by Melissa Marr
“They think he was in his trailer, but they can’t be sure. It’s not like actors really live in their trailers, not when they’re not on set. This is where Connie spends the nights—only no one’s supposed to know that.” Theo sighed. “When he’s not in rehab, he isn’t allowed to live on his own. It’s part of his probation.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“Let’s just say, he’s not the easiest person to insure. But when he showed up in town, he wouldn’t stay where he was supposed to.”
“And where was that?”
“With me. And my dad. On the other side of the cattedrale. But Connie had a fit, he wouldn’t even move his bags in. We had to get him his own place. Off the books.” Theo shifted, uncomfortably. “You probably shouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Let’s check it out. Maybe he’s here. Maybe he just passed out or something.” Isabella’s eyes gleamed at the idea.
“He didn’t. My dad sent Diego over, first thing.”
“Maybe Diego didn’t look carefully enough.” She started up the steps.
“Don’t. We shouldn’t.” Theo didn’t know why she’d even want to, but then somehow her wanting to made him want to, though he didn’t—it was all so very confusing. “I mean, why?”
“Why not? Because he’s a movie star. Because he’s dead.”
Keep her busy. Entertain her. That’s what he’d said, his father.
“Okay. Yes. I guess. Just for a second.”
They made their way up the rest of the stone steps—hundreds of years worn in the center, like everything else in Otranto—past the pots full of red geraniums. Conrad’s door—painted a dark green, just like the exterior one—was closed, but when Theo pushed on it, it opened with a creak.
“Conrad?” Theo’s voice sounded strained, like he was reading a line of dialogue from a particularly haunted scene. The one right before the hero gets the ax, he thought.
“No one’s there,” Isabella whispered.
“Maybe we should go.” Theo tried not to sound relieved.
A woman poked her head out the door across the way. “Buona sera—”
It was her, the Elephant Woman. Theo’s breakfast companion of many weeks now, the harbinger of all of Otranto’s bad omens and americano doom.
And apparently, Connie’s landlord.
“We really shouldn’t be in here.”
Theo looked uncomfortably around the small, square room—all white plaster walls and terra-cotta-tiled floors. He also tried not to look at the small wooden cross, nailed up over the bed, probably because of the heaps of unidentifiably illegal substances piled beneath it.
“Relax,” said Isabella, picking up one of the plastic bags that composed Connie’s stash. “What is this? Is that—a beet?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a turnip? I wouldn’t put it past him. He’d smoke Lindsay Lohan if you lit her on fire.”
Isabella dropped the bag and walked outside to the portico. The harbor beyond the stone balcony looked only like the dark absence of lights; dated disco music floated over the water, from the dance club at the beach across the way.
Theo crept out after her. The balcony doors were wedged open, though every few minutes or so the wind blew them loose, slamming them into their wooden frames with a bang so startlingly loud, it sounded as if someone had been shot—no matter how many times you heard it. “It’s just the wind,” Theo said, though he didn’t know who it was he was reassuring, not exactly.
“Right. Tell that to Connie. Poor guy.” She laughed, but Theo didn’t think it was so funny. Not when the poor guy’s trailer was still in a thousand splintery pieces on the harbor rocks.
Had it been the wind? Really? Trailers were pretty heavy.
Isabella only kicked a wine bottle out of the way as she moved back to the door. “Poor, classy guy.”
Theo picked the bottle up, righting it on the table inside the door. He followed her into the empty kitchen, where a green-and-white-checked oilcloth covered a square table. There was only a silver espresso kettle on the tiny stove, though Theo had gotten Connie coffee enough times to seriously doubt he’d ever managed to make it himself. He couldn’t even manage to put sweetener in, not on his own.
“All right. We’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here.”
Isabella hitched her bag more tightly to her shoulder. “Seriously? You know actors. This Connie guy’s either dead—in which case he doesn’t mind—or he’s not—in which case he’s probably such a power tool, you’d want to annoy him.”
“Really?” Theo didn’t. In fact, he was getting increasingly uncomfortable with the whole conversation.
“You have no idea.” Isabella pointed to something beneath the bed. “Wait. Jackpot.”
“His stash?”
“No. His laptop.”
There it was, poking just one steel-cased corner out from under the crumpled laundry and the gossip magazines—mostly starring Connie himself.
Theo stepped between her and the bed. “Hold on. You can’t just open his computer. He’ll have it password protected. Some kind of alarm probably goes off at CAA every time you open that thing.”
“Seriously? Are you always this much of a stiff?” She slid past him, yanking the laptop out from under the bed and flopping down next to it.
She flipped open the lid. “Okay. Password. Any ideas?”
“No. We’re not doing this.”
She ignored him. “It’s not douchebag. So I’m stumped.”
“Isabella.” Theo gave up.
“It’s not Spartacus, either. No intensive Latin here.” She grinned.
Theo looked at the screen. “Some pet name for his girlfriend? Or his grandma. Or his car. Or maybe his—”
“Don’t say it.” Isabella shoved his shoulder.
“I was going to say dog.” Theo shoved her back.
Isabella tapped her chin. “Or what about the name of his last movie? What was that?”
Theo was impressed. “Seriously? You really have to ask?”
“Hey, I’ve been in Italy, remember?” Isabella blushed. “And besides, I’m not really into movies.”
“Just movie stars?” Theo raised an eyebrow.
“Okay. I’m into movies. I’m just not into douchebag movies.”
Theo angled the keyboard in his direction and slowly began to type into the password box.
“TEEN_HAIRWOLF.”
She groaned. “Really? That’s even worse than I thought.”
“Three hundred million at the box office. Bet you a hundred bucks, there’s no way a guy like Connie would have wanted to type anything else.”
The glowing white prompt flashed no more than three times before they found themselves staring at Connie’s mailbox.
“I don’t believe it. We’re in.”
Theo sprang up off the bed, pacing around the room. He didn’t know what to do with himself. “We can’t look at a dead guy’s mail. Even if he’s not a dead dead guy. Isn’t that mail fraud or something? As in, a federal offense?”
Isabella clicked on the INBOX, nodding. “Probably worse than that, since we’re not even in the country.”
Theo tried not to look at the screen, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. “Right. There might be all sorts of Italian laws.”
Isabella clicked on NEW MAIL. “Except Italians don’t have laws. They don’t even bother to put money in their Bancomats on the weekend.” She looked up. “Are you going to stop me or not?”
BANG—
The wind slammed the balcony door shut, so hard the walls shook. Theo looked out at the moon in the glass of the door. It shone round and high, almost like in the Teen Hairwolf posters.
How many secrets could a guy like that have, anyway?
And he was missing, wasn’t he?
It wasn’t like the police weren’t going to take all this stuff for themselves and sell it to the paparazzi, as soon as they found their way to Connie’s apartment. Where he really lived.
Had lived.
It was only a matter of hours, really.
Minutes, even.
“Maybe just for a second.”
One second turned into one hour. The Internet being what it was. The Internet, and secrets.
Connie, it turned out, led a strangely uninteresting life online, at least for a minor movie star slash major drug addict.
The duller the e-mail, the more quickly Theo and Isabella flew through them—and the more they wanted to read. There was something gripping about every dull interaction with every dull ex-girlfriend, at least when they were reading them through the digital eyes of one possibly dead former star.
It was Theo who stopped everything.
All it took was one click on a particularly dull-looking attachment in an e-mail from Connie’s agent at CAA.
Theo scrolled down the screen. “Wait a second. Look—that looks like some kind of insurance document.”
“It is. It’s a policy. See that word, right there. Polizza. Polizza de Assicurazione.” Isabella looked up at him. “It’s absolutely an insurance policy.”
Theo frowned. “Well, I guess the good news is that Connie finally got insured. They were trying to get him bonded for, like, forever.”
Isabella looked at him sideways. “What’s the bad news?”
“Well, it sort of gives a motivation for somebody to kill him—I mean, doesn’t it?” Theo didn’t want to be the one to say it, but there. He had.
“You mean it’s an insurance scam—like in the movies?” Theo didn’t know why Isabella sounded so chipper about the whole thing.
“Yeah, except in the movies you usually find out they faked their own death. Instead of, you know, dying.”
Isabella didn’t respond. She just kept reading.
Theo tried again. “Oh my god. It’s Law & Order: Otranto.”
“Shh.” Isabella quieted him. It seemed to Theo that she couldn’t take her eyes off the screen.
“Isabella? You there?”
Only very slowly did she finally turn to Theo. “Why would a person like Connie want to fake his own death? He was making a lot of money just being Connie—wasn’t he?”
Theo shrugged. “No question, that guy has a lot of outstanding debts. Probably buying smack from the Italian mafia, for all we know.”
Isabella looked puzzled. “But he’s not the beneficiary. Connie. He wasn’t going to make any money from disappearing, not right now.”
“So, maybe he’s getting paid off. The Bulgarians might have had something to say about it … ” Theo looked at her, embarrassed.
“Say it. You’re talking about my father.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“That’s exactly what you said. And look, my Italian’s not perfect, but that word there”—she pointed to a small line at the bottom of the screen—“beneficario della politica. The beneficiaries.”
All Theo could see were two names, and he knew them both. He knew she did, too, but he left it to her to read them.
His heart was pounding in his ears—also like a Law & Order: Otranto episode. His heart was pounding, and all his witty comments blew out the window with the wind, toward the sea.
So the room stayed quiet, as long as neither one of them could think what to say next.
Because of the two names.
Two scanned signatures, on the dotted line.
The director, for one.
And the Bulgarian.
“It might not be them. I mean. They may not be involved.” Theo said the words—finally, sadly, not even believing them himself.
“Or they might not both be involved.” Isabella stood up, moving to the far window.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Theo bristled, in spite of everything.
She took a breath. “My father’s a businessman. Your father’s a film director. If someone were to sabotage his own production—well, one of those would have a lot better idea how to go about it than the other.”
Theo ran his fingers through his spiky brown hair. “I can’t believe you’re saying that. I can’t believe you’re accusing the man. He’s my father.”
She looked like she wanted to slap him. “I can’t believe you’re defending him. What does that say about my father?”
Theo was incredulous. “I thought you hated your father?”
Isabella was furious. “I think you’re confusing him with yours.”
There it was.
Family ties had bound and gagged them both.
The room contracted around them with the impasse. They couldn’t look at each other, but they couldn’t seem to look away. The small space had only grown hotter and hotter with two more bodies and badly adapted technology—the outlet in the wall was, after all, practically smoking—inside.
This particular sirocco might as well be coming from inside the windows, rather than from the night sky beyond.
Then Theo caught something else. “Look at the e-mail attached to the policy. The time stamp. It’s today. Why would someone send an e-mail about an insurance policy to a dead man?”
Isabella looked down at the screen, over his shoulder. “Unless he was a not-dead dead man?”
“According to the message, they’re meeting tonight at the taxi stand.”
She sniffed. “Of course they are. That’s where your father meets people.”
He raised an eyebrow. “People like your father, you mean.” But the wheels were turning in Theo’s head. “Fine. I’ll go see for myself.”
She flung her fingers into the air, just like an Italian, Theo thought. The gesture was endearing, even though she herself was—at this particular moment—not.
“What, you’re going to march up to a criminal at an illicit rendezvous and demand an explanation?”
He shrugged. “Give me a little credit. I’m not going to march anywhere. Just spy. You can see the taxi stand from the piazza.”
Isabella looked skeptical. “Not at night.”
“Yes. From the roof of the Castello, you can. It’s at the top of the hill—you can see the whole town from there.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Midnight. That’s what it says.”
“Midnight.”
“See you then.”
“Same here.”
They stood there in the dark heat, until Theo switched off the computer and yanked the plug out of the adapter in the wall.
When he looked back up, Isabella was gone.
The wind slammed the door, louder than a shot, faster than a bullet. It was enough to drive a normal person crazy.
This time, Theo didn’t so much as flinch.
IV. Il Castello (The Castle)
Even the stones were hot beneath Theo’s feet in the darkness. He could feel himself sweating as he reached the top of the hill, even if he couldn’t see it. It didn’t matter. He could feel it, the wind at his throat—its fingers around his neck.
He couldn’t breathe without knowing it was there.
And I’m here, too.
He stared up at the Castello Aragonese. It may not have been all that impressive on its own, but the dark splotch of crumbling stone towers and cannonballs—twisting passageways and ancient turrets—blocked out even the moon, from where Theo stood.
How strange, he thought, to be standing here, in the middle of the night, in the center of the piazza, in the heart of town, in the heel of the boot—and facing—what?
For the first time, Theodore Gray had absolutely no idea. Not about what had happened, not about what would happen. Not even about what was happening.
He didn’t know if that was good or bad, but it was something.
It was new.
“I didn’t think you were going to make it.” Isabella hung back in the shadows of the castle wall. It took a moment for Theo’s eyes to adjust, but they did. She was dark and outlined in darkness. Something slight and shadowy, just like everything else around her.
He drew a breath. “I made it. This isn’t a movie. In re
al life, people make it when they say they’re going to make it.”
“Not all people,” she said, softly.
“I do.” He looked at her.
“And the wind doesn’t push over trailers?” She looked like she was about to cry.
“No.” Theo swallowed. “Not usually.”
She looked away. “You sure, Theo? You want to do this? I mean, I don’t blame you if you don’t. It’s a lot to handle. For either one of us.”
Theo felt in his pocket for Dante’s key—the only key to the castle, the one he’d had to drag out of Dante’s hands in exchange for his brand-new phone. The deal had taken longer than he’d thought, and he almost hadn’t made it all the way up the hill to the castle in time.
Standing here right now he almost wished he hadn’t.
Theo pulled the key out now, looking at her. “Do I want to do this? I’m pretty sure I don’t. Yet here we are.”
Isabella nodded, taking the key out of his hand. “Well, then.” She shoved the key into the lock. Rattled it, up and down. The chains fell, clanging, to the cobblestone ground beneath them.
Isabella threw her small body against the gate, and it creaked slowly open, just a few inches at a time.
It’s ironic, Theo thought, how quickly some chains fall. While others—
She smiled at him. “After you.”
A strangely hollow feeling overtook Theo, but when Isabella turned back to him, she didn’t look especially like herself, either. It was like they’d both been cast in someone else’s haunted, horrid ghost story.
“Do you hear something?” He stopped himself, his hand on the door.
She shrugged. “Some sort of bird, I think. Or an alley cat.”
“It sounded like crying,” said Theo.
“More like screaming,” Isabella said, listening, her head crooked like a bird.
“We could go home,” he said. “It’s not too late.”
But it was.
A horror movie, that was this story. The Castle of Otranto. Of course.
Wasn’t that why he was here, for the longest, hottest summer of his seventeen years?
“Come on, then. What are you waiting for?” She tossed her hair and disappeared into the darkness, before his eyes.
He followed her into the night.