Page 21

CHAPTER 21

Something There

E verywhere, the glittering plates poked above creeping ivy, beaded with dew and sparkling like a thief had split his sack of gold amongst the woods.

“Rowan?”

I pushed to my feet, brushing aside Bryn’s offer of help. “What are these?” I asked, pointing to each in turn. How had I never noticed them before? “Is this some dedication?”

Bryn tried to reach for it, but I yanked it away. “What is it?” I insisted.

He shook his head. “A memorial.”

A memorial? But I recognized these names—Ruhavens who’d visited Naruka. What would that—?

I dropped to the ground. No, no. The buzzing in my ears drowned out whatever Bryn was saying behind me. I stabbed my hands into the earth, digging through dark clay, slugs, and worms. Snap. I yanked at the roots, breaking them in my fist.

What would I do if I found something—something human ?

Bryn’s shadow fell over the hole I’d carved in the earth. “Rowan, stop this. These are sacred here.”

Sacred . But he worshiped Ruhaven, existed inside that world for hours every day. Would there ever be a line he wouldn’t cross for it?

“Why? What am I going to find?” I muttered just as my fingers scraped something smooth and clear. What was it, goddamn it? What was—

Not bone.

I nearly sagged with relief when I yanked out my treasure—a man’s rusted spectacles. What were these doing buried here? And what an idiot I must have looked like right now, holding a pair of dirty glasses, my face probably still bone white. Had I honestly thought James would—

I jumped when Bryn’s fingers curled around my shoulder. “You must rebury those, now .”

Why? I twisted around, but was so off balance, I nearly decked Bryn with the glasses. “But what are these?” I asked, gesturing at the plaques. There must have been hundreds.

Bryn’s face slipped into cold ice again. “If you cannot stomach a few undoubtedly entertaining rounds with an Azekiel, I doubt you are ready for this.”

“I thought they were irregular expressions .”

He set his jaw, his eyes going to unamused slits.

And there went any hope of him taking me to the Gate.

I resisted backing up when Bryn stepped forward, studying me from under dizzying eyelashes, his cane squelching in the mud.

I thrust the glasses between us, a barrier against my nerves. “Please, just tell me.”

He exhaled, long, slow, like a wave cresting to shore, then curled his fingers around my hand holding the glasses. “This is a Token,” he explained slowly. “Each Ruhaven chooses one to be buried for them before they make the Fall. This is what you have desecrated.”

I clenched the glasses hard enough they would have cracked if Bryn hadn’t stopped me. Since I’d first walked into his office, Bryn had held back information from me—from James too— when what he knew could have explained Maggie’s death. “I’ll desecrate the rest of what’s buried here—scarves, hats, dentures, whatever—if you keep holding back.”

His face soured, but still managed to look only as bad as a model who’d been given the least favorable design for the runway.

“I obviously cannot stop you from digging up our religious site like a child’s sandbox.” He rolled his shoulders, a bird adjusting its wings after landing. “James prefers to wait to reveal the Fall—wisely, I might add. However, I can tell you that the Fall is when a Ruhaven chooses to return home. Not to the memories, which can never be changed, but to be reborn as Ruhaven again. If we are in the Gate when our memories finish, then our souls can attempt the Fall.”

The woods quieted—or my racing heart drowned everything else out. Had I heard wrong? Had he really said…

“Reborn in Ruhaven? That’s…that’s impossible. You don’t believe that?”

But of course Bryn did. There was nothing of Ruhaven he didn’t worship, if James had told him this was possible, he’d believe it.

“Yes, Rowan, I do. I have seen it. I witnessed Mohammed disappear at this very Gate, his soul returned to Ruhaven.”

I backed away from him, the possibility of what he dangled left a cavernous hole that threatened to drown me. How would this even work? Did we go back in time? Did we transport? Did we remember who we were? Or were we reborn like now?

I blubbered out all my questions in a nonsensical loop, then landed on one. “If—if I did that, what happens to—to me?”

He reached for me again, grabbing my wrists, emotion banking in his eyes. “You are Nereida. Therefore, you will return to Ruhaven, but your life here would cease to be. You would not be Rowan, you would not remember who you were, no one would.”

I stammered under him. I’d stop existing, and then—then I’d be someone else. Someone better, maybe someone like my sister.

“You do not need to make the Fall, Rowan,” he said, softer now.

I stared blankly at the glittering graveyard. “They all… they all returned to Ruhaven?”

He closed the space between us, and the tingling in my wrists spread to the rest of my body. “In a manner, their souls returned, as yours would. You would become Nereida, though she would not remember you.”

Was that why James had brought me here? Not to find the reason for the Inquitate, but because I could be Nereida. I could be James’s sister—the real one.

Panicked, I shoved away from Bryn with the glasses still clenched in my fist, forcing him to fight for balance with his cane. “Rowan, this is why James did not wish to tell you yet. It is a great deal to understand and accept.”

Air whistled in and out of my lungs. “What if I’d made the Fall on one of my trips in Ruhaven?” I’d die in the Gate, and never be able to say goodbye to Willow.

His voice was brisk now. “Breathe, Rowan, else the shock will take over and I shall not be able to carry you home. You will know before the Fall begins and the memories start to end. None of us wish for you to make this accidentally.”

Yet that was exactly what could have happened.

“ Don’t you?” I accused, and chucked the glasses.

Bryn juggled the spectacles, annoyance riding high in his flushed cheekbones. “Have you no respect at all?”

Respect ? When they didn’t respect me enough to warn me? I ground my teeth. How could I expect them to when I was the one currently lying to everyone?

Shaking my head, I turned and walked quickly into the woods, away from Bryn, away from all of it.

W hen the trees finally parted, Naruka’s windows glittered with emerald reflections, and I heard the unmistakable sound of James’s Ford farting up the lane. He drove with one arm out the window, a cigarette in his hand, switching between chatting and arguing with Kazie.

My lungs still ached from the rush down the mountain, from the shock of what might have happened to me. Why hadn’t James told me? I could barely stomach the likely answer—that he’d wanted Nereida back, and it was just easier if I didn’t know.

I watched as he pulled to a stop in Naruka’s shadow, where the Ford’s exhaust pipe shook like a scolding parent before settling into quiet disapproval.

Kazie popped out of the car first, shouting a quick hello to me as she flew past and into the house.

“Would ye stop visiting that Irish gift shop?” James yelled after her, slamming the Ford’s door. In his soaked snowcap jacket and black rain boots, he looked like a dehydrated penguin. “Oh, Roe, how ye? Did yerself and Bryn go on up to the Gate? Where is he?” He squinted at the empty trail behind me.

How was I? Shaky, exhausted, and apparently one memory away from my soul tumbling through the Gate permanently.

“Got ya that Cork spiced beef ya like,” Tye said, emerging with a bag of potatoes over one shoulder and a grocery bag cradled in his elbow. “As long as we’re both still eatin’ meat, we gotta splurge, huh?” The bag thunked against his back as he stopped and lifted his ball cap with his wrist. “You okay, kid? You’re as pale as Stornoway.”

I strode unsteadily toward the misty car that steamed fumes out its butt.

Did Tye know too? Had he planned to tell me? To warn me?

I planted my hands on the overheated hood, more for balance than anything. James looked at me curiously, crumbs dotting his jacket. I took a deep breath. “Were you ever planning to tell me about the Fall?” I asked quietly.

Shock registered on his handsome face.

Tye only arched a slow brow. “So, Stornoway spilled the beans,” he drawled.

James cursed loudly and slapped the car. “Ah, for feck’s sake.”

Why didn’t he want me to find out? Because he knew I wasn’t Nereida? Or—or was it so he could exchange Roe-the-electrician for Nereida-the-sister like a Ruhaven slot machine?

I lifted my hands off the hood. “I found the plaques after I came back from the Gate. Why didn’t you tell me, James?”

Tye answered, “Hun, do ya really think now was the best time to spring this on ya?” He shifted the bag of potatoes to his other arm. “You’re just gettin’ settled. Ain’t no need to talk about the Fall this early.”

James nodded as he dug for another smoke. “Roe, me mum taught me to space things out. Ye don’t go throwing reincarnation at people after telling them about the Gate. I wanted to give ye a bit of time is all.”

Relief whistled through my lungs. Was that really why he’d waited? “I could have handled it.”

James let out a short laugh. “Oh, ye mean like when ye nearly stole me bloody car?”

“Or when ya thought that beast man was gonna kill ya?” Tye piled on.

“Or when ye wanted to avoid the Gate because yer Tether broke?”

Points unfortunately taken. I grabbed the smoke Tye held out. “But what if I’d made this Fall without knowing?”

“Ye think I’d let ye escape that easily?” James asked with a grin. “I’ll explain things properly over tea like, or…” He broke off, scratching at his jaw and squinting at the spot Tye was now staring at. Then he let out a low chuckle.

I followed Tye’s gaze.

Bryn limped from the shadows into Naruka’s garden, sweat beading on his temples and hair plastered to the sides of his face. Mud spiraled up his cane in a crude art experiment.

I should have helped him walk back, should have stayed with him, just in case.

He stopped about ten feet away, bracing a hand on the hotel’s stone walls to catch his breath. “Rowan, while you may enjoy the exercise, I am not a gazelle and do not take pleasure from bounding through the woods multiple times a day.”

James nudged my side. “I’ll say, I do quite like the state ye keep him in, Roe. Good for him.”

Tye shoved past Bryn. “You ever think she’s tired of all your hovering, Stornoway? You’re worse than an old woman. Breathing down Roe’s neck all the damn time like the Inquitate are gonna jump out of the shadows.”

“Don’t ye two get into it again,” James warned.

“What happened last time?” I asked, but Tye only grunted as he booted open the tack room door.

Kazie came bounding out when he did, skipping in a loop around the house before grabbing another basket from the car, and shouting, “Hey, Bryn! Why do you have my alarm clock?” Then disappearing past me for the second time.

I stared at the clock in Bryn’s fist, the one I’d left at the Gate, the one I’d forgotten about.

Slowly, I raised my gaze to Bryn’s and caught faint amusement before he wiped it away.

“So James,” I said, trying to draw his attention, “why don’t you tell me all about the Fall now?”

But his eyes pinwheeled to the evidence of my self-guided trip to Ruhaven, his mouth gaping like the stuffed bass nailed above Naruka’s fireplace. “Jayzus. Mary. And Joseph,” he panted, fury widening his nostrils as I braced myself. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is. Go on, tell me, Bryn.”

His eyes twinkled before he threw me bodily to the wolves. “While I wish I could persuade you otherwise, James, I cannot.”

Oh, you think that’s funny?

Moderately.

James covered his face, inhaled, then dropped his hands and pointed a finger at me. “Rowan Tullum, ye will not tell me ye took a feckin’ alarm clock to bring ye back. Oh, me feckin’ word. Me mammy’s rolling in her grave—circles! That’s what ye’ve done to her. And Bryn, ye were supposed to be watching…” When Tye stepped out of the house, James trailed off before he could say “ after the Inquitate in Norway. ” Instead, he settled with crossing himself.

Resting a hip on the car, I flicked up my hood as the rain started. “James, I swear I didn’t know I needed a person .”

He paced in circles before Naruka’s crimson door, fumbling for another cigarette. “An alarm clock,” he muttered. “Ye’ll have me hair going feckin’ gray before I’m forty, so ye will.”

Bryn corrected dryly, “James, you are forty.”

“Ah, go away with ye!”

I jumped when Tye planted his hands on either side of me, denting the car’s hood. His hair was soaked to dark brown and curled under his ball cap. “Darlin’, you don’t have any goddamn idea what might have happened to ya,” he growled, breath smelling of Irish coffee.

“I do know. I mean, I know now . I’m sorry.”

In the corner of my eye, Bryn peeled himself off Naruka.

“Just because you wanted to go off on your merry own, ya go on up there without a fuckin’ thought!” Except I had put a lot of thought into it—especially the clock. “You’re supposed to be the one with sense around here, not with your head in the damn clouds. You might have died today for a bunch of fairy dreams.”

I shrank under Tye’s accusations. What if, because of his cane, Bryn hadn’t made it in time? What if he hadn’t been watching after me today?

I smoothed my palms on my shaking thighs. “Tye, I—”

Bryn grabbed Tye by the shoulder and yanked him away from me like a horse pulled back by its halter.

Tye stumbled, then jabbed him in the chest. “This is your damn fault, Stornoway.”

“It’s not,” I said, shoving off the hood. “ I went up there. I thought the clock would work.”

“Then you’re a goddamn idiot,” Tye said flatly.

I winced.

James maneuvered between them, prying them apart with a hand on each shoulder. Then he turned on me. “Roe, I don’t know what ye were bloody thinking. Ye know I’d take ye to the Gate meself, and there’s a reason we’ve not been letting ye stay in as long. ‘Tis not safe. But ye risk yerself, ye risk Nereida, ye risk me sister,” he hounded me, on and on and on.

Sister. I only had one sister, and she was dead.

I curled my fingers in my jacket. “Stop it!” I shouted at him, unable to stand the tirade. Every favour he’d done for me, every stew he’d made, every walk to the Gate to show me Ruhaven, all the effort he’d gone to in bringing me here, had been for a lie. “I don’t need you protecting me. I don’t need Bryn following me. I don’t need Tye critiquing my repairs. And most of all—I am not your goddamn sister.”

James froze, his lips popping open like I’d slapped him, his pupils going wide and dark. A slow blush crept across his cheeks and nose. He lowered his voice until his accent had none of its up-and-down charm. “Well, if that’s what ye think, Roe.”

What I thought didn’t matter, but what was true was that I wasn’t who James wanted me to be. That woman had died of an aneurysm walking alone on a side street of L’Ardoise.

“James, it’s not that I don’t—”

He flipped up the hood of his jacket, spun on his heel, and strode briskly through the main entrance. The crimson doors slammed shut behind him.

I could actually taste my own foot in my mouth.

Tye stabbed his cigarette at Bryn’s soaked woolen jacket. “Here we go again, Stornoway. Both of ya are too damn close to this.” He ground the smoke under his heel and walked away.

Bryn and I stared at each other in the rain. His pale face beaded with wet rivers, his linen shirt now completely soaked through and clinging to muscle, the bluish vein at his neck disappearing under his collar.

“Rowan, you are getting wet,” he said finally. Go inside .

And say what?

That even if I were James’s sister, a few months in Ruhaven didn’t replace a lifetime with Willow?

Bryn said nothing, only continued watching me through eerily blue eyes as the rain pounded harder and harder, cracking on the Ford’s battered hood. I broke contact, then crossed my arms to pin my jacket tighter as I strode past him and into Naruka.

James was in the kitchen.

After months here, it was as welcoming as my mom’s had once been, even if the occupier was angrily sorting teabags. The jacket he’d been wearing hung limply from the coat rack, a thin puddle gathering beneath it so the slow drip-drip fell in time with the clocks.

On the table, two dried-out sandwiches waited on wooden plates, a cup of tea in front of one, water for the other. Neither was touched.

And I’d left Bryn up in the woods. A Ruhaven wouldn’t have done that. They’d have thought of how the trail would be slick with mud for a cripple, or of the Inquitate that might still be hunting him. They’d certainly have thought of James, who’d given up his life to help Ruhavens find Naruka, to show them that impossible dream up in the woods. A dream Willow might have wanted to return to, but I never would.

“James, I’m sorry that I said—”

“It might be,” he cut in with his back to me, “that some of us take our past lives more seriously than ye, Roe. Might be offended by the way ye so flippantly throw that in our face.”

I deserved that, but the coldness in his tone had my gut clenching. I couldn’t possibly explain to him the mess I’d made for myself, or what it’d do to him if he knew the truth. What it was doing to me right now, to see the obvious pain I’d caused.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, pausing under the priest calendar to rub my forehead. “I’m trying to… to figure all this out. It’s not that I don’t…” How did I say this to him? I didn’t have the words that Willow did, wasn’t good with people like her.

But I liked James, liked his puppy-dog eyes and quick charm, liked how the simplest things made him happy—like when I glued a new rubber band around the oven door to keep the temperature constant. But I wasn’t his sister. And he wasn’t my brother.

His shoulders tensed. “Ye don’t need to say it, Roe. Ye’ve made yerself clear.” Tea trickled from a kettle in the shape of a polka-dot mushroom. “So I’ll let that go and say only that I don’t know what would possess ye to go to the Gate alone. I thought I made meself clear ye need an anchor. And yet for all yer sense, ye didn’t listen. Why?”

I tapped the heel of my boot.

This was at least easier to explain, if a whole lot more embarrassing. Maybe he was comfortable with his public displays with Essie, but I would never be.

James swept his gaze over me. “ Well? ” he demanded when I remained mute.

Heat pricked the tips of my ears. Just get it over with . If I could tell Bryn, surely I could tell James. “It’s just that when Nereida is… I mean, when she’s with—”

“I will take Rowan to the Gate from now on.”

I started at the sound of Bryn’s voice from the doorway. His cane tapped softly on the linoleum as he stepped into the kitchen, angling himself between James and I.

Slowly, James set down his tea. “What’s this about like?”

“I will anchor both of us. You know I am able.”

Guilty relief lifted the weight on my shoulders. So he hadn’t changed his mind.

James’s brows knitted together—but he wasn’t looking at me. “Ye think ‘tis smart to be going to the Gate with Roe, to be in the memories with her?”

“It’s safe,” I answered immediately. “Bryn pulled me out before and I didn’t realize it.”

James made a noncommittal sound before sipping his tea. “I don’t like it.”

“It is not for you to decide,” Bryn stated.

I glanced between the two. I was missing something, some unspoken challenge. But after moment, James said, “Alright so, if that’s what ye want. But ye’ve made a right bollocks of the rest, telling Roe of the Fall. So ye’ll make yerself scarce while I give her the answers ye’ve forced out of me too early.”

Bryn hesitated, but this time, it was him who gave in. He turned and met my eyes, inclined his head, then strode out.

James leaned against the cupboard, face set in unreadable lines as he gripped his steaming tea.

I toed at a pebble I’d dragged in, glad he didn’t look quite as angry. “You really think we just… disappear when the memories end?”

“Not think, sure, I know. I’ve witnessed it meself many a time and ‘tis not something I’m likely to forget. It’s something that we each choose when the memories end. I would have told ye eventually, of course, but ye were ready to leave Naruka only a month ago. I didn’t think it was time.”

He’d taken me to Norway, paid for my flight, the hotel room. Helped me find what must have killed Willow. But had it all been to get Nereida back?

“And you, will you make this Fall?” I asked.

He walked in a slow circle around the kitchen, studying the portraits, or maybe the clocks, seeming to need the time to settle himself. Automatically, he kicked the fridge as he passed, then straightened a fur rug thrown over the back of a chair.

“No,” he admitted quietly. “Though how ye must believe that every bone in me body wants to. Though ye may not consider our relationships of much importance to ye, what with not wanting to be me sister and all, it so happens I do take them fairly seriously. So no, I won’t be going back. I’ll die a man here.”

Why? Did he not believe in the Fall? I started toward him, stopped. “What is it, James? Why won’t you go? If you believe it?”

He stiff-armed the chair, used it to support his weight as though he were an older man. “Don’t ye understand yet, Roe?” He looked out the window, at the cliff jutting over Naruka. At the Gate which loomed over us all. “Didn’t ye notice there’s someone missing from the Gate?”

I frowned. Missing? “I…Willow?”

Annoyance flattened his lips. “No, not yer sister, Roe. Bloody hell, how blind can ye be?” He twisted away from the window, eyes swimming. “‘Tis Essie who’s missing from the Ledger . Don’t ye understand what it’s like for us, for me? Have ye no care at all for what it is to love Essie like I do, to see her every day in the Gate, to watch and love and hold her memory, yet to look at the Ledger and not find her name?” Eyes shimmering, he slapped a hand on the counter, fought back tears.

Even the clocks fell silent in the stillness of the kitchen.

Sticky shame washed through me.

Because no, I hadn’t thought about Essie. She was just one more creature in the Gate, a character in a play that was as fictional as the Azekiel. “You wanted to find her here,” I said hollowly.

He looked away from me, stared at the tiled backsplash above the sink.

Then realization struck, thick and consuming. “No, not just that. You thought she’d be me .”

I could see it in his face—the truth written so plainly, I wondered how I hadn’t seen it before. That’s why he’d broken down in the forest.

Not for what I was, but who I wasn’t.

I wasn’t Essie.

God, how could I be so blind? So selfish ?

“Is there no one else she could be in the Ledger ?” I asked quietly.

He shook his head, weary now as he gripped the counter, the tea forgotten. “No. There’s no one, Roe. We’ve found the last, and anyone else is too old or young to have been her.”

“But why not make the Fall then? Wouldn’t you…” I was out of my depth. Emotionally. Theoretically. “Find her again?”

“No. Eight hundred years ago, one of two things happened to Essie. She either lived out her life, or she died and made the crossing here with me. As she’s not in the Ledger , she would have passed away in Ruhaven some centuries ago. Only if we made the Fall together would our souls return. We can’t. And I won’t return without her.”

I said nothing, just let the aching silence hang. How did I apologize for being what I wasn’t? Never could be? Not Essie. Not the girl he’d grown up with as a child, not the woman he’d loved in the Gate later, with her round cheeks and curly hair. Not even his sister—I couldn’t even offer James that.

In that moment, I felt smaller than the potato bug crawling up the chair leg.

“I wanted, so bloody badly, for someone to enter the Gate and look back at me through Essie’s eyes,” he admitted, fingers curling on the counter. “So badly. I hoped, that maybe—” his voice broke, “that maybe then, the woman I’ve known me whole life might finally know me as well. Might finally see me. James . Not Jamellian.”

My throat went dry. He deserved that—to find Essie, to find someone who’d love him here. Not someone who’d thrown the fact of his sister in his face. “I’m… I’m so sorry. So sorry that I wasn’t—”

“Ye know, Roe,” he interrupted, voice so raw that I stopped talking at once to hear it, “I wanted ye to be Essie, ‘tis true. But I never felt ye were, and I thought I should. So that day when I found out ye were me sister, it was when I knew for certain that Essie was dead.” He rubbed his chin, fought for control. “But—but it was enough that I’d found me sister. It was enough. Until ye threw that back in me face today.”

He strode out through the tack room, and quietly shut the door behind him.

I floated in the river of white milk where the bubbles floated up and up and up until they disappeared into the purple sky.

Here, I could lose myself again, forget what I’d done. I didn’t want to think of James, of Essie, of the person I should be, but wasn’t.

Kazie had voiced no questions when I asked her to take me to the Gate, to anchor me. I couldn’t bring myself to ask Bryn.

So I kicked my feet, enjoying the feel of the thick warmth of the river as O’Sahnazekiel watched me with golden eyes from the beach.

He’d swam with me minutes ago, and now his braid hung in a wet swath past his waist, the end of it blackened like the wings that draped on the velvet, turquoise sand. Tattoos danced across half his naked body, caressing the inside of his thigh before wrapping around his left foot where talons dug into the sand.

I felt myself grin at him, beckon.

With a roll of his eyes—the motion like a planet circling the sun—he rose and stretched god-like wings. Their smoky depths spanned the width of the beach, casting the milk water and me in purple shadows, before he folded them gracefully behind him.

The length of him swung between his legs as he walked, and thankfully, I hadn’t yet seen him use it. But a part of me wondered. And right now, miserable as I was, I might not care as much to see that side of him.

But Nereida only paddled toward the beach, watching with her zoomed vision the water rise over taut muscle, the tiny pulses of light gliding under his skin, as if his veins flowed with melted bronze.

When the river rose to his pebbled nipples and his braid floated, he grinned at me.

And a bubble burst in my face.

Nereida cursed and patted at the liquid streaming painlessly down her face. Just as she blinked it away, Sahn was there, scooping me up in his arms so that my feet kicked harmlessly in the water.

She pressed her hands to his cheeks, staring at him, saying something to him in that sense they used to greet each other, but this was something different, an invisible rope that strung from her chest to his. I felt him. Or some part of him.

She lifted her mouth to his as his fangs slid out.

And nipped his neck instead.

He let out a hoarse laugh when she jumped back, sending bubbles floating his way, this time bursting on whatever part of his braid had started to dry in the star’s light.

He lifted his wings out of the river, held them above.

Don’t you dare! she seemed to say.

With a devilish grin, he slammed them down.

The last I heard was Nereida’s spluttered complaints as the wave smothered her.