Page 5

CHAPTER 5

The Great Escape

I n seconds, I was out and careening through the tack room.

I kicked over a bucket in my scramble, sending thick, black hoof oil spreading over the cement floor before I slammed through the barn door. My shoulder sang from the impact, but I didn’t stop. Cackling birds took off in fright as I charged through the front garden toward the old Ford twenty feet away, ten feet away, five, the keys locked in my fist.

Behind me, the long creak of a door made my limbs go rigid with fear.

I peeked over my shoulder.

James burst from the tack room, gripping his flat cap against the brewing storm, his jacket flapping in the wind. “Roe, love, would ye just—”

My thighs quaked so hard I nearly collided with the driver’s door. Knees throbbing, my fingers like swollen sausages, I fumbled with the latch before I finally wrenched the damn thing open.

James shouted something as the ignition jackhammered in my palm, the spark plugs firing a rat-a-tat-tat .

Bang.

The engine spluttered to life, diesel fumes pluming in a black cloud out the exhaust.

Stomach-curling relief shuddered through me, but it did little to help my focus. I’d have one chance at this— one . Get to the road, then don’t stop until I made it to the airport, and only when I was on the plane would I consider what the hell was going on. I’d have to call the cops, or whatever they called them here, and—

“Roe, just give me a chance to explain!”

That was one thing I wouldn’t do.

Grinding the clutch, I reversed just as James hurtled himself at the Ford’s hood. The shock of the impact, of the sound of his belt buckle cracking against the metal, startled me before I recovered and slapped the gas.

James held on. “Roe, sure this is me bloody job, like!” he cried, banging on the windshield. “To find ye, to bring ye here.”

His job ? The hell it was. I wouldn’t be any part of what he had going on here—smuggling, trafficking, kidnapping.

I slammed the brake, threw the car into first. Not for the first time, Willow’s insistence on teaching me to drive manual saved me.

James skidded off the hood, taking the right windshield wiper with him so he clenched it like a sword in his fist. “Ye think I want to go through this every time?” he shouted. “Ye think I want to lie to ye—lie to others—just to bring them here? Kazie was like yerself, Roe.”

So this was some kind of cult.

I stomped the gas, my sweaty grip slipping on the steering wheel as I swung the Ford around and toward the line of trees. Rocks flew up, causing James to yelp when one pinged off his knee.

Wouldn’t feel guilty. I wouldn’t feel guilty.

The car seesawed down the driveway, over potholes and under twisted oaks, with Naruka glowering in the rearview mirror, her windows flashing as the rain pounded them. The front tire dipped, snapping my jaw shut and rattling my brain, so I stomped harder on the gas, shouting at James to back off, back the hell off!

In the driver’s side mirror, James pumped his arms harder, sprinting to keep up, his jacket cracking like a whip behind him. God, he might just catch me. The end of the road seemed impossibly far, the distant hum of traffic pure imagination in my ears. And even now, a part of me couldn’t believe what was happening, was convinced that the glasses jumping up and down on James’s nose couldn’t belong to a madman.

Focus.

I whipped the car around a rocky bend, my stomach whooshing as the nose dipped down, then up. Bushes whacked the side of the car, each thump like thunder in my roaring ears.

This shouldn’t be happening to me. I’d wanted to find something I was good at, figure out who I was without my sister, not this.

I swiped the steering wheel left to avoid another pothole that would have disabled the car—

Oh god!

I sucked in a breath, slamming the brakes to avoid colliding with the man standing in the middle of the road, my forehead cracking off the steering wheel.

My vision swam, my head throbbing like it was split in two, or three, or four. Tears sparked in my eyes—from the panic or the pain, I didn’t know. I blinked rapidly, trying to bring into focus the figure obscured by the hood’s billowing smoke, and my stomach sank.

So he’d come after all.

Standing in the beam of the headlights, his hands tucked into the pockets of his rich coat, was Bryn. Older than in the photograph, his jaw firm where it’d been softer before. But him, unforgettably.

Hands shaking, I tried to restart the car.

His eyes flashed, a blue warning in the glow of the headlights.

“Roe!” James’s voice broke through the dull roar in my ears. “Jayzus, Roe, are ye alright?”

No, I wasn’t alright. Hadn’t been in three long years.

But Bryn’s expression never changed. His lips remained in a wide, firm line, his eyes wary and unreadable, and even when he began to fade like the car’s steam dissipating in the air, he only offered that unrelating stare.

Then he was gone.

And I was alone, the woods empty, the air still.

I was going crazy. My gut clenched at the hallucination I’d just witnessed, some by-product of whatever had happened up in the woods. A concussion, maybe, and the idea brought me some brief relief before I spotted James in the driver-side mirror.

His heavy panting carried through my open window, then he ducked inside, cursing me, cursing Tye, as he yanked out the keys.

I couldn’t seem to move.

Something was wrong —with me? With Naruka? I couldn’t be sure, and that uncertainty was worse than the hallucination.

Then James was gripping my hands, prying my stiff fingers off the steering wheel and folding them in my lap. He pressed two fingers to my temple, my forehead, the back of my head as I sat there, numb, my bottom lip trembling and tasting of snot.

“Jayzus, ye really got yerself good,” James huffed, straightening his glasses over a sheen of sweat. He shouted over his shoulder, “Tye, would ye bring some ice?”

The man who’d been kissing my cheek only an hour ago slid into sight in the rearview mirror. “Hey, darlin’,” he drawled, flashing a dimple and a salute.

I could smell the sweat pooling in my armpits.

James reached into his pocket and drew out a pack of smokes, offered one. “No? Ah well,” he said, sliding it between his lips. “Ye know it wasn’t supposed to be like this. ’Twas supposed to be Bryn who showed ye the Gate, who explained things.”

I didn’t care about Bryn, didn’t care about any of it anymore—I wanted to scrub every piece of Naruka from my brain.

I quickly motioned for the cigarette I’d turned away and stuffed it between my lips. I’d have a smoke before I died, or before my mind sank into the next illusion.

James flicked the lighter, and I inhaled the lung-searing heat with trembling relief.

“The truth of it is,” he continued, “what ye saw up there in the Gate, on top o’ the mountain—it’s a memory. Yours . As real as yerself or I right here.”

This was it. My body would be found years from now under the bluebells by some tourist. My bones rotten. My parents oblivious to what had happened. I’d never be buried next to my sister in the grave at the church on the hill.

“What do you want?” I managed. And what the hell did I have to offer?

“Want?” James rubbed a chin that never grew any stubble. “I want to tell ye where yer from, where we’re from. I want to share with ye the history of that place, and why…” He lifted a brow. “Suppose first I want ye to stop looking at me like I’m stark raving mad.” His lips stretched into a grin. “For I’m only a wee bit. But Roe, yer not the first to come through and ye won’t be the last.” He stabbed his cigarette on the dashboard and flicked it away. “I’ll prove to ye ’twas no dream, because I’m going to tell ye exactly what ye saw, and then yer going to believe me.”

No, then I was going to swallow my last mouthful of air and scream until my lungs were shriveled grapes.

James took the smoke from my shaking fingers. “So here’s how it went,” he began. “Ye were lying in the Gate—that’s what we call it—when ye slowly started to sink into the earth before ye woke up to the strangest scent, a bit like smoked vanilla, and yer eyes were so thick and heavy ye might have thought ye were underwater. But when they did open, ye saw a sky the color of burnt indigo, and a million cogs turning among the stars, with a forest growing through them, where the vines drag down and trail on the earth.

“And when ye breathed, ye tasted the air in yer lungs rather than yer throat, and they filled up with the stuff ’til ye almost thought ye were drowning. Then ye held it in ye, the taste of our world, until ye thought ye might burst from the weight, before ye exhaled at last.”

My breath was coming in quick, harsh gasps now.

“It was terrifying. Not what ye saw in the memories,” he mused, “but what ye’d left behind for a tiny moment. That’s why when ye woke, ye weren’t scared right away. No, ye felt like a mother who’s lost her child, a terrifying longing, like something vital was ripped from yer soul.”

James laid his hand over my clammy one.

“Roe, love, come back to the house with me. We’ll have a cuppa, and ye can hear me out, see what I’ve got to show ye.”

The leaves whinnied in the quickening winds. “I want to go home,” I said weakly.

James leaned closer and murmured, “Roe? I am taking ye home. To Ruhaven.”

J ames wrenched open the car door, waited.

Gripping the window for support, I rose slowly, carefully. He gestured to the lane that led to Naruka, the hotel watching the unfolding scene in silence. I started toward her. Stopped. Pivoted.

Bolted.

I didn’t know how I had any strength left, but I got my legs under me, even if they felt like bags of lead. I’d take my chances with—

Arms locked around my waist, yanking me back. “Roe, would ye feckin’ just let me—”

James swore as we fell into a tangled mess, pebbles digging into my spine. He reeked of cinnamon and flour and yeast—a lie, when he should have smelled like the traitorous wet of this place. Not a new start for me at all, but the end.

I rolled over, kicking at his legs. He grasped my arms again. Firm, but not painful. Not yet.

“Let go !” Panic blurred my vision—for the pain to come, for the person I’d never be, for the desperate, horrifying relief that soon I’d see my sister.

Two cowboy boots clunk-clunked at my shoulder. I stopped fighting James long enough to look up, over the muddy knees and the leather jacket bulging at the breast pocket with a pack of cigarettes.

Tye blew out a long trail of smoke. “Darlin’, ya can do this the easy way or the hard way. But ya best remember I’ve broken horses ’bout ten times your weight. So it won’t bother me none to toss ya on over my shoulder and drag ya back to that hotel.” He hiked up his jeans, crouched. “I might even enjoy it a little. Now, which way do you wanna have it?”

I could barely look at his face, at the crinkles forming around his lips when he smirked at me.

James pulled himself off me to glower at Tye. “Yer making a bloody bollocks of this, ye know?”

“ I am?” Tye replied, eyebrows flying into his hairline. “Ain’t you supposed to stop her at the house, not let her steal your damn car?”

James peeled off an apron still coated in flour. “Yera, Kazie was talking me ear off about the usual shite, and ye were taking so bloody long I nearly fell asleep from it. Ye know she was trying to convince me to turn the gate lodge into a giant birdcage? Made it seem so reasonable that I—ah, sorry, Roe.” He turned to me with his hand extended. Lunatic . “Ye wanna do this yerself or no?”

I’d be better off making another attempt at the road, but I’d never outrun Tye, not when—

“ The easy way ,” I hissed when he bent to grab me.

Tye held up his hands. “Alright.”

They waited until I started moving toward the hotel, then Tye took up the rear with James leading. I felt like a prisoner on death row, and could only hope it all ended quickly, preferably without me knowing when the blow was coming.

What would Kazie think when she saw them leading me back? James had said I used to be like her—did that mean she was in on it? How many others were involved? Would I be allowed to live like her, or would I be…

Would I be like Bryn? Exiled. Except…except that wasn’t what happened to him, was it?

I sucked in a sharp breath, felt all the blood drain from my face.

James glanced over his shoulder, brow furrowing. “What in the name of Mary are ye on about now?”

“Did you—is he dead?” I coughed out. “ Bryn .”

“Why in the bloody hell would I be trying to get a dead man to show ye the Gate?”

Tye stopped to grin at me. “Stornoway, dead? Oh, darlin’, don’t be sayin’ things that’ll just get me excited.” He put a hand on my back, guiding me up Naruka’s crumbling steps until the castle door loomed tall and bloody. “In ya go.”

The foyer was dark but for a low-lit chandelier. The bird sculpture by the door cast a wicked silhouette before Tye tossed his jacket over it.

“I can’t believe ye think I’d be killin’ people, like,” James muttered, aiming toward the library door on his left. “Bryn is in Norway, and he’s—-”

“—fine,” Tye finished, slamming the main entrance shut, and I shuddered in the firewood heat of the foyer. “Buck up, kid.” He gripped my shoulders, thumbs massaging the tight knots there.

I whipped around. “Don’t touch me.”

“Whoa.” Tye lifted his hands. “That ain’t what ya said an hour ago.”

Despite everything, my cheeks scorched at the reminder.

“Tye, what the feck did ye do?” James demanded.

Tye angled his gaze over my shoulder. “She was gettin’ up and I needed her to lie down. Ya know, for the Gate to take her.”

So even the brief fantasy had been a lie. That shouldn’t bother me. Not when I was about to be something the mushrooms would feast on in Naruka’s cellar.

James stomped his foot. “ No romantic stuff when yer recruitin’, like. I know I bloody well told ye that.”

Tye winked at me. “No regrets. Now you go on and listen to James. He’s got a nice ol’ speech planned that he’s been practicing all week.”

“ Tye! ” It was James’s turn to look indignant now. “Ye can be the brute ye are and wait out here. Guard the door since me knee is banjaxed.” He cast Tye a studying look. “I can see why Bryn didn’t take too kindly to ye now.”

Tye bared his teeth.

Scowling, James ushered me inside before closing the door with a thud behind us, the sound vibrating up through my toes.

Just a library, I reminded myself. Ancient, massive, and surreal. No torture contraptions, no chains, just the same library where I’d hung Bryn’s paintings a week ago on the burgundy wall.

James brushed past me to sweep back a velvet curtain as tall as the intricately molded ceilings. When he did, storm light filtered into a room that smelled of the grassy tang of old books, rows and rows of them climbing to the ceiling. When they weren’t stuffed into the wall, they cuddled in freestanding bookshelves lined up like church pews, the boards curved from the weight of the tomes.

“Take a seat, Roe. Ye’ve nothing to do but listen to an Irishman’s tales for the next hour.”

I remained standing, even as my adrenaline bottomed out. “Is this what you wanted to show me? Ruhaven?”

James scrunched his eyebrows. “Roe, this is the library,” he stated, sounding a little miffed that I didn’t know the difference.

I was about to toss something back at him, but if he was relaxed enough, trusting enough that I’d sit here, maybe I’d be able to surprise him.

On shaky legs, I lowered into the weathered springs of a teacup chair, tracking James’s movement as he wove between labeled bookcases. Looking for something to bludgeon me with? That bronze horse statue would do the job. And worse, Tye probably knew whatever race the beast had won.

But James moved on, past aisles with handwritten labels reading 1500–1600: Lacontiz, Azekiel , then the next row, 1700–1800: Originals in Box A0F: Mavante, Iskamastin . And the next: 1900–2000 .

He stopped at a desk with hundreds of drawers, all decorated with different colors and patterns. He opened the smallest, a deep purple with a hand-painted knob, and pulled out a key twice the size of the library’s, then made his way toward an enormous fireplace opposite the bay windows, and stopped.

I followed his gaze above the mantelpiece. Nailed to the wall was a maple cabinet as polished and wide as the fireplace with two doors of pristine glass. Flickering light reflected off its surface, obscuring what I hadn’t bothered to notice before.

James slid the key into its lock, turned.

Click.

The doors opened with a quiet whoosh. This had to be the only hinge in Naruka James kept oiled. He stood there a moment, staring at something deep within the cabinet.

Then he stepped back and revealed the largest book I’d ever seen.

It stood nearly four feet high and, with its pages spread, spanned five feet wide. Irish bog, weeds, and dirt caked the book’s rotted parchment, and chunks of soil clung to the edges, devouring the rows of scrawled text. Though the pages were shrunken and furrowed, the glittering bronze script remained pristine, as if it had been written in some god’s blood.

Had James stolen it? Maybe he was a smuggler of old artifacts and wanted my help. The idea sounded a lot better than my murder.

“Come have a look, Roe.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” I croaked. “It’s better from a distance.” Especially with the door only ten feet to my right.

“Love, I’m not going to bloody hurt ye. I just want ye to see this. ’Tis over two thousand years old, ye know.”

Jesus. He’d go to prison for years. But as James beckoned, I rose and stepped closer, navigating around sunken chairs and stacks of books until a strange smell hit me, like vanilla and jasmine blooming at night—smoky, sweet.

“ This is the Ledger ,” James announced reverently. He clasped his hands behind his back, staring at the book—the Ledger —with its shimmering text reflected in his eyes. “’Tis the answer to the reason we’re here, Roe, and why ye saw what ye did in the Gate.”

Again, that word: Gate . A clue to whatever illegal thing they were up to.

“I can see why you’re fascinated by it,” I said. Reasonable, comforting, like prey pretending it wasn’t snared in a hunter’s net when I could all but see the ground spinning beneath me.

James tucked his tongue in his cheek. “Ye think I’m a wee bit mad, Roe. I know, as I’ve explained this to people far more stuck in their ways than yerself, like Tye, ye see.”

I didn’t see, not at all, even when my nose was inches from the ancient book, the paper grainy and thicker than stretched animal hide. It was open to page 241, but only the left sheet still bore a number; the right had disintegrated under the bog. A two-inch border of symbols framed rows and rows of golden writing, mostly numbers interspersed with a few words in another language.

“It was this book that led me to ye,” James explained, tapping the glass so the sharp tick-tick of his nail matched the clocks. I gazed fleetingly at the line under his finger’s cast shadow.

7 Iúil 1965 23:58 45.740234, -61.137997

He read the line aloud, breath thick with excitement in my ear. “What ye saw today wasn’t a dream, but a memory . This line, Roe, this is why ye could see what ye did at the Gate. Day. Month. Year. Time. Coordinates. Iúil, sure that’s Irish for July.”

“What does that have to do with…” Then I saw—I really saw, but not what James had intended, not what had led him to drag me into this room. My throat went dry, my armpits damp. “You—you think this is my birthday.”

“Roe, it is yer birthday.”

I almost laughed, except it came out more as a croaking sob. Because of course it wasn’t. Even in this hoax of a book, my birthdate wouldn’t be written.

“—yer listed right here, and the row above yers is Bryn’s,” James continued, pointing at the line.

7 Iúil 1965 23:56 63.519469, 9.090167

“Two minutes before ye. Then ye’ve got this one here.”

8 Iúil 1965 00:02 47.8344143, -110.6582699

“That’s Tye, four minutes after. Different coordinates, as ye see, but when ye take into account the time it took yer souls to travel, it means ye crossed together.” He nudged me and hovered a finger over 23:58. “This, Roe, is the time ye were born.”

I shook my head, backing away, because it wasn’t my birthdate — it was Willow’s.

James grabbed me by the collar of my jacket. “No, don’t ye lose it on me yet. Ye see this last number? I said, do ye see these last two numbers?”

When he gave my jacket a rough shake, cold sweat broke out along my spine, but I glanced at where he pointed.

45.740234, -61.137997

Bullshit. This was bullshit. “Let go of me.”

James’s eyes darkened with the fervor of the devoted. “That’s the exact coordinates of yer birth, love.”

No.

I gripped James’s wrist, tried to pry it off. “Let me go,” I repeated, weakly now.

“Roe, I tell ye someone knew ye’d be born on this day, at this time, in a wee First Nations village on the coast of Cape Breton, and they knew it almost two thousand years ago.”

I licked my lips, my pulse jittering a sloppy double-time beat. This was all wrong, horribly wrong. Did I admit the truth? What would he do if he knew it wasn’t me listed in the book he believed in? He’d kidnapped me, faked a job, lied about the hotel, pretended to care—all for a lie.

“This is some hoax, James—”

It was the wrong thing to say.

“A hoax!” James yelled. “Roe, this may be the only real truth in this whole feckin’ world. Ye want to tell Kazie she’s a forgery?”

“Look at line 1021,” James demanded, pushing me into the cabinet. His body bracketed mine until my cheek was pressed against the cold glass and my shallow breathing fogged the words beneath.

21 Aibreán 1965 05:23 13.9738825, 33.8276906

“That’s Kazie. Me own recording is four rows above, in 1953, where ye’ll find the coordinates for a town in Thailand me mammy adopted me from. I’m not lying to ye. This is the feckin’ truth, Roe.”

When he released me, I teetered back into the wall, chest heaving. Kazie? Tye?

I slid a hand along the sticky wallpaper. “Tye believes in this?” No one was steadier, more grounded. He didn’t even read books.

“We all do.” Breathing heavily, James locked the cabinet again. “We’re all in the Ledger .”

I slid down the wall, landing on the echoey floor as the room swam. “You find these people, then.” But he couldn’t, because there were hundreds—no, thousands —of rows in the Ledger . He’d never be able to bring that many here and…and…

I stared in horror at the bookcases: 1301–1400 , 1401–1500 , 1501–1600 .

Not books, but journals .

I pressed a hand to my trembling lips, biting my knuckle to keep back the rising hysteria.

I was so completely fucked.

James circled the library, breathing in the journals like oxygen. “Now, I’ll tell ye what it means to be in the Ledger .” He stopped before a window, the curtains framing him like a mad king’s cape. “Ye see, almost eight hundred years ago, we lived in a different land, and when we died, our souls were reborn here. But someone made this book so we could return to that exact spot ye were today. It lets us relive the memories of who we were before we died. That’s what ye saw.” James watched me, hope shimmering on his face before it crumpled. “Ah, Roe!”

He rushed across the room, dropping to his knees and taking my hands. His were soft and warm against my calloused palms.

“Don’t cry, love. I’m sorry I’ve got to tell ye all this, and I know ’tis hard to understand.” He thumbed away the tears spilling freely over my cheeks.

I’d never escape this, escape whatever Naruka was, whatever he believed. I’d never escape Willow.

“’Tis my job to find those in the Ledger , to show them the Gate as someone wanted me to. It’s what me family does, what me mam did and hers before.” He dug into his pocket, then held up a dinner napkin, pressed it to my nose.

Swiping it from him, I blew the rest of my dignity onto chicken-patterned cotton.

“What can I do to make ye believe me, Roe?”

I looked into his smoky, determined gaze, and took a breath. “I do believe you, James.” Believed that if anyone would be written into his book, it would be Willow. That if anyone was worth remembering, it was her.

He searched my face, looking for something that could never be. Then he whisked the napkin from me, unbothered that it was soaked with tears and snot. “Well, it looks like I’ll just have to show ye. Again.”

I didn’t fight when Tye and James dragged me up the mountain. When James let Tye return to Naruka after. When he forced me to my knees, ordering me to close my eyes and wait. It was late afternoon now, the tree trunks nearly red against a sun shining parallel with the land.

“There ye are now, Roe, go on…” James said when I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for this to end.

Of course, nothing happened.

Birds rustled in the trees, chirping so innocently no one would ever believe what I’d been dragged through today.

I cracked open an eye when James started humming.

“Ah, keep them closed!” he said happily. “Or ye’ll just end up hearing me entire rendition of ‘The Fields of Athenry.’”

When I shut them again, James’s low tune replaced the birds and the wind tickling my ears. Not being able to carry a tune had never stopped him from belting one in the pub after a few nudges from Tye. When James had been nothing but my boss, and Naruka nothing but a hotel in desperate need of repairs. When I’d been nothing but a repair woman from L’Ardoise. Nothing but the sister who survived.

Then I felt it.