by Nicole Maggi
“No.” Nerina came over to me and put an arm around my shoulders. “It will just put her in more danger.” She walked me into the living room and ushered me to the couch. “The amulet will protect her—and you—from any magic they try to do in the house. And if they use violence, they’ll just raise suspicion.”
“I don’t know about that. They already burned down our barn.”
Nerina grimaced. “Yes, Heath told me about that.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Will it ease your mind a little if I tell you I’ll watch out for her? Don’t worry. I’ll be stealthy so she doesn’t suspect anything,” she added with a wink.
“That would be great. Thank you.”
Nerina got to her feet. “The sun is almost up, cara.”
I didn’t move. “Nerina, I’ve been thinking about something. Since I talked to Jonah.”
“Si?”
“Why doesn’t the Benandanti use magic too? We must have it, right?”
Nerina walked in a slow circle around the coffee table, her heels clicking on the hard floor, and paused at the edge of the armchair. “The Benandanti most certainly has magic,” she said quietly. She picked at an invisible thread on the armchair for a moment before facing me. “Alessia, I am going to tell you something that I would appreciate you keep to yourself. Until I tell the rest of the Clan.”
“Okay.” I sat up a little straighter. Heath and the others in the Clan—particularly the Stag—were always keeping things from me, saying I was too inexperienced or too impetuous or too something. Apparently Nerina had taken seriously my assertion the other night that I wasn’t a child.
“Before the Malandanti attacked us in Friuli, the Concilio was”—she looked at the ceiling as she searched for the right word—“troubled.”
My heart skittered a little. “What do you mean?”
She sank into the armchair and leaned toward me, her elbows digging into her knees. “We knew we were losing the war, but we disagreed on strategy. Although we controlled fewer sites than the Malandanti, we do have powerful magic—or at least the knowledge of it. But some of the Concilio didn’t think we should use it.”
“Why not?”
Her mouth twisted. “To do so, they said, would lower us to the same level as the Malandanti.”
I shook my head. “But the war is already being waged on the lower level.”
Nerina met my eyes. A hint of a smile pulled at her lips. “Alessia, I think you and I are going to get along very well.” She stood up. “And now, you should really get home before Lidia finds you gone.”
She walked me to the bottom of the staircase. I paused on the first step. “Is that why the Malandanti were able to attack the Concilio? Because you were a divided front?”
“There are those in the Concilio who would deny that with their last breath, but yes, I believe it is.” She flung her arms wide. “And look where it got us. We are more divided than ever.”
The house was ablaze with light when I crested the hill on my way back from Nerina’s. The sun had peeked over the treetops and gilded the grass. I held close the basket of eggs I’d collected from the hens. I hadn’t been completely useless at three o’clock this morning; I’d thought to bring the basket in case I ran into Lidia on my way back.
I expected to find her at the stove when I came in through the back door to the kitchen, but instead, I glimpsed her rushing around the living room. “Mom?”
“Alessia! Good. You’re back.” She skidded into the kitchen, one shoe on, the other clutched in a hand. “Have you seen my shoe? I can’t find it anywhere!”
“Uh, Mom.” I set the basket of eggs on the table. “You’re holding it.”
She stared at me for a second. Then she looked down at the shoe in her hand. “Oh, mio Dio,” she moaned and hit herself lightly in the head with the shoe. She sank into one of the chairs at the kitchen table and pulled the shoe on. “I need my coffee.”
Nerina’s got a fresh pot in her underground hideaway. “Do you want me to make some?”
“No, cara, I don’t have time.” She stood, tucking errant strands of hair behind her ears. “I have to go.”
“Where? What’s going on?”
She heaved a deep breath. “He’s back. Ed—Mr. Salter. Barb called me this morning. They found him wandering down Main Street about an hour ago.”
Barb was Jenny’s mom. She always seemed to know everything happening in Twin Willows—much the same way her daughter always knew everything going on at Twin Willows High. “What do you mean, ‘found him’? Is he—?”
Lidia grabbed her purse from the counter. “He’s okay. Physically, anyway. Barb says—” She pulled her keys out of her bag and turned to me. “Barb says he can’t remember anything.”
My insides went cold. “I’m going with you.”
“Cara, no—you have school—”
“Not for another hour and a half. You can drop me off. Where is he?”
“At the Sands’s.”
I followed Lidia out to the car, my mind whirling. Mr. Salter returned this morning, just hours after I’d yelled at Jonah about his disappearance. I couldn’t believe that was a coincidence, not when I knew, in my gut, that the Malandanti had been responsible for Mr. Salter going missing in the first place.
The drive to Jenny’s house took less than two minutes—not nearly enough time for me to figure out how to question Mr. Salter without giving any of my secrets away. As we walked up the steps to the front door, I hung back from Lidia and pulled out my cell phone. Mr. Salter’s back. Will text you later with more deets. I found Heath’s number in my contacts and hit Send.
Jenny’s home was the kind of place where you could walk in without knocking and be greeted at six o’clock in the morning with a cup of coffee and a muffin. I think that was why my mom got along with them so well; their hospitality reminded her of her neighbors in Italy. So we opened the front door, called out good morning, and found everyone in the kitchen.
Mr. Salter sat at the table, his hands wrapped around a mug of steaming coffee. His eyes glowed when he saw Lidia and me, and he half rose out of his chair. “Hey, Jacobs gals. Feels like it’s been forever.”
Lidia hugged him tight before he sank back into the chair. “Where were you, Ed?”
He shook his head and looked into his mug. I met Jenny’s gaze across the kitchen. She was perched on top of the counter, kicking her legs against the cabinet underneath. I sidled around the table and hitched myself up next to her. Barb handed me a muffin. It was still warm. I was about to bite into it when Jenny muttered under her breath, “It’s gluten-free.” I set the muffin on the counter and focused on Mr. Salter.
“I think I was at my cabin—you know, up north?” He hunched one shoulder. “But I don’t remember. It’s all fuzzy. And I only use that cabin when I go hunting.”
“So?” Lidia accepted a cup of coffee from Barb and settled into a chair at the table.
“If I was hunting, where’s all the game?” Mr. Salter’s mouth pinched. “I’ve never gone out for a week and come back with nothing to show for it.”
“We’d never call your hunting prowess into question,” Jeff, Jenny’s dad, said, a lilt of gentle sarcasm in his voice.
I looked over at him. He stood against the sink in the corner of the kitchen, tapping his fingers on his thighs. Being a vegetarian, Jeff was always ribbing Mr. Salter about his hunting.
“So if you weren’t at your cabin, where would you have gone?” Lidia asked.
“I don’t know.” Mr. Salter’s eyes shifted from each of us, his cheeks ruddy under our intense scrutiny. He pressed two fingers against his temple. I noticed his hand shook. “I don’t know.”
“Mr. Salter, do you remember if you talked to anyone? Right before you left?” I asked.
“The last thing I remember is spending the night at your house because of the snowstorm,” Mr. Salter said.
I licked my lips. “What I remember is you fighting with Mr. Wolfe.”
Everyone looked at
me. “What does that have to do with anything?” Jeff asked.
“Well,” I said, tiptoeing over my words, “first my mom protests the Guild’s power plant. Then our barn burns down.” I pointed at Mr. Salter. “He gets into a fight with one of the Guild’s top men and disappears for more than two weeks.”
Jenny bumped against my side. “You really are turning into a conspiracy theorist, aren’t you?”
“No,” I said, sharper than I intended. I forced a shrug. “It just seems a lot of . . . bad stuff has happened since the Guild came to Twin Willows.”
Jeff coughed. “It’s a little far-fetched—”
“But not out of the realm of possibility,” Barb said. A look passed between them, something deeper than I could read.
Jenny hopped off the counter. “I’d love to stay and fight corporate America, but we gotta get to school.”
“I’ll drive you,” Barb offered.
“Lidia,” Mr. Salter said, “will you come to my store with me? I can only imagine what’s piled up in there.”
“Of course.” Lidia patted Mr. Salter’s hand, holding it there a little longer than necessary.
I watched this little exchange, my brow furrowed, until Jenny tugged on my arm. “See you later, Mom,” I said.
“Have a good day, cara.” She blew me a little kiss and turned back to Mr. Salter.
“How weird is that?” Jenny said after we’d gotten out of the car in front of the school. “Losing your memory? I thought that only happened on soap operas.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty weird.” I chewed at my bottom lip until I tasted blood on my tongue. It wasn’t that weird—but Jenny didn’t know what I did.
The Malandanti ruled a site in the Congo that had the power of controlling minds. And I was pretty sure that making someone lose his memory for two weeks fell under the heading of Mind Control.
Lidia was still at Mr. Salter’s store when I got home from school. There was a message on my cell telling me she’d be home in time for dinner. I forced myself to focus on homework while I waited for her. The last thing I wanted was for Principal Morrissey to call her in for a conference and tell her how behind I had fallen.
But it was close to impossible to maintain my focus in school when I had Jonah sitting in front of or behind or next to me in almost every class. We didn’t exchange a single word, and he didn’t try to pass me a note, but his constant presence was like a brick wall I kept bumping into. So when Lidia came home, only about half my homework was done.
“How’s Mr. Salter?” I asked while she bustled around the kitchen, making dinner.
She shook her head and dipped her wooden spoon into the sauce that simmered on the stove. “Not great.”
“What, the sauce? Or Mr. Salter?”
“Mr. Salter. Ed.” Lidia laid the spoon in its little cradle on the countertop and faced me. “Imagine how you would feel if you simply could not remember what happened for the last two weeks.”
“Yeah, I’d be pretty freaked out.” I moved my books to one side of the table and got up to get plates and silverware.
“Well, that’s what he is—as you say, freaked out.” She turned off the gas on the stove and poured the sauce over the hand-rolled cavatelli waiting in a bowl on the counter. As she carried the bowl to the table, there was a knock on the back door, followed by a creak as it opened. “Buonasera, Heath. You’re just in time.”
“Buonasera, Lidia, Alessia.” Heath slid into the chair nearest the door. “Thanks for inviting me.”
“Pffft.” Lidia sat down. “You’re always invited for dinner. You know that.”
In the months that Heath had been working at our farm, he had become more like family. Especially to me, since he was my Guide. And Lidia loved having another mouth to feed.
Lidia and Heath talked all through dinner about the farm and plans for rebuilding the barn once the weather warmed. After dinner, they sat in the living room drinking coffee while I tried to finish my homework. Finally around ten, Lidia excused herself to bed. Heath said good night and ducked out the back door.
But as soon as Lidia was upstairs, he snuck back in. “Don’t get too comfortable,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow, but before he could explain, my rib cage tightened. I tried to gasp, but no breath came. My life, my soul, literally squeezed out of me. Heath flung open the door. Wind gusted in, flipping the pages of my biology textbook. I still have a chapter to read, I thought, and then I was gone, flying out the door while my body slumped over my unfinished homework.
Chapter Five
The Meeting
Alessia
The stars looked close enough to touch as I soared toward the woods. Heath’s white figure streaked through the brush below. Why were we Called? I asked.
Before he could answer, a voice echoed in my mind, one that I had never heard before. I Called the entire Clan.
I looked around for the source of the voice, but the blackness of the night enveloped me. Who said that?
I did.
White light flooded the darkness. I wheeled, blinded by the brilliant glow. I blinked several times until my eyes adjusted. Then I blinked again, certain that what I was seeing was a hallucination.
The creature that hovered above me—me, the Falcon who could fly as high as the stars—was not like any kind of animal I had ever seen before. It galloped across the sky on legs that looked like a lion’s, but its wings unfurled against the darkness just like mine. The creature dipped and came level with me. Its head was that of an eagle, and its sharp eyes were unmistakable. Nerina?
Her laughter filled my mind. Yes, it’s me.
Wh—what are you?
A Griffin, silly.
Yeah, silly me, for not recognizing a Griffin. Considering they didn’t exist. Um—how did that happen?
The Concilio all transform into mythical creatures, Heath said.
Before I became immortal, I turned into a simple lioness, Nerina explained. But once I tasted the magic, I became this. She fluttered her enormous wings, buffeting me backward in their wake. I must say I liked the upgrade.
King of beasts and birds? Yeah, I wouldn’t object to that either. I trailed behind her as she loped over the treetops. Her movements were power and grace combined—just like Nerina in her human life. As jarring as it was to see a mythical being come to life, it suited her perfectly.
We passed over the copse of birch trees near the Waterfall, and Nerina dropped toward the ground, grazing the bare branches with her paws. It’s just past these trees, I told her.
I know, dear.
Sorry—I just figured it’s been a while since you’ve been here—
She laughed again, the sound like church bells inside my head. When you are on the Concilio, all of the sites live inside you. We cannot survive without them, and they cannot survive without us. As she spoke, the sound of rushing water grew louder, as though it ran through my own veins. Though it has been many years since I was last here, I can find the Waterfall with my eyes closed.
We broke through the brush and veered left, soaring over the creek that flooded into the Waterfall. The misty veil surrounding the site glittered and danced like a living thing. I dove through the barrier ahead of Nerina. On the ground below, the rest of the Clan gathered, their auras reflecting off the barrier. I landed on a branch that dangled over the pool below the Waterfall. I turned my head upward.
There was a collective gasp from the Clan as Nerina emerged through the veil. She circled above the Clan and floated down to earth impossibly slowly.
Someone likes to make a big entrance, I thought.
You’re not kidding, Heath muttered.
I started; I hadn’t meant anyone else to hear that. But apparently Heath was the only one. Everyone else was too distracted by the fantastical Griffin in our midst.
Nerina landed on the muddy bank of the pool, just below the branch where I perched. She folded her great wings around herself, and I was reminded of a picture I’d seen in my French tex
tbook of the gargoyles that populated Notre Dame. The others clustered around her, though Heath hung back, keeping himself outside the bubble of her aura.
Thank you, friends, Nerina said when everyone had settled, for the warm welcome. It heals my soul to be amongst the finest of the Benandanti.
I rolled my eyes. Mentally. Falcons can’t actually roll their eyes. I know, because I tried once, and it felt like my eyeballs were going to pop out of my head. But really, Nerina was laying it on a bit thick. The finest of the Benandanti? She probably would’ve said that to whichever Clan she landed in.
Heath tilted his head up, his look piercing. I shifted from one claw to the other. I was sure I’d closed my mind off this time, but it was almost as though he knew what I was thinking anyway. He snorted, puffing a white cloud of air, and settled back on his haunches.
What happened in Friuli? asked the Stag.
My attention slid back to Nerina. She cocked her huge eagle’s head and blinked at the Stag. For centuries, the Concilio Celeste has been safely hidden away in the hills of Friuli, she said. But nearly three weeks ago the Malandanti, and their Concilio Argento, found us.
How? It was the Eagle. She was perched on one of the Stag’s antlers.
We don’t know, Nerina answered. She stood and paced in a small circle, the tips of her wings drawing spirals in the mud. It happened so fast that there was no time to contemplate how we were betrayed.
The Lynx stretched out his front paws. What about the others?
One of the Benandanti from the Friuli Clan was killed.
A collective sorrow clouded my mind. My gaze flickered to each member of my Clan. I never wanted to know what it would be like to lose one of them.
A search has been started for her replacement, and one of the Concilio stayed behind to aid them.