Page 13

CHAPTER 13

I Only Ever Loved Your Ghost

I fought my way out of sleep like a swimmer rising from a great depth.

Willow had once tried scuba diving off the coast of L’Ardoise—she’d wanted to explore a shipwreck before they explained that was only for advanced divers—but she’d told me you have to ascend slowly because of the pressure change, that your body needs time to adjust.

Willow .

I shifted under rough sheets. The fabric was hot, starchy, the pillow too soft and fluffy, not the hard sack of flour I slept on in Naruka.

Where was I?

Home, in L’Ardoise? Maybe in my roommate’s apartment, or the college dorm I’d shared with Willow before I’d dropped out.

Slowly, I peeled open my eyes.

A tasseled light hung from a faded-pink ceiling. Sunlight beamed across it in a blinding tangerine that could never come from Ireland. The cawing of seagulls snuck in under a cracked window, followed by a crisp breeze that tickled my nose.

This wasn’t Naruka, wasn’t L’Ardoise. What had I dreamed? Images and memories tangled in my head.

Willow, waving at me on a rainy street, her face shining with dew, blonde hair in droopy ringlets. Why would she have dyed her hair like that again? She wouldn’t have, so maybe she— Wait, I’d seen Willow?

My lungs strained from the sudden effort of breathing, flexing muscles I hadn’t used in years.

Willow. Alive.

God, alive and here .

I flung the sheets off me, swung my legs over the bed. I needed to find her, to tell Willow—I don’t know, but something , before the relief of the dream wore off and I forgot what it was to lose her.

My bare feet slapped onto a crusty rug as I shoved off the mattress, shielding my eyes from a glittering sea light. Where was I? And what was—

“ Ahhhhhh! ” The scream burst from me on a gasping wail.

No. No. No, no!

In a tall portrait mirror, an angel lifted an elegant eyebrow, his long fingers pausing around the knot of a beige tie, blond hair combed tidily to the side. Willow had wanted hands like that so she could reach wider than an octave.

“Does the sight of someone properly dressed always send you into such shock, Rowan?” Bryn’s voice brought reality crashing down.

Willow was dead.

“Holy, Mary, and Joseph,” James cried, sitting up in bed and wincing from the sun. “It’s bloody seven in the morning.” He fumbled for his glasses on the nightstand.

“Nine,” Bryn corrected.

Willow. Dead. Not alive.

I pressed a hand to my belly. Oh no, not in front of—

Sucking in a breath, I scrambled to the washroom, half-tripping over Bryn’s cane before I shoved open the door and my knees smacked into the tiles with a thud, bruises protesting the impact as I gripped the rim of the toilet and heaved.

Bile soured the back of my throat. Breath wheezed in, out. But I didn’t throw up, was at least spared that indignity.

The bathroom door creaked open wider, and when imaginary snowflakes flickered over the back of my neck, I knew it was Bryn.

“Rowan, I must admit, this is not the usual reaction women have to me in a suit.”

I just bet, but I was too ashamed with how I’d spoken to him yesterday to answer, too ashamed that I’d accused a cripple of lying about his leg—and a little scared, too, of that thing he’d been.

When the worst passed, I brushed back the hair that had come loose from my braid and shakily rose.

Bryn was half-dressed in a cream shirt tucked at his trim waist and cinched with a chocolate leather belt. A matching tie draped loosely around his neck. He’d shaved whatever beard had tried to escape the night to a fine 220-grit sandpaper, so clean I could eat off him.

But there was no sign of the man who had crept into my nightmares, only bored curiosity in those cool Norwegian eyes.

As we stared at each other, James called from the other room, “Since when did they need ye all fancy at work? Aren’t ye supposed to be an artist?”

He couldn’t be farther from the image. No color, no fun, no loose appreciation for the wild and ironic.

Bryn’s gaze dropped to my left shoulder, where my shirt had slipped off. I jerked it up, covering a pale birthmark.

“Was,” he said shortly. “I was an artist. Now I am instructing on the history of art.” Bryn continued to study me as he spoke to James. “I let myself out at five this morning for a change of clothes—rather easy with your snoring for cover. I must speak to the dean if I am to return to Naruka.”

So he’d decided to take James up on his offer after all, which brought me a surprising measure of relief. However much Bryn disliked me, he seemed to feel a responsibility to James, one that would hopefully keep the Irishman safe when I was gone.

There was a beat of silence in the other room, then James let out a relieved groan. “I’m glad of it, so I am,” he said.

I held Bryn’s stare, let him see just what I thought about the answers he still kept from me. Behind Bryn’s eyes, fire simmered and banked like a flame in the night, causing each tiny hair on my neck to stand up.

“But I have conditions,” he added.

“Conditions?” James parroted.

“Indeed. Rowan, when you are ready, come into the room so we may negotiate properly.”

I started after him, then quietly shut the bathroom door. He probably wanted to ensure I never returned to Ruhaven, a world I’d dreamed of nearly every night since I’d seen it.

I shook myself. Not mine . My world would be in L’Ardoise, where I could drive Willow’s truck up to her gravestone at the church, under the old town wall we used to drink on for our birthday. I’d tell her about Naruka, about James and Ruhaven, maybe complain about Bryn. She’d like that, like to hear whatever was a bit outrageous.

On autopilot, I showered, changed into my other jeans before pulling on the now-dry cardigan I’d worn yesterday, brushed my teeth, toothpaste stinging my cut palms, and swung my hair into a ponytail that brushed the small of my back.

Thinking of Willow, I stepped into the wallpapered hallway.

And paused as something shimmered up my spine.

A painted blue teapot hung as crookedly as the paintings at Naruka, but otherwise, there was nothing but the sound of James flipping through paper.

After a moment, I shook off the feeling and followed the smell of coffee into the bedroom.

James sat upright against the headboard, a mug in one hand with the paper spread before him on the quilted bedspread. Glasses rested on the tip of his slightly crooked nose. What I wouldn’t give for a cup of that—

“Coffee?”

I caught myself an instant before knocking the offering out of Bryn’s outstretched hand.

“Are you always so unobservant, Rowan?” the Norwegian drawled while I righted myself on the coat stand.

“No, thanks,” I said when he offered the mug again.

The corners of his mouth wilted. “Do you prefer tea?”

“No, thank you.”

James grimaced at the newspaper. “Yer not off to a great start, lad.”

“Indeed.” Bryn set the steaming cup on the corner of the kitchenette, picking up his cane instead. “Rowan, we shall need to work together to determine why the Inquitate are targeting us, and by extension, your sister. So I would suggest you overcome your disapproval of me.”

How could I when he might be responsible for— Wait, what did he mean by work together ?

God, that coffee smelled good.

“Work together?” What would he want with a non-Ruhaven?

Bryn slipped past me. “Yes, Rowan, for you are the only one who has lost a twin to the Inquitate and therefore, are more likely to find a connection.” He scooped up his leather bag, movements deft and purposeful as he flipped through the contents. “It is clear I cannot avoid the Inquitate here, and my previous suppositions as to why they targeted me appear decidedly incorrect.”

“And yer not going to tell us what yer theory was?” James vocalized my own questions.

“No. But I believe the answers may lie with Rowan and her twin.” Bryn snapped his satchel closed. “Willow had never been to Naruka, never seen Ruhaven, yet she was attacked in her hometown. Perhaps something she did, or someone she met, triggered it. Or perhaps it is a connection—through Rowan—to something that occurred in the memories—in Ruhaven.”

My stomach flip-flopped. Why didn’t he just say it was because it was Willow that Ruhaven wanted? And besides, had he really proven anything yet? I might have stuck my ample foot in my mouth last night, but that didn’t mean it was a creature from the Gate causing aneurysms.

“How do you know it wasn’t just an aneurysm?”

His eyes swept me, measuring, assessing. Deciding. “There are a number of coincidences with your sister’s death and the others that cannot be overlooked,” he said at last. “First, of course, the cause. A brain bleed in the frontal lobe.” He tapped the area of the skull that the doctors had explained very calmly, very rationally, had been the cause of Willow’s death. A pale finger pointing to the scan, nails brittle from all the sanitizer. “I viewed her medical records.”

“You what —”

“In my research, as she was a potential candidate for Inquitate targeting,” he said smoothly, and bottled insult rose in my chest. He’d known all along, he’d even researched her, and he’d said nothing to me. “Though Willow had not visited Ruhaven like the others, and there has never been a Ruhaven born with a twin before.”

Never? After centuries of Ruhavens born, not one was a twin?

“Secondly, for the Inquitate to attack and approach both her and I in the same town cannot be a coincidence.”

The same town ? I looked at James incredulously. “What’s he talking about?”

James only lifted his coffee, sipped. “Ask him.”

Bryn looped the satchel over one shoulder, tightened the strap. “I take it you are unaware that it was, in fact, myself who was sent to recruit you initially.”

I blinked at him. Bryn ? Bryn was sent to recruit me? In L’Ardoise? “You? I’ve never met you before. It was Tye who—”

“Who took over for me,” Bryn finished. “Because I was attacked while on recruitment in L’Ardoise. So you see, Rowan, it is highly unlikely for your sister’s aneurysm to be unrelated to the Inquitate when they came upon me only a few years later in the same location.”

He’d been in L’Ardoise. Before Tye, before James. Had we met? No, no. I’d never forget his face, the alienness of him. Yet he’d known, even back then, that the Inquitate had likely killed Willow and he’d said nothing to me. What kind of person did that make him? Maybe my accusations hadn’t been so far off the mark. I’d never leave someone to grieve like that, not knowing the truth of what happened.

“This leads me into my conditions,” Bryn said.

I jerked my head up. “Conditions?”

“Indeed, for you are going to assist me, Rowan.” He reached for his coat, a knee-length wool that was brushed to smooth coal. “Willow is the outlier—never before has a relation of a Ruhaven been targeted. And now, even stranger, her twin is targeted as well. Why? I have a number of lines to investigate.”

“Which are?”

His bottom lip puckered. “The state of things has changed. I did not expect the Inquitate to target you. However, now that they have, we must determine the cause before others are similarly affected.

“First, because your sister has neither visited Ruhaven, nor been written into the Ledger , her death may be related to an interaction she had on Earth. Perhaps she met an Inquitate who crossed from the Gate? We must track her movements in the year before her death.”

But he knew it was Willow meant for the Ledger . Wasn’t that the simple answer? That the Inquitate—if that’s what they were—had targeted her for that reason? But then why had they been here in Oslo as an illusion of Willow? Why would they target me ? I was nothing to them, unless there was more Bryn wasn’t telling me.

“Second, there is a reason some Ruhavens are meeting the Inquitate in the Gate. Did they know something in their past lives? Find something? What attracts the Inquitate to them? For this, you can assist, Rowan.”

I lifted my chin. “Assist how exactly? Yesterday, you wanted nothing to do with Willow or I.”

“Do you not wish to determine why your twin was killed?” He wrapped a soft, cotton scarf around his neck, tucked it under the collar’s marble button. “Or was I under the mistaken belief that when you stormed into my office yesterday, it was because she was important to you?”

“What? Yes, of course, I just—”

“Good, then you, Rowan, shall have no issue providing me the material I require, such as friends you shared, places you have visited, anywhere Willow went outside of your town. The Inquitate appear to be targeting Ruhavens due to something that occurred in the memories, or an interaction, event, or other such incident here. We must pursue both paths.”

Something fluttered in my chest, so foreign, so strange, that I barely recognized it.

I tried to smother the spark of hope. “Okay. I’ll need time to sort through her things.” To figure out how to convince my parents to see me again, to let me go through Willow’s things, her diary, calendar, whatever I couldn’t remember. “Then I’ll write to James in a few weeks with what I find. If you tell me what you’re looking for, I can—”

“You misunderstand me, Rowan,” Bryn interrupted, long fingers slipping pearl buttons through slits. “You cannot go back to L’Ardoise. You must return with James and I to Naruka. You can compile your list there.” He straightened his collar.

Return to Naruka? Why would he ask that when he knew what I wasn’t?

When I glanced at James, he sipped his coffee, a glint in his eyes. I opened my mouth, shut it. “But Willow’s things are in L’Ardoise,” I said, making up an excuse, because the alternative would be facing Willow’s past life.

“If you do not return to Naruka, how will you visit Ruhaven?” Bryn said, limping toward the door with the satchel thumping his thigh.

I stared after him. “Visit Ruhaven?” I repeated dumbly. Why would he want that? Wouldn’t that be an insult to him?

“Yes, indeed, Rowan. Our past lives must have encountered these Inquitate, and something they have done will lead to the reason our lives were attempted upon here. Why your sister was executed. Perhaps, the insult was so egregious as to need to eliminate the bloodline entirely.”

Something bubbled up inside me, hot and ripe. “ Nothing my sister did would ever—”

“And so I ask you,” Bryn barreled over me, “how you shall possibly uncover the grievance our past lives inflicted if you do not relive the memories?” He stopped with a hand on the doorknob, glanced over his shoulder. The window light seemed to stretch across the room to play tenderly with his hair. “Do you have some other prerogative in L’Ardoise?”

Prerogative? “No, I—”

“We have already determined there is no community popcorn maker for you to return to, have we not?”

I pulled on my collar. “No, there’s no one.” No boyfriend. No friends after Willow’s death. No sister.

His eyes flickered. “And your job, I understand you are unemployed now? That your father does not wish for you to resume working for him?”

The blow landed like he’d intended, though how he knew, I didn’t know. “Yes,” I said quietly.

“And you are pursuing no other higher education?”

This time, I said nothing.

“You are not developing some unique hobby, are you? Perhaps longing to join the L’Ardoise marching band? Training for the hammer-throwing contest? Well, Rowan?” he pushed.

I couldn’t even look at James now. “No.”

“Then this is my condition. You return with me, visit Ruhaven regularly, and I will continue my research, with which you will assist. And perhaps, if we are lucky, we shall discover why your twin was attacked.” Bryn swept open the door, striding out with the cane leading. “Now, let us hope the dean is more amenable to me than yourself, Rowan, as taking a sabbatical this early in one’s tenure is rather frowned upon.”

The door whisked shut behind him.

T here was nothing in L’Ardoise waiting for me. That much was true. Everything I’d wanted, planned for, all of it was more of a dream now than Ruhaven had ever been.

Willow and I would never buy a house together. I’d never make that maid of honor speech I’d been running through my head since her first date. I’d never watch when she played for the national orchestra. We’d never drink wine on the church wall overlooking L’Ardoise, or laugh at the pigeon lady at Port Michaud beach again.

When I returned to Ruhaven, I’d be doing what I’d always done—chasing Willow’s dreams.

“What do you think of Oslo?” Bryn asked.

In the hallway of the bed and breakfast, I shifted my knapsack to my other shoulder before releasing a long breath. I pressed my lips together, half to smother the thoughts that swarmed like bees, half to suppress the taste of apple perfume trailing the woman who passed, heels click-clicking down the sunlit hall.

It’d taken Bryn only a few days to pack his entire life into the striped leather suitcase he gripped—a life that appeared to consist of ten matching shirts and four pairs of pants in the same color.

“It’s very clean,” I said when the woman turned the corner.

Bryn’s shoulder brushed mine as he angled toward me in the narrow hall. I kept my eyes fixed on the tops of his shoes, the embroidered leather glistening a chocolate orange in soft contrast to the oatmeal cuffs of his slacks. No man had ever worn anything so nice in L’Ardoise—and these were Bryn’s traveling clothes.

“I thought you may have wished to see the fjords,” he said.

Yes, ever since I’d flown overhead and seen those grooves clawing through the landscape—yet I could never afford the tour prices. “I’m sure they’re nice,” I offered.

“Yes, in the same way that Ruhaven is nice , I am sure.”

I probably deserved that after accusing him of lying about being crippled—and when he’d been attacked trying to recruit me .

“Did we ever meet?” I asked quietly.

“Meet?”

He knew what I meant, but I said it anyway. “In L’Ardoise.”

His heel tapped the carpet runner three times. “You do not remember?”

The words drew me up short. Did I? I peeked at him from under my braid. His face was set in stone, his smooth jaw clenched, his slicing cheekbones turning those blue eyes into severe pops of ice under his shadowed brow. A face no one would forget.

“I guess not,” I said at length.

“Then I guess it does not matter. James ,” Bryn said deftly when the door opened. “Will we leave now? Or do you wish to steal more of the shampoo?”

“Nope, got it all,” he assured us, and whistled through the hallway.

We walked to the train station while James filled Bryn in. “Kazie will be happy to see ye,” he said.

Bryn’s lips twitched in a rare warm smile.

James warned him about Kazie’s latest hobby—crocheting. “And she’ll make ye wear the feckin’ things too,” he lamented as we followed a sign for platform sixteen. “Mary from the post office asked me why I was wearing an ice cream cone on me head.”

I lost them briefly in the crowd at the station, but Bryn’s tall form provided an easy beacon.

“I take it you are not much of a traveler, Rowan,” Bryn commented when I at last found my seat across from him.

I crossed my legs, careful not to knock his cane. “I prefer to drive.”

James shook his head and took out The Kerryman newspaper, the same he’d read on the flight here. Even when the train whistled under a tunnel and the darkness left little room for reading, he merely turned a page about a builder not wanting to cut down a tree.

When the light came back, I asked him why.

“Ah, because ‘tis a hawthorn tree and we’re a superstitious lot.”

“But it’s just a tree.”

James looked at me, the towns of Oslo disappearing into a blur behind him. “And it’s just a dream,” he reminded me, and returned to his paper.

As the train picked up steam, Bryn asked James about Essie, and for anyone who might have overheard, they’d think she really was James’s wife. I hadn’t considered how it would feel to leave these people he knew in the Gate, to not be able to hold a photo of them, certainly not to call, for days or weeks on end.

What if someone discovered the Gate and stopped him from visiting? Actually, how were people not storming the West Irish countryside and bottling whatever magical element grew a mile up?

“Because ‘tis not exactly advertised, Roe,” James said when I asked him. The train rumbled as we careened through tunnel after tunnel, not short underpasses like in Nova Scotia, but mile-long monstrosities that carved through mountains. “And the Gate being in Ireland is a blessing, for if any tales do come out, we can fob it off on more Yank nonsense and play up the whole thing.”

He wasn’t going to get off that easy. “But what if someone you showed Ruhaven to told someone?”

James signaled when a woman pushed a cart over. “Black with a wee drop of milk,” he said, handing her change. “Ah a bit more, go on sure, a bit…there ye are,” he finished when his tea was white. “We did have someone once, ye remember, Bryn?”

He turned a page of his novel—a weighty thing about Greek love stories. “It was Aushin, I recall, who went on to write a rather extravagant book that would have been better literature should she have remained in Ruhaven.” He eyed me pointedly. “Regardless, it was published and now resides in the fantasy section of some unfortunate library.”

I think it was a joke, but Bryn’s eyes drifted back to his page.

James smirked. “That’s it. So ye see, Roe, even if people do tell a tale, there’s not many who will believe ‘tis more than a story. And if they do, sure it’s lost in all the other fables the Yanks invent.”

“And if they go up to the Gate and investigate?” l pushed.

James shrugged and sipped his milk. “They’ll see nothing, as ‘tis only Ruhavens who can experience the memories.”

Only Ruhavens? But did he really know for sure? There was another country, wasn’t there— Drachaut —that’s what he’d told me, so what about them?

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, Rowan,” Bryn replied to his spread novel. “If someone did not once exist in Ruhaven, there is no past life to witness.”

Unless Kazie had been right about a twin connection, and enough of the Gate recognized me as Willow.

We plunged into another tunnel, darkness consuming the train so long that Bryn sighed and folded the novel on his lap. When he looked at me, his brittle blue eyes reflected the steady beat of passing lights.

“Roe,” James said, and I glanced away. “I want to ask a favor of ye before we arrive in Naruka.” He planted his elbows on his knees. “About Tye.” I kept my face neutral. “I know that yer close, and yer going to want to tell him what happened, but…” He steepled his hands. “Well, I’d prefer if ye didn’t. So I’m asking ye not to, for me.”

I peeked at Bryn, but his face betrayed nothing. “For you , James?”

“For me,” James agreed, in a way that said we both knew it wasn’t. “I know Tye’ll worry about ye if he finds out the Inquitate have approached.”

I caught my bottom lip between my teeth. Why didn’t Bryn want Tye to know the Inquitate had been in Oslo? Because that’s what this was about—not some misplaced concern for me.

I shifted on the carpeted seat. “But I’ll be researching Willow’s connection. How am I going to explain that?”

Bryn spoke now, one finger tapping his knee. “This is simple, Rowan. You can explain your research of the Inquitate because Willow was killed by them. You do not need to mention they approached you in Oslo.”

While the train rumbled side to side, Bryn barely moved.

“Why do you want me to lie to my recruiter?”

The hand on Bryn’s knee stopped its tapping. “Is that what he is to you, Rowan?”

He couldn’t possibly know what I felt for Tye. “What exactly are you trying to say?”

“I think you understand me perfectly,” Bryn replied, holding my gaze for a knowing beat. “But should you proceed to tell him, I will not assist with the Inquitate,” Bryn threatened. “And my second condition,” he continued in the same even tone, “is that you remain with myself, James, or another Ruhaven at all times.”

“ What? Why?”

James winced as heads turned our way.

Bryn arched one elegant eyebrow. “I had thought it obvious, Rowan. You are now a target of the Inquitate, and therefore, should take precautions to ensure that there is a Ruhaven near you who will break any illusion.”

“Like when you tackled me to the sidewalk?”

His eyes flicked to my knee, then my hands where they curled on my lap. “Perhaps with more finesse, but yes.”

James crossed a leg over his knee. “Roe, he’s right, so he is. Until we know why the Inquitate have come after yerself and Willow—”

“And Bryn,” I interjected.

“Aye, and Bryn,” James agreed. “We should be sure to stick together. All of us.”