Indigo(46)

The tears that seared her cheeks, though … did they belong to her or her shadow self? What was the difference now? Who was she after all?

A betrayed child of human monsters?

A slave to a demon?

A woman whose entire life was a lie?

Where was Nora in all of that? Who was Nora?

And what was Indigo? How much of her was hers, and how much was the demon who moved within her like a virus, infecting her, controlling her, feeding off the things she did?

Too many questions.

Too many.

Nora wept against the cold stone, not knowing or caring where she was.

Unsure if she wanted to know who she was.

And dreadfully afraid of what she was.

*

The voice said, “Are you all right?”

But those were not the actual words. It took Nora’s numbed mind a moment to realize that the question had been asked in Italian.

“Stai bene?”

Those were the words she’d heard … but she’d understood them in English. She raised her head and looked at the figure standing a few feet away. It was a nun. Ancient, her face a labyrinth of deep wrinkles, mouth thin and trembling, nose bulbous and a bit crooked. But her eyes were strangely young. They were bright green, like cat’s eyes, with no trace of glaucoma, no rheumy redness to the sclera.

Nora licked her lips. “I don’t understand,” she told the nun.

But her mouth said, “Non capisco.”

The nun smiled. A thin smile, oddly knowing. “Da dove vieni?”

“Where am I from?” Nora looked around. The wall against which she’d been leaning was a massive structure, broad though only a few stories high, made from massive rough brown stones. A sloping grade of stony concrete swept down to a narrow, crooked cobblestoned street. A handful of people sat at sidewalk tables, drinking tiny cups of coffee and eating croissants. The sign on the wall of the little restaurant read CAFFè DELLA GALLERIA. “Where the hell am I?”

“Dove credi di essere?” Where do you think you are?

Nora said, more as a question than a statement, “Italy…?”

The nun shook her head. “Firenze.”

Nora blinked in surprise. “Florence? How—?”

She stopped, unwilling to have that conversation with a stranger. She knew how. Shadows. The real question was “Why?” or … “Why here?”

She had no connection with Italy beyond a love of pizza, cannoli, and a good Chianti.

Continuing to speak in Italian, the nun took a tentative step closer. “Are you lost, my child?”

Nora began to turn away, to wave her off, a denial forming on her lips, wanting to end this conversation so she could find another doorway into shadow and get the hell out of here. Instead, she stopped and her mind replayed the question.

Something was wrong.

Her confused mind had heard the nun ask if she was okay. A kind question, spoken with compassion by a woman whose job description required compassion. But then the actual words came through the fog in Nora’s mind. The nun hadn’t asked a question at all. No. She had made a statement. Two words.

“Sei perso.” Nora turned back to the nun. “You are lost.”

That was what the old woman had said.

And she hadn’t said it nicely.

“Wh-what did you say?”

“You are lost. So lost.”

“What do you mean? You don’t even know who I am.”

“I know.”

“Prove it.”

The smile on the old nun’s face widened, revealing yellow teeth that were wet with spit. “I know you, Nora Hesper, born of shadows, fattened on lies, blood traitor, daughter of fools, slave and whore of the Butcher.”

Each word struck Nora like a physical blow, pummeling her, driving her back step by step until she sagged gasping against the wall.

“Who are you?”

Instead of answering the nun spat on the ground at Nora’s feet. The spittle glistened on the stone and then began to sizzle like fat on a griddle. Nora yelped and scuttled sideways.

None of the people at the café across the street had noticed. They were all caught up in their envelopes of privacy, talking, laughing, hunched over coffee cups and cell phone screens.

All traces of humor were gone from the old woman’s face. Her smile crushed downward to become a heavy sneer of disgust. The mass of wrinkles tightened into a lupine leer as the nun raised a liver-spotted hand and pointed one thin and twisted finger at Nora and rattled off something else in a language that sounded so familiar and yet which Nora could not understand. Even though Indigo’s powers had somehow allowed her to understand and speak Italian, this language eluded her. And yet …

And yet …

It was so strangely familiar. Nora was sure she should know this language, and that was certainly as strong as anything in her mind. She’d heard this language somewhere. Some … when, but it was hidden back in the damaged darkness of her mind. Fumbling for it was like trying to pick up pieces of broken glass. It hurt her to try. It made her want to scream.

The woman spoke at length, hissing and snarling her strange words, pronouncing them like an accusation. Or a curse. Then Nora heard a single word in the midst of the tirade. A name, spoken with such intense hatred that it sounded as if it must have drawn blood in the nun’s throat.