Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ten thousand words.

I look at the number at the bottom of the page on my laptop again, and no, I’m not imagining it.

In the past three days, I’ve written ten thousand words, which is more than I’ve written in the last eight months combined.

Granted, not a one of those ten thousand words is about Petal Bloom, a fact that probably won’t thrill my editor, and certainly doesn’t help my bank account, but for the first time in ages, I actually feel like me again. Writer me, losing herself for hours at her laptop, slipping into some kind of jet stream only I can feel.

The only problem is I’m not sure what it is I’m writing exactly.

The name of the document is “TheVillaBook.doc” but it’s not about the villa, really. Or not just about the villa. It’s part biography of Mari Godwick, part true crime dealing with the murder of Pierce Sheldon, and part personal narrative—my Italian summer, post-divorce, where instead of eating, praying, and loving, I became interested in the link between a horror classic and the real-life horror that unfolded at the villa where I was staying.

It’s not like anything I’ve ever written before, but there’s something there, I’m sure of it, and even Rose seemed cautiously optimistic when she replied to my email, reminding me that I should still make the next Petal Bloom book the priority, but that she was just glad I seemed excited about writing again.

And I am. As excited as I can remember being in a long time.

A couple of years ago, just after Matt made his big baby announcement at Thanksgiving, I’d been between Petal books, and decided to try my hand at something different, something darker, edgier. I think there had been a part of me afraid that if I didn’t start it then, I might never do it, that I’d get too busy with life, with a baby, with the other Petal books still under contract.

It was never a book, never anything more than a quickly sketched-out premise about twin sisters in North Carolina, one of them a murderer, but which one? Still, I’d loved working on it, stayed up late just to spend more time with those characters, made playlists and Pinterest boards, thought about them when I was driving, when I was at the gym.

I always thought that’s why Matt’s reaction had been so lukewarm when he read the few chapters I’d written. He hadn’t liked how much it had consumed me, kept asking if I “really thought this was the best time to veer from the course,” and of course, it’s hard to try for a baby when your wife is practically glued to her laptop.

But maybe Matt had seen something in the pages that I hadn’t because when I’d sent them off to Rose, she’d come back with a very kind, very gentle reminder that I still had two more Petal books under contract, and the thriller market was so crowded.

You’re so good at what you do!she’d said over the phone. Do you know how hard it is to write cozies? Anyone can write these kinds of dark, twisted books. Think of this as a fun little exercise you did to get limbered up to work on Petal #7, okay?

It shouldn’t have hit that hard. Books were a business, after all, and Rose was smart, and probably right, and whatever that book might have been, it was now sitting on a flash drive that I’d misplaced somewhere in the house.

Besides, right after that was when I’d started feeling sick, so it was probably for the best I hadn’t started some big new project then, but I still thought of it sometimes, still wished I could slip back into the flow I’d felt working on it.

And today I had.

Closing the laptop, I stand up and stretch, looking out my bedroom window to see Chess outside on the lawn. She’s sitting on a striped blanket, her laptop perched on her knees, and even though her sunhat means I can’t see her face, I can see that, for once, her fingers aren’t flying over the keyboard.

They’re just sort of … hovering.

I know that position well, but Chess always seems to be barreling through her book, so it’s weird seeing her just sitting there, tortured by the blinking cursor.

Tires crunch on the gravel out front, and I turn away from the window, heading downstairs.

As I’d thought, it’s Giulia, coming in with a load of groceries, and she brightens when she sees me.

“Buongiorno, signorina!” she calls out. Giulia is a little older than us, probably in her mid-forties, and she always seems to be in the best mood any person has ever been in.

I gesture to the open door, her car beyond.

“Let me help you with that.”

She gives me a grateful nod, and we quickly get the remaining food inside.

I always enjoy Giulia’s visits. Maybe it’s because she’s always so sunny and easy to talk to, or maybe I just need a little conversation that isn’t with Chess. In any case, I’m glad she’s here this morning because I’ve been meaning to ask her about something.

“Giulia,” I ask, sitting down at the kitchen table and pulling an orange out of the big bowl of fruit, “Was someone from your family working here in 1974?”

Giulia pauses as she unloads the bag and turns to look over her shoulder at me, a smile curling her lips. “Ooh, are you one of them?” she asks in her accented English, and I laugh, digging my nails into the skin of the orange.

“One of who?”

“The true crime people,” she says. “With your podcasts and your Netflix.”

I shake my head, still smiling. “No. Or, I mean, I wasn’t? Maybe I am now?”

She nods, turning back to the bag. “That’s how it happens, I think.”

“It’s just interesting,” I say, wondering if I’m trying to convince her or myself. “And weird that no one really talks about it that much anymore given that it involved famous people.”

Giulia moves to the fridge, her ponytail swinging. “It’s a good thing people forgot it. I like working here, and I want nice people like you and Signorina Chandler. Not weirdos who come here for murder.”

Fair enough. Villa Aestas is a peaceful, pretty place that doesn’t deserve to be tainted by one bad night fifty years ago.

I’m just about to get up from the table when Giulia adds, “But to answer your question, yes.”

She closes the fridge with a thunk and turns around. “My aunt Elena was working here that summer. She actually testified at the trial. Made her a little famous for a time.”

Giulia sighs, her hand going to her bangs. “Ruined her life, though. Made her think she was somebody when really she was just a part of a somebody’s story.”

Part of a somebody’s story.It’s a twisty turn of phrase, one I immediately like, and I tell myself to remember it later.

“Is she still in Orvieto?” I ask, and Giulia shakes her head.

“No, she moved to Rome for a bit in the late seventies, and by 1985, she was dead.” She taps her nose, mimes taking a big sniff. “Drugs.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, instantly wishing I hadn’t brought it up, but Giulia only shrugs again.

“I told you, it ruined her life. Took it in the end.”

Wagging one finger in my direction, Giulia narrows her eyes at me. “So, you leave all that alone,” she tells me. “It’s like a curse, that story.”

She’s joking, being playfully stern, but I think there’s something a little sincere behind it. And given that everyone involved in that summer is now dead, Elena included, I can’t really disagree with her.

Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing about it, though. Not with those ten thousand words sitting on my computer and my brain actually feeling like it’s firing on all cylinders for once.

The door from the back patio opens, and Chess comes in, her laptop tucked under her arm, a rose-gold Hydro Flask in her other hand. “What are you two gossiping about?” she asks, and Giulia laughs, gathering up her purse.

“She wanted to know all about the muuuuurder,” she replies, wiggling her fingers like claws, and Chess shoots me an indulgent look that makes my teeth itch.

“Are you still thinking about that?” she asks.

“I’m writing about it, actually,” I say. “Already have a couple of chapters.”

I don’t know why I tell her, and it’s not technically true, anyway—what I’ve got so far is mostly freeform, nothing organized into sections yet. But saying it out loud makes it feel real, and I want desperately for this to be real. An actual book, a thing I’ve made.

I see the way Chess takes that in, and I nod at her laptop.

“How’s your work coming?”

“Great!” she chirps, too fast and too bright.

Giulia looks between us for a second, and then offers her own too-bright smile.

“You should be set for the next few days, I think. Call me if you need anything else.”

We thank her, and then she’s gone, her little blue car traveling back down the hill, leaving me and Chess alone again.

Chess sits at the table across from me and unscrews the top of her flask. “So, tell me about it,” she says before taking a drink of water. “What you’re working on.”

I make myself lean back, casual, as I pull a section from the orange. “It’s kind of a mix of things. Little bit about the murder, little bit about Lilith Rising, little bit about me.”

Her eyebrows go up. “About you? So, it’s like a memoir?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then, what exactly?”

I laugh, but it sounds shrill. “I don’t know yet, Chess. It’s still in the early stages, but I’m having fun with it at least. And wasn’t that the point of this trip? To get some writing done?”

She acknowledges that with a nod, then folds her arms on the table, leaning in closer. “I’m just surprised, is all. I never thought you’d want to do nonfiction.”

Neither had I. I’ve always liked my stories fictional, preferred inventing characters and situations rather than just reporting them as they happened, but this was different. This felt like … unearthing something. Exorcising it, maybe.

Ooh, that was a good word for it, especially considering the subject matter of Lilith Rising. I should remember that, try to work it into the book.

My fingers were already itching to return to my laptop, brain whirring in that way that tells me I have an excellent few hours of writing ahead of me.

I get up from the table, but as I do, Chess stands, too. “God, do you remember when I took that fiction writing class with you junior year? What was that dickhead professor’s name?”

“Dr. Burke,” I say immediately, not adding that A, she wasn’t a dickhead, and B, I remember her name because she’s in the acknowledgments of the first Petal Bloom mystery. She was the first person who ever told me I might be able to make a living at writing, and it was her voice I heard in my head when I sat down and started that first book, An Evil Evening.

“Dr. Burke,” she repeats, nodding. “Who hated me.”

“She didn’t hate you,” I say, “she was just tough on your stories.”

Chess rolls her eyes. “She told me, and I quote, ‘If you’re this interested in yourself, Miss Chandler, maybe you should move to memoir rather than fiction.’”

I don’t remember that, but it does sound like something Dr. Burke would’ve said. Especially to Chess, who seemed to push her buttons for some reason. That was around the time we were working on Green, and Chess had decided she wanted to take a creative writing class with me, that if we were writing for the same teacher at the same time, it would help our collaboration or something.

Except that Chess had ended up with a C while I made an A, and it wasn’t long after that Green was abandoned.

I wonder why she’s bringing it up now.

“Well, you took that advice,” I remind her. “And sold a gazillion copies and made a gazillion dollars, so maybe you should send Dr. Burke a thank-you note.”

She snorts at that. “Maybe. Anyway, if you need any help, let me know,” she says, and her voice is breezy, but there’s something in her eyes that doesn’t match that tone. “This is my deal, after all. The nonfiction thing. I’m happy to read what you’ve got, give some tips, whatever you need.”

“Thanks,” I tell her, “but it’s really nothing I’d want anyone to read yet. It might not be anything at all.”

A lie. It’s something, I know it is.

And it’s not that I don’t want anyone to read it.

It’s that I don’t want Chess to read it, specifically—and I can’t really explain why.

---

“SO, WHAT IS the book even about?”

It’s two days later, and Chess and I are back in our favorite room in the house, the small sitting room with its soft sofas and crystal candelabras. Tonight’s wine of choice is a red, a Sangiovese that Giulia brought for us, and it’s sliding over my tongue like velvet as I study Chess on the other sofa.

“Lilith Rising,” she clarifies. “I know, I know—you don’t even have a book yet, right?”

What I have is 21,863 words that I now know in my heart are absolutely a book, but I make myself shake my head. “No, I’m still just in the exploratory stage. But you really want to know about Lilith Rising?”

Chess is slouched on the sofa, her feet on the coffee table, the toenails a bright coral, and she lifts her glass like a toast. “If my best friend is obsessed with something, I wanna know about it. Like when you got super into those dragon books in ninth grade, and made me read the little stories you were writing about them.”

I laugh at the memory. “You never even read the dragon books.”

“And I’m probably not going to read Lilith Rising, but I still want you to tell me about it. I know it’s all demons and possession and stuff, but—”

“It’s more than that,” I tell her, and she immediately holds up a hand.

“Okay, sorry to insult your new favorite book. Please continue.”

I throw one of the tiny decorative pillows at her, and she dodges nimbly, her wine sloshing, but not spilling. She’s laughing, and she once again looks like the Chess I knew years ago. Less polished, less perfect, her hair in a messy bun, dressed in an old T-shirt and pajama pants with watermelons on them instead of one of her Guru in Italy looks.

Maybe that’s why I let down my guard a little.

“All right, so Lilith Rising is about this teenage girl, Victoria Stuart, who moves with her family to a big old manor in the English countryside called Somerton House. And everything is perfect and bucolic and summery, and the house isn’t even super creepy, and you’re, like, ‘Oh, okay, so maybe this isn’t gonna be so bad!’ But then she meets this priest, and they fall in love.”

“Hot,” Chess acknowledges, and I nod.

“Also, timely. This book came out right after The Thorn Birds, so everyone was very into that. But this priest is evil.”

“Not exactly a shocking plot twist.”

I forgot how fun it can be to talk with Chess like this, like bouncing a ball back and forth, both of us somehow always knowing the right thing to say to each other. I’ve never experienced that kind of intellectual chemistry with anyone else. Not even Matt.

“No,” I agree, “but that’s kind of the point of the book. By the end, you’re not sure who was the corrupting influence, him or Victoria. And he’s dead, so she’s the only one telling the story, and obviously she’s putting herself in the best possible light. But…”

I sit up, warming to my story, feeling excited all over again. “That’s what’s so cool about the book. Horror was pretty straightforward at the time. This person is bad, they do a bad thing, or this house is bad, it makes people do a bad thing. But Lilith Rising is just really ambiguous. Was there even a demon? Is Victoria making up a story to explain why she does all this violent shit? Or did she just want to kill her family, kill the priest who seduced her, and blame it on some outside force?”

“That is kind of fucking cool,” Chess says, propping her ankle on her knee, her foot jiggling, the light catching on a thin gold anklet she’s wearing.

“It’s very fucking cool,” I assure her. “Plus, at the end of it, she wins! Sure, they ship her off to a hospital for a while, but then in the last chapter, she’s been released and is living back in the house that she loved, and all the other assholes are dead. And so of course, male critics were, like, ‘this is bleak as shit.’”

“And female critics were, like, ‘actually, this rules’?” Chess supplies.

I nod. “Exactly. And that’s why Lilith Rising is considered a masterpiece of feminist horror.”

Chess claps, careful not to spill her wine, and I lift my glass to her. “It’s no TED Talk, I know, but I’ve hit the high notes for you.”

Chess grins at that. “And you think there are more connections between the book and the house than just ‘she wrote it here.’”

A little of my tipsy enthusiasm fades. Now we’re back on my story, and I’m probably imagining it, but there’s something so … avid in Chess’s eyes as she studies me.

“I think there could be,” is all I say.

I don’t tell her what I’ve really been thinking, which is that Mari Godwick wasn’t just writing a book inspired by this house and people she knew. She was actually trying to tell us something, something more about what happened that summer. Was Pierce Sheldon’s death really as simple as a drugged-up argument between two men that went too far? And if it was, why were the survivors so secretive about it for the rest of their lives?

“Your brain is working, I can tell,” Chess says, and no, I’m not imagining it, the hungry expression on her face. Suddenly, I think of the past few days and try to remember if I’ve seen Chess working at all.

She was out most of yesterday, and then the day before, I saw her reading at the pool. I’ve been so absorbed in my own stuff that I haven’t really been paying attention.

And then something in her voice goes sly as she says, “And you’re a dirty rotten liar, because you absolutely have a book.”

I blink at her, my stomach lurching. “What?”

She’s very drunk, I realize now, way more than me, and she’s giggling as she sits up. “Okay, don’t be mad, Emmy…”

Emmy.

It’s always “Em,” unless Chess suspects she’s fucked up. That means she knows I’ll be mad.

“But”—she places both hands on her knees, watching me—“the other day, you left your laptop open when you ran out to the store, and I was just passing by, and maybe I had a teensy little peek.”

Holding her thumb and index finger close together, she gives me what I’m sure she thinks is an endearing squint.

“You read it?” I ask, holding very still, and she drops her hand, some of the silliness immediately falling away from her.

“It’s not like it was some password-protected document, Em. It was just up on your computer, and you’ve been so weird about all of it that I mostly wanted to check and make sure it wasn’t a hundred pages of ‘All Work and No Play Makes Emily a Dull Girl.’ I was looking out for you.”

“You were snooping,” I counter, and she rolls her eyes, throwing up her hands.

“You’re being so dramatic, oh my god. I just read through what you were working on because it was there on an open laptop. And it’s really fucking good, Em! That’s why I wanted to tell you, so that I could compliment you, and now you’re making, like, a federal case out of it.”

“I’m not,” I argue, standing up off the sofa, my shins bumping the coffee table. Chess sits there, her arms crossed now, her expression petulant, and it could be sixth grade again, the time I found her flipping idly through my diary in my bedroom after I’d gone downstairs to get us some snacks.

“You are,” she insists. “And honestly, I’m the one who should be kind of pissed at you.”

Chess Logic is occasionally baffling, but this is particularly confusing. “Um, why?”

“Because you’ve been holding out on me!” She sits forward again, her forearms on her knees. “You were all, ‘Oh, it’s just some ideas, it’s nothing really,’ and then it’s actually this amazing thing about books, and stories, and murder, and life and, like, how do you not see it?”

She slaps the coffee table. “This is it, Em. Fuck Green, and any of our other stupid ideas, this is the book we were meant to write together.”

I stand there, staring at her, surprised by the sudden rush of anger that surges through me.

“What?”

“This is nonfic, Em, and it’s a whole other world than your little garden party murder books. This is the kind of stuff that’s on NPR. Reviewed in the Times. It’s a big idea.”

“And it’s mine,” I say, the words rushing out before I can even think about them, the feeling almost primal.

This is mine.

“I know that,” she says, waving a hand. “But, Em, my name on this could take it even further. And I have some ideas, too, you know, ideas about how we can broaden the story, make it apply to more women.…”

Her eyes are bright now, and I can see it all taking hold of her the same way it’s taken hold of me. I also think of how quickly she gets bored. How this will just end up being another thing she throws herself into only to dump it when it gets too hard or too boring.

But what scares me more is … what if she doesn’t?

“No,” I hear myself say, and she rocks back on the sofa, almost gaping at me. “I don’t want to cowrite this, I … I want to keep working on it. By myself.”

Silence.

The tick of the ormolu clock, the creaking of the house.

My breaths, sawing in and out of my lungs.

And then Chess speaks.

“Fine. It was just an idea.”

I nod, telling myself to unclench. “And in the future, please don’t go through my things.”

She gives the most extravagant eye roll I’ve ever seen. “There was no going through!”

“I’m just saying, I wish you hadn’t done it,” I continue, talking over her, my voice louder, and Chess stands up, too, grabbing her empty glass.

“Okay, well, I did, and I’m sorry, and now I’m going to bed, so please, feel free to work on your precious book without worrying that one word of it will reach my unworthy eyeballs.”

“Now who’s being dramatic?” I call after her, but she’s already stomping up the stairs, probably muttering under her breath about what a bitch I am.

I sit back down on the sofa with a sigh. Maybe this is why Chess and I haven’t spent that much time together in the past few years. Put us in the same room for too long, we fall back into old patterns, old fights.

But it still bothers me, the thought of her scrolling through what I’m working on, not asking, just taking.

Like she always does.

I should go to bed and hope that by tomorrow, she’ll have sobered up and maybe I’ll get an actual apology.

Jesus, if all those fans of hers who think she’s the most enlightened being since Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina could have seen her tonight, I think as I stand up.

Powered Path, my ass.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: [no subject]

S-

Almost done with the excruciatingly titled Swipe Right on Life!, so using this time in Italy to think about what’s next.

I really feel like there are only so many times you can advise women to journal their feelings or start every day with lemon water and cleansing breaths, and we don’t want to go stale. I know the next big thing in wellness seems to be selling $500 vibrators, but I’m not sure that path is for me.

What I’ve been thinking about is—and this will sound nuts, but I swear to you, it’s brilliant—something in the true crime sphere. But not the usual kind of thing, four hundred pages about some dead white girl from Nebraska, I’m talking something a little more elevated, a little more sophisticated.

The villa where I’m staying was the scene of a pretty famous murder in 1974 that involved a bunch of artist types—rock stars, writers, that kind of thing. One of the men was murdered by another guy, blah blah blah, we don’t care so much about the murder. But! The women staying here ended up producing two really important works of twentieth-century art. We get Lilith Rising, a famous feminist horror novel, and Aestas, which is basically Tapestry, but sadder. What if the next book focuses on them and that summer? The ways in which adversity can spur women to creation? How toxic men hold women back from reaching their full artistic potential?

This is amazing, right? You’re dying and imagining putting “National Book Award–Winning” in front of my name, aren’t you?

Will talk soon!

Chess

MARI,1974—ORVIETO

“Fancy getting out of here for a bit?”

Mari has been sitting by the lake, her tears hidden by sunglasses, and she wipes quickly at her cheeks as she looks up at Johnnie.

She’s surprised to see him, given that he’s been keeping his distance ever since that night in the study. Maybe Lara told him what she saw, or maybe he’d just sussed it out on his own, but Mari sensed that he knew something had happened between her, Noel, and Pierce, and that it had hurt him.

There hasn’t been a repeat of that one mad night, but Lara is still upset and Noel is snapping at her too much, which in turn makes Pierce angry. (God forbid he miss leaping to Lara’s defense, Mari has thought more than once.)

And Johnnie …

Johnnie had seemed to be slipping further and further away from all of them, lost in a haze that Mari had not quite understood until she’d seen Pierce emerge from Johnnie’s room, holding a small packet.

You didn’t know?he’d asked when Mari had questioned Pierce. That’s why he’s here. He’s Noel’s dealer, and Noel didn’t want to be stuck in Italy without … resources. Why did you think he was here?

I thought they were friends,she’d replied, and Pierce had laughed in that way he did, smoothing her hair back to kiss her forehead.

My innocent girl,he’d said, and then his eyes had heated, and he’d taken her to bed, and she’d forgotten how much she hated it when he called her things like that.

But now Johnnie looks like he did the first day they arrived, bright and happy, his skin golden in the sunlight, and if he sees she’s been crying, he doesn’t mention it.

“Where did you have in mind?”

“Needed to go into town,” he says, nodding in the direction of Orvieto. “Thought you might like to come along.”

Mari thinks about that packet in Pierce’s hand again and wonders if that’s the reason for Johnnie’s errand. But she hasn’t been writing, and the tension in the house has started to give her a headache.

And it’s Billy’s birthday.

Or it would be his birthday, if he had lived.

He would be two, an idea that is almost impossible to contemplate. He was only nine months old when he died, a baby still, chubby and sweet in her arms. What would he be like at two? Would his blond hair have darkened to Pierce’s brown or reddened like her own? What words would he be saying?

All of it hurts to think about, hurts in a way she can hardly bear, and it hurts all the more to know that Pierce doesn’t remember the date.

She’d waited this morning for him to say something, even to simply catch her eye or pull her into his arms wordlessly.

But nothing.

So yes, the idea of zipping down the mountain in the ridiculous sports car Noel lets Johnnie drive, feeling the wind and summer sun on her skin, is appealing enough to make her put aside any misgivings about why Johnnie might need to go into town. What resources he might be bringing back to the villa for Noel to use.

“I would, actually,” she tells him, and he offers a hand, pulling her to her feet. His palm is warm against hers, bicep flexing beneath the tight sleeve of his Jefferson Airplane T-shirt, and when she’s upright, he doesn’t let go right away, pulling her just the littlest bit closer.

Testing the waters, maybe, seeing how she’ll respond, but Mari just pulls her hand back from his with a flustered sort of laugh, and he gives an easy shrug, hands shoved in his back pockets.

“You all right?” he asks as they make their way across the lawn, and Mari looks over at him sharply. He had noticed her red eyes. He had, and Pierce hadn’t.

For a moment, she thinks about lying. Saying she’s fine, or even making up some other less-tragic reason to have been crying by the lake.

She surprises herself by telling him the truth.

“I had a baby. Billy,” she tells him, wrapping her arms around her body. “Two years ago. He was born two years ago today.”

Johnnie stops, turning toward her, his brows drawn together, but he doesn’t say anything, and that makes it easier for Mari to go on. “He got sick,” she continues. “When Pierce was on tour with the Faire last year. We … we thought it was just a cold. All babies get them, you know?”

Billy’s body in her arms, hot against her chest, his breathing wet and ragged, and there was no money for a doctor’s visit, everything they had was keeping them on the road, and didn’t she see, didn’t she understand, they were so close, they couldn’t leave the tour now, and Billy was strong, Billy was always healthy, Billy was going to be fine, just like everything was always going to be fine …

Until it wasn’t.

“He died,” she says. She is struck, as she always is, by how small those words are, how simple. How they sum up what happened and don’t come anywhere close to capturing the horror, all at once.

She doesn’t tell Johnnie about the rest of it: the grief that ate her alive, the long days she can’t even remember now. How she’d wanted nothing more than to go home, but how even the death of her child hadn’t softened her father’s heart toward her.

How she’d learned then that her home was with Pierce—with Pierce and with Lara, both—for good.

“I’m sorry,” Johnnie says now, because what else can he say? But when Mari looks up at him, she sees his expression is serious, his eyes warm behind his sunglasses, and she’s thankful for that.

When he’s not high or trying too hard to impress her or Noel, he’s a good guy, Johnnie. Later, this is a memory that will break her heart a thousand times over.

In the moment, though, she just smiles and nods. “Anyways,” she says, heading toward Noel’s car, “I could use an outing today.”

There’s more Johnnie would like to say, she can tell, and she doesn’t miss the strange look he shoots at the house in the direction of the bedroom she shares with Pierce.

They reach the car, and Johnnie opens her door for her before sliding into the driver’s side, keys already in the ignition.

He’s just put the car in reverse when the front door suddenly flies open, and Noel is there, wearing a pair of jeans that Mari thinks might be Pierce’s and one of those flowy white shirts he seems to have an endless supply of. Before she even has time to make sense of what’s happening, he’s opening the car door behind Mari and flinging himself into the backseat with a dramatic sigh.

“Where are we going?” he asks, but before Johnnie can answer, he waves a hand. “Fuck it, I don’t care. Tell me you’re going to drive this car off a cliff and I’d still rather be here than in that house.”

Johnnie glances over at Mari, frowning slightly even as he continues to pull the car out of the driveway, and she looks back toward the villa

It’s stupid, that sudden surge of panic she feels, that silly, childish urge to ask Johnnie to stop the car, to let her go back inside. All so that Pierce and Lara won’t be alone in the house together.

She almost gives in to it. Her hand actually moves to the door handle, her lips part, and then she catches Noel’s gaze in the rearview mirror.

He’s watching her, waiting to see what she’ll do, the tiniest smile playing along his lips.

Is that why he’d suddenly decided to join them? Is he playing one of his weird little fucking games?

In that case, Mari isn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

She places her hands in her lap and faces forward, and if she hears a snicker from the backseat, she ignores it.

---

JOHNNIE HAD WARNED Noel to stay in the car lest he start some kind of riot, but Noel had insisted on walking the streets of Orvieto with them. He’s plopped Mari’s hat on his head, pulling the floppy brim low, and with Johnnie’s sunglasses covering most of his face, he’s actually fairly well disguised.

Or maybe it’s that Noel’s fame is beginning to fade. Because while heads do turn in their direction as they make their way through the narrow streets, Mari suspects it has more to do with Noel’s ridiculous getup than the locals actually recognizing that there’s an international celebrity in their midst.

“I’m not disrupting a planned romantic interlude, am I?” he asks Mari in a low voice as Johnnie walks slightly ahead of them, and Mari shoots him a look.

“Even if you were, would you care?” she asks, and he chuckles.

“I’m merely teasing, Mistress Mary. It’s very clear your heart belongs only to Pierce. Shame John-o there hasn’t quite picked up on that yet.”

Mari watches Johnnie ahead of them, sees the way eyes linger on his tall form, and shakes her head. “You’re wrong about him.”

“Am I? He’s been glaring daggers at Sheldon for the past week.”

Mari had noticed that, too, but she thought it might be more about Noel than about her. She still didn’t understand the nature of Johnnie and Noel’s relationship, and now, as Johnnie glances back at them, his eyes once again straying to Noel, she wonders again whether there’s more to the story than Pierce had suggested.

Noel reaches down, grabbing her hand and tugging hard, nearly pulling her off her feet. “Come on,” he says, and then cups a hand around his mouth and shouts, “John-o! See you back at the car, mate!”

Johnnie stops, his handsome face creasing with confusion. “Where are you going?” he calls back, and Noel holds up his and Mari’s clasped hands, shaking them.

“To hell!” he calls back, and then he’s pulling Mari down a twisting street.

The day has turned slightly chillier, clouds piling up thick and gray, when Noel brings them to a stop in front of a squat, circular building.

“Pozzo di San Patrizio!” Noel exclaims, sleeves falling back as he gestures up at the building, and Mari remembers Johnnie mentioning this.

The well named after a place in Ireland and said to spiral down into hell.

A shiver races down her spine that has nothing to do with the weather.

“Shall we descend?” Noel asks her, reaching for the door, but before he can open it, a man in some sort of uniform rushes forward, a rush of Italian spilling from his lips.

Mari can only pick up the odd word, but she knows they’re being told to bugger off, and she’s about to suggest they do just that, but then she sees the moment the man recognizes Noel.

“The Rovers!” he says in a thick Italian accent. “Rovers!”

Noel smiles, but it’s a little tight around the edges as he nods, and then makes an elaborate gesture back at Mari that has the guard—if that’s what he is—chuckling and nodding in that way that men do, and has Mari rolling her eyes.

But the door is opened, and she follows Noel into cool darkness.

It smells metallic, like earth and stone and water. Shafts of sunlight shine through narrow windows carved along the top of the spiraling path that descends into the side of the mountain. She can hear a slow drip, the slap of her sandals, and she wonders how many feet have walked this same sloping ramp, wearing grooves in the rock. How many people, long since dead, made this same descent. The thought seems morbid, but it comforts her, oddly. Especially today.

People are never just gone, after all. There are always marks, always signs.

“I have to say, this is substantially less dreary than I expected.” Noel’s words echo around them, and Mari snorts, poking him in the back.

“Less dreary than you’d hoped,” she corrects him. In the fading light, she can see him grin as he replies, “Guilty.”

It’s growing darker as they walk farther, the sound of water louder now, and Mari looks around, letting her fingers graze the cold walls.

“Do you think this really could reach all the way to hell?” Mari asks absentmindedly, and from just ahead and below, she hears Noel laugh.

“Depends on if you believe in hell, I suppose. I, for one, very sincerely and very obviously hope there is not one, but maybe we should cut this walk short just in case.”

“You just don’t want to walk all the way back up to the top.”

“If you were a man, I’d call you out for that.”

Mari’s laugh sounds too loud in this solemn place, but she doesn’t mind. She’s feeling better now, a little lighter. Her mind has started drifting back to Victoria, back to the book. Maybe she can use this spot, somehow. Is there a well at Somerton? Could it be a place where—

“Didn’t your mother write about Hell? Something about a demon?” Noel suddenly says, and Mari is so surprised, she nearly stumbles down the steps.

Noel pauses, turning to look back at her. “Is it gauche to bring up someone’s dead mother whilst journeying into the underworld?”

Recovering herself, Mari shrugs. “Probably, but when has a fear of being gauche ever stopped you from anything, milord?”

Noel laughs and turns back around, taking the steps a little slower now. Mari trails behind, her fingers brushing the stone as she says, “And yes. She did. Although the entire point of that story was that Lilith wasn’t a demon at all, just a wronged woman.”

Mari hasn’t read her mother’s writing in a while. When she was younger, she’d gobbled it up in secret, spending hours in the library with her mother’s one book in her hands, her fingers tracing the words. Mari’s father had kept Marianne’s writing in the house, of course, multiple editions of the book of short stories, all her articles cut out and carefully preserved in an oxblood leather album, but Mari had never asked to see them. She’d always felt that doing so would just remind her father that she was the reason his brilliant, talented wife was dead.

Not that he needed such a reminder, of course. She knew that now. But that’s how it had worked in her childish brain, and so Mari just had that one library copy, read and reread and finally, shamefully, pilfered in her satchel to be hidden under the mattress in her bedroom.

The same copy has come with her to Orvieto because it goes with her everywhere, even though it’s been some time since she’s opened it. Still, she likes having it near, likes the cracked spine and the title, Heart’s Blood and Other Stories, in faded gold foil on the green fabric cover.

“The First Wife” was the shortest story in Marianne’s collection, almost more like a poem, really, a metaphorical, lyrical take on the legend of Lilith, said to be Adam’s wife before Eve. But Lilith had been made of the same earth as Adam rather than made from him, and she hadn’t been obedient, which of course made her wicked.

Marianne clearly hadn’t thought so, and neither did Mari. In fact, she remembered the first time she’d read that story, sitting there at the long table behind the rows of books by old dead men, and thought how thrilling it was, having a mother who would write something like this.

It had caused a minor scandal on publication, Mari had later learned, throwing churches and priests all in a tizzy. Thinking of it now, Mari knows she’ll want to reread it once they get back to the house. Maybe immersing herself in her mother’s words will bring Victoria’s voice back to her.

“Listen, Mari,” Noel suddenly says, stopping so abruptly she nearly runs into his back. He turns around, looking up at her since she’s still on a step above him.

“I was only teasing about Johnnie earlier, but … truly, you’re not interested, are you?”

Mari’s brain is still on her mother, on “The First Wife,” so it takes her a moment to even understand what Noel is talking about, and even once she does, she’s confused.

“Because if you are, that’s certainly your prerogative,” he hurries on, “and let me not to the marriage of true minds—”

Rolling her eyes, Mari gives him another shove, this one slightly harder.

“Piss off.”

Noel gives an exaggerated grimace, but Mari thinks he’s actually a bit relieved, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “Okay, so you don’t reciprocate young Johnnie’s feelings then. I didn’t think you did, but you’re a very hard girl to read, Mistress Mary. Still waters and all that.”

Coming from him, Mari suspects that’s a compliment, but she’s still slightly bemused. “What does it matter to you if I did?” she asked, and he glances up at her, one eyebrow raised.

“For one, there’s quite enough sexual intrigue in the house already, don’t you think? And two … well, to be frank, if you want to step out on Sheldon, you could do much better.”

For a moment, Mari wonders if this is Noel making some sort of play for her himself. They haven’t talked about what happened that night, and Noel’s behavior toward her hasn’t changed. But she suspects that if he were declaring himself, he’d be a great deal more forward about it. “I couldn’t ‘step out’ on Pierce,” she tells him. “It isn’t like that with us, we’re … open. Free. Which you should know better than most, frankly.”

Noel makes a rude noise at that. “Please. Sheldon may tell you that, may certainly practice that for himself, but something tells me that if you were ever to act on any attraction or desire without him present, it might be another story.”

Mari has sometimes thought that herself, but she doesn’t want to give Noel the satisfaction of agreeing.

“In any case,” she says now, “I’m not interested in Johnnie. Or anyone besides Pierce.”

“Wound to the ego, balm to the mind,” Noel replies, then sighs, shaking his head. “He’s a good lad, Johnnie. Sweet and loyal. Bit like a spaniel, really. Sadly, a rubbish musician.”

“I haven’t heard him play,” Mari replies, and Noel flicks that away with an elegant gesture.

“You haven’t missed anything, believe me. He’s desperate to get in on the studio time I have booked when we’re back in London, but he just doesn’t have what it takes. I keep him around because he’s gorgeous to look at, and he has a surprising talent for finding any kind of … let us say, recreational substance a man might desire, no matter where one is in the world. Last year, he managed to get hashish in the Outer fucking Hebrides. Otherworldly, I tell you. Honestly, I thought about letting him play on the album just as a reward for that alone, but Sheldon is right—if one element is out of place, the whole thing falls apart.”

Mari’s first reaction is relief that Pierce and Noel have been talking about music at all. But then she thinks about how kind Johnnie was to her earlier, and her heart aches for him. She knows what it’s like to want something and feel like it’s close, but just out of reach. How much it must sting, watching Noel and Pierce play together and being shut out. To see Noel turn his attention to Pierce, to give Pierce the opportunity that Johnnie himself has been craving.

The well, which had felt magical and soothing earlier, now feels too small, too narrow, and Mari is intensely aware of the layers of rock and soil above her, around her, below her.

She turns and begins trudging back up the stairs, her breath harsh in her ears, her eyes fixed on her sandals, and she doesn’t see Johnnie sitting on one of the steps until she nearly trips over him, a startled, “Oh!” flying from her lips as her hands land awkwardly on his knees.

He’s holding himself stiffly, and Mari knows, immediately, that he heard every word Noel said. Maybe it didn’t come as a surprise, but thinking a thing and having it confirmed are different beasts, as she well knows.

“Johnnie,” she breathes, and he stands up quickly, his hands taking hers as he helps her up onto the next step.

“What did you think of hell?” he asks, and tries to give her that bright smile she’s used to, but it falters just the littlest bit.

“Hellish,” she replies, trying to match his fake cheer as Noel comes up behind her, slightly wary.

“John-o,” he says, but Johnnie only smiles at him, too.

“Got everything,” he tells Noel, patting his pockets with a knowing look. “We should be set for the next week or so at least.”

“Good man,” Noel says, clapping him on the shoulder, and if Mari sees something flicker in Johnnie’s eyes, she blames it on the light.