like this?” I look at the album.
“I don’t think Antonia did,” Marek says. “The first photographs were in 1937. Writing and pages are faded. And she wasn’t alive back then. We should get those note pages translated. Maybe there’re answers in them.”
The phone to the room rings. Marek leans back and picks up the receiver. “Hello? No. We’re not here, and I didn’t just answer the phone. Okay.” He sighs as he waits for something. “I’m not giving him a hard time. Right. See you later.” He hangs up and turns to me. “That was Shona and her lapdog. They’re on their way back.”
I push off the bed and pick up the album. “We have to hide this stuff before they return.”
“Okay,” he says, sounding as if he thinks I’m unreasonable. “Why? I thought they were in this with us. Shona is on that list. She’s searching for answers, too. Besides, she speaks Italian, and we need a translator.”
With a deep sigh, I collapse back on the bed beside him. “You’re right. I just don’t trust Cain. He freaks me out.”
“The dude definitely has anger issues.” He places his hand on my knee, and I feel a tug inside me at his touch. If we were in a different situation, I might act on my growing attraction to Marek. He keeps pulling me closer with every touch, smile, and kind thing that he does.
And by different situation, I mean if I weren’t in mortal danger.
…
Sid drops Shona and Cain off almost thirty minutes later. Thankfully, it’s another full-moon night, so he doesn’t come up. He’s off to see the same guy he saw last night.
Shona keeps glancing at us as she reads the notes from Antonia’s box. “These aren’t hers. It’s experiment records from a coroner’s daughter named Isabella Favero. She studied under her father. Bodies would come in for autopsies, and she’d experiment on them. It’s just stuff like subject died by drowning, pneumonia and other diseases, and accidents. Raised at such and such date. They’d come back to life. Doesn’t say how.”
“Maybe she injected them with something,” I say.
Her eyes go wide, and she covers her mouth. “Oh my gosh, then she’d suffocate them. Kill them.”
I clench the side of the bed. Did they feel anything when she experimented on them?
“There’s nothing about how she brought them back?” I ask.
Cain’s pacing the floor in front of a fancy wardrobe. “I feel cooped up in here. Let’s go out. It’s still early.”
“Dude, calm down,” Marek says. “Your girl is upset. Maybe you should, I don’t know, be less of an ass.”
A growl originates somewhere deep in Cain’s throat, and his chest puffs out, his hands tightening into a fist. “What’d you call me?”
Marek stands and readies himself for an attack. “An ass. Which you are.”
Before Cain can make a move for Marek, Shona steps between them, facing Cain. “Stop.”
Cain does.
“Take a shower and cool down already.” She crosses her arms and stares him down until his hands go slack and his chest deflates.
“He’s gonna get his one day,” Cain says, grabs his backpack, and slams the bathroom door behind him.
“Why are you with that guy, again?” Marek asks, returning to his seat on the bed.
“I try to remember the good times,” she answers, not convincing herself or us.
“There must’ve been a lot of them.” Marek smirks but then sobers when both Shona and I give him a that-is-so-not-funny-right-now glare. “Bad timing?”
“Yes.” I elbow him when Shona returns to reading the notes and mouth, “Be nice.”
He mouths back, “I am.”
“I’m right here,” Shona says, her eyes still planted on the page. “I can see you in my periphery. And I agree. Marek, behave. Stop trying to provoke Cain.”
Marek chortles. “But he’s so easy to provoke.”
“Still not funny.” Even though I say that, I have to press my lips together to stop the smile tugging at my lips. Marek is too cute when he laughs.
“I’m sorry.” He swallows back one last laugh. “I can’t help it. Being in this room with him sucks.”
Shona looks up from her reading. “Have we forgotten the scary shit going on? Specifically, this.” She shakes the paper in her hand. “Stop messing around.”
Who could forget? It felt good to laugh a little. Relieve some tension.
After she gets through all the pages, she straightens the stack beside her. “It’s basically all the same. The girl was experimenting on dead people. That shit’s not right.”
“So we should go to the Sistine Chapel tomorrow,” I say. “See if we can find the next clue.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Marek agrees.
Cain comes out from the bathroom—hair wet, no shirt, low-slung pajama bottoms—and I avert my eyes. Sharing a room with two guys does have its benefits.
My eyes meet Marek’s brown ones. My cheeks heat.
And it has its downfalls.
“Cain, put a shirt on,” Shona says, slipping the papers into the box with the poster boards and album. “You’re making Analiese uncomfortable.”
“I’m not—” I catch Marek watching me. That heating sensation returns in my cheeks. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Once inside the bathroom, I stand in front of the mirror, just staring. I’m a lot older now than I was in that photograph with Antonia. The porch swing we were on still hangs from our back porch, paint chipped, chains rusty. Safta made the dress with the daisies I’m wearing in it.
The image of Antonia and me together keeps flashing in my mind. Wren said I was Antonia’s only living relative. How were we related? I don’t know if my mother has any family left. I’m a lot closer to my birth father’s family.
My mom had only the one brother, Eli. My dad. Grandfather Bove was killed young in a hunting accident. My mom was three and my uncle barely one. When my grandfather was a boy, his entire family died in a house fire. He was lucky to make it out alive. Grandma Bove was an orphan and died seven years ago from a massive stroke.
They’re all dead.
“You’ll never know,” I tell my tired reflection and run my brush through my dark, tangled hair.
You never need to be afraid; you hold more power than you know. Something Dad used to say to me. He said it often. Always emphasizing power.
I glare straight into my hazel eyes. “Dad, why didn’t you tell me? What secrets were you hiding?”
Tears dribble down my cheeks. I can hear him in my head again.
Someday, you won’t like me as much. He said that at our place by the riverbank on the rocks. I was upset with Jane. She’d taken my phone away for having an attitude at the dinner table. I’d asked Dad why she couldn’t be as kind as he was. Looking back, she was right to do it. I was such a brat.
That’s impossible, I said to him at our place. I love you too much.
The forced smile he gave me right before responding concerned me. Well, for now, everything’s perfect. But I brushed it off, thinking that maybe he was having a mid-life crisis or something.
I place a shaky hand on the image of my face in the mirror. That was before the happy girl in our place was broken. Back when all she worried about was if Sean McCabe in third period math liked her or not. Before Dad died and left our place.
If I survive tomorrow, if I survive the week, I’ll try to do better. Be a little bit easier on Jane.
Be a little bit easier on me.