Read Online The Demon Catchers of Milan by Kat Beyer - Free Book Online

and I’m supposed to empty my mind and picture her in total detail. Here’s what it says in the ancient notes that Emilio helpedme translate (he refuses to speak any English with me anymore, which is a total pain):
“The demon catcher would do well to meditate daily upon Our Lady, Queen of Heaven. The wise demon catcher will meditate for at least an hour a day, imagining her in her perfect form. He must picture her in great detail, from the stars upon her mantle and her robe blue as the sea, to her firm and shapely foot upon the sickle moon. He must picture her shining with a great yellow light.”
Uh, okay. Whatever. Apparently this comes from a really old manuscript, written by yet another relative of ours. I don’t know if it says “he” all the time because only men can be demon catchers, or because people used to (and sometimes still do) say “he” when they mean “everyone.”
So besides Italian verbs and meditation and history, how else are they preparing me? I don’t know. I don’t even know if they know. I go along day by day, and then all at once I’m paralyzed with fear, so frightened I wear myself out. Gina, what am I going to do?
Sorry to freak out on you. I don’t have anyone else who will get it, who I can really talk to, even if they could speak English.
Okay, freak-out over, for now.
Dinner is almost ready. I can smell it from the kitchen. That’s one thing, Gina. I never thought food could be so important. It’s a huge deal here. Every day Laura goes out to the shops and comes home with bags and bags ofgroceries and a Plan. Everyone else pitches in with the Plan when they get here, and the Plan is always delicious.
Okay, dinner’s up. Give my love to Mom and Dad. Keep lots for yourself.
Xoxo,
Mia
Dear Mia-boBIA,
Sorry to answer your long one with a short one, but I have, like, ten essays due, and that’s before I start memorizing.
Poor you. I don’t even know what to say. This has thrown all of us for a loop. But I did get to see some of what they did with you, and I have to say, I think they have big plans, and they know better than anyone how to defend you. Maybe it’s like school, you have to learn to count before you can add and subtract, and so on. And Emilio: he’s way more than just good-looking, you know. He’s the real deal, just like his grandfather.
On a completely different and more cheerful note, Ariel does not get to kiss anybody, least of all Luke, who is playing the Duke of Naples. Bummer. Ariel is Prospero’s odd-job fairy, though, so I get the most excellent supernatural costuming and a twenty-minute makeup job.
The rest of your life sounds alternately boring and totally awesome, by which I mean staying inside all the time blows, even if inside includes the balcony, but thefood and the culture and the whole family history thing are fundamental, it sounds like. If I wasn’t insanely busy, I would envy you.
Love,
Gina-banana
    Finally one morning, about five weeks after I arrived, I felt brave enough to start on the pile of Italian history books. I had been avoiding them. I had tried one in the first week, but after referring to my dictionary fifteen times in the first paragraph—I am not joking—I decided they hurt my head too much and exiled them to a corner of my desk, where they sat and glared at me. Then one day I just reached for one of them, and I didn’t need a dictionary every five seconds, although, granted, it was a children’s history of Milan. I read. And read. And read. I didn’t take in a lot of what I was reading, because it felt a bit too much like school, but at least I could read it—and that made me ridiculously happy.
    I noticed my progress in other ways, too, like at dinner at night.
    Francesca and Égide always came home at the same time, walking in the door together, one or the other carrying a battered grocery bag with orange flowers on it that always contained something Nonna had asked for: fresh milk, fresh bread, a half kilo of mushrooms,