“Hm. Interesting. Noise pollution. Like traffic?”

He didn’t know. He’d just made the career up. “Yep, exactly.”

“I’m Lilly.”

“Jonathan,” he said. Because he’d always liked the name.

Triplet. Jon-a-than.

A name in waltz time.

“You must get lots of data, or whatever it is you do, here in Naples.”

“It’s noisy. Yes.”

A pause. “So, no idea where to get a cab?”

He looked around because that was what a blandly normal person would do. He shrugged. “Where do you need to go?”

“Oh, a touristy thing. A guy at the hostel I’m staying at recommended this place. He said it’s awesome.”

Stefan was considering.

Not a good idea…He should be following up on his plan regarding Artemis (it was quite a good one). But, then, she wasn’t here, and Lilly was.

“Well, I’ve got a car.”

“No way! You drive? Here?”

“Yeah, it’s crazy. The trick is you just forget there’re traffic laws, and you do okay. And don’t be polite and let people go ahead of you. You just go. Everybody does.”

Blandly normal. Stefan was in good form.

Lilly said, “So you want to come with? I mean, if you’re not doing anything.”

A Black Scream began. He forced it to silence.

“What is this place?”

“The guy said it’s totally spooky.”

“Spooky?”

“Totally deserted.”

So it would be quiet.

Quiet was never wise. Even the best intentions went away when there was quiet.

Still, Stefan looked Lilly over, head to toe, and said, “Sure. Let’s go.”

Chapter 37

Skulls.

Ten thousand.

Twenty thousand.

A hundred thousand skulls.

No. Even more than that.

Skulls arranged in orderly rows, eye sockets staring outward, triangles of darkness where noses had once been, rows of yellow teeth, many missing.

This was the place to which Lilly had directed Stefan. The Fontanelle Cemetery in Naples.

Spooky…

Oh, you bet.

It wasn’t a burial ground in the traditional sense; it was a huge, forbidding cavern that, Lilly’s guidebook explained, had been used as a mass grave site when half the population of Naples had died from plague in the 1600s.

“And there are rumors that underneath here’re more, going back to Roman days. There could be a million skulls under our feet.”

They stood at the entrance, a massive nature-made archway that led into the darkened expanse. This was no longer prime tourist season and the place had few visitors.

And those who were here seemed to be on missions of devotion, rather than sightseeing. They lit votives, they prayed.

Spooky…and quiet. Almost silent.

Well, he’d have to deal with it. Stefan wiped sweat, put the tissue away.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

They walked farther inside, her boots tapping and echoing. Lovely! Reading from her guidebook, she whispered—here was a place to inspire whispers—that Naples was savagely bombed during the Second World War, and this was one of the few places were the citizens could be safe from the Allied planes.

The lighting was subdued and flames from the candles cast eerie, unsteady shadows of bones and skulls—reanimations of victims dead hundreds, or thousands, of years.