Inferno (Blood for Blood #2) (8 page)

I circled the house again. In the driveway I stared up at the old turrets, feeling a stirring sadness in my bones. It felt peculiar, standing alone in the grounds of a place that had brought such great passion and grave danger into my life. Jack’s dealings with the Falcones were forged long ago in the underbelly of Chicago, but my time with the Falcones had taken root here, in the driveway of this lonely old mansion.

I pulled Luca’s switchblade from my pocket and rotated it
in my hand. Underneath, the jagged cut in the centre of my palm glowed red. This knife was the last piece of them. I could leave it here with the rest of my memories, but somehow it didn’t seem right. To drop it in a place they would never revisit seemed like cheating. I would return it to Luca, or at least to somewhere he would find it.

I stuffed it back in the pocket of my shorts and turned for the diner, trailing my fingers along the tree bark as I retreated down the driveway.

I saw it then. Outside the black gates, halfway down the other side of the street, was the black Mercedes. I craned my neck and stood on my tiptoes. Black rims! There was no mistaking it; the car was back and it was getting bolder, following me around in broad daylight.

I marched towards the end of the driveway. Down the street the car door was flung open and the girl with purple hair emerged on to the footpath. She was wiry but small, wearing low-rise jeans and a black tank top.
A Falcone
, I thought. There were definite shades of Elena Genovese-Falcone in her. She had to be one of them, a spy probably, which only added another lie to the pile Nic had built already.

This had gone on long enough.

I squeezed myself through the gap in the chained gates again. It was harder this time because I had an audience, and I was vaguely embarrassed of my squishing cheeks as I slid them against the metal. My attempts at intimidating her wouldn’t exactly thrive after my compacted-chipmunk display. She waited, propped against her car as I surged towards her. I might not have had any official karate training, but I was damn scrappy – if I needed to, I could probably kick
her in the face at least once if she tried to come at me.

‘Persephone!’ A shout rang out behind me. I almost stopped but I registered the voice in time. Mrs Bailey, Cedar Hill’s resident gossip merchant, was not about to mess up my showdown with whoever this nosy Mercedes chick was.

Purple Hair actually looked taken aback as I stomped towards her, but still, she made no effort to approach me. She simply waited, and the arrogance of it just made me angrier.
Get out of my life
, I wanted to yell. It would be easier to say it to her than to Nic, because I couldn’t look at him without remembering the intensity in his kisses, or the way he looked at me. But this girl was just a straight-up pain in my ass and I would have no trouble telling her exactly where to go.

I could hear Mrs Bailey bustling her way up the street behind me.

‘Persephone Gracewell!’ The wail was shriller this time – half car alarm, half dying cat – and somehow,
somehow
, it stopped me.

I skidded to a halt.

Purple Hair peered around me, at the commotion. From her vantage point, she couldn’t see Mrs Bailey and Mrs Bailey couldn’t see her, and I was stuck in between them both, wondering which was the greater annoyance in my life.

‘Mrs Bailey,’ I laboured, turning around. ‘I’m kind of in the middle of something.’

Mrs Bailey was pottering up the street as fast as she could. She was shiny with sweat. Her cropped hair was flopping into her eyes and her dress was bunching around her ankles, threatening to trip her.

She grabbed on to my arm, gasping for air like she was drowning. ‘There. You. Are.’

I mentally ran through the checklist for CPR in my head, just in case. I didn’t particularly like Mrs Bailey, but I wasn’t above trying to revive her if she collapsed at my feet. ‘Is everything OK?’

She removed her grip from me and clutched at her heart. ‘I’ve. Been. Looking. For. You. For weeks!’

I was still acutely aware of the girl behind me. Time was of the essence. I was about to hand out a much-needed lesson in Inappropriate Snoopery. After all, I was the expert. ‘Can you hang on just a sec, Mrs Bailey?’

‘Why? Where are you going?’

When I turned around, Purple Hair was back in her car. Mrs Bailey blinked over my shoulder at apparent nothingness.

Crap
. I started towards the Mercedes. ‘Hey!’ I yelled. ‘Wait!’

She revved the engine and pulled away from the curb. I tried to run after her but I fell short, stumbling and panting. ‘Hang on! I want to talk to you!’

The car sped off down the street, squealing around a faraway bend, and I had to swallow the string of curses welling up in my throat.

I doubled back towards Mrs Bailey, already feeling fed up with her company. She had the
worst
timing.

‘Who was that in the car?’ she asked.

Count to five. Calm down. Do not punch her
. ‘I don’t know.’

Her face changed, and she remembered why she had stopped me. ‘You haven’t been at work in weeks, Persephone. I’ve barely seen your mother. I thought you were an apparition when I saw you just now.’

‘Well, I had an accident,’ I told her. ‘I’m sure you heard?’

She cocked her head, running her gaze along my stiffened frame. She lingered over the faint swelling around my eyes, stared for too long at the faded bruises near my jaw. ‘You look dreadful,’ she informed me.

‘I’ve missed this.’

‘You look like you have jaundice.’

‘Yeah, well you know how it is …’ I trailed off, gesturing at myself and searching for the words I needed. ‘One minute you’re standing on the top of the stairs playing on your phone, and the next minute you’re hurtling down them, toppling over yourself … and just generally … hitting your face off stuff … repeatedly … until it bruises … a lot …’ I flashed a sheepish smile.
That ought to do it
.

Mrs Bailey ignored the flimsiness of the lie, waving it away on the wind. ‘What a terrible business, Persephone.’

I shrugged haplessly. ‘I bruise like a peach.’

‘Indeed,’ she muttered.

‘Was there something else?’ I asked.

She was staring at me – at the old bruises around my jaw. I had tried to cover them with make-up, but clearly I had failed. My skin was still pretty Simpson-esque. I smoothed my hair down and brought it in front of my ears so that it fell around my face – a fashionable yeti.

‘Have you been keeping to yourself, Persephone?’

‘I should go,’ I said. ‘I’m supposed to meet Millie.’ I side-stepped around her, but she tugged at my arm, pulling me back.

‘I wanted to say something to you.’ She started fidgeting with the folds in her dress. ‘I wanted to tell you that if you
were feeling upset about … well, about anything, perhaps I could help. I’m going to church tomorrow morning. It’s a good place to find comfort.’

The surprise inside me swelled. ‘Thanks,’ I offered, aiming for politeness. ‘I’ll give it some thought.’

*

I was almost at the diner when Millie called me. ‘Hey, I was thinking I would just meet you at your house. There’s no need for you to come to the diner.’

‘I’m pretty much here,’ I told her. I crossed the street, leaving the library behind me and scanning the diner lot. She was standing outside, her purse on her shoulder, her phone pressed to her ear. ‘I can see you!’

‘Oh.’ I watched her face fall. ‘OK, then … listen, before you freak out—’

‘Mil,’ I interrupted her. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

I was across the street, and she was staring at me, and I was staring at the corner of the lot, where a black SUV was facing the diner.

‘Ehhh.’ She followed my gaze, not that she needed to, since she was clearly already aware of its presence. ‘No?’

‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

‘Just ignore them, Soph. Seriously. The goal is to cut contact, remember?’

‘They’re outside my diner!’

Millie had started unlocking her car and was gesturing at me to join her. But I was making strides towards the SUV. The window buzzed down before I had a chance to slam my fist against it. Dom poked his head out. Unlike Nic, he was the picture of health. His shiny hair was thick and slicked back,
and his skin was smooth and olive, like he had just been on a relaxing two-week holiday in the Caribbean.

‘Gracewell. Nice day, isn’t it?’

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

I was distracted by a moving blur behind Dom’s head. Gino ducked around his brother and continued his manic waving. ‘Hi, Sophie. How are the ribs?’

I rehinged my jaw. It was hard to know whether he meant to be rude or inquisitive with his question, but either way, I wasn’t impressed. ‘Fine, Gino. Now answer the question.’

‘No can do,’ said Dom. ‘But don’t worry, it doesn’t involve you.’

‘My family owns this diner.’

‘OK,’ said Dom, cocking his head. ‘In that case, I suppose it involves you slightly. But not directly.’

Well. This added a whole new layer to the timing and strangeness of Nic’s visit. It was getting harder to believe he had just wanted to see me.

Gino was tapping out a rhythm on the dashboard with his fingers, but I couldn’t hear any music inside the car.

‘Don’t stress about it,’ said Dom. He had stopped paying me any attention and had taken his phone out to play a game on it. Hint received. I tried to see around them, into the back, to check if they had weapons, or just for a clue as to what the hell they were doing there. Surely it wasn’t just for Jack. He wasn’t about to come strolling into Gracewell’s in the middle of the day. My uncle was dumb, but no one was
that
dumb. ‘Unless you have Jack Gracewell in your pocket,’ Dom droned without looking up, ‘you can take off.’

‘Shouldn’t you be off drugging and kidnapping someone,
Dom? I know how you like to do that.’ I imagined throttling him and the thought made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

He bared his teeth at me. ‘Careful now, Gracewell.’

My cheeks started to burn. A hand brushed my shoulder and I turned to find Millie beside me. ‘They’ve been here all week,’ she said. ‘I was waiting for the right time to tell you.’

That got Dom’s attention. He flicked his gaze up. ‘Millie,’ he offered, with a curt nod. Gino was still tapping on the dashboard, his chin jutting in and out with the rhythm.

‘Dom,’ she hissed. ‘You’re looking greasy as ever.’

‘Still juvenile, I see,’ he returned. He glanced at his phone again, drawing his finger across the screen and flicking at something in the game he was playing.

‘Shut up, Dom,’ I said, jumping to Millie’s defence.

‘So snappy now she knows we can’t touch her,’ he muttered to Gino.

‘Let’s just go. Let them have their secrets.’ Millie tugged me away. I went willingly. Dom’s aftershave was overpowering and his attitude was making me want to punch him. ‘Oh, and, boys?’ Millie shouted over her shoulder. The window was already buzzing up, but they definitely heard her when she shouted, ‘
Vaffanculo!
’

‘You’ve been brushing up on your Italian, Mil?’

‘I got an app,’ she said, opening her car door and smiling as she slid in. ‘I knew it would come in handy.’

We pulled out of the lot and I watched the SUV sit motionless as it hovered across from the diner, waiting for something. So they had one car at the diner and one car trailing me. And one boy popping up in my back garden.
What the hell are they up to? What secrets do they think I have?

‘So are you ready for the next phase?’ Millie asked. ‘Do you have the switchblade with you?’

‘Yes …’ Hesitantly at first, I pulled it out of my pocket.

‘So I was reading up about this, and we have to get rid of it, but in, like, a symbolic way. The switchblade is really the last thing you have that connects you to the Falcones, right? So when you leave that behind you, you’ll be emotionally distancing yourself from all the pain they caused you. Are you with me?’

‘Uh-huh …’

‘So traditionally you’re supposed to burn these things, like, in a ritual or something, but I googled it and you can’t really burn a knife.’

‘Did you really have to google that?’

‘What you
can
do,’ she said, ignoring me, ‘is throw it in a lake where it’ll never be found again. And then it will be gone and hopefully some of the memories and stuff will go with it. I know it’s a long shot but it can work for some people, and since you can’t really risk going to therapy or whatever, I think it’s worth a try.’

I stared at the switchblade, at its grooves and flourishes that had become so familiar to me. At the name that I read at least ten times every day. ‘I don’t want to throw it in a lake, Mil.’

Millie slammed on the brakes and the car came skidding to a stop. ‘Are you serious? Come on, Soph. You know it’s got to go. You cut yourself with it. You’re too dependent on it.’

‘It’s not that,’ I told her. ‘I just think I should return it to him. It has value. It’s a sentimental thing.’

‘Pfff, and you think Luca Falcone is sentimental?’

I held it up to the sunlight and watched it reflect in a
hundred different directions. ‘I do, actually.’

‘Fine,’ she said, pulling the most illegal U-turn she possibly could. ‘Let’s go and give it to his idiot brothers, then.’

‘No! Are you crazy? Then they’ll know he set me free!’

‘Oh yeah.’ She started manoeuvring the car back around again, taking advantage of the quiet street to pull another tragic turn. ‘Well, then?’

‘The mausoleum,’ I said. ‘Mrs Bailey mentioned going to church earlier and it got me thinking about the Falcones and their beliefs. Their father is buried in Graceland Cemetery. If I leave it there, then one of them will find it eventually.’

‘Ah,’ said Millie, a smile brightening her features. ‘Leave it in the grave. I like it.’

‘You do?’ Relief flooded me. Sometimes it was difficult to tell whether my thoughts were rational or completely insane.

‘And,’ she added, ‘by traipsing through a graveyard, we can get a nice little gander at where you’ll end up if you don’t cut Nic and his family
out of your life
!’