one had come to greet me.
I zipped my coat closed, bracing against the sharp wind. The cold was so domineering that it had overtaken the stone: an entire wall of the castle was encased in ice, as if a wave had washed up on it and, in a snap of subzero wind, frozen in place. I had landed in an unwelcoming, desolate place, one that matched the mountains that surrounded it.
I looked up to the star-spattered sky. It was a black bowl filled with diamonds—glittering and inaccessible. The helicopter was gone. I was on my own.
Grabbing my suitcase, I started across the flagstones, the needling wind pricking my skin. I had just passed the main entrance of the castle when I saw it: a flicker of candlelight in a small window at the top of the tower. For a fraction of a second, a face appeared, terrible and twisted by shadow. It was a woman, her brow heavy, her hair wild. I dropped my suitcase, surprised by her sudden appearance. That must be Dolores, I thought. Her illness explained the ravaged visage, her unnatural pallor, the strange features, the monstrous expression. Then, in a flash, the candle went out. The window turned black, and I was left breathless, my heart beating hard, my hands trembling.
A shuffling of feet alerted me that someone was coming. I turned to find a short, fat woman in a heavy wool coat. Greta wore a wool stocking cap pulled down over her ears, and I could just make out a series of scars on the left side of her face.
“Hello,” I said. “You must be Greta.”
She stared at me, silent. I glanced up at the tower.
“There was someone standing there just now,” I said. “Did you see her?”
“That is the northeast tower,” Greta said, without answering my question. Her mouth went lopsided when she spoke, as if her jaw had been broken.
“Was that Dolores Montebianco?”
She shrugged and said nothing.
I considered this cryptic response as she continued to stare at me, blankly, without affect. I offered my hand. “I’m Alberta,” I said, raising my voice, in case her hearing was bad. “Here to see Dolores Montebianco.”
She didn’t take my hand. Instead, she grabbed my suitcase and shuffled across the courtyard. I followed her past a row of outbuildings, abandoned stone structures with heavy wooden doors—a granary, dairy, apiary, and abattoir. Zimmer had told me that, once, these buildings had sustained the castle, giving the Montebianco family flour, milk, honey, and meat. Now, like so much of the castle, they had been left to rot.
Greta walked ahead, her thick-soled boots crunching over the ice. The night was bitter cold, the wind slicing through the courtyard, all sharp edges. I was eager to get inside and warm up. It had been a long, frustrating day. That morning, I spent hours trying to get in touch with Luca. When he hadn’t picked up his phone or answered my messages, I resigned myself to try again from Nevenero. But from the looks of it, I would be lucky to get even one bar of reception. Zimmer had mentioned the remoteness of the village, but I hadn’t had the strength of imagination to picture anything so isolated as this. I tried not to be too alarmed. I would go inside, get some sleep, and figure it out in the morning.
We turned a corner, and—bam—I was on the ground. A heavy, hairy beast tore at my coat with its teeth, growling and straining to split me open. I struggled, kicking and pushing with all my strength, but it twisted and feinted, claws and teeth raking at me from every direction. The thing snapped at my face, my ears, my arms. I kicked, landing a few solid thrusts before realizing that I was fighting some kind of dog. I screamed and doubled down, kicking harder.
There was a scurry of feet on the flagstones, and suddenly the dog was jerked away, leaving me gasping, my cheek searing with pain.
“Jesus Christ, what the fuck was that?” I said, pushing myself up from the flagstones. I was shaky on my feet, hardly able to stand. I touched my cheek. My fingers were wet with blood.
A man slipped a rope around the dog’s neck. He was talking to it in a language I didn’t understand, Franco-Proven?al, I would learn, the local patois. The dog was as strange as the language, huge, with long black dreadlocks that gave it the look of an evil Muppet.
The man gave the