The Villa(48)

But just like before, there’s this sensation, almost like a hand guiding me, and I move toward the window seat.

The M etched in the glass seems to be watching me as I lift the cushion off the bench, feeling stupid even as my heart races and my palms sweat.

There’s just a flat wooden surface, and when I pull at the edge, nothing happens. I hadn’t really expected the entire seat to lift up, revealing a treasure trove, but I’m still a little disappointed.

But it was silly to think that Mari would’ve left anything here back in 1993. She probably just came for some kind of closure in her final days.

Except that I kept returning to that same thorny issue. This was the spot where her boyfriend had been horribly murdered—wasn’t that closure enough? Why revisit the scene of the crime, literally?

But after she died, several unpublished books—everything she had written since Lilith Rising—had been found hidden around her apartment.

So, maybe it wasn’t completely crazy to think Mari came back here to hide one last thing. Maybe I just misinterpreted the riddle.

That’s when I spot it.

The window seat isn’t completely flush with the wall, and at some point, someone had added a thin piece of wood to fill in the gap. It’s painted the same shade of white, so the seam is barely visible, but it’s there.

I grasp the end of the board and gently pull.

At first, it seems as solid as the rest of the seat, but then there’s a slight give, and suddenly there’s a thin piece of wood in my hand.

Gingerly, I slide my hand inside the gap between the wall and the bench, visions of something lurching out of the dark to bite my fingers, my heart pounding in my ears, but there’s no sharp sting, no pain.

There’s just the rustle of paper.

Mouth dry, I pull out a folded stack of yellow paper and when I open it, I see each line filled in a neat, economical scrawl.

And at the top, the words that make me lift a trembling hand to my mouth.

Mari—London, 1974.





MARI, 1974—ORVIETO


The scream doesn’t just wake her.

It sends Mari hurtling into consciousness, her brain rattling in her skull. She’d always thought it was a cliché, that moment of someone sitting straight up in bed, heart pounding, but that’s where she is now, hand pressed to her chest as she searches the room for the source of that sound.

She’s sees almost immediately that it’s Pierce. They’d fallen asleep peacefully enough earlier, wrapped up in each other, sweat still drying on their skin, but now he’s out of bed, crouched naked in one corner of the room, his hands over his ears, his eyes wild.

And he’s still screaming, screaming and screaming, the sound so loud that Mari is forced to get out of bed and go to him, grabbing his wrists as she tries to wake him.

“Pierce!” she says, her voice sharp. “Pierce!”

She can hear footsteps in the hall, and then Lara’s voice at the door. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” Mari calls back, even though Pierce is still whimpering at her feet, blinking like he’s trying to clear his head.

“Go back to bed!” Mari adds, and she kneels down in front of Pierce. He’s covered in sweat, almost glowing in the moonlight spilling through the window, and Mari brushes his hair back from his face.

The rain has returned and with it, the oppressiveness of the house, a feeling that seems to affect Pierce more than any of them, and Mari sometimes has the crazy thought that maybe they were the ones causing it, that all their tension and weird energy was spinning out and up into the sky.

“It’s all right, love,” Mari says, and she’s assailed by the memory of holding Billy as he burned like an ember against her chest, shushing him and speaking the same words into his damp hair.

It’s all right, love.

They’re not words anyone has ever said to her.

“I … I was dreaming,” Pierce gulps out, his hand shaking as he reaches up to grab Mari’s wrist. “But it was real, Mare, it was so … so fucking real.…”

She doesn’t bother reminding him that this is why they’d agreed that while booze is fine, he should lay off the drugs. They always mess with his mind like this, make him see things or hear things or have these horrible nightmares he can never shake. He’ll be ruined for days now, she knows. No music, no writing.

“What was in the dream?” she asks, trying to make her voice soothing and steady. He looks at her, his face somehow going even whiter in the moonlight.

“You,” he says, and then she shakes his head again, pulling his hand back from hers. “You were covered in blood. Reaching out. And it was … it was like you were so tall, and I was so small, I was crouching at your feet.”

Pierce breaks off then, putting his face in his hands. “It was so fucking wild. I was looking up at you and all that blood and thinking, she’s inevitable, she’s inevitable, like this fucking drumbeat.…”

Mari lifts his face again, looking into his eyes. “It was just a dream, Pierce. See? Look. No blood.” She holds up both her hands. “Just me.”

He gives another shuddering sigh, leaning forward to rest his head against her breasts, and she keeps stroking his hair, feeling his sweat and tears soaking through her nightgown.