“What?” she asked.
This is the last time I’ll ever hear your voice. “I miss you, Mom,” I said, wiping my eyes with the heel of my hand. “And I love you.” I wanted to scream. How could this be happening? How could I have kept this from her? “Mom, are you there?”
“The way you said that, it gave me chills,” she sighed. “Isis, maybe you should come home.”
You’re right to be worried. “You’re overreacting.” I kept my voice steady. “As a matter of fact, I’m headed out for more fun in about five minutes.”
“Oh yeah? Where to?”
“A movie—with English subtitles.” I thought adding the part about subtitles was a good save.
“Hmph,” Claire grunted. “I was hoping for a longer call this time.”
“My phone bill’s going to empty out your bank account if we talk longer.”
“You’re probably right,” she said. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Mom, I’m having a blast over here. You have nothing to worry about.”
“Well, okay. Take care of yourself. And if you need to come home—”
“Mother—”
“Okay, okay. Love you bunches. Bye.”
“Love you, too,” I said and left the phone on my ear until the line went dead. I was a horrible daughter.
When I stepped out of my room, David had just set foot on the second floor. I saw Eros walking down the left corridor to his bedroom. He peeked over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows at me as if he had stolen the crown jewels and gotten away home free.
“Please don’t be angry at me,” David said.
“Don’t.” I raised my hand. “Just don’t say anymore. I’m tired of worrying, and of crying, and of everything.” I rubbed the side of my forehead in circles with my fingers. “I want to forget for just a little while. Can we do that?”
“I want that, as well,” David said.
He locked my hands behind my back and pulled me against him. He took my lips in his, and I indulged in layer after layer of kisses. I was inebriated by the familiar scent of sandalwood that rose from his skin.
Eros had been feeding me a lot of lines about how I was falling in love with him, and at times I believed him. But when I was in David’s arms, I felt that—like the times Grandma Eva’s septic tank overflowed at the ranch house—Eros was full of crap. Yes, Eros was beautiful and there was something that I had been fighting against that called me to him, but he wasn’t David.
“Are you forgetting, yet?”
“Forgetting what?” I stood on my tiptoes with my eyes closed, eager for one more kiss.
“Mission accomplished.”
I opened my eyes and twisted my arms, freeing my hands from David’s grip. I hugged him hard.
“Is it strange that I miss you?” he asked, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. “I feel like I’m so close to you, but at the same time, so far away.”
“I feel that, too.” I placed the side of my face on his chest. I could hear his heart beating, his chest expanding with each breath he took.
A sob echoed up from the first floor. I knew who it belonged to.
“Is Paulina willing to stay here after all of this?”
“No. She’s already given her resignation.”
“I don’t blame her.”
David tightened his arms around me.
“Paulina is returning to Italy with her mother, Susana, who’s also Camilla’s sister. Susana will be arriving later today.”
“Where will Camilla be put to rest?”
“Arrangements are being made for Camilla’s body to be transported back to her home for the burial.”
“Camilla told Paulina I had a purpose,” I said. “What do you think she meant?”
“Well, don’t we all have a purpose?” David asked. “You shouldn’t read too much into it. Camilla might’ve been possessed when she spoke her last words.”
“But she knew about the Turpis. She was communicating with them. And Paulina never said she was possessed.”
“Isis.” David took my head between his hands and kissed my forehead. “Let it go. What she said was a generalization.”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.” I stared down at my feet, which brought back a quick image of Camilla’s body lying bloody and lifeless on the kitchen floor. “But I know the demons will be back.”
“They know we’re on to them. I don’t think they’ll make any attempts against you anytime soon. But if they come back, we’ll be ready.”
“Right,” I said, but I didn’t believe it. “Do you think you can get the file back from Carboné?”
A sound came from down the hall. David lifted his finger to his lips and signaled toward Eros’ room. We walked into my room and David closed the door behind us.
“Eryx went to verify the address. Carboné and his men have never seen Eryx, so it seemed reasonable to send him.”
“Does that mean you’re planning something?”
“Eryx will stakeout the house and wait until Carboné and his minions leave. Once we have the file, we’ll leave Athens.”
“We’re leaving Athens? Why?”
“Carboné will be scouring the city to find us. We have to disappear.”
“And go where? You can’t be moving around. You heard what Dr. Gunn said. The seizures will continue until you’ve changed. What if you start hemorrhaging? You could bleed to death.”
David rubbed the top of my hand with his thumb. He looked worried.
“Gunn is coming with us. We need him, and Carboné will go after him when he finds that my file is missing. Gunn and his wife will meet us in Romania. A family friend in Bucharest has offered us refuge there.”
“You said no one else was supposed to know.” I frowned. “Is it another deity? Can we trust them?”
“She’s the only one we can trust. She’s Galen’s ex-girlfriend. Since she still has feelings for him, I know she won’t turn her back on us.”
“Poor girl.”
“That’s what my mother said.”
“I meant that I feel sorry for her taste.”
“So does my mother.”
I laughed.
“That has to be the best sound I’ve heard in a long time.” David smiled. “I wish I would hear it more often.”
“I know I haven’t been the best person to hang out with lately.”
“Neither have I.”
We stared at each other in silence. No other words had to be said between us to understand that we regretted the ongoing fights we’d had since we’d arrived.
“Changing the subject,” I said. “When will you and Eryx go get the file from Carboné?”
“I was voted out of the plan. I’m not going.”
“Because they’ll recognize you?”
David looked at me for a moment as if trying to decide whether he should respond to the question.
“Because I had a small convulsion in the study, after you left. That’s why I took so long to come after you.”
My chest ached. I reached for his face, feeling the need to be closer to him.
“I’m sorry. If I’d known, I would’ve gone back.”
“It was better that you weren’t there.”
“Did you bleed again?”
“Very little.” He pointed to the left side of his head. “From my ear this time.”
“If you’re lying to me, this conversation isn’t going to end well.”
“I’ve told you, I will never lie to you. How many times do I have to repeat it?”
I knew David well enough to know that he’d keep his word. He wouldn’t lie to me. But as for me, I was a whole body of lies and deceit. My guilty conscious wouldn’t allow me to look at him anymore, so I buried my face in his chest.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I said.
“I don’t know why you keep apologizing.”
I’m apologizing for everything I’ve done and for everything I’m going to do. “I just am.”
***
Susana, Paulina’s mother, arrived in the early evening. When she saw Paulina standing in the middle of the living room, they fell into each other’s arms, weeping. I paid my respects to Susana and sat in a chair in the corner as Nyx discussed the transportation and funeral arrangements that she had been busying herself with all day.
David rubbed my arm as I watched Paulina and Susana holding tight to each other’s hands. I wondered who would hold my mother’s hand when I was gone.
“I arranged for flowers to be delivered at the wake,” David whispered in my ear. “A bouquet from each family member, including you.”
“Thank you,” I said, absently, eyeing Eros as he walked into the room to pay his respects to Camilla’s sister. He sat with Susana and spoke to her in Italian. The woman nodded at Eros’ words.
“What’s he saying?” I asked David in a hushed voice.
“He’s offering words of comfort, but also manipulating their emotions to ease their grief. He’s letting them feel the love Camilla had for them.”
“That’s nice of him.” I crossed my arms and settled back into the chair, wondering if Eros was doing it all for show, to keep his farce believable.
A couple of hours later Nyx set up dinner in the formal dining room. I don’t think any of us could have eaten in the kitchen, knowing Camilla had died there. I had been avoiding the kitchen on purpose. Not that it was hard since I didn’t have an appetite with the recent events branded into my memory.
Paulina and Susana joined us for dinner. Eros claimed a spot next to me at the table, leaving me seated between David and him. Reminding myself of Gunn’s prognosis about the fat filter my body had so inconveniently grown, I decided to play it safe and had a serving of steamed vegetables, instead of pasta. Everyone turned their attention to their plates and ate in silence. I was thankful for the quiet dinner, because I had to think hard about what my next move would be.
After dinner, Alezzander called David, who excused himself with a face of dread and walked out of the living room to speak to his father. Nyx was speaking with Susana when Paulina walked over to me and asked if we could talk in private. It made me uncomfortable, but I agreed. I hoped that she wouldn’t apologize. She had no reason to.
Paulina led me into her room, which I didn’t know was beyond the stairs on the first floor. I had never been to that part of the house before. The bedroom was a bit smaller than mine. Her bed was covered in a flowered yellow and white duvet. A gold crucifix hung right above the white headboard.
As she closed the door behind her, Paulina didn’t waste a moment.
“Before I leave, I have to tell you everything,” she said.
This can’t be good. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what Paulina had to say, but I asked anyway.
“About my purpose?”
“No.” Paulina looked around the room with apprehension splayed across her face. She held her hands up to her mouth, then looked at me and said, “I killed Camilla.”
What. The. Hell? Wide-eyed, I took a few steps back and away from Paulina.
“You don’t understand—she was going to kill me.” Paulina muffled her cries with her hands. “And she was going to kill you, too. That’s why she sent me to call you. Only, it wasn’t her. It was the thing inside of her.”
“You lied?” As shocked as I was, I tried to take in what she had just told me. “She was possessed?”
Paulina nodded, wiping away the tears with the back of her trembling hand. “I was sent here by my mother two years ago when I was attacked in Italy.” She touched the scar on her chin. “And then it happened again. This is from the second attack.” She lifted her skirt, exposing a long, concave disfigurement that ran from her knee to the inside of her thigh. “My uncle did this to me when they took control of him.” She looked up at me through her wet eyelashes. “The town’s priest let the people burn him alive, because even he was too afraid to perform an exorcism.”
I shivered from the vivid images produced in my head by her story.
“So—they’re after you, too? Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“They thought I was you.” She sniffled.
“What do you mean?”
She walked to her packed suitcase, zipped open a pocket, and pulled out a piece of paper. “Here,” she said. “Look at this.”
I unfolded the sheet. It was written in Italian except for one line.
“This has my name on it.” I raised the paper. “Why do you have a piece of paper with my name on it?”
“It’s my birth certificate.” She took the paper from my hand. “My name is Isis Martin.”
I stood silent, assessing the degree of psychosis that a person could reach after the disturbing death of a loved one.
“Paulina, I don’t know where you got that paper, but I think maybe you may need a doctor.”
“Listen to what I’m telling you!” She waved the paper in my face. “My name is Isis. My sister is Paulina. I was too young to apply for a migrant work permit so we used her papers to bypass immigration because she’s older and we look alike.” Paulina, lowered her hands to her sides. “You need to leave here before they come back. Now that they found the Isis Martin they want, the demons will all come at once.”
“That’s ridiculous. I don’t think demons can mistake identities.”
“Why not? We have the same name,” she paused, “and we were born one day apart.”
“How do you know—”
“Your name was on the airline tags on your suitcases.” She turned her back to me. “And I saw your passport.”
“You searched my things?”
“I had to make sure.” She slipped the document she had showed me back into the suitcase pocket and zipped it. “Camilla kept saying the demons were telling her to kill Isis.”
“That part of your alibi was true, then?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “She would speak to them, and I could smell them in her presence. They were driving her mad. The same thing happened to my uncle.”
“Yeah, I know how they work.” Blurred images of a crazed and possessed Gabriel flashed in my head. All of my insides trembled as I relived the moment. “Do you know why they want to kill us?”
“Us? No. They no longer want me, and I don’t know why they want to kill you.” She sat on the suitcase she had been standing in front of. “Do you believe in God, Isis?”
The question caught me by surprise.
“I do.”
“He spoke to me once.” She touched the scar on her chin. “He told me my purpose. Do you want to know what He said?”
A little shiver ran up my spine. I rubbed the back of my neck to settle the goose bumps. “Okay.”
“He said He had a job for me. He said I could die if I accepted. Then he showed me an image.” Paulina’s bronze eyes wandered over to the metallic cross on the wall. “I was only seven years old, but I understood.”
“What was it—the image He showed you?”
“It was like…” Paulina shrugged. “It was nothing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I saw absence. There was nothing left.”
“Nothing left of what?”
“Of anything. It was over. We were gone.”
“You’re talking about the end of the world.”
“No, the world was still here. It was life that was gone.” She rose up from the suitcase, glanced at the crucifix, then back to me. “You should know that I’m no longer your scapegoat. You’re on your own. I’m sorry for everything you’ll have to deal with.” Paulina spun on her heel and walked toward the door.
Could it be that she had been taking all the attacks that were intended for me? It made sense. She was a decoy. My decoy. But there were still something I wasn’t clear on.
“Wait—wait,” I said, walking after her and taking her by the arm. “You told me that Camilla said I had a purpose. What am I supposed to do?”
“Ugh!” Paulina flinched at my grip on her arm,
and I released it. I guessed my physical strength was increasing as Eros had said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“If I knew what your purpose was, I would’ve already told you.” She twisted the knob and stared at the door for a moment. “You have to leave here. Run. Hide. Stay alive. Kill if you have to.” She turned to look at me. “And if you say anything about Camilla, I’ll tell your boyfriend about you and the Frenchman.”
My stomach cramped with nerves from both the advice and threat. Paulina didn’t give me time to react. Her skirt tail floated through the doorway, following her into the hall, her back straightened in poise. A moment later, I hurried after her and caught up.
“Murder is hardly a comparison, you know?” I said in a hushed voice.
“Life, death, and love have the same worth.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I knew it too well.
Standing next to Susana and Nyx, David looked surprised to see Paulina and me entering the living room together.
“Everything alright?” David asked, and I nodded.
Paulina lowered her head and glanced at David from under her black lashes, then quickly looked away. It wasn’t hard to see that Isis Martin number two was still attracted to him. It annoyed me. I grimaced at the thought of David being with someone other than me.
I’m a hypocrite. He’ll be better off without me.
“Your mother needs to rest,” Nyx said to Paulina. “We all do.”
Susana looked at us with weary eyes and took Paulina’s arm.
“Buonanotte,” Susana said in Italian.
“Buonanotte,” David and Nyx responded to Susana.
“Goodnight,” I said.
Mother and daughter disappeared into the corridor, and soon after, we heard the door to Paulina’s room close. David locked his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling, taking in a lungful of air.
“Your father’s call,” Nyx said. “What happened?”
“Our absences in the meetings of the Clergy haven’t gone unnoticed. The Council is questioning Father. We must all make an appearance tomorrow during the morning summit, or they’ll come here.”