AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m not sure how long I stayed there, shaking and sobbing on the floor, but at least an hour or two had passed. Maybe more. I needed to get help.
Not that anyone could save Vittoria now.
With weak arms, I finally pushed myself back up and stared at my sister, unable to reconcile the truth before me.
Murdered.
The word clanged through me like a death knell. Fear cleaved through my despair. My sister had been murdered. I needed to get help. I needed to find safety. I needed to—I dragged the stranger’s blade across my palm and held my bleeding hand over my sister’s body.
“I swear on my life, I will make whoever did this pay, Vittoria.”
I looked at her one last time, then ran like the devil was coming for my cursed soul next.
SIX
Revelers jostled into me, splashing cups of wine down their tunics and dresses, laughing and trying to swing me into a dance. To indulge in their merriment. To celebrate the victory of life over death their blessed saint brought them all those years ago.
In a daze, I walked past our darkened restaurant, long since closed for the night, and found my way into our neighborhood. The hem of my skirts were soaked from goddess knew what. The material clung to my ankles and itched like mad. I kept moving, ignoring any discomfort. I had no right to feel anything when my sister would never feel again.
“Little witch all alone.”
It was no louder than a hiss, but the voice sent a violent shudder down my spine. I spun on my heel, and stared into an empty street. “Who’s there?”
“Memories, like hearts, can be stolen.”
The voice was behind me now. I jerked around, heart racing, and saw… nothing.
“This isn’t real,” I whispered. My mind was just taunting me with horrific things after finding my sister’s mutilated body. It seemed my invisible ghost demon had found a voice—a thought so ridiculous I couldn’t even entertain it as truth. “Go away.”
“He wishes to remember, but only forgets. He’s coming here soon.”
“Who is? The man who did this to Vittoria?”
I pivoted, skirts twisting around me. Not a single living thing was in the street. In fact, it seemed eerily still—like someone had snuffed out all life. No lights were on inside homes. No movement or noise. I couldn’t hear the bustle and excitement of the festival, either.
Thick unnatural fog crept along the ground and curled around my feet, bringing with it the scent of sulfur and ash. Nonna would claim it was a sign demons were near. I wondered if some murdering human was hiding in the shadows, waiting with a knife.
“Who’s coming?” I demanded, feeling more and more like I was trapped in some terrible nightmare. I closed my eyes and forced myself to snap into reality. I couldn’t fall apart now. “When I open my eyes again, everything will be normal.”
And it was. There was no sulfuric fog, sounds of families sitting down together floated through open windows, and jeers of drunken festivalgoers echoed all around.
I rubbed my arms and hurried toward my house. Ghostly demons. Disembodied voices. Devilish fog. I knew exactly what was going on—I was suffering from hysterics. And now was not the time. Vittoria’s body needed to come home for death rites. I could hide my own despair and delusions away long enough to do that much for her.
After a few more minutes of mindlessly pushing forward down familiar streets, I stood outside our stone house and paused under the trellis covered with plumeria, unable to formulate the words I needed to say. I had no idea how to deliver the news to my family.
In moments they’d all feel like they’d been beaten and broken, too.
From here on out, our lives would never be the same again. I imagined my mother’s scream. My father’s tears. The horror in Nonna’s face, knowing all her preparations to save us from evil had been pointless.
Vittoria was dead.
I must have cried out or made some small noise. A swath of golden light cut through the darkness before fading as quickly. Nonna was at the window, waiting. She’d likely been there since she came home. Worrying and fretting. Her warnings about the devil stirring the seas, and the sky being the color of his blood didn’t seem like silly old superstition now.
The door swung open before I finished climbing the steps carved into the front of our home and reached the knob.
Nonna started shaking her head, her eyes watering, as she grabbed her cornicello. I didn’t have to say anything. The blood staining my hands said enough. “No.” Her bottom lip quivered. I’d never seen such despair and undulated fear in Nonna’s face before. “No. It can’t be.”
The hollowness inside me spread. All her lessons, all of our charms… for nothing.
