Page 11

CHAPTER 11

Somebody Desperate

B ryn didn’t look toward the intruder. Didn’t so much as blink. It was me who turned when the office door swung open so hard, it slapped a smile onto James’s pretty face.

“Bryn, how ye? Love the haircut.”

Haircut? Who cared about some damn haircut, other than the fact it was possible on a man carved from limestone.

But the fresh blast of air and James’s quick wink had my shoulders relaxing a fraction. This had all gone to hell just as he’d predicted. Because I should never have come here. “James, you should try talking to—”

“My office is not the town piazza for your enjoyment.”

“—since he won’t tell me about the disease,” I finished.

“Attack.” Bryn.

“I warned ye he’s a wee bit touchy on the subject.” James peeled off his jacket, tossing it over a sculpture with a small penis before sinking into a rocking chair. He yanked out a textbook with a wince. “Recovery going well?”

Bryn sucked in his cheeks, which only made his sweeping cheekbones more devastating, and eyed the phone on his desk, as if weighing up which button dialed security. “You know I did not want to become involved again,” he warned in a low voice. “And yet you traveled here despite my wishes. And far worse, you have brought Rowan.”

I shrank under the words, knowing he could probably sense the fraud I was hiding behind.

“I cannot help you,” he said to me without sympathy. “You should leave, and quickly.”

“Oh no, I think we’ll be in town for a good while, right, Roe?” James said merrily as I blinked at him. God, I hoped not.

He pushed the rocker back. “Maybe I didn’t come for ye at all, Bryn. I hear there’s a Turner exhibit in town.” James picked up a miniature statue, pretending to examine it before setting it back down. “Might be I’ll drop by for the local artwork.”

“Turner is most certainly not local artwork, ” Bryn said with a voice like warmed ice. “And if I recall, the last exhibit we visited, you departed after successfully finding the entire subset of naked women. As Turner is known for his landscapes, I am sure you will be disappointed.”

As Turner is known for his landscapes .

“Rowan, while you may believe that is a close imitation of my accent, you are sorely mistaken.”

I jolted. Had I said that aloud?

James pursed his lips. “Sure, a man doesn’t want to be looking at trees all day, and ye can’t blame me when all I have is me sweet Essie.”

All he had was Essie ? His wife—no, his mate. But surely James dated here, was with women here—wasn’t he? He couldn’t be that committed to a memory, to a dream.

“Rowan, your mouth is open.”

I clamped it shut at Bryn’s dry comment.

“I take it,” he drawled, “that you share as much disdain for Ruhaven’s law of mates as you do for Ruhaven.”

Law of mates? “You mean, marriage laws?”

Bryn curled his lip. “No, those are not equivalent.”

James saw me glancing to his right hand and held it up. “Ah, ye’ve been wondering about this?” The gold band winked under the colourful stain glass light. “The symbol itself came from Ruhaven. I wear this for Essie, it’s a token for mates in Tallah, and one that found its way here as well. But sometimes, something gets a bit mixed up along the way. For it’s Drachaut—the other country—who wear it on the left hand, and Ruhaven who wear it on the right.”

How could James be so devoted to a memory? There was no way a guy from L’Ardoise would be caught dead wearing a symbol from a dream. And when the memories finished—when James’s past life died—wouldn’t Essie die as well? He’d never be able to talk to this woman again, in any life. She’d cease to exist, and then she really would be just a memory.

Maybe one like Willow, slowly fading each time James touched it.

Then my gaze darted to Bryn’s empty hand. In this one case, at least, maybe James was crazier. “It’s just hard to believe you have a wife,” I said at length.

James looked perplexed. “Why? I make a sound husband.”

He probably did. “But she’s not, um,” I said, a blush creeping in, “not a real wife.”

Amusement danced in James’s brown eyes. He tucked in his chin, clucked his tongue. “Why, Roe, what would ye be meaning by that?”

I don’t know why I’d said anything. “You know what I mean, James.”

“Pray tell us, Rowan,” Bryn said dryly, “what do you mean?”

I kept my mouth shut.

James’s grin was wide, brilliant, and utterly amused. “Now, ye wouldn’t think it, as I’m only too charming, but I am indeed entirely and completely faithful to me sweet Essie.”

God. That couldn’t be possible, could it?

“Essie is a spirit of rock,” Bryn stated. “I assume you have not met, as you have been in the Gate so little. But it is common for mates to be as committed here as they are in Ruhaven.”

So if my past life found a boyfriend, I’d have to give up men? “Just another reason I’m going home,” I said to annoy him.

“Indeed.” Bryn turned back to James, dismissing me. “Though, now that I reflect on Essie’s spirit trait, I feel this does explain your fascination with Stephan Winding’s exhibition of sculptures from the nineteenth century.”

James scowled. “Are we going to spend all afternoon talking of me love for me sweet Essie, or settle this at the bar?”

“I see no reason I should accompany either of you to the bar or otherwise.”

James slowed the rocking chair. “It may be,” he began, voice thickening with his Irish brogue, “that I’ve a mind to reconsider yer exile from Naruka.”

Bryn stilled. “You assume I wish to return?”

Oh, I’d say he did. So why didn’t he come back before?

The two men eyed each other, and somehow, James held his own under a look that had almost brought me to my knees at the door.

“I know ye do,” James said smoothly, then rubbed his hands together. “Ye know if the Jeger pub is still around? Or did we drink it dry three summers ago?”

T he Jeger pub had not been drunken dry after all—far from it.

From every wall, stuffed reindeer, white foxes, and grizzlies eyed the diners’ plates with bared teeth. A shark skeleton swam from suspended wires, its bones glowing in the atmospheric din. A musician strummed a simpering guitar next to a rack of harpoons, and behind him, a skewered pig rotated in the kitchen. Juice sluiced off the hog, its honeyed scent drifting through the pub.

Bryn, James, and I had walked here in stony silence, with Bryn’s cane thumping behind us the only clue he was following.

“Can you at least tell me if you think the infection—?” But the words were no sooner out of my mouth than the waitress decided to tap over on needle-thin heels.

Across from me, under the soft light of our window booth, Bryn lowered the menu. “ Attack . What are you having, Rowan?”

Having? “Oh, I…” I glanced at the Norwegian menu I couldn’t read, then pointed at something random. “It’s only that if there is some sign, besides an aneurysm, that—”

“ Hallo ,” Bryn said, twisting toward the waitress.

I looked up.

She was young, about the same age as Willow when she’d died, with curly red hair fastened at her nape. She offered Bryn a shy smile before exchanging a rapid back and forth that sounded a lot like German yodeling.

James lifted a smoke to his lips. “Bryn’ll tell ye when he’s ready,” he murmured of the disease.

Except ready might be a day, a month, a year from now, or never, and my sister deserved better.

“Tell me something, Rowan,” Bryn began when the waitress clicked away, “what is this special charm L’Ardoise holds which makes Ruhaven so terribly boring to you?”

“That wasn’t what I said.”

“Bryn, would ye leave it alone,” James warned.

Bryn shifted, his cane or leg bumping my foot before he settled. “I am only wondering what could possibly maintain more interest in such a tiny town than the lived memories of a fantastical realm,” Bryn replied blandly. Behind him, a lady dressed for church started in her seat. “Perhaps she has a man waiting at home?”

My reflection frowned back at me in the glass, and I started to regret not just telling him the truth.

“Leave it be, ye git,” James warned again.

Bryn brushed him off. “No? Surely there is some sticky-fingered boy running the L’Ardoise movie theatre who has caught Rowan’s eye, a childhood sweetheart who took her to a prom at the farmers’ community center, or perhaps it is a man from the Midwest whom she favors—”

“ Bryn ,” James fumed as my face burned. “Jayzus, Mary, and Joseph, what the feck has gotten in to ye?”

Yet he’d been mortifyingly close to the mark. Not only did Bryn seem to know about Tye, but he’d also guessed at every parking lot where I’d endured fumbling hands and sloppy kisses, in a town so puny it must have embarrassed him to ever hear about.

Was that part of his Mark ? Knowing someone’s history? Or, maybe, just being able to read people really—

“Me?” Bryn repeated mercilessly. “I believe it is you, James , who has let the standards for recruiting Ruhavens slip so low.”

The words landed like an open-palm slap. And he didn’t even have the decency to look at me when it did, as if James were to blame for Bryn needing to call out his recruiting mistake.

A mistake. Because I was a stupid repair woman, with no dreams, no ambitions, and nothing to show for it but a dead sister and a lie on row 1274 in the Ledger .

I shoved up from the bench at the same time James’s fist came down on the table.

“What are ye bloody on about?” James demanded as heads swiveled our way, the church lady clutching her oversized baubles. “No, Roe, ye sit down while I deal with this ejit. Sit ,” he ordered in a voice James had never once used before.

When I did, he moved the ashtray aside, elbows pressing into the plastic menu. “If ye’ve a problem with how I recruit people,” he warned Bryn, “ye’ll bloody say it to me in private and not be insulting a woman who—after what ye did—has more right to Ruhaven than yerself.”

I didn’t know if Bryn had deserved his exile, but in that moment, James’s faith in me nearly had me reconsidering my trip home. And he wasn’t even done.

Bryn let James rip into him—a true spectacle, with enough Irish lingo that while half of it may not have landed, it did cause people to gawk openly. He was just winding down when the waitress reappeared, saving Bryn.

James leaned back with a huff of exasperation, but the tall stout she set in front of him seemed to drain the last of his ire.

While the waitress unloaded the drinks, passing a pale wine to Bryn, he spoke to her in rapid, quiet Norwegian. She looked a little perplexed as she toyed with the heart-shaped necklace at her collarbone, but eventually nodded.

“Let’s just take a wee breather here,” James said when she’d left. “I don’t know where all of this came from. Maybe ‘tis that pig over there that’s got us all worked up.”

I glanced at the sizzling hog. What did the pig have to do with anything?

“But Roe, should he ever speak to ye like that again,” James continued, digging another smoke from the pocket of his tweed jacket. He blew off a fleck of lint. “Ye’ve only to remind the man of his shoddy work that ye’ve been fixing in Naruka for months.”

The wineglass hovered an inch from Bryn’s lips. “Excuse me?”

I covered my smile with my pint, remembering just what non-waterproof sealant did to a kitchen pipe. “To be fair,” I said to James, “I never knew there were so many uses for hot glue.”

“While I do not proclaim to possess any expertise in repair work,” Bryn said archly, “I am certain that stopping a leak is more important than the manner in which it is done.”

The manner in which it is done. Boarding school, without a doubt.

“I don’t know,” James said, taking another long drag before waving the cigarette at Bryn. “Wood glue for caulking, exposed wires because ye didn’t use electrical tape, and what was it ye said, Roe?”

I crossed my arms. “That the wall he tried to knock down in the music room was load-bearing?”

James waved the cigarette and, for a moment, thick smoke obscured Bryn’s face into a blur of disbelief. “No, no, not that, though aye, ‘tis true enough. I think ye said, ‘ He’s too pretty for repair work, ’ that was it.”

I felt my cheeks flame and reached for my cold pint. Kazie had a big mouth. Huge. Enormous. And that was the last time I ever confided in her.

Bryn lifted a cornsilk eyebrow at me, and I braced for the insult. Then his mouth quirked up, just a little at one end. “Some, I imagine,” Bryn said quietly, “might say the same of you, Rowan.”

I quickly looked away.

Over the next fifteen minutes, James peppered Bryn with questions on Oslo, on adapting to “regular life,” and his job at the university, his accent traveling up and down so much we could have been driving over the Kerry hills. Bryn answered each question automatically, with as little detail as possible. Was he thinking about Ruhaven? What would it be like to visit those memories every day for years, then to be forced to slot yourself back into life in Oslo?

By the time the food arrived, I’d switched to a stout dense enough to withstand a few rounds with whatever nightmare James had ordered.

He gawked at the bowl the waitress set before him. I couldn’t blame him—he’d ordered something that looked like shrunken intestines with fries.

As the waitress unloaded more food, Bryn handed me a plate, then another, and another. Sausages, potatoes, and food I couldn’t identify slid in tiny dishes until I was surrounded like royalty.

“Bryn, can you tell her I didn’t order…” I trailed off as he slid over a plate of braised beef dripping with juice. My stomach kicked me square between the ribs. Or maybe that was anxiety.

But Bryn said nothing and the waitress walked away.

So he’d done this on purpose. To embarrass me? A little punishment for showing up at his office, for asking questions about his infection, for denying Ruhaven.

Well, it’d worked, because I was absolutely sweating. “I didn’t order this,” I repeated. Or had I pointed to some family-size menu item?

His face didn’t change. “I know. I did, Rowan.” He passed me a final plate of crisp broccoli. “I did not think you would enjoy your appetizer of boknafisk soup—stockfish, rehydrated cod—so I ordered additional selections. The sooner our dinner is over, the sooner you may return home and forget about Ruhaven, or is that not what you want?”

The last thing he knew was what I wanted. “I want the soup.”

Bryn’s brow lifted on a slow wave. “Do you?”

Not only couldn’t I afford all this, but I didn’t want food—I wanted answers about Willow, and I didn’t need Bryn substituting that with honey-glazed chicken.

I tugged the bowl toward me. “Yes.” But my nose twitched at the smell of ripe fish. “This is what I ordered, because this is what I want.”

Even if it was floating in little chunks.

Didn’t matter. I’d eaten plenty of Willow’s cooking before, and something even worse—my own. My stomach was fortified steel.

So I spooned up a generous portion and ignored the reek of rehydrated fish— what the hell was rehydrated fish? Swallowed.

Maybe my stomach was more like tinfoil than steel, but I got it down.

“Enjoying that?” Bryn asked drolly.

I picked up the plate of braised beef. “So much so that I’m not going to be able to touch any of this. Why don’t you eat—”

Bryn recoiled like I’d dangled a live snake.

Cursing, James ushered my beef and me away, bad children at the grown-up’s table.

“Roe, we can’t eat meat,” James explained while Bryn stuck his nose in the wine like the smell could wipe away his near-death encounter. “It’s the Gate. Ruhavens don’t eat meat and I suppose it rubs off after a while. We can get quite sick from it, actually.”

I stared at him, aghast. “You mention the Marks but not this ?”

“It’s not so bad like.”

I looked pointedly at Bryn, whose blown-glass cheeks hollowed on deliberate exhales. “I have never fully recovered from my time in Ruhaven,” he said carefully, holding James’s gaze a second before lowering his wine. I’ll say.

“I know it like,” James said softly. “And ‘tis why I want ye to come back now. I never liked how we ended things.”

If he did return, it’d only be one more reason to avoid Naruka.

Bryn stabbed a cherry tomato. “Why? Although Tye may have enforced it, I recall it was you, James, who exiled me.” The tone was mild, but his look could have sliced my medium-rare beef.

“Ah, come off it. ‘Tis yerself who stopped answering me calls after yer leg,” James reminded him. “I used to be able to talk to ye at least, and ye bloody well know I didn’t force ye out forever. Ye needed a break. So ye took it and ye got some perspective.” James paused, a frown playing around the corners of his lips as he worried his ring. “And a lot of it, or so I hear.”

Bryn’s careful mask snapped .

His nostrils flared, his lips snarled over pink gums, and—for a shattering heartbeat—a monster sat before me, more terrifying than anything I’d seen in Ruhaven.

I dropped my fork, my pulse ping-ponging in my ribs. Then I blinked, and Bryn’s features rearranged themselves into smooth limestone.

Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades.

I glanced around the restaurant, expecting faces to be frozen in horror, but laughter carried over the booth, glasses clinked, steak was carved and served. A lady with a rose on her blazer did stare at Bryn—except it wasn’t fear but blatant interest in her hazel eyes. At the opposite end of the pub—obviously, chosen intentionally—the pig rotated on its skewer, mouth gaping, fat bubbling from its seared flesh.

“Rowan.”

I whirled at Bryn’s low voice.

“I apologize for startling you.”

I swallowed heavily. “Is that your—your—"

James bumped my elbow. “I warned ye, just a glimmer of his Mark is all. A good reminder not to stay in the memories too long, else ye’ll end up like this freak.” He shoveled a fry through mayonnaise. “Don’t ye worry though; Bryn’s bark is worse than his bite.”

His bark seemed bad enough. “James said your Mark is light.”

Before Bryn could answer, James said, “In Ruhaven, he wiggles around like a wee little fish.” James mimicked the motion with his hands while Bryn rolled his eyes.

A surprised laugh escaped me. “Really?”

“Aye. Now, Bryn, if yer done scaring Roe, I want to talk to ye about Willow,” James said, and I felt my eardrums lift and revolve in my head, the glimmer forgotten. “If ye’ve anything to tell us about the infection—-”

“Attack.”

James lifted an eyebrow. “Attack then, if ye believe it.”

“I do.”

“Then let us see yer research on it.”

I held my breath as Bryn replied, “You assume I have continued my research?”

“I know ye have,” James corrected.

Instead of answering, Bryn looked across the bar at the lady with the rose, the pretty one who’d been staring at him, and— But no, he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the paintings—pictures of the sea, of pirate ships and churning black water with clouds divided between storms and light. Of a narrow bolt of lightning warming the ocean.

James scratched at his eyebrow with a cigarette, bringing it so close, his hairline sizzled. “Ye know I thought things would be different for ye now. Maybe I didn’t understand.”

I didn’t understand either—didn’t understand what would make James reconsider this man’s exile.

“Perhaps you did not,” Bryn agreed, shoving up so abruptly that his head narrowly missed the rainbow lampshade. “I believe it is my round. James?” He reached for his cane.

As Bryn limped to the bar, James on his heels, I gripped the dessert menu I wouldn’t order from.

Coming here had been a mistake. But it was exactly what Willow would have done. If there’d been any chance of finding out the truth of why I’d died, she’d have stopped at nothing, torn apart the world to find those answers, interrogating every Ruhaven or human, living or dead.

Why did Bryn think he’d been targeted with the disease? And if he knew anything about the symptoms, why wouldn’t he just tell me? Then we could leave and he could return to his nudeless Turner exhibits.

My gaze drifted over to the bar. Bryn spoke rapidly to James, cheeks flushed with faint color as James flung out a hand, nearly knocking over the pint the bartender sat before him. Oh, to be an ear on that stuffed reindeer right now.

Whatever James said next had Bryn leaning in closer, brow wedged in a tight knot.

How had his Mark materialized like that? Could it happen to me after just one trip to the Gate? Could I be sitting here, enjoying dehydrated fish soup, then suddenly scare a small child?

I shifted in my seat, turning away from both of them to stare out the window.

It should have been Willow and I here together, exploring Europe, like she’d always wanted. Watching the smokers huddled against the rain under café roofs, gazing in the windows of fancy shops whose clothes we’d never afford, slipping into a smoky pub to join the musicians in the back.

My lips twitched at the memory of when we’d done just that, when she’d sat down at an old piano and earned a hundred dollars in tips.

Outside our window, a woman slowed, paused, like she’d experienced the same longing I’d just felt. Oblivious, people swarmed past on the sidewalk, but there was something about the set of her shoulders that…

Then she lifted her eyes, twin blue storms, so impossibly familiar that I jerked back.

The sweep of her pixie chin and heart-shaped face was softer, paler, and more beautiful than mine. Freckles streaked across her cheeks like stars and gathered on the tip of her nose, that dyed-blonde hair she’d once hated now drenched and swaying in the rain.

My heart clogged when she lifted a sandy-skinned hand and waved, her lips twitching into a wild, mischievous smile.

She’d flashed the same one after punching that boy from eighth grade.

I bolted upright, slamming my knee into the table. Pints rolled, shattering against the stone tiles. Heads swiveled on skewers toward the mess.

I squeezed the top of the leather booth as if it’d wring sanity into my mind. What if Ruhaven had brought her back? What if this was why I was here, right now, in this place and time?

For a moment, everything made sense—Ruhaven, Naruka and its forgotten Gate, the memories.

She wasn’t dead—she’d always been larger than life, impossibly full of everything I wasn’t. The prodigy. The pianist. The cheerleader. And here she was, standing in a street in Oslo. Waiting.

“ Willow ?” I croaked.