Angela’s face reddened. She pulled Donny closer. “Howard. Trust me, you don’t know the whole story. Donny’s with me now.” Donny sucked in a deep breath when he heard those words.
“Is that right?” Howard said. He looked Donny in the eyes.
Donny nodded. “Yes, sir. I can’t go home.”
Howard glanced from Angela to Donny and back again. “That’s your business, I suppose. But if you want to avoid trouble, Miss Obscura, stay out of New York for a good long while. And under no circumstances should you two go to Brooklyn.”
Angela grinned and clapped Donny on the shoulder. “Come on, Howard. You think we’re crazy?”
CHAPTER 37
Donny stared at the tall narrow Brooklyn brownstone where he had lived. “So,” said Angela. “That’s the homestead, huh? Nice place.”
“Yeah,” said Donny. They were on the other side of the street, hidden in the shadows under a small tree. Donny looked up and down the block, as nervous as a bird. If he was ever recognized, it would happen here. Fortunately, it was one o’clock in the morning, and the neighborhood was empty. Still, he flipped up the hood of his sweatshirt to conceal his face better.
“You look a tad nervous,” Angela told him.
“Because I am,” he replied. “Howard was right. I’m a missing kid, and this was my street. I don’t want anyone to see me. And the police might be looking.”
“Well, at least my hair is different. Maybe we should’ve put a fake mustache on you.”
“I’m twelve years old; I wouldn’t have a mustache. Sometimes I think you don’t understand people.”
She waved her hand. “Fiddlesticks.”
The street was quiet, but his father was awake. Donny wasn’t surprised to see the light on at the second-floor window. His father was often up until two a.m. and had never needed much sleep.
Angela looked the building up and down. “What do you suppose is the best way in?”
“I don’t know—maybe through the front door?” Donny said. He took his house key out of his pocket and held it up for her.
“You’re taking all the challenge out of it.” She grabbed the key.
Donny looked at her black dress, full of lace and fringe. It was a few sizes too big for her, and he realized why. She had room to transform. “So you’re going to show him . . . the other way that you look?”
“You said you wanted to scare him,” she replied with a grin. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Donny said. He pressed his hands together and tried to squeeze the tremors out of them. “Scare him really good. Make him be a better person. You can do that, right?”
“I can try,” she said. “I have to admit, I had misgivings, but now I think this’ll be all kinds of fun.”
“Listen, you have to be careful. I think he has a gun in there. Actually, I know he does.” Donny thought back to that awful night, the conversation he was never meant to hear, and the sight of his father on the stairs, gun in hand.
“Pshaw,” Angela said. She waved the thought away. “Look at me. I’m adorable. No way he shoots me when he first sees me. And after that, he’ll be too freaked out to breathe, never mind pull a trigger.” She pointed at the curtained window. “So he’s up there now?”
Donny nodded. “Yeah. Unless he hears you coming.”
“Oh, he will,” she said. “Watch the downstairs window. I’ll put on a show. See you soon.” She slipped off her shoes and started to cross the street barefoot.
“Wait,” Donny said. She looked back. Donny took a deep breath. “Can you ask him something for me?”
She angled her head. “Now you want me to take a survey?”
“No. Just . . . just ask him what happened to my mother.”
“What happened to your mother?” she said. “Wait, do you think he—”
Donny shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t believe he would do that. But . . . she disappeared, you know. So, maybe you could ask him.”
“Cricket. I want to help you out here, but you’re really adding to the degree of difficulty.”
“I know. You don’t have to. But if you can—”
“We’ll see,” she said, and turned and trotted across the street.
Donny watched, barely able to breathe, as she ran up the steps to the front door. She put the key into the lock and opened the door, with no effort to be quiet. Donny heard her voice from across the street. “Hello? Benny Taylor? Are you here?”
“What the heck are you doing?” Donny muttered. He saw a new light come on, the one at the top of the steps inside the house. Angela’s shape was silhouetted in the doorway. Donny’s heart leaped as he heard his father’s voice from inside, faintly. “Who are you? How’d you get in here? Don’t move!”
Angela put her hands up, shoulder high. “Relax, Benny. We need to talk.” She stepped inside despite the warning, and closed the door behind her.
Donny pressed his knuckles into his mouth, fully expecting to hear a gunshot ring out. Seconds passed, but they felt like eons. He stepped forward, out of the shadows, and fought the urge to cross the street. But he wanted to hear. He needed to see.
A muffled shout came from inside the house. Donny took another step forward. Then the curtain across the living room windows was torn away and flung aside. He saw the two of them inside in the dimly lit room. Angela was in her scaly demonic form, terrible and fierce, radiating menace and heat. The black dress looked absurd on her monstrous body. She had a hand around his father’s throat, while both his hands were wrapped around her wrist in a futile attempt to break her grip. His eyes looked ready to explode, and his mouth was frozen in a soundless scream. He kicked at her and thrashed but could not get away. She pulled him closer and turned his face toward the window.
Donny took a step back, afraid to be seen, but his father showed no signs of noticing him. Still, he grabbed his hood on both sides and pulled it even closer around his face.
His father squeezed his eyes shut. He looked like he expected to have his throat torn open, but Angela had only turned his head so she could talk into his ear. He answered her, his eyes closed and his mouth contorted with fear. It went back and forth that way, and then something she said made his father’s eyes spring open. He mouthed the word no! and summoned the courage to look at her. He shook his head and said more, looking almost angry. Angela tossed her head back. She laughed and rattled her tongue. Then she cradled his head in both hands and drew him within an inch of her face, nose to nose. She spoke again, smiling under a fierce brow. When she stopped, Donny’s father nodded—whether on his own, or because her hands forced him to nod, Donny wasn’t sure.
It wasn’t over yet. Angela had one trick left. Donny sensed it, even from outside the building, and he clasped his hands atop his head, heartsick for his father.
In the room where he and his father used to play video games and watch movies, Angela unleashed a beam of fear with all her furious energy. She took her hands off Donny’s father, but he was paralyzed on the spot, unable to move until his legs went liquid and he thumped to his knees. His body trembled, and his face contorted until he looked like a frightened chimpanzee, all clenched teeth and manic eyes.
Angela pointed first at him, and then straight down at a place below the floor. She spoke one more time. When she was done, Benny Taylor’s eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he toppled over sideways, dropping behind the windowsill.
Angela stared at where he had fallen. Then she looked out the window at Donny and gave him two hearty thumbs-ups. She reached into the purse still slung over her shoulder, took out the gold band, and slipped it over her wrist. Instantly, she began to change. She shrunk to her usual size, the scales turning to flesh, the claws on her hand softening into nails. This time when the change was done, her hair had come back a dark wavy brown and far longer than before, tumbling nearly to her waist.
She stepped out of sight and opened the front door, pulling her glove onto the hand that never changed.
Donny stood, rooted to the spot. “Is he still alive?” he asked quietly.
“Oh, sure,” she said brightly. “He just passed out. And he might need to change his pants when he wakes up. But I think it went pretty well, don’t you? Come on, suddenly I’m craving a cappuccino.”
“I don’t know if we can get one around here this time of night.”
“We’re not getting it around here.”
They went to Italy.
CHAPTER 38
Donny could only shake his head at how quickly it had happened. They traveled by fire from New York to Sulfur, and then from Sulfur to Florence. Before long they basked in the morning sun at a sidewalk café in one of the world’s most beautiful cities.
“I have to admit, scaring your father half to death was way more entertaining than I expected,” Angela said.
A woman came to serve them. She must have heard Angela speaking, because she smiled and addressed them in English, but with a wonderful Italian accent. “Welcome. What can I get for you?”
“I’d adore a cappuccino,” Angela said. “You have gelato?”
“Yes, we do, signorina.”
“Pistachio for me. How about you, Donny?”
Donny’s head still reeled from the sudden journey to the other side of the world and from watching his father terrified into unconsciousness. Food was the last thing he wanted to think about. “Sure,” he said anyway. “Pistachio.”
“This is my brother,” Angela told the server. “He’s fatally ill, so please treat him kindly and give him a really big scoop.”
The server’s smile crumpled. “You poor boy, I am so sorry.”
“No, don’t be,” Donny said. He glared at Angela. “I’m not fatally ill. I’m perfectly healthy.”
“He’s in denial,” Angela said, shaking her head. “Typical in these cases. He hasn’t come to terms with his fatal illness yet.”
“There is no fatal illness. I’m not even her brother.”
“Calm yourself, Cricket. You know the doctor said you shouldn’t get overly excited.”
Donny huffed and looked at the server. “You know who’s dead? My doctor, that’s who’s dead. He told me that himself.” The server took a little step back.
“Oh, bring us the gelato already,” Angela said. She waved the server away.
“Why do you have to do that?” Donny asked quietly.
“Just feeling mischievous, that’s all,” she said. Her newly brown hair was so abundant that it spilled over her shoulders and across her eyes. She brought a length of it up for inspection. “Wow, that’s a lot of hair.”
Donny shook his head and slumped in his seat. “You know that what happened back in Brooklyn was painful for me, right?”
She laced her fingers together and leaned forward, grinning. “You’re welcome.”
“Right. Thank you. I asked you to do that to my dad, so definitely, thanks a lot. I guess I shouldn’t have watched.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” Angela said. She took her phone from her bag and looked at it while Donny sat back, still numb. The cappuccino and gelatos came, and the server retreated the moment she’d set them down. Donny sat quietly and dissected his gelato with a spoon.
Angela put the phone away and took a sip of her steaming drink. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said over the rim. “I found out about your mother.”
Donny shot up straight in his seat. “What?”
“I said—”
“I heard what you said! How could you not have told me already?”
“You were busy being ungrateful.” She took another sip, then set the cup gently onto the saucer while Donny waited and nearly burst out of his skin.
“Well?” he finally said, trying not to shout. He had a white-knuckled grip on the table’s edge.
“It went like this,” she said. She leaned forward and waggled her shoulders. “I’m giving your dad the full boat, just scaring the absolute snot out of him. And in the middle of it, I say, ‘What happened to your wife, Benny Taylor?’ His mouth is flapping open and shut, but he’s not making much in the way of noise, so I throttled down a little. And he finally gets some words out, and he says, ‘I d-d-didn’t hurt her! Sh-sh-she just left; she wanted to leave me!’ And I laughed at him, and I said, ‘Leave without her baby boy? What kind of mother does that?’ And he finally spits it out, he says, ‘I told her I’d never let her take Donny. I’d find her no matter where she went, that nobody was taking my son away from me! And she was afraid, she knew I could be dangerous, so she ran away and left Donny behind, and I never saw her again, I swear!’” Angela grinned at Donny, but the smile faded when she saw the expression that had come over him.
Donny felt like a knife had scraped him empty on the inside. He shrank in his seat with his chin on his chest. His throat was a knot. His shoulders hitched.
Angela reached out and took his hands. “Oh, Cricket. I’m such an idiot sometimes.” She stood up, circled the table, pulled a chair up next to him, and put her arm around his shoulders. She cradled his chin with her other hand and pushed his face into her wild mane of hair and kissed his ear. “I’m so sorry. Your mom was afraid, that’s all. And your dad loved you, right? Couldn’t stand to lose you? That’s a plus, right? Even though he’s kind of homicidal. Oh golly, I think I’m making it worse.”
Donny’s face crumpled completely, and he groaned and sobbed. She let it go on for a while, and then whispered into his ear. “Tell me the truth. Can I be a little insensitive at times?”
And just like that it was funny. The tears didn’t stop, but a weird bubbly laughter flowed with them, and Angela giggled with him as they rocked from side to side.
CHAPTER 39
The great cathedral of Florence, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, was just around the corner. Angela insisted on seeing it. It was a short walk from the café to the Piazza del Duomo, and then there it was: the soaring bell tower with its intricate bands of pink, green, and white marble, and the amazing dome. “The things you people dream up,” Angela said as she gazed.
The piazza was full of tourists, but the wait for the cathedral wasn’t bad. “Were you here before?” Angela asked when they’d walked inside.
“Yeah. My dad and I walked all the way up,” Donny said. He pointed at the inner side of the dome.
“So you saw the frescoes up close?”
Donny nodded. The vast work of art, which filled the underside of the entire dome, was so high above the floor that it was hard to see from where he stood now. But he remembered it clearly from when he and his father had climbed that winding, claustrophobic staircase to get a better look. It was called The Last Judgment. Up high among heavenly clouds there were prophets, angels, and saints. At the bottom humans were cast into Hell, with grisly images full of torture and suffering at the hands of vicious demons.
“The infernal stuff is a little over the top,” Angela said. “But they got the spirit right.”
Donny stared at the highest point, his neck craned back. “You think there’s still a chance for my dad?”
“To do what?”
He looked at the tourists milling about and dropped his voice. “To go to a better place.”
Angela looked at him doubtfully. “Like what, Oregon?”
“You know what I mean,” Donny said. He pointed at the peak of the dome. “Heaven. You call Sulfur the infernal realm. You call Earth the mortal realm. I mean the heavenly realm.”
“If there is one,” she said with a shrug.
Donny needed a moment to regroup from that remark. “What are you talking about? There must be a heavenly realm.”
“‘Must be?’ What kind of logic is that?”
Donny stared with his mouth agape. He couldn’t believe the turn the conversation had t
aken. “Well, it only makes sense. If there’s a hell, then there’s a heaven.”
She chuckled. “If you say so.”
“Don’t you say so?”
“I’ve been to two places, Cricket. The mortal realm and the infernal realm. Never seen the third.”
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t there!”
“Doesn’t mean it is, either.”
“But the souls that move on from Sulfur, after they’ve done their time—where else would they go?”
“Who knows? That’s the best mystery of them all! Ever hear of reincarnation? Maybe that’s the next stop. Step back in the queue and get born again in the mortal realm as a person, pig, or paramecium. Sulfur might be one big recycling center. Round and round we go,” she said, twirling a finger.
“Wait, is that what really happens?”
“Don’t be silly. I’m trying to tell you: I have no idea what happens. Heaven sounds fabulous. I’m all for it. But believe whatever you want.”
Donny waved his hand, palm out. “Hold on, what about all the souls that never go to Sulfur? The people who don’t get punished?”
“What about them?”
“They must go somewhere else.”
“Not necessarily.”
It was getting hard to keep his voice down. “Yes, necessarily!”
“Achieving goodness might be the end. Once you’ve done that, you might just . . . poof, dissipate.” She waggled her fingers.
“What’s the point of that?”
“Why does there have to be a point?”
“People should be rewarded for being good; they shouldn’t just turn into nothing.”
“You sound like a trained seal: you want a fish just for balancing a ball on your nose.”
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