The Demon Catchers of Milan by Kat Beyer

peaceful than any of us. I started to feel bad. We were upset over nothing. She was fine. Why were we here?
    “Well,” she said, still in the harsh voice from the lost places, “I’m back, anyway. I expect Ludovico has made a mess of everything, hasn’t he? Hopefully I can make a start on the depositions. I need to get back to work, it will help. Straight back to work.”
    Of course she should. Emilio raised his book; I saw his hair glitter in the dark as he lifted his head, before his grandfather laid a hand on his arm and stopped him.
    “Work is good, always good—provided you don’t work too hard,” Giuliano said to the floating form above him. He sounded as if he were chatting with an acquaintance in the street.
    “Provided you don’t have useless, lazy assistants and an equally useless husband,” she said, adding bitterly, “People who have good help can afford not to work hard.”
    “That’s the truth, isn’t it?” said Giuliano, smiling at the terrible creature who hung above him. I couldn’t believe he could smile at her.
    “True as the soil,” she agreed. “Inevitable as winter.”
    “So,” he continued in the same easy voice, “where have you been?”
    There was a rushing, roaring sound, as if all the little light left in the room were being sucked out of it. We were left in a darkness so complete that I could feel my skin itching. When the voice spoke again, it was a dreadful, enraged hiss.
    “If you dare send me back, I will kill her. She won’t survive me. You can’t make me go back.”
    In the dark, with nothing to go by but the breathing of Francesco beside me, I felt as if I were back in my old room, with the voice coming out of me, the candle flickering in front of me, the longing in my heart to fly—
    Something brushed against me. At that moment, Signora Galeazzo began laughing in triumph.
    My whole body cramped, and I went down on my knees. The smell of bitter almonds filled my nostrils again, this time overpowering, suffocating; I knew if I could not breathe fresh air I would die. I gasped for breath, clawing the rug.
    “See how you like that,” snarled the voice, rattling the old woman in her chair.
    Paolo and Francesco were holding me. Giuliano stood with his back to me, facing her. Didn’t he care that I couldn’t breathe? Or Emilio, holding his book before him, or Anna Maria, ringing that damned bell?
    “Steady, steady,” said Francesco, but still I couldn’t breathe. I felt my lungs cramping.
    “Yes! Yes!” shrieked the voice. It seemed to boom even deeper, as if it came from far inside the earth. “ That’s how it feels. She knows how it feels. If I kill her, if she dies with it inher lungs, she will understand before she dies! And you, you will know what it is to lose what is precious to you! To lose the ones you love. I didn’t come all this way so that you could send me away! I didn’t come all this way not to be listened to, after all this time!”
    She was shrieking now, thundering. Her words pounded in my ears and then faded, as if someone were turning the volume up and down. I felt like I was about to vomit, but I felt sure that if I threw up, I would choke on it. I understood the smell of almonds outside too well now.
    Then: peace. Snow was falling on my face. Thank goodness I’m awake, at last , I thought. I stood up but it was hard, as if I had forgotten how. I looked down and saw myself lying down, another snowflake settling in my hair.
    My face was not my own, and yet I knew this was me. I bent down to look, and I saw that my skin had sunken into my cheeks, that my eyes remained open and bloodshot, but that instead of being red, the blood was turning brown, and my lips were blue, with no breath parting them. In the moment I understood that I was dead, I noticed another still hand resting beside my own, already dusted with snow. Raising my eyes slowly, I looked out across a patch of ground covered in bodies, all still, all quietly kissed by the