Yes, I know it’s too early, but they can wait at the hangar. Get all the men and their families into the great house. The lake looks like it may … rise. And call Villa Cavallino and Villa Pironi. Then make an anonymous call to the emergency services. Untraceable. Same information. The lake may rise, something looks like it’s happening, get away from the water’s edge … I don’t know … Yes, I understand it sounds crazy.
She reappears in the hallway, saying distractedly, ‘Excuse me, while I change, pack a few things.’
She doesn’t bother to shut her bedroom door, and I hear wardrobe doors being opened and closed hurriedly, the sound of a zipper being pulled. She emerges about five minutes later with a small holdall, dressed in the same grey sweater and black jeans we first saw her wearing, her hair bound back in a low ponytail, feet in heavy black boots, a bunch of keys dangling from the fingers of one hand.
‘Why don’t you come with us?’ Ryan says with concern, as Bianca switches lights off all around us, then presses numbers into a glowing keypad by the front door before ushering us outside. As she closes the heavy, wooden door behind us, I hear the security system emitting a rhythmic
Bianca shakes her head at Ryan’s question. ‘There’s nowhere safe from the Devil, is there? Some of my men are the great-grandsons of the people who originally worked here; this is all they know. They’ll want to stay and defend their homes — if it comes to that — as do I. Leave that part to me, as I leave the liberation of … of … archangels to the two of you.’ She gazes at my blurring, shifting outline with that expression of fearful wonder on her face.
I detect the faint purr of a car engine, the crunch and squeal of tyres sliding slowly across stone. I put a hand on Ryan’s arm as headlights swing into view high above us, and he nods to indicate he’s seen them. We watch the car slowly descend before the driveway switches back again and the vehicle is momentarily lost to sight.
‘Ryan,’ I say hurriedly, ‘while you’re in the car, you’re not going to see me or hear me. But I’ll be with you, I’ll be near. You won’t see me board the plane either, but I’ll join you when I can. Okay?’
I see uncertainty leap in his eyes, and place the back of one hand against his face. ‘
Bianca places a hand tentatively on my arm at last, the way I know she’s been dying to. ‘You feel so …’
‘Real?’ I reply with a crooked smile, which is echoed by Ryan’s. ‘That’s what people keep telling me.’
‘And warm,’ she adds, a small frown pleating her forehead. ‘I hadn’t expected that. You look so, so … flawless that I’d imagined you’d feel cold, like marble.’ She drops her hand. ‘I’m sounding crazy.’
I say quietly, ‘Not to me.’
‘I don’t know how to wish you luck,’ Bianca mutters, ‘but I know that you’ll need it.’
‘As will you,’ I tell her. She seems too slight, too frail, to withstand what is headed her way, but courage comes in many forms. It’s something I’ve witnessed firsthand. ‘
‘And to you,’ she whispers.
I bow my head in thanks, in admiration of her strength. Then I let it all go; hear Ryan gasp, see Bianca’s face go pale. I let my outline shred into a pale mist before dispersing silently; just lean into the atmosphere and somehow become of it until I’m weightless again, I’m air.
By the time Tomaso steps out of the wide, black, low-slung luxury sedan with its heavily tinted windows, its high beams on to ward off the pre-dawn darkness, I’m nowhere to be seen. Only Ryan is standing there, the pack slung across one broad shoulder, wearing his faux glasses, his peaked cap jammed down low over his face, Bianca at his side.
‘Where is the girl?’ I hear Tomaso ask his employer sharply.
‘She could not wait,’ Bianca responds, meeting his gaze steadily. ‘She went on ahead.’
Tomaso’s reply is faintly derisive. ‘Then she is either very mad or very brave.’ He holds the door open for Ryan, indicating he should get in.
Ryan and Bianca exchange glances, then he extends a hand politely, awkwardly, and she takes it, gripping it briefly with both hands before letting go.
As Ryan ducks his head to enter the vehicle, I flow up and across the back of the car, a pocket of turbulence, indistinguishable from the metallic black of the paintwork. I crouch weightlessly upon the roof like a runner, giving myself perfectly uninterrupted 360-degree views in every direction. By the time the driver enters the deserted street that runs along the lake’s shore, the gates are already closing against us and Bianca and Tomaso are quickly lost to sight.
As the car picks up speed, it becomes obvious that a thick and unnatural fog is building slowly but steadily over the lake, rolling outwards towards the banks on both sides as if it would swallow the world.
11
The fog brings the dead to the lake’s shore.
I see them in the faint blush of light that signals daybreak as our car sweeps down the deserted, winding road that runs right beside the water, the wind soughing eerily through the pines that line it. There are scores of them. They drift along the road, down through the terraced gardens, anguished and confused, responding in some speechless, primal way to something in the water.
As we pass, every wraith lifts its head as if it can scent me, turns to follow my progress though I am nothing to the human eye, just a patch of turbulence, a cloud of energy, surfing by on top of a sleek and anonymous European car. But, still, they seek me out, and I feel a ripple, a chill, move across my soul at the sight of them all gathering.
Our driver does not see what I see; has no clue of what surrounds us. He ploughs the car straight through the grieving figure of an old man drifting in the centre of the road, dressed in the same shapeless cardigan, button-down shirt and suit pants he was last wearing in life. The car shreds him to pieces. When I look behind me, the apparition has already re-formed: his ashen face and eyes trained on our disappearing taillights, arms outstretched as if pleading, before recommencing his mindless passage down to the water.
The fog builds and builds upon the lake beneath a heavy sky brimming with leaden, menacing clouds that the sun cannot break through. We travel through a weird, yellow-grey half-light, as if traversing some scenic boulevard of the underworld. After a time, there are no more dead lining the road, which tells me we have left Moltrasio and its new-minted spirits behind.
As we fly down a road that suddenly turns inland, away from the water, there’s a vast, rending sound, a giant
In response, the driver floors the accelerator. I feel his fear in the way he’s handling the powerful car beneath me, feel his panic in the way we almost fishtail around the bends though the road here is dry and in near perfect condition.
I hear car alarms go off, see lights flare into life in the windows of some of the buildings we flash past. But the booming sound does not recur, and, mile after mile, we leave its unseen source behind us.
We cross a bridge at a punishing, rattling pace, and the lake once more swings into view. We hug its mighty contours for a stretch before turning inland again and losing sight of it altogether. But that last, quick glimpse fills me with a greater apprehension — nothing can be seen of the water’s surface, save that rolling white fog.
For a moment, I imagine I hear a high, whining sound in my inner ear. A questing sound, the kind that might herald the sort of intense pain Luc caused me only hours ago, when he was trying to get inside my head and I didn’t want him there. My reaction is fierce and immediate. I imagine myself as a closed box, a walled compound,
