Even a child could hate those words.
But on this night, she had fallen asleep unnoticed. And rather than her grandfather’s words, she woke to darkness and the jingle of the front doorbell.
How late was it? She peered out the window; her father was walking home.
She grabbed her coat and was ready to chase after him when she noticed the door to the workshop was ajar. And on the other side was the back of her grandfather, hunched over his workbench, immersed in what was before him.
“Ah, after all my son gave you,” she heard him say. “You still disobey.”
He said it in a curious singsong, like a parent admonishing a mischievous child. But it was not quite a child.
He took out his chisel and held it over the wood. She had seen him use a similar tool before, but this he held almost like a weapon?
“Now, we shall behave?”
The workbench light seemed to flicker, making the violin appear to twist and squirm beneath him.
Then Lucy heard a strange music unlike any before. It wasn’t that it was beautiful. She had heard plenty of beautiful music. But this made her heart race, and her body eager and jittery, like it did when she held a sharp knife or a box of matches, or walked over a bridge and wondered how it would feel to jump.
The voice blended with the sound of her heartbeat, in time with her breathing. She moved closer. Closer, until she could smell the varnish and the wood. It smelled like flowers. It smelled like blood.
“Lucy, no!”
Her grandfather threw a cover over the violin. He gently but firmly led her toward the door. But Lucy resisted.
“Grandpa, I want to hear more—”
She reached to pull the cover off the violin.
She wanted to see it; she wanted to hear it sing.
“Get out now!” she heard.
And then she felt a sharp slap across her face.
In shock, she ran away crying, and slammed the workshop door behind her.
Not long after, Catalin Matía had found her curled in a corner next to the violas. He wiped her tears with his handkerchief.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
That night, he walked her to the Big Donut and bought her a Bavarian Chocolate with sprinkles. He said he’d buy her hot chocolate if she would promise to forget what happened that night.
“Lucy, do not ever come in there again. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Grandpa.”
“Luce mia, I know it’s not easy to understand. But this is not the sort of thing for little girls.”
* * *
One does not simply break a cursed violin.
Actually, yes, they do.
Cursed violins are more common than one might imagine. The details vary, but most follow a typical pattern of notoriety: the violin is stolen, someone kills for it, dies for it, pulls it from a grave, bathes it in blood.
Not surprisingly, their owners tend to keep quiet. Thus, cursed violins rarely receive regular maintenance. More than a few have been ruined, not by Hell’s Infernal Forces, but by being played without a sound post or with a backward bridge.
Even worse, most every player of a cursed instrument seems compelled to flaunt their anguish like a cheap Paganini understudy— snapping a string, spewing various bodily fluids, playing drugged or drunk, lurching like a contortionist.
And if a player cracks the pegbox while playing because he absolutely had to writhe as if possessed by Mozart’s illegitimate child, what then?
People willing and equipped to repair such violins didn’t advertise openly. Such business was conducted quietly, through word of mouth.
The Matías had done this work for generations. And they were paid very well. But curses are, well, curses, with all the danger and unsavoriness that the term implies.
Thus, Catalin and Francisco Matía had only worked on these particular violins late at night, or early in the morning, when a pretty little girl like Lucy was safely tucked in bed.
Here was the legacy of the Matías. And not only the client notebook—others even older, full of special techniques and recipes, with lists of tools and incantations passed unbroken through time.
Just then, the doorbell jingled.
“The lights were on, so I decided to drop in.”
She looked up to see who had entered. For a second, he looked like a toad.
27
“Lucía Matía. My name is Tremon Philippe. I noticed that you are open for business.”
Tremon Philippe. A black-and-white photo of him was on the wall.
“This … San Gabriel Valley … is interesting. In this seemingly ordinary place are two people who are very important to me: the Queen of Hell and you.”