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I’d been thinking about Greed’s seemingly innocuous answer all afternoon, and puzzle pieces slowly clicked into place. I tallied up a few instances where blood had been integral with demon magic. In order to summon a demon, I needed to offer blood in sacrifice.
Then there was Wrath and his blood trade. The supposed blood debt Nonna mentioned.
I tried and failed to hide my repulsion. Would it be too much for demons to accept a bit of wine instead? I sighed and pricked my finger with a pin, letting a single drop splatter onto Vittoria’s diary. Breath held, I stared at it intently, waiting for some sign the spell held or disintegrated.
There was no cataclysmic event or flash of lightning. One minute I couldn’t open it, and the next I could. I hesitated with the spine half cracked. I’d been trying to get into this diary for so long, and now I was a little afraid of what I was going to find. This might reveal my sister’s murderer. The more I learned, the more I doubted witch hunters. Demon princes were taking the lead as the most likely to commit murder. But if the devil needed a witch, it didn’t quite make sense for them to thwart his efforts. Which meant someone in our circle might have been responsible. I shivered in place. It was easy to think she’d been killed by a demon, but the thought of it being someone she knew…
I took a deep breath and began reading Vittoria’s most private thoughts.
The first several pages were dedicated to the perfumes she’d crafted. A few random spells, or charms for Moon Blessings and luck. A sketch or two of a cimaruta and a few other symbols I didn’t recognize. I paused on a page where she’d written down one of Claudia’s scrying sessions in great detail. I was about to scan the opposite page when something caught my eye. A tiny, almost insignificant note she’d left for herself.
Am I hearing magical objects, or the souls attached to them over time? Sometimes the whispers are louder, clear. Other times they’re frantic and hard to understand. Similar to Claudia’s scrying, or different?
Hearing magical objects? I stared at the line, unblinking. I had to be misunderstanding somehow. Vittoria never mentioned this ability before. We told each other everything. I was her twin, her other half—but then again, I’d never told her about the luccicare, either.
I turned over the events of the night when we were eight. It was highly probable that she’d developed some latent ability, too. I had. Though I had believed I was an anomaly because I’d been the one holding both of our amulets. I hadn’t confided in my sister because I didn’t want her to worry about the repercussions, or blame herself since it had been her idea.
I quickly turned to the next page, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. No clue to her magic. I flipped to another, and another. I’d gotten to the middle of her journal before finding another passage about the strange, secret magic.
I was out near the sea collecting shells and sea salt when I heard it. It started as a whisper, frantic, too low to hear clearly. I set my basket down and clutched my cornicello, which seemed to help me focus on the voice. Voices. There were many. And they were speaking all at once. They begged me to come help. They said the time was upon us. I followed the whispers until they turned to chatter, indistinct and out of sequence—like they were speaking in tongues. It reminded me of old Sofia Santorini. Of the time her mind got trapped between realms. I wanted to walk away, to run back and get Emilia, but something warned me not to. I followed the hum of voices into a cave, high above the sea. I don’t know why, but I dropped to my knees and started digging. I found it there, buried deep within the earth. I managed to understand one line before it descended into chaos.
Unfortunately, my twin didn’t write down the line she’d heard. I exhaled loudly, hands shaking as I flipped through the rest of the diary. There wasn’t any other passage about the mysterious “it” she’d found buried beneath the earth. I scanned doodles of flowers and hearts, Claudia’s dreams, and all of the questions Vittoria had recorded the answers to.
I couldn’t bring myself to read the part about what ended up being our last night in the world together. So far there were no names, no people she’d mistrusted, or demons she’d struck bargains with. How she’d ended up agreeing to marry—my attention fastened on to something that made my palms dampen.
I didn’t plan on listening to it again. I’d already decided to hide it, far from where they could ever find it. Then it whispered something that sounded a lot like nonsense, but my blood prickled. The Horn of Hades is a key to locking the gates of Hell, but, according to it, what it really is, is two somethings. They are the devil’s horns, cut off by his own hand. I held my cornicello, feeling the truth in the hum and whispers. The root of my power. Emilia and I, for reasons I am unsure of, have been wearing the devil’s horns our whole lives.
So if that’s true, how did they find their way to us?
I slowly closed the diary and exhaled. Holy goddess. The devil’s horns. It was hard to believe and yet… I knew it was true. We’d been wearing the Horn of Hades our whole lives. No wonder Greed was so interested in our amulets—I couldn’t even begin to imagine the damage that he could cause if he managed to get his hands on them both. I shoved that destruction from my mind and read over the last line my sister wrote again. It was an excellent question. One I fully intended to get the answer to immediately.
“It’s about time you tore yourself away from dark pursuits, bambina. Your mother and father are sick with worry.” Nonna eyed me from the rocking chair she’d dragged across from the simmering cauldron. Spell candles for peace and restful slumber burned all around her. “All day, petrified you were laying somewhere with your heart ripped out, alone. Like your sister. Do you have any idea what you put us through?”
I did. And I hated it, but I wasn’t the only di Carlo who had explaining to do. I moved fully into the kitchen and laid Wrath’s dagger and then my cornicello
on the island. “Is this one of the devil’s horns?” Nonna’s face paled. “Have we been wearing the Horn of Hades?”
“Don’t be silly. Who filled your head with these stories?” Nonna got up and walked over to the cauldron, added a sprinkle of herbs and stirred them into her newest essence. It smelled of spruce and mint. I wondered where she got the evergreen, but didn’t ask. “We don’t believe in such things, bambina.”
“A Viperidae was summoned, and is guarding Vittoria’s amulet.”
She stopped stirring the mixture. “It’s true, then. The Malvagi have returned.”
I waited for her to start muttering protection charms, or rush around the house, checking all the windows and doors for herbs and garlands of garlic she’d hung to keep wicked things out. She didn’t ask me to grab olive oil and a bowl of water to make sure evil wasn’t in our home this very moment. This calm, collected version of my grandmother was completely foreign to me. For as long as I could remember, she’d worried about the devil and his soul-stealing demons.
Human children had nursery rhymes, but we’d been taught about the seven demon princes and the four—in particular—di Carlos should fear the most. I hadn’t forgotten that Wrath had been named. Nor had I figured out if he was the one who’d crave my blood, capture my heart, steal my soul, or take my life. Honestly, I could picture him fulfilling any of them.
My grandma moved the wooden spoon around the boiling mixture, her attention stubbornly fixed on its ornately carved handle, and said nothing. Of course now that all of the nightmarish stories were coming to life, she stayed silent.
“Nonna, you have to tell me about the Horn of Hades. Vittoria knew about it, and she was killed. Please. If you don’t want that to be my fate, too, you need to tell me what it is and why we’re wearing it. I deserve to know.”
She stared into the cauldron and sighed.
“Dark days are upon us. It’s time to be a warrior of the light.” Nonna left her essences and removed a pitcher of wine from our sideboard. She poured herself a glass of chianti, then sat in her rocker. “I never wanted it to come to this, child. But the hands of Fate work their own magic. Who are we but puppets on their cosmic strings?”
Cryptic as usual. I decided to start with the smaller details, and work my way up to the harder questions. “Is it really a key for locking the gates of Hell?”
“Yes and no. It has the ability to open and close the gates, but that’s not all it does.”
