Arcadia Falls

by Kai Meyer

  “As soon as I can,” said Rosa.

  “You should have something to eat first.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “I bet this guy has a gun somewhere. Did you see how heavily secured this whole place is? He’s afraid of people breaking in. Bet you anything he has a shooting-iron somewhere.”

  “Don’t try talking like a Mafioso.”

  “You want to meet Alessandro. And if he doesn’t turn up you’ll try to find him. I know you. If you do that, you’ll need all the help you can get.”

  “I’m not taking you with me, no matter what.”

  “I know.” Iole slid off the beanbag and wandered over to the sleeping corner. “Keep his attention away from me,” she whispered to Rosa.

  It was too late to stop her quietly. But Lorenzo still had his hands full keeping Cristina away from his synthesizers. When she pressed another button, otherworldly New Age music boomed out of the loudspeakers.

  Rosa quickly went past them, watching Iole out of the corner of her eye while the girl approached the bed, as if for no real reason.

  “Sounds great,” she told Lorenzo. “Is that one of yours?”

  He nodded grouchily and snatched up Cristina’s beer can before she could spill the contents over the sensitive regulators.

  “Oops,” said Cristina.

  “I thought you composed rock music. And I thought you were a singer.” Rosa stationed herself in front of him so that he would have to look away from Iole and the sleeping corner to speak to her.

  “Can you help Raffaela make coffee?” he asked Cristina, annoyed.

  “But I want beer.”

  “There’s more in the refrigerator.” Obviously he didn’t mind anything as long as she stayed away from his technical equipment. Gulping the beer down, he drained her can.

  “Good idea.” Cristina stood up.

  In the background, Iole was feeling around under Lorenzo’s pillows, obviously not finding anything. Next she turned her attention to a wooden crate that he used as a bedside table.

  While Cristina wandered over to the coffee machine, the refrigerator, and Raffaela, Lorenzo dropped into the swivel chair at the mixing desk so that no one else could sit there.

  Iole had cleared all sorts of things off the crate and opened it carefully.

  “I wanted to apologize,” said Rosa, claiming Lorenzo’s attention for herself. “For what I said just now. You’re being so kind to us, I mean, helping us although we’re total strangers. And I couldn’t think of anything better to do than insult your beliefs.” She knew she was behaving badly—and she enjoyed it. “God may not mean much to me,” she blathered on, “but all the same, I ought to show more respect for what you think. It’s nice when someone thinks something is so important that he’ll give his whole life to it.”

  Iole glanced over to them, her brow furrowed. There was no gun in the crate. Rosa dared not signal to her to move away from there. Instead, she chattered on. “And honestly, your music is great. I think it’s so . . . soothing.”

  He raised his left eyebrow. “That’s what the people at iTunes said, too.”

  “I’m sure it’s good music to pray to.” Oh, for goodness’ sake! This was going to arouse his suspicions.

  “My music is the way I pray,” he said with deep conviction. “I talk to God through it.”

  On the other side of the church, Iole raised an arm in triumph. She was holding a black automatic that she had found in a basket of dirty laundry. A pair of crumpled boxers hung over the barrel.

  “And there are CDs of it?” asked Rosa.

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Wow. You must be so famous. We just drop in here, like groupies, and you stay so . . . so amazingly cool.”

  The last time she had made an idiot of herself with this kind of trick, she had ended up being hunted through Central Park by a pack of Panthera and was nearly torn to pieces. Other people learned from their mistakes.

  A touch of doubt flitted over Lorenzo’s face.

  “Hey,” she said quickly. “I have an idea.”

  “You do?”

  “Why don’t you play us something?” When she saw Raffaela and Cristina busy with a large pan of spaghetti, she added, “After we’ve eaten. How about it?”

  Iole had concealed the pistol under her ghost costume, and was hastily tidying up the chaos she had created.

  Lorenzo leaned back in his chair. “I’ll have to smoke something first.”

  “Of course.”

  Before she could do anything to stop him, he gave the chair a push and swiveled around in a circle.

  She held her breath. Bit her lower lip. Waited for the inevitable moment when he caught sight of Iole.

  But when the chair had completed its circle, and he was facing her again, his eyes were closed and his head thrown far back. “I have to say,” he told her, “you really do inspire me.”

  “I do?”

  “When you were looking at the fresco just now, there was kind of a force field between you and the picture. Like it was something that speaks only to you.”

  Iole stole back to her beanbag and the panting Sarcasmo. With her thumb and forefinger, she gave Rosa an okay sign.

  “I really feel like I could play a little piece when we’ve eaten.” Lorenzo opened his eyes again, but Rosa was no longer standing in front of him. He tipped the chair forward and looked around for her, irritated.

  She waved to him, halfway to Raffaela and Cristina. “I’d better see if I can help.”

  Lorenzo nodded, stunned.

  When she reached the two women, the tutor said, with a dark look at Cristina, “She’s drunk.”

  Rosa was prepared to deal with a hundred tipsy female attorneys, as long as she never had to talk about prayers and inspiration again.

  “Only a teeny little bit,” babbled Cristina, groping around for the refrigerator door.

  THE TEMPTATION

  SHE WAITED UNTIL AFTER they had eaten—mountains of spaghetti with tomato sauce and garlic—before deciding it was time to put her plan into action.

  While Lorenzo had another quarrel with Raffaela, she took a thick Windbreaker from a pile of clothes near the porch and squeezed out of the barely open door. The jacket was heavier on the right side than the left. A little while before, Iole had inconspicuously slipped the pistol into its pocket.

  The sun was low on the horizon; it would soon set. The roar of the sea at the foot of the cliffs, and the howling of the brisk wind, drowned out all other sounds. The expressway ran only a few miles south of the village. When it was built, it had struck the little place a deadly blow, but the traffic noise went in the opposite direction.

  The abandoned village street lay ahead of Rosa. She took a deep breath and then swiftly skirted the front of the church. Pebbles crunched under her feet. She almost expected the bell on the roof to ring, sounding the alarm and terrifying her. It had to be rung by hand; inside the church, Rosa had seen the thick bell rope dangling from an opening in the ceiling.

  She turned the corner and stopped dead.

  The VW minibus had disappeared.

  Its tires had left deep ruts in the grass. They led to the sacristy, which had a garage with an old-fashioned double door beside it. A chain lay around the handles of the two sides of the door, secured with a padlock. Lorenzo must have driven the vehicle in there while she was changing in the bathroom.

  Shivering, she pulled the jacket closer around her body and approached the door. The chain was wound several times around the handles, the padlock firmly in place. From inside, she would be able to smash through the decaying wood with the VW, but it was impossible with her bare hands. She went along the side of the garage and to the back. There was no window, no gap that she could have wriggled through in her snake form. There had to be a door between the garage and the sacristy. That meant she would have to go back into the church.

  Once more, she went to the door and rattled it. Not a chance. The chains were much too solid.

  �
��I knew it the minute you turned up,” said Lorenzo, behind her.

  She spun around. There he stood without the others, both hands in the pockets of his jeans. A gust of wind blew into his long dreadlocks, moving them like the plastic strips of the curtains that Sicilians liked so much.

  “You were naked under that blanket,” he went on, “but you didn’t seem the least bit disturbed. Not even ashamed. You just looked determined, as if you weren’t going to let anything or anyone stop you.”

  “If you’re so sure of that, then please open this door.” Her hand went to the gun in her jacket pocket, but she didn’t take it out yet.

  He shook his head. “This is my car.”

  “You’ll get it back.”

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “None of your business.”

  “You were about to steal my car. Now you expect me to lend it to you. And you’re not even saying where you want to drive it?”

  “It’s better if you don’t know.”

  She tensed slightly as he came closer, but his casual stroll didn’t seem threatening.

  He stopped three paces away from her. “What happened, Rosa Alcantara?”

  He knew who she was.

  “I watch the news,” he said. “Your photo is everywhere. Yours and your boyfriend’s. Is he hiding out here somewhere? Did you think it would be easier for you to take me for a ride without him?”

  “He isn’t here. I need your car to go and meet him.” And she hoped she was right. Alessandro must be there. Although she could guess how poor his chances of escaping from the Stabat Mater were.

  She drew the gun and aimed it at him.

  He didn’t seem in the least surprised. “Did the girl look to see if it was loaded?” He smiled, but it was a sad smile. “Because you didn’t, as I noticed.”

  “Why don’t we find out?”

  “Are you really going to shoot me? For a VW minibus forty years old that hasn’t gone farther than the nearest supermarket for ages? How long do you think it would last?”

  She was feeling even colder, in spite of the jacket. The sun touched the land to the west. The falling twilight was fiery red. The rough grass, the church wall, Lorenzo’s eyes—they all looked suffused with blood.

  “Do you have the key on you?” she asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Raffaela still likes you a lot. She’d be angry with me for shooting you in the leg.”

  “If you do shoot. And if there’s a bullet in it.”

  She stepped to one side and waved him over to the door. “Open the padlock.”

  He stood there with that idiotic New Age expression, as if he were about to press some esoteric pamphlet on her.

  “Lorenzo,” she said softly. “Please.”

  “I’ve called the police.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “I was waiting to see what you’d do. I wouldn’t have called them if you hadn’t gone off with the gun. We don’t even know each other, I have nothing against you. But if you really have murdered someone, I don’t want you going around the island with my pistol.”

  “It’s got nothing at all to do with you.”

  “The gun’s registered in my name. Perfectly legal. But suppose you shoot someone down with it, who do you think will get their ass kicked?”

  How long ago had he called? And how long would it take the police cars to get here? Were they coming from Palermo? Cefalù? One of the smaller towns? Or were they bringing the whole anti-Mafia squad into the hunt for her?

  Festa wouldn’t want to miss putting the handcuffs on her himself. Nor would Stefania Moranelli. Rosa should have stapled her eyelids together when she had the chance.

  “For the last time.” The cold filled her whole upper body now; the skin on the backs of her hands was tingling. “Open that door.”

  He looked back over his shoulder at the corner of the church. None of the others appeared there. Iole at least must have realized that he had followed Rosa.

  “You locked them in,” she said.

  “They’re not stupid. Sooner or later they’ll find the only barred window that can be opened from inside. But I didn’t think this would take that long. If you’re as innocent as some say on the internet, then turn yourself in to the police.”

  “We didn’t kill the judge. She was almost . . .”—she hesitated—“a friend.” Kind of. A little like a friend.

  “A lot of people say you’re Mafia.”

  “Unlock this damn garage.”

  “Jesus will save you, too.”

  That was the last straw. She pulled the trigger. The shot whistled over the plateau.

  The hole in the ground beside his foot was large enough to fit a football.

  A dangerous hiss left Rosa’s lips. “That’s enough.” Her anger drowned out even her relief at finding that Iole had indeed thought to check for ammunition. What a sweetheart.

  Lorenzo hadn’t moved from the spot, but even in the poor light she saw how pale he had turned. Any red on his face he owed to the setting sun.

  “This is crap,” he said quietly.

  She pointed to the padlock. “Go on.”

  His eyes slowly widened.

  “The key.”

  His lips opened slightly, as if he were about to speak, but not a sound came out.

  She moistened the corners of her mouth with her tongue, and could feel that it had forked. Her scalp itched, a sign that it was changing. Her eyes had probably already become slits.

  Couldn’t he just have been a guitar-playing druggie? Without all that stuff about Satan and Jesus and salvation?

  “What are you?” he asked hoarsely.

  “The reason why you want to take off that chain.”

  His mouth formed two syllables, but once again his voice failed him.

  Then she put the pistol to the padlock and turned her face aside. It worked in films, but in real life it would probably tear her arm off. She could only hope that she’d have a new one after her next metamorphosis.

  She fired.

  Something struck her. At first she thought it was the ricochet. Then it dawned on her that Lorenzo had hit her on the head as hard as he could.

  She fell to her knees and saw that the lock had broken to pieces. The chain looked like a silver snake.

  He hit her again.

  This time she avoided him, sank with her shoulder against the garage door, turned around, and aimed.

  “Try that again,” she challenged him in a brittle voice. She couldn’t shift shape, not now. All this was costing her way too much time.

  He stared, astonished, into the barrel of the pistol. His expression had nothing to do with the gun, only with the scaly strands of skin surrounding her face instead of hair. The double fork of her tongue. Her snake’s eyes.

  “I promise you,” she whispered, “I’ll blow your face off.” Suitably satanic, she thought—and effective. He took a step back, and seemed to be wondering whether to run for it. But he probably wouldn’t put it past her to shoot him in the back.

  With difficulty, she hauled herself up by the door. There was a rustling around her ears as the strands of snake skin turned back into blond hair.

  “Another two steps back,” she said with a slight lisp, but her voice was already more human. A Hunding would have growled; one of the Panthera would have snarled. She lisped. Typical.

  With her free hand, she pulled the chain away from the door handles. It fell to the ground with a clink.

  Lorenzo didn’t say a word. The sight of her had deprived a rock musician of speech. Someone ought to have told her that when she was fourteen.

  She was just about to pull one side of the door open when she saw the headlights at the end of the village street. Two cars. No, three. They were driving with their brights. The light passed over the deserted ruins of houses by the roadside.

  The vehicles raced up at high speed. None of them had a
blue light on the roof. Three black Mercedes. Not patrol cars.

  “Is that some kind of special squad?” asked Lorenzo.

  She recognized the registration numbers. The same abbreviation three times. “No.”

  He looked from the oncoming cars back at her. She was entirely human again now.

  “Carnevares,” she said.

  MASSACRE

  THE CHURCH DOOR CRASHED shut behind them.

  Even before Lorenzo could lock it, Iole went for him with a guitar. He tried to avoid the blow, but she hit him on the shoulder and pushed him to the floor.

  “You asshole!” she said angrily, as she stood menacingly over him with the instrument.

  He put out a hand to ward her off. “She was going to steal my car. Why does everyone seem to think there’s nothing wrong with that?”

  Rosa turned the key in the lock and threw it to Cristina, who caught it with surprising expertise. “Leave him alone,” she told Iole. “He’s right.”

  “He locked us in.”

  “We have other problems right now.” Quickly she told them about the arrival of the Carnevares. She had hardly finished before several car doors slammed outside.

  Lorenzo stood up without taking his eyes off Iole. She was still holding the guitar aloft, as if just waiting for a reason to bring it down on him again.

  He turned to Raffaela, pointing at Rosa. “What kind of a creature is she? What have you brought into my house?”

  Iole got her word in before her tutor. “Rosa is not a creature!” With that, the guitar started coming down again, but this time Rosa caught it in midair. Swiftly and skillfully. Snake reflexes.

  “Let it rest now,” she told Iole. “The Carnevares will kill us all if they get in here.”

  Cristina stayed cooler than anyone. “How many ways are there into this church?”

  “The windows are all barred.” Lorenzo’s voice was still unsteady. He had just met the devil in person. “There are only two doors. The one on the porch, and one from the sacristy into the garage, but it has an iron bolt over it. No one will get in there in a hurry.”

  Rosa looked up at the small windows, each three yards above the floor. They were more like loopholes than church windows. No one could possibly get in through them.