“What about your dad?” I asked, while feeling slightly bad for bringing him up.
Luca shrugged. “I’m not sure if he can sense it or not.”
“I meant, could you be near him?”
“I haven’t been around him in years. Being near him didn’t bother me. He was a selfish, narcissistic jerk, not a demon,” he said.
I looked up at him. “A demon? You think there are actual demons?”
“That’s what evil is, right?” Luca said. “Demons.”
The wind rushed against my bare skin, I shivered. Luca actually thought there were demons in the inn? This was too twisted and bizarre, far too bizarre to accept.
“I better be getting back,” I said, coming to my feet and brushing the dirt from my pants.
“You think I’m crazy,” he said, copying my movements.
I inhaled. I would not lie to him, but I would be kind. “I think you’ve had different life experiences than me, and so, things which appear possible to you seem completely impossible to me. Besides all of that, I need to get back. My grandmother will wonder where I am.”
“Is it okay if I walk you back?” he said.
“If you want to, you can, but I’m very safe here,” I said kindly. He meant well, that much was clear. It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t completely sane.
“It would make me feel better,” he said as we started forward, doing our best to avoid the muddiest parts of the trail.
The only sound was that of our feet and the birds singing in the trees. I was thinking of Luca and the inn. I couldn’t help myself. “Why did you get so close?” I asked.
“So close?”
“If there is evil in the inn, and if evil makes you sick, why did you get so close to it?”
He walked a few more feet before stopping. I stared up at him, his eyes on mine.
“Because you don’t know,” he said, his hands in his pockets.
“Don’t know what?”
“You don’t know evil and if you don’t know, you can’t defend yourself. You live in this idyllic place surrounded by a family who has never hurt you, in a beautiful forest where strawberries and blueberries grow wild, in an enchanted castle filled with love. It’s like you stepped out of a Disney movie. You don’t know how to protect yourself.”
“That’s not true,” I said, offended that he thought of me as some naïve princess.
“You don’t even have poisonous snakes in Maine,” he said. “Your life is a fairytale.”
“My mom is dead,” I said with hurt, hoping to stop this conversation that was becoming as strange as the boy in front of me.
It didn’t stop him. “A parent being killed is not uncommon in fairytales, and from what Aunt Sam said, your mother was killed by evil.”
“What?” I said in confusion, as if he were speaking a different language. I’d heard his words but they made no sense.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said. “I don’t think your idyllic life has magically happened. I think your dad and grandmother have worked really hard to protect you and your sisters. It’s clear, to me at least, evil is hunting you.”
I stared at him in complete confusion. “Evil … is … hunting … me?” I repeated his words slowly to understand what he was saying.
“I’m not trying to freak you out,” he said.
“I’m not—I mean you’re making no sense,” I said. My yard was close, so I walked faster, ready to be done with my creepy neighbor.
Still he did not stop. “Sometimes, we choose evil and sometimes evil chooses us. When we choose it, we welcome it in. When it chooses us, it finds ways to get to us, or tries to, anyway. I think it’s been trying to get to you and your family since before you were born. I’m not sure what happened in the inn, but whatever happened has connected your family to a darkness that is more than I have ever felt.”
“And you think that killed my mom?” I said, beginning to understand he was playing a cruel joke on me. He must be. What else could this be?
He nodded.
In a loud and forceful voice, I said, “It’s one thing for you to say whatever you want about the inn or my so-called idyllic life, but it’s a whole different thing to talk about my mom.”
“I understand that,” he said, withdrawing a step, my anger finally making him back down.
“Do you? Because none of this is funny!”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” he said. Now his face showed confusion.
“Then what are you trying to say? People die every day. People are murdered every day,” I said, my voice rising. “That has nothing to do with demons and everything to do with messed-up people.”
“It-it’s true,” he replied. “People die every day by accidents, car crashes, drownings, war, domestic violence, old age. But that’s not what happened to your mom. In her case, the demons whispered ‘Kill’ and the man who took her life killed.”
“You believe that?” I said with disgust.
Distress came over him. “Yes,” he said.
“You’re crazy,” I said, my tone biting.
I felt the hurt, but he didn’t ease up.
“You must know as much as Sam does,” Luca said. “You must know of the murderer’s life, of his obsessive focus on porn, of his desires to hurt in every way, of his pure hatred for God and all churches—the Catholic church in particular. He gave himself to Satan and so when the word ‘Kill’ was whispered, he followed the command. Later, when the word ‘Kill’ was whispered, he killed himself.”
My stomach whirled as the wind increased. The trail was now behind us. I didn’t say a word; I never wanted to speak to him again. I ran up the hill.
I didn’t talk about my mother’s murder. I thought of her often; her memories didn’t hurt me. But her murder was more than I could handle. I never thought of it and I never, ever thought of her murderer.
Luca was wrong. I did not know as much as Sam.
My mind spun, making me dizzy, my stomach threatening to force up its contents. I pulled open the kitchen door and slammed it closed.
I ran up the stairs. Behind me, Gigi called my name. I didn’t respond. I entered my room, my body shaking.
I paced from one end of the room to the other. Why did he speak of her murder? He had no right—no right to know more than me and no right to tell me what I chose not to know.
There was a knock.
“Siena, are you okay?” My father’s voice sounded scared and small. I felt sadness at his fear on my behalf. I went to the door and opened it.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice so kind and timid. He loved me so much it was overwhelming. I fell into his open arms and cried like a young child.
“What’s going on?” Gigi’s concerned voice was behind him.
I couldn’t keep them so scared. “Luca told me things about Mom’s … killer. It was too much for me to hear.”
My dad’s body became rigid. “He did what?” he asked, his voice no longer timid.
“Luca said he was trying to protect me from the inn because evil was hunting us. He used Mom’s murder as an example. He said demons told that man to kill Mom.”