I had surreptitiously enquired at the cake stand yesterday what time the ladies organizing the book sale were going to tidy up, and I’d been told they would meet again this morning after the Sunday morning mass. Mrs. Mancini would no doubt be very efficient and most likely would have done the majority of work that followed such an event yesterday, so I didn't know how long she would stay there.
Luckily, she was still there when I arrived, and I greeted her with the excuse I had prepared. I told her I had lost my scarf yesterday and wondered if someone had turned it in. Mrs. Mancini's greeting was perfectly cordial, but then she narrowed her eyes. “I don't remember you wearing a scarf yesterday. I have an excellent memory.”
“Oh, I did. One of those thin, handkerchief-style ones in peach. Maybe you just didn't notice it.”
“Hmm. No, nobody found anything like that. I don't even need to check the lost and found.”
“Okay, then,” I said extra cheerfully. Then I pulled the bouquet out of the bag that I had taken along for this purpose. “I’m also here for another reason. Do you remember the elderly gentleman I was with yesterday? Good-looking, charming, fetching hat?”
“Yes, I certainly do.” Even though Mrs. Mancini replied in her usual curt manner, I could have sworn that a little bit of color rose to her cheeks. I knew it! They had hit it off. I couldn't believe my luck.
“He really enjoyed making your acquaintance, and when he heard I was stopping by, he asked me to give you this bunch of flowers.”
Now Mrs. Mancini's cheeks were definitely flushed. “Oh. That's nice. Please pass on my sincere gratitude.”
“I will.” After a few seconds of silence, I said, “If that scarf is nowhere to be found here, I better be going. I hope your book sale has been a success, and good luck with those stamps.”
Mrs. Mancini nodded. “Hang on a minute, if you don't mind.” She disappeared into the building adjacent to the church. I assumed that it housed offices, a kitchen, and something like a church hall.
I could hardly contain my excitement and wondered what she would give me. Her address and phone number to pass on to Vito?
Instead, she returned with something wrapped in aluminum foil. “Won't you take a bit of leftover cake, Miss Martens? We still have quite a bit to pass around, and it would be wasteful to throw it away.”
“Oh.” I tried to hide my disappointment. “Thank you. Have a nice day, Mrs. Mancini.”
In the car, I peeked under the tinfoil and saw pineapple upside-down cake. Even though it was Bertie's favorite, it didn’t look very impressive. I made a face, but then I had an idea. I drove by the diner and asked Aunt Jeannie for a whole coffee crunch cake. That was her specialty, and it was always really good. I was reasonably sure Vito liked coffee cake too.
I would tell Vito that Mrs. Mancini had baked it just for him. If he called to thank her for the cake, she would assume I'd given him the pineapple upside-down cake and that was what he was referring to. After all, Mrs. Mancini seemed to have taken a liking to Vito. But where Vito was concerned, I wasn't so sure. With this cake, Mrs. Mancini could wow him a little. Didn’t they say that food was the best way to a man's heart?
I also planned on telling Vito that I’d had a whole bunch of flowers from a friend's garden in my car, and when Mrs. Mancini gave me the cake, I gave her a couple of roses as a thank you. That would cover me in case she thanked him for the bouquet. It was a rather complicated ruse, but I was feeling very clever for figuring out everything in my head. I was especially pleased that my plan gave me the opportunity to give back the file I’d borrowed from Vito and to do further research in his library. He had said I could even though he hadn't specifically invited me to come by today.
After stopping at the diner, I dropped off the pineapple cake at Bertie's. He thanked me so profusely that I felt a little bit guilty. I felt I had to tell him that it was only a leftover cake from the sale we had been to the day before. “Mrs. Mancini gave it to me. Do you remember the tall lady with black hair?”
He didn't say anything and just happily started eating his cake.
He probably didn't remember. But I had given him a little lift today, so that was something. I declined his invitation to have a coffee and share the cake. “Thanks, but I have to be somewhere.”
I left Bertie's, drove the few blocks to Vito's apartment, and took the cake out of the trunk. A woman who was leaving through the main entrance held the door open for me when she saw me carrying the big cake box. I smiled a thank you and walked up the stairs to Vito's apartment. I was just about to knock when I realized the door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open with my elbow.
“Vito?” I called. No response. I pushed the door open further and took a step into the hallway. “Vito? Are you…”
I nearly dropped the cake. The hallway was completely empty. Hardwood floors gleamed where carpets had been yesterday, and the stark white walls where pictures had hung were bare. The coat rack and shoe rack were missing as well as the long mirror next to the door.
“Hello?” I shouted. Maybe Vito was redecorating. I walked down the hall. The first door on the left went to the kitchen, and it stood open. The kitchen proper with a sink, counter, oven, stove, and fridge was still there, along with the table and chairs. Aside from that, the room was empty. No coffee maker, no toaster. There were no dish towels, tablecloths, jars of tea and sugar, potholders, ladles… none of the things that had been there yesterday when I’d had tea with Vito in this kitchen. The opposite door, which I believed led to the bedroom, was closed.
I knocked. “Vito?” Still no answer. “It's me, Stella.” Silence. I opened the door. Again, the room was empty aside from the furniture. All personal items were missing. I walked in and set the cake down on the bare mattress on the bed. One door led to the bathroom, which had also been cleaned out. On impulse, I opened the bedroom closet and saw nothing but empty hangers.
It was the same in the next two rooms—a guest bedroom and a guest bathroom. I had visited that one yesterday, and there had been blue towels, a matching floor mat, and toilet seat cover. Fancy orange-and-mint-smelling guest soap had sat in a dish, and a framed Gandhi quote had hung on the wall. All of that was gone.
I stood in the corridor for a moment and tried to come up with a logical explanation. What was going on? Surely, Vito would have mentioned yesterday if he was planning to move. And was it even possible to pack up and move an entire apartment in less than twenty-four hours?
Due to the shock of finding his apartment empty, I had completely forgotten the Malachriel pamphlet in my purse. The last door at the end of the corridor led to the big study. That library contained information—possibly the only information—that could help me find out about angels and demons, about Zack and Malachriel, about Vitrella and me. It was the information I needed to help me save Marie.
I pushed the door open and saw nothing but bare floors and empty shelves. Not a book in sight. Vito had disappeared, and with him, the knowledge that I was so desperate to learn.
13
As I drove home, still utterly confused, something else occurred to me. Vito was supposed to play a vital part in fulfilling Mrs. Meyers’s wish. He was Mrs. Mancini’s potential new partner. I had spent so much time finding him for her. It had all looked so promising. Now he was gone. Would I have to start anew?
Somehow, I was still convinced that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for Vito’s disappearance. Maybe he had moved at night. It wasn’t as if he was obligated to tell me.
After I had already made the turn onto our road, it occurred to me that Bertie was Vito’s best friend. Even though he wasn’t always in the here and now, surely Bertie would know where Vito was. I drove by our house and turned the car around at the end of the cul-de-sac.
A little while later, I stood outside Bertie’s door and knocked.
“Changed your mind, did you?” he asked when he saw me. Then he smiled ruefully. “Sorry, but I already ate the entire cake.”
I
exhaled in relief. He was lucid. “That’s okay. I came because I’m looking for Vito. Do you know where he is?”
Bertie frowned. “Vito? Is he not at home?”
“No. Bertie, Vito’s apartment is completely empty. Has he moved?”
Bertie looked puzzled. That was a good sign. If he was confused, it usually didn’t show on his face. “What? No, why would he? He’s been living there for more than five years.”
“And is that how long you’ve known him?”
Bertie nodded. “Yes, my wife Carol, may she rest in peace, and I met him when he moved into the neighborhood. He moved in right after they converted the old mill into apartments. Carol went around with little baskets of muffins for every new tenant to welcome them to our neighborhood—that’s what she was like—and he was very pleased. We’ve been friends ever since.”
His eyes took on a faraway expression, then he focused on me again. “Since Carol passed away, I’ve been getting a little bit… forgetful sometimes. Not the important things. I’ll never forget my Carol and the life we had together. But the more recent stuff, like what I had for dinner yesterday. I don’t know if that’s because it doesn’t really matter if I can’t share it with Carol anymore… if it’s just not worth remembering, you know. Anyway, Vito has been making sure that I’m all right.”
I smiled at how warmly Bertie spoke of his friend. I hadn’t known Vito long, but I’d also had the impression that he was a kind, loyal, and stand-up guy. “I really don’t understand it. He wouldn’t just leave, would he?”
“Oh, no,” Bertie answered with confidence. “He wouldn’t. I’m sure there’s an explanation.”
I nodded, relieved. Bertie was right. Vito would turn up again.
Except that a couple of weeks went by, and he didn’t.
His apartment just stood empty. I went to see his landlord, and he didn’t know anything about it. Vito had paid until the end of the month as usual. His payments had never been late. The owner of the apartment building was as puzzled as I was. He said he wouldn’t rent it to new tenants as long as Vito’s deposit covered the rent.
Neither Bertie, Alf, nor any of the other people that came to the senior citizen center regularly and knew Vito had ever heard him talk about family. As far as anyone knew, he had no children and had never been married. He had never mentioned a brother or a sister or even a distant cousin. He was well-known for his interest in religious books, and it was common knowledge that he used to teach at a university, but nobody knew which one. So we couldn’t track down colleagues or old friends, either. There was nobody we could contact.
Eventually, Bertie, Alf, and I went to the police to report Vito missing. They took us fairly seriously but told us right off the bat that they couldn’t do much. After all, it looked as if he had just packed up and went somewhere else. A police officer came to Vito’s apartment with us and established that there had been no signs of foul play. With no evidence of a crime, they had to pretty much assume he’d left voluntarily.
Once, I called them to see how the investigation was going and was told that they couldn’t give me any information. I took that as police code for they hadn’t found anything and weren’t bothering to look anymore. I never heard from them again.
We thought we had a little breakthrough when I went to the senior citizen center one day and Alf greeted me excitedly. “Guess what, Stella! Bertie remembered something.”
It turned out that Vito had given Bertie a cell phone to use in case of emergencies. It wasn’t so much the cell phone that Bertie had forgotten, but rather the fact that Vito had saved a number on it that Bertie was supposed to call if he couldn’t reach Vito at home. I dialed it, but nobody picked up. There was no voice mail or anything. I continued to dial that number every once in a while, but nobody ever picked up.
In all this time, Zack didn’t show. The experience of him taking me back to my conception faded more and more into a vague dream, and my conversations with Zack started to feel increasingly as though I had just dreamed them. They became less significant in comparison to a real-life friend disappearing. Honestly, I had stopped caring about fulfilling that matchmaking wish. How could I, anyway, now that Vito was gone? I would have had to start anew.
Of course, I didn’t forget about the fact that Marie was possessed and that she wanted to kill me. God, I could never forget how my little sister had stood above me, stabbing me with that knife. But there hadn’t been any more incidents, even though I was no longer pursuing the wish thing, and I felt as though I had it under control.
Well, I had to admit that there had been incidents, but no immediate repercussions, so I ignored them. Looking back, I recognized that I'd buried my head in the sand. One day, Allison complained that one of her expensive stainless steel steak knives was missing. Another day, there had been a big hoo-ha when Dad got out his fishing gear to go on a fishing trip. The rod had no fishing line. That one was a head-scratcher. Who would just steal a fishing line from the rod?
“Have any of you girls maybe used it for a school project or something?” Dad asked with a stern voice.
“I’m sure they wouldn’t just…” Allison began. Then after a pause, she said, “Wait, Anna, didn’t you use fishing line for that solar system we built?”
“Yes, but I didn’t take it from Daddy’s rod,” Anna protested. “We bought all the material for it together, remember, Mom?”
Allison drew her brows together. “I guess so.”
The mystery remained unsolved.
Marie still had bad nightmares and sleepwalked. I wasn’t really affected because I locked my door at night. Marie was seeing a sleep specialist, and I was thinking that if he was such an expert, he would have realized what was wrong with her.
I didn’t give up on trying to exorcise Malachriel and took out the pamphlet every so often. But without Vito’s or Zack’s help, what could I do? I spent a significant amount of time doing Google searches and library enquiries but came up with nothing. I just avoided Marie as best I could. I missed my little sister, but it was easy to get used to new routines. As I said, I thought I had it all under control.
Until that day when it all went horribly wrong.
14
It was my day off, and I was in my room, deliberating whether I should delete my fake Angel Average Facebook profile. Weirdly, people kept posting wishes on my wall, even though I never replied. It must have become a thing. Some of them were obvious, like money and power, but others were ridiculous—liposuction, free chocolate for everyone every day. Still, others were really sweet. An eleven-year-old girl wished for books for every child and mandatory bedtime reading for neglected and orphaned children. I half considered choosing one of those wishes as a trade-in for the failed Mrs. Mancini wish-fulfillment. But I had lost a bit of confidence after all that had happened. Plus, did it really matter? I had been doing this for Zack, really, and he had apparently disappeared into thin air along with Vito.
I felt that I should concentrate all my energy on getting Marie better. Maybe there were other people out there who were experts on demons. Vito couldn’t have been the only one with such an interest. Maybe he was the only one in Average, but I had the Internet community from all across the world at my disposal. I had just searched a couple of sites and was thinking about posting something in a forum and emailing a guy who had an interesting blog on the subject, when Allison knocked on my door.
Reluctantly, I flipped my iPad shut. “Yeah?”
“Hey, Stella, I need you to pick up Marie and Anna from riding practice. Do you mind?” She smiled ruefully. “I really need to get this giant pile of laundry done.”
I made a face. The ranch where my sisters took riding lessons was a good twenty-minute drive away. All that time in the car with Marie was something I would rather avoid. “Why don’t you pick them up and I do the laundry?”
“Oh, please, Stella. I have a system. It would take me just as long to explain it to you as it takes to pick them up.”
I held my hand up. “Okay, okay.” I put the iPad down and got up.
“Thanks, honey. I really appreciate it. As a thank you, I’m making tacos for dinner tonight.”
That did put me in a better mood. Tacos were my favorite. On the drive to the ranch, I convinced myself that being in a car with Marie wouldn’t be that bad. At least I would have Anna with me as well.
At the ranch, the riding instructor took me aside. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But we really couldn’t put Marie on any of the horses today. They all got spooked when she came near them. Naturally, I’m happy to refund you for her lesson.”
“Just write it up for next time,” I said as casually as possible. “How weird. Does that happen often?”
The riding instructor bobbled her head back and forth. “It can with certain people and certain horses. Sometimes, they literally can’t stand each other. But all horses taking a dislike to a little girl… I’ve never experienced it.”
“She must have been so disappointed. Where is she?” I had already spotted Anna, who was still brushing her horse, but Marie was nowhere to be seen.
“Actually, she was fine. I sent her to play with the cats. They didn’t seem to have anything against her.” The riding instructor was trying to make a joke, but I could tell she was unnerved by the whole thing.
I saw Anna putting her equipment away and leading her horse into its box, so I called out for my little sister. “Marie? Where are you? Let’s go.”
She came immediately out of the stables with a perfectly innocent smile on her face. I looked her up and down suspiciously, but she seemed entirely normal.
I remained cautious and made sure to strap her extra tight into her children’s car seat, which was right behind the driver’s seat. Anna wanted to sit in the passenger seat next to me, but I made her sit in the back. I wanted her to keep Marie occupied.
Wish Upon a Fallen Star: Average Angel Page 8