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Nicolosa put her hand over her eyes, muttering in what sounded to Sam like Italian or Spanish or Latin. He couldn’t quite make it out definitively. He suspected Italian, because this was a desperation move that he and Dean had come up with in trying to deal with a ghost.
Thankfully, they had Castiel there to not only translate, but to give Nicolosa an angelic download of modern English. She only took a few heartbeats to recover. “Let me see if I’m understanding this properly. You two are somehow dealing with the ghost of Piero, son of Giorgio, duc d’Arrellio, and you thought bringing me out of my well-earned grave was the solution? Why? That makes no sense.”
“Other hunters have tried all the conventional solutions.” Dean held out a beer to her, and Nicolosa took it out of curiosity. If it killed her, well, she was meant to be dead anyway. “So we started trying to learn more about Peteyboy…”
“Peteyboy?” Nicolosa frowned. “Who or what is Peteyboy?”
Sam took a deep breath. Castiel’s translation downloads were amazing, but they did have flaws, and he wasn’t at all surprised that this is one of the things that tripped her up. “The person you know as Piero has been living as a ghost who steals bodies. As times changed around him, and especially after moving here, he changed his name from Piero to Peter. Pete or Petey is a common nickname, and Peteyboy is a way to be insulting, like you’re calling him a child.”
“Anyway. Pete. Peer-o. Whatever we want to call him.” Dean coughed. “There’s not much about him, but Sam was able to trace the threads all the way back to his original death. In Fiesole, killed by Princess Nicolosa of Florence.”
Nicolosa burst into shocked laughter. “Forgive me, but did you say Princess Nicolosa?”
“Uh, yeah? Isn’t that who you are?” Dean looked at Castiel. “You told us this was the right person!”
“I did,” Castiel confirmed. “I did not, however, say that she was a princess. I am not responsible for misinformation in your books.”
“Did you bring her back wrong somehow? She’s supposed to be a badass warrior princess, not… this.” Dean waved a hand at Nicolosa’s gown and hair. “C’mon, dude, what’s going on?”
“I was never a princess, nor a warrior,” Nicolosa protested, arms crossed as she sneered at Dean. “I stabbed a man one time, when I was fifteen and scared to death. Thankfully my father was able to protect me from his father’s attempt to have me executed as a witch or a murderess.”
“So you were a princess,” Dean interrupted. “Petey was a duke’s son, even you said so, so if your dad was able to protect you from a duke…”
Nicolosa shook her head. “My father was rich, not noble. Between Piero’s dastardly reputation, my extensive injuries, and a few well placed bribes, he was able to convince the magistrates to order me locked in a convent instead of killed. If I were a princess, I’d never have been asked to marry that scoundrel in the first place.”
“Wait, what?” Sam took his turn to interrupt. “You were married to him? I’m not surprised about the stories taking a young heiress and turning her into a princess over the years, but…”
“I can’t say why the stories didn’t mention the part where I was forced to marry him because he wanted Father’s money and Father wanted grandsons who were in line to become a duc,” Nicolosa said. “It was a common enough story for a young woman with no brothers and a rich father.”
“At fifteen, though? Ew,” Dean said.
“It wasn’t exactly popular, but given how many babies die, noblemen wanted young wives so they’d have as much chance as possible to have a son who lived to adulthood,” Nicolosa observed with no emotion. “I was old enough, according to the priest, and if it weren’t Piero it would have been some other man who suited my father’s ambition.” She looked between Sam and Dean. “I take it the plan was to bring a warrior princess who had already killed him once out of her grave to put him in his for good this time? Need I remind you that if he’s out there haunting people, I mustn’t have done the job right the first time I tried?”
“Well…” Sam glanced at his books. “The idea was that we’d use you as a distraction. He’s been holding on to his anger at you for five hundred years, give or take a century, so we figured we send you in to fight him while we do our thing of getting him laid to rest properly this time. We’ll figure something else out. Castiel can put you back to death, if that’s what you want, or we can set you up with a life in our time and give you a second chance.”
“You said he’s still angry at me. Me specifically?” Nicolosa spoke with an effort. “How do you know?”
Dean smirked. “Well, we got wind of him when three teenage girls went missing in the same general area. One escaped and was able to tell her parents that she’d been kidnapped by some asshole calling himself Peter, who insisted on calling her Nicolosa. Said that he’d make her regret what she did to him a thousand fold.”
“When we started tracking his movements, we found a couple other escaped girls, who told the same story,” Sam added. He squinted, tilting his head. “You know, they even look a fair bit like you, now that I know what you look like.” The stories had only said dark-haired beauty, which, fair enough.
“All right, then.” Nicolosa visibly swallowed, and her voice shook, but her eyes were firm. “Take me to him. No more girls should have to suffer his idiocy. Then, Castiel, put me back in my grave, if Piero doesn’t do it for you.”