Page 17

CHAPTER 17

Between Me & You

T he translucent-skinned, black-boned creature had been James, and the bubble-faced female his mate, Essie.

And he was my brother.

James tried to explain it to me—siblings in Ruhaven—how they worked, what they were, but I couldn’t hear him over the buzzing in my ears. Couldn’t handle the watering sincerity and belief and hope ringing in his eyes that made my gut want to eat itself alive.

It was one thing to lie to myself, to live the memories of a woman who couldn’t possibly be me. Stealing her life, pretending it’d been mine, posing as this memory. My thievery was never supposed to affect James.

But now?

For James to look at me as he did, to call me sister ? To be so convinced that the woman he’d known—Nereida, that’s what he’d called her, what he’d called me—was finally returned to him.

I wanted to claw my own skin off.

“Roe, watch out!”

Breath left me on a whoosh as Simona, Naruka’s unwieldy cow, bowled me into a mound of hot mud—maybe dung—then warmed my face with a sour exhale.

Yeah, this was about what I deserved.

“C’mon, Roe, get up!” Kazie shouted, launching herself at Simona’s broad neck, but with a bony shrug, the beast bumped Kazie off again, splattering her feet away from my disgrace.

She laughed at my expression. “It’s not that bad.”

“I think you have dung on your chin.” Not to mention on her pink overalls where a previously glittering unicorn was pinned to the breast pocket.

She wrinkled her nose, wiped it with a ruined sleeve, then shrugged. “So, how’s your research on the Inquitate going?”

“Not good. I’m starting to worry about Bryn,” I said, hunting for a branch while Kaz tossed another rope over Simona’s neck, “it’s been a month and he still hasn’t given me any details about the other deaths.”

She lifted her hand to slap Simona. “He’s working on it, Roe—oh dear Lord!” she exclaimed, barely missing bringing her palm down on diarrhea. “I hate this cow.”

In that, at least, we were in complete agreement. “You don’t think Bryn should have something by now?”

“What do ya think he’s doing in his room after the Gate?”

“Recovering?” I hazarded. “He visits Ruhaven for six hours every day.” Six hours in Ruhaven. I could only imagine what I’d be able to see in that time.

She tsk -ed me as I located a branch at last. “It’s totally fine,” Kazie insisted, mistaking my envy for annoyance. “What’d you get up to yesterday?”

“Rode an eight-legged llama through the woods.”

She goggled.

“I know,” I said, “it was a little ridi—”

“ You rode a Dinkleamu ?”

Now it was my turn to goggle. “A Dinkleamu ?” I laughed. “You’re messing with me.” With that, I lifted the stick, brought it down on Simona’s backside. The cow belched. Moaned. Bayed. But at last, she trodded onward, farting the entire way to the barn while Kazie quizzed me on Dimkleamus .

The gray sky dimmed to faded black when we clomped under the tin roof, the sweet vegetable scent of hoof oil replacing the wormy damp outside.

I yanked on the pull cord of the nearest stall’s light bulb. Warmth flowed over the fresh hay piled high for a cow who definitely didn’t deserve it or the waiting oats. But I led her in, fastened the rope to the hook, and prepared to hunt up a clean bucket for Kazie to milk her.

“So, think you’ll find a spirit soon?” Kazie asked, watching me. “Since you’re a Kalista.”

“James says I don’t get one until I complete some rite. I guess my Mark doesn’t really mean anything until I find one.”

“Yeah, it’s the same for all Marks to activate. You haven’t seen me yet, though, have you? I see Nereida now and then.”

I shook my head. “Horns, is that what I’m looking out for?”

“And dark skin, yup.” Then her eyes softened. “Heard James told you he’s your brother.”

A sinking feeling started up again in the pit of my gut. “Yeah. I’m not—I’m not something to you, too, am I?” I hadn’t even considered it and I should have. Another sister, maybe a mother for all I knew, but—

“Naw, you’re just a friend.” That was a small mercy. “You don’t seem, like, all that excited about the brother situation, though.”

I hated that it was so obvious. Especially when, under normal circumstances, I’d be happy to have James as a brother. “No, I am. I mean, I’m grateful to James, and he’s—” The kindest man I’d ever met, “—real nice. I don’t want to— Ah !”

My heart tripped over itself at the sight of him .

Tall and lean, Bryn stood next to the saddle rack, cane tucked under one arm, a leather satchel on his shoulder.

In the unforgiving light of the barn, with dung covering my jeans, I couldn’t look much better than the cow. Bryn, on the other hand, looked like he’d escaped a Norwegian fashion magazine on the season of beige.

“Hello, Rowan,” he said smoothly.

As I frowned, Kazie hurried from the stall with a muttered, “See ya in the Gate later!”

“Wait, Kazie, what about—” But the barn door swung shut behind her. “Simona,” I finished lamely.

Bryn unlatched the stall, limped in.

With the end of his cane, he nudged away the stick I’d swatted her with, and in a low voice, clucked at Simona, using soft noises that had her tail swaying. She flicked bored, cataract eyes at him before returning to munching hay.

“Sometimes, Rowan, a softer touch will do better.” He took the bucket I’d found, then lowered onto an upturned crate beside the cow and tapped Simona’s belly with the flat of his palm.

I gripped the top of the stall. “Are you enjoying Ruhaven now that you’re back?”

“ Enjoying ?” He seemed to taste the word. “That is not how I would describe it.”

“So you haven’t encountered any Inquitate in the Gate?”

“Surely, Rowan, I would tell you if I had.”

You’d think, but it’d taken for me to be targeted in Oslo for him to tell James the truth. “What about the list of other deaths?”

“I have been compiling my research, as I said to you last week.”

Milk began to trickle into the bucket. “But it’s been nearly a month.”

He started to roll his sleeves up, stopped. “I assume you wish me to be thorough? If not, I would have delivered you my summary on the very first day.”

I picked up the shovel, stabbed it into the steaming pile Simona had left. “And I suppose the delay has nothing to do with the fairy women you’re with?” I asked, impatience getting the better of me.

His eyebrow cocked up. “Has visiting the Gate been so torturous to you? James tells me you have been enjoying the memories.”

Of course I was, and that was exactly the problem. Because I wanted it so much I was already willing to pretend to be James’s sister. Was willing to use his affection, his trust, and his own belief, to find a reason for Willow’s death— Or was it just for me?

I dumped the shovel’s contents shakily into the bin. “Is that what you wanted? For me to enjoy it?”

“It is what I expected,” Bryn said, keeping his head down, silky hair brushing Simona’s coral-pink belly.

“Why?” I asked quietly. “Why are you doing this to me?” Was it some kind of punishment?

His hands stilled, and when he lifted his head, those crystal-blue eyes clouded. “To you, Rowan?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, in fact, I am entirely at a loss.” He rose slowly, coming toward me as I stood, nearly shaking, outside the stall. He curled one hand over the top, his jaw tight. “I do not know what it is you believe I am doing to you, nor do I know why I am being labeled a roving fairy lover in Ruhaven. Is this what you think of me?”

“It’s what Tye said.”

“It is obviously ridiculous.” The left side of his mouth lifted. “There are no fairies in Ruhaven.”

Maybe Tye had simplified. “You said you’d help me if I went into the Gate,” I reminded him, gathering my dignity and starting toward the exit. “You broke your promise.”

His eyes lit, then died. “Rowan, wait.”

“I’m going to fix the washing machine.”

“You fixed it yesterday.”

“The fuse box then.” After the crime you committed on it.

“ Rowan .” His voice was a growl of impatience.

I felt my shoulders hunch, already giving in before I turned and walked back to him.

He shifted, bending down so his head briefly dipped below the stall. When he rose, he reached over the door and dropped a thick notebook into my baffled hands. “Here.”

The cover was battered leather, old and ancient, with cracks forming like a farmer’s sun-aged skin. Probably some book on the different types of Ruhaven fauna.

With a frown, I peeled it open. It gave with barely a sound, the leather tired and worn and well-used, but I recognized his writing immediately—a garden of curving letters that bloomed on every page. Names, places, detailed notes, a history of each Ruhaven’s life, where they’d lived, who they’d known, their friends and family, there was even a genealogy chart for a few of them. Each death was listed in precise detail. Time, medical notes taped to the page, the person who’d found them, letters written and signed in James’s loose scrawl.

Leather bookmarks divided the notebook by decades of deaths, with the most recent being… Willow .

My throat closed when I saw the photo he’d taped to her page. She sat at the piano, hands raised, a grin curving her lips as she stared at the photographer—at me. Here was her life, written in delicate handwriting from the school we’d attended, to the college I’d dropped out of, to the awards she’d graduated with. All of it listed with such careful dedication, I could only hope someone would remember me with the same detail.

“As I said, Rowan,” Bryn murmured, and I flinched, half-forgetting he was there. “Sometimes, a softer touch is preferred.”

I spent the next week poring over Bryn’s notes, and if I felt some guilt for accusing him of taking his time, I pushed that aside, shoved it into the place where I kept the guilt over James, Ruhaven, and Willow.

Since meeting James in the Gate, I’d yet to meet an Inquitate, but I had seen two other creatures—one with three legs, the third used as a rudder, and a mermaid in the milk swamp, except its face was two feet long and only an inch wide, like it’d been pressed through a crevice in a rock and what was left emerged as this creature.

But Nereida didn’t speak to either, and only passed them with a pulse of energy that served as a Ruhaven greeting. She was still searching for something, or someone, but her thoughts were as confusing as the world.

If the answers were in the Gate, it could be years before I met an Inquitate. I had a much better chance of finding some connection between Willow and them here.

Which was why I was sitting in the library now, pouring over writing nicer than my mother’s Christmas cards. Bryn had spared no detail, having included every possible connection to an Inquitate, even if they were missing but not dead. He must have read through countless journals between visits to the Gate.

Guilt pecked me right in the temple. I flicked it away and picked up where I’d left off with his notes on Ben.

17 November 1961—Ben Einhart, New York, USA. Found dead outside a bodega. Collapsed at thirty-two due to an aneurysm.

His parents were listed below, their birthdates, and where they were born. A copy of the medical report was included as well. No wonder this took a month.

But I needed a general sense of each of the most recent deaths before diving in too deeply, so I flipped to the next page, then the next, until a milky sun glided through the library window, highlighting the history of Patrick Dubois.

In 1981, Patrick worked as a tradesman in the port of Marseille. He maintained a residence on Rue de Saint-Jean and wrote regularly to Naruka. He was recruited the same year, and stayed at Naruka between 1981 and 1987, but in 1987, with the Fall only months away, he returned to his home in Marseille.

That same year, Patrick was found dead by the Gendarmerie Nationale at the Calanques de Marseille, a cliff hiking spot. Later, James discovered he had died from a brain bleed. His next of kin, an ex-wife, was informed but was unaware of his ties to Naruka. When Patrick did not return our letters, James traveled to Marseille to visit him.

The inky writing, almost musical, ended on a smudge. I could hear Bryn in the words, the soft yet formal lilt of his voice that was hard to shake.

Willow had visited Paris once on a school music trip. What if they’d interacted in France? Maybe something could transfer between Ruhavens. After all, something had transferred from Willow to me if I could live her memories.

I moved to the next person.

Levi Lopez. Missing since 1986. Last known address 140291 Calle Ignacio, Oaxaca, Mexico.

Bryn had added a note to his list: We presume Levi may be another victim of the Inquitate, but with no secondary contact for him, we were unable to determine.

So he might have gone home and lost contact, or he might have been attacked as well. But he wasn’t visiting the Gate anymore, so what did the Inquitate care if he was living out his human life here?

Maybe, for the same reason they’d cared about Willow. Which begged the question—what could her past life have possibly done to warrant an execution here?

I took out the notepad, scribbled a few ideas on my page.

Levi—why did he leave Naruka? When did they lose contact?

Patrick—how far is Marseille from Paris?

The Fall—what is this? What does it mean to be months away?

James called us to dinner at five by banging the cowbell he should have kept on Simona. Bryn didn’t join, and Tye was busy working on the farm next door, so it was James, Kazie, and I who scooped up his vegetarian soup, a ginger-carrot combination that wasn’t bad.

How long did I have before I couldn’t eat meat either?

“James,” I said, pulling out my notebook. “How far is Marseille from Paris?”

He sipped a French wine. “I thought I told ye no Inquitate at the table.”

“It’s geography,” I corrected.

“Five hours,” Kazie answered, then prodded James with her fork. “Stop being such a stickler. So, Roe, it looks like Bryn finished that research after all.”

I stabbed a cherry tomato, nodded into my soup.

“Well, that’s good, because we’re all going to the Gate tonight—Bryn too,” she proclaimed. “You’ll come, won’t you, Roe?”

“Actually, I wanted to go over these notes and—”

James wagged a finger at me. “Ah no, yerself and Bryn aren’t to be alone after the attack. Ye’ll have to come with us.” Last week, Bryn had filled Kazie in when she’d caught him pulling old journals in the library. Luckily for Bryn, Tye was busy most days helping a farmer down the road, and too tired to take much note of what he was up to.

M y memory— Nereida —was combing her fingers through strands of silver jelly hair when I opened my eyes.

I’d never get used to this. The world—no, the planet —and its heavy scent of blooming vanilla-jasmine, or the way she slurped in the air like water.

Nereida. I was in Nereida’s body, but wouldn’t some part of her know I was here—listening, watching, feeling all that had happened some eight hundred years ago?

Maybe. Or maybe it was just a movie, an echo, and no more intimate than plopping down at a cinema and expecting the movie to care that you were there.

But if that were true, then how could Bryn embody that glimmer I’d seen? Surely, there must be some connection between then and now. Whatever that was might be responsible for the Inquitate.

I waited for my eyes to adjust, for the fog to clear, and when it did—

Holy god.

If it could, my head would have rotated on a pivot and never stopped. As it was, I fought to rein in my wildly beating thoughts, because trying to force Nereida to look, to stare, to soak in every shiny scale of the twenty or thirty creatures milling around us strained something inside me.

The scales, the feathers, the sizes! The necks that curled and twisted, the dinosaur spikes growing from the ridges of their spines, the plants that grew out of their ears. They walked and hummed and sang and danced and trailed and traced and even flew .

And it was strange to be amongst them. Trapped, almost, in a body that couldn’t respond with the hiccuping surprise and exhilaration I should have felt, that was instead constrained to a memory whose pulse beat like a lumbering bear settling into hibernation.

So I absorbed what I could, storing it away in case I woke up and never saw this again.

Look at that guy! Nereida, turn your head, just a little …ah! She craned her neck so far back, we ended up staring at the massive jaw of a giant. He scratched at a beard that was the size and color of a grizzly bear, then bent low enough to speak to a woman with two deer legs and curling horns. His breath sent her mane blowing back over her freckled shoulders. Then Nereida proceeded onward, passing a scaled man a few feet shorter with a round belly, and then— James.

He and Essie stood at the edge of a cliff. He drew back a bow with four-jointed fingers—that had to be handy. She giggled at him, her smile taking up half her face, but it was endearing rather than creepy.

Puffing out his purple chest, James let the arrow fly.

She lifted her hand, and with a flick of a finger, shifted the rock he’d been aiming for. It skirted to the left before the arrow thudded into it.

Rock spirit, indeed.

But we moved on, Nereida’s gait more glide than walk as she browsed the myriad stalls. Eventually, she selected one owned by a female with a mushroom growing on her head.

I tried not to stare, then realized it didn’t matter.

The roots of the mushroom grew from her skull, curling over the side of her jaw and down her long, long neck. Blue blood pulsed in the stem before it disappeared under an extravagant gown. The top was a laced vest pulled snugly over a chest that bloomed with thorns. Intricate lace decorated every seam and stitch. It all ended at feet that— Jesus Christ —grew into the ground.

I looked down when the fungus woman held out her hand. In her thorny palm, she cradled a patch of spotted weeds, soft as a hatched chicken. “Daringa!” the woman shouted at me, grinning a row of thorns.

Daringa ? What was that word again? James had been practicing with me in the kitchen. It was… eat ! Ah, that was it. It’d be great to tell James I could translate my first—

Wait? Eat what ?

Oh, no.

I groaned inwardly, but couldn’t stop Nereida’s clawed fingers from lifting the offering to our mouth. She bit into the soft moss and squishy bits as I tried to spit out the vile taste of mushrooms. Bad, Nereida, very, very bad.

But she swallowed every shimmering weed, and seemed to enjoy it so much that she started browsing more of the fungus woman’s wares, including an assortment of petals, rocks, and chunks of bark to sample—each more intimidating than the last.

What about that candy bowling ball I’d eaten weeks ago, did she have any of those? They weren’t so bad compared to the—

Oh. God.

Sudden, bone-splitting pain thundered through my body. Then Nereida screamed. No, no— I screamed.

Because something was breaking inside me.

I couldn’t see what attacked us as I fell, only the indigo sky swirling above like a demented painting.

A male with tangled hair swam into my blurred vision, desperate eyes searching my face as he fluttered skeleton fingers over my forehead, a moth bouncing around the light. Nereida tried to speak, but the sound died on the liquid bubbling from our lips.

Then he came into focus. Jamellian. James.

Could he lift me out? Please, James, pull me home. I tried to feel his hand in mine, the easy comfort that always dragged me out of this world, but my arm was cold. Everything was cold.

Because Tye was anchoring, not James. God, the pain , I could barely think .

I was burning alive.

Dying? Maybe. Had to be. The end of the memories. And I’d suffer every searing bit of it. Never to see Ruhaven again, never to eat the mushroom moss, never to breathe the spiced honey air.

Or had Ruhaven finally realized who I was? Like antibodies attacking an infection it hadn’t known was there.

Something flickered at my neck. Not more pain, but a pinprick coolness that didn’t belong to this world. Tye ? No, he felt different.

As I tried to reach for it, Jamellian’s panicked fluttering stopped, his hairy ears twitched. Was he calling me home? Or telling Tye to? Could he do that?

But instead he looked up, purple eyes rotating back in enormous sockets. Because a massive shadow had just blanketed the burning sky.

The pain in my chest lessened, just a fraction, and I all but sagged with relief. It felt like invisible fingers were rubbing over each bone in my rib cage, caressing Nereida’s spine and organs until the burning inside me simmered to a low flame—enough to see clearly again.

Still, the shadow careened toward us, roaring its fury now.

All around us, creatures—males, females, animals, some towering above the indigo trees—began backing away. I wanted to scream at them to stay, to help me, but the market emptied until only Jamellian and I remained.

And then I saw why they’d all scattered like ants from a fire. I saw the monster.

Boom.

It smacked into Ruhaven, rattling the leaves and shaking the stalls, breathing a throaty growl that promised if the pain didn’t kill Nereida, it would.

Its skin was shimmering gold, its waist-length hair blackened at the tips. A cloth draped over its chest, hanging to its muscled thighs, and the upper half of its body was covered in demonic markings.

James squeezed my shoulder before sprinting for cover. If I made it out of here, I’d tell him exactly how much of a coward his past life was, but for now, my eyes remained transfixed on my executioner.

Behind the beast, something fluttered, moved.

Feathered wings shot out of his back like dark thunderclouds, rippling in both directions, spanning at least twenty meters.

My thoughts stuttered at the sight. It was— neolithic . Some mammoth man-bird resurrected from thawing permafrost.

In answer, its feathered tail whipped out, splitting the air with a thunderous crack before flicking the ground in predatory warning.

I was dinner.

It lifted its chin, head partly hidden in the shadows of the trees. But fangs extended over a snarling mouth like jail bars dropping down.

Terror tripped along my spine, turned my bowels to water. I shook violently as a chill spread from the base of my neck.

It was looking at me. Me . Not Nereida. Because this demon had somehow detected my false soul, occupying this Ruhaven memory I had no business being in. That was why my chest felt like it was splitting down the middle.

Now, my punishment for stealing this dream would be living through my own death. Nereida’s body would die, but I’d still be trapped, feeling its teeth shred me, until I was alone in a nothing void at the end of the memories. I’d never get to tell James the truth, never figure out why the Inquitate killed Willow.

When the beast let out a blistering howl, I shrank inside Nereida, trying to be as small as possible.

But he charged with his wings arched in spears, pounding clawed feet into Ruhaven, his heaving breath misting to gold, like he’d spotted the thief crouching in Nereida’s mind and was now hell-bent on ridding her of it. My skull jittered on the ground. Yes, he’d cast me right out of this body, send me flying through the Gate like I deserved.

The monster thudded to his knees before me, muscled chest heaving deep breaths like he’d flown miles.

Eyes like Saturn locked on mine.

Let him kill me before he eats me, please.

Up close, his hair was blinding, his face terrifying. His wings were ghostly, massive, dappled-gray monstrosities that blocked out all light when he arched them above us.

Slowly, he slid taloned hands under my spine.

And I prepared to die. For Nereida to die. To feel the gut-tearing pain rip through the rest of her body when this monster tore her apart. This would be the end of my past life. Of this beautiful world.

But we didn’t die.

No, we were flying .