Omnipresence
I leaned my head against the windowpane of Nike’s car. We had been driving for hours, but the daylight had faded to almost dark. The path ahead was straight.
No intersections or forks.
No crossroads.
Just straight ahead.
As we headed into the oncoming wind, I opened my eyes enough to see where we were. The countryside had changed from lush and green—first to the dark-black peat bogs and now to rock where almost no green grew. The sky ahead deepened to a dark gray and into night as a storm headed inland from the western coastline with occasional hurricane-force gusts.
I glanced over at Nike behind the steering wheel to my right. Her jaws were tense. Her hands were knuckled around the steering wheel. I shivered and closed my eyes.
Let her drive me, I thought. Let me turn over everything that I feel and am to this priestess of a dead god, and let her take me to some place safe, as long as I can sleep.
I had slept fitfully ever since we left Dublin when Nike had found me on the floor in front of St. Patrick’s altar and helped to carry me out to her waiting car. Every time I would start to fall into a deep sleep, I would wake suddenly, wondering for a moment where I was, and then realizing I was a passenger in a car heading for the Cliffs of Moher. Just as suddenly, I would realize that I was leaving Charlie behind. He had chosen some other woman instead of me and in the matter of only a few days all the good between us had shattered. Then I would calm myself and fall asleep again, only to wake a little while later to momentary confusion followed by the fresh blow of memory.
It reminded me somehow of when I was a child, when they told me that my mother was dead and wasn’t coming home. Every morning after that for years I woke to either peace or confusion and then remembered my grief, and the pain was just as fresh all over again. It was like that now thinking of Charlie, of how quickly everything had perished between us.
All the time that he had been there for me, all that time of trying to win me over, and when I’d finally given in… what? He’d lost interest? He needed something I couldn’t give him?
The bottom line was that I wasn’t enough. Maybe I had been enough when I had held myself at bay, but once I had given myself over to him as completely as I could and celebrated having such a so-called good man in my life, I was no longer enough for Charlie. Maybe he had just finally found out who I really was on the inside and as long as I never let him see the real me, he had thought I could be more to him. I would never be his ex-fiancée, his first love, but I’d thought that, at least for a few months, I might have been his last love, and he mine. The possibilities had been so enticing.
“Stop torturing yourself,” Nike told me on at least three occasions when she noticed my eyes were open and teary.
Each time, she said the same things in slightly different ways, as if trying to enchant my subconscious.
“I know it feels like you’ve lost ‘The One,’ but that’s not the case at all. So much of what you’re feeling is biological. You’re in withdrawal. That’s why you keep making excuses for him and talking yourself into seeing him as a better man than he is. Your body is used to having him in your life, and it’s like a dopamine hit whenever you talk to him again or see him or try to recreate what you had. Or thought you had. Stop giving him second chances to hurt you. You need to go cold turkey and get him out of your life. If you can. Replace him with something you can feel the same depth of passion about. I don’t mean another man necessarily—though it wouldn’t hurt if you’re around more men who are truly good for you. Eventually you’ll have the partnership you want, but you’re not in the right headspace for that yet.” She paused every time as if she had seen the future. “Meanwhile, throw yourself into your work—into protecting these ancient libraries and dangerous books—and rewrite your neural pathways into something better for you than Charlie or Jakin.”
Each time Nike repeated herself, I said nothing. By the third time, I realized she hadn’t spoken aloud at all. I closed my eyes against the thought of it all and slept.
The car sputtered to a stop, and I opened my eyes, blinking. The last of the daylight had given way to darkness. In fact, the only light I could see anywhere for miles around us came from the windows of a small pub that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.
“Wakey, wakey. We’re here.” Nike’s joke fell flat, and her forced smile drooped to an expressionless face in an instant.
I’d learned that she was the younger stepsister of Aoife Jung, the Daeganean High Priestess and currently the new Secretary of State, like her High Priestess mother before her. Aoife wasn’t the biological daughter of Nike’s father, a famous geneticist who’d gone back to Korea and remarried before returning to the States to assist Aoife in her search for ancient DNA. Nike didn’t particularly like her sister-in-name-only, but she’d learned to play Aoife’s game, bleaching her hair to match Aoife’s and joining the Priesthood of Daegan. She was far more aloof than Illyria, but I was glad for the quiet.
“Where are we?” I straightened in the passenger seat, then clumsily found my seatbelt and unbuckled it.
“Not far from the Cliffs, but this is a safe house.”
“Hmmm… okay. I’m spotting a pattern here. Pubs with apartments on the upper floor. Does the Priesthood of Daegan prefer Guinness or hard cider? Or mixed together in equal parts?”
Nike smiled, genuinely this time. “Actually, I prefer absinthe, but there will be no drinking tonight. We will need clear heads.”
“We? You mean you and me?”
“And Raven.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Raven’s here?” There was so much I wanted to talk to him about. I felt safe with him in a way I didn’t with anyone else.
“Yes, he’s here. Didn’t he tell you? We have safe houses all over Ireland. All over the world, if need be. Raven’s in seclusion though. You’re welcome to witness. For this particular ritual, that’s important.”
“What’s important?”
“Witnesses. We are there for his protection when he’s so vulnerable and there for support in case he transgresses.”
“Transgresses? I don’t understand.”
“Plainly? In case he fucks up when he’s authenticating The Lost Teachings of Dead Monks. With his history, he can’t afford a transgression.” She frowned as she realized that I still didn’t understand. “It’s possible that he might fall into a deeper trance when he is authenticating this book. If he does that and his thoughts are not absolutely pure and focused, he could change his own future in an unintended way.”
I watched her carefully across the dark car. Raven had a past? I couldn’t imagine him being as broken as I was. Or as messed up as Charlie. Or Jakin. I remembered the fire of his grip on my arm when he had kept me from falling again in the mud at Tara.
Nike raised one black eyebrow as if she’d been reading my thoughts. I blushed.
“Raven is well-balanced, mature, responsible. He is both a light worker and dark worker, but he must not slip up at any point during the ritual and for a single moment think of any fears he has in his own life, or he might change his own course for the worse. He never wanted to be part of the priesthood, but Aoife found him and” —she sucked in her breath— “put him back together in exchange for a different kind of sacrifice. He’s dedicated his life to our mission in ways you cannot yet understand. He’s the Last Priest. It is not the intention of the Priesthood of Daegan to cause harm to one of our own when the future of humanity depends on him.” She paused. “Let me save you some trouble. He’s the real deal. Whatever he says, Lilah, you can trust.”
“So you and Raven, you’re a couple?”
She laughed. “No, Illyria and I are a couple. Raven has someone back in the States that he cares deeply for. One day they’ll be on the same side of the ocean, but for now it is affection from afar.” Nike bit her bottom lip. “Nothing between them will come to fruition. I’ve seen how it ends. He knows it, too. It can be hard to enjoy the present when you’ve seen the end.”
“Emry,” I whispered to myself as Nike exited the car. It had to be. I remembered the look on Raven’s face when I’d mentioned her name while Raven and I stood on the Hill of Tara. In my last phone call to Emry, I had heard a hint of giggle in her voice when I mentioned Raven. She knew more than she should have, either from me or from Dru, and I suspected that the source was the Last Priest himself. I was happy for my friend, but a little concerned by Nike’s prognostication that nothing would come to fruition between them. Emry deserved to be happy.
Nike nodded. “That’s her. It’s your destiny to be with him, though. Not hers.”
I stared. “I would never do that to my friend!”
“You and Raven will be close friends and partners for a long time before that destiny arrives, and by then, your Emry will not oppose.”
I shook my head. “I would never hurt Emry. Not knowingly.”
“No, not knowingly.”
“I just won’t be Raven’s friend. See? I can change whatever future you’ve seen.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve looked at a thousand timelines, and in every one of them, it’s you the Last Priest seeks when the world as we know it ends—and beyond. Not always in the same form, but you are meant to be with him. I can see how the prophecy will unfold.”
No, I wouldn’t let that happen. I was fascinated by Raven and wanted his friendship, but I would never hurt a true friend like Emry. I knew how betrayal felt.
“Ah, don’t fret, Lilah. There is no harm meanwhile in growing your friendship with both Raven and Emry. You will be glad later that you did. When the wounds Charlie has inflicted have faded and the time comes to open your heart again, you and Raven will both welcome it and honor your friend for the part she played. She will not oppose. I guess Jakin never told you that we Daeganeans can see the future, past, and present all at once—if we choose to. Some of us turn away from the knowledge, like Jakin. He’d rather not know and imagine greatness that isn’t there than learn the truth and step aside for the better man. He’s content to divine the future, looking at bite sizes only. We can choose the bite sizes, too, but those of us who are brave enough look at the totality of our human lives. We know how we will die and who will betray us along the path, yet we choose to live and love anyway. We don’t always know every step of the path or how certain events come about, but we know the most important things we will experience in our own timeline. Like how you remember the big memories but not all the little ones. We call it omnipresence, or ‘all time is now.’”
Nike was wrong for a change. Jakin had told me about omnipresence, once, just not in great detail. When Raven had pressed his bind rune to my scar on the Hill of Tara, I’d understood, even if I still had trouble wrapping my mind around the concept. I was a coward like Jakin, not wanting to see the bad stuff and peeking at just one snippet of the future at a time.
“Oh, don’t look so sad, Lilah. I know I will lose Illyria within the year—we’ve both seen it—but we choose to savor every minute of the time we have until then. We live more fully in the moment and cherish each other in ways other mortals never could.”
“Doesn’t that spoil your happiness? Can’t you stop bad things from coming? If you know how it will happen, then… ?”
“Some things we can stop, and we know we’re shown visions meant to help us take action to make small course changes in our lives, but the big things, like who lives and who dies and our triumphs and losses? We know those things—if we are willing to look. Some of us are like Aoife, who shields her ending from others, even those closest to her, but often, when two members of the priesthood choose each other as partners, we show everything to each other by joining our initiation marks. It’s the ultimate trust. One day, years from now, you’ll have that with Raven.”
I blinked into the darkness beyond the nearly-abandoned parking lot beside the pub where an orange tabby cat swished its tail as it watched us. The wind whipped at a sign in Gaelic that showed tour buses where to park. Raven had touched his tattoo to my suicide scar, but I hadn’t seen his life, only mine and what swirled around it. Maybe he could shield that information in the same way some people can shield their feelings from empaths. Maybe I needed to become a priestess to see his memories. I remembered how Illyria had greeted Nike back at the safe house, each extending a right arm to clasp the other’s just below the elbow, Walking Lightning tattoos conjoined. No wonder neither had had to speak of the day’s events—they had shared it in one quick download, skin on skin, mark on mark, and had spoken only for the benefit of others in the room.
Nike opened my car door and extended her left hand to help me out. “Are you well? You seem dazed.”
You better believe I’m dazed, I wanted to say. You would be, too, if you’d been through what I have these last few days. Witnessing a suicide, discovering my lover of the last year was just as much of a liar as any man of my past. The entire disillusionment—either with discovering that Charlie was not the man I thought he was or that once again I’d fallen for the wrong guy. And now to find out that I had some kind of destiny with a man I’d met only days ago and that he’d dump my closest friend for that destiny? Too much!
I followed Nike toward a large wooden door, a small window in it and light pouring through. I couldn’t discern the length of the walls in the darkness, but I could tell from the number of glowing sconces on the exterior of the building just how large it was. It could probably seat five hundred people. The second story appeared to be smaller, maybe a third of the size, and likely either living quarters or office space, or both.
Nike held the door for me, and I walked through. The lamplight was bright in the foyer but once we passed through an interior archway, the space was dim. When my eyes adjusted, I noticed the picnic-style tables from one end of the space to the other with rusty but clean farm implements on the walls as decoration.
To the far left, next to a staircase, was a bar even more darkly lit than the dining area. Half a dozen older men sat at the bar, all regaling each other with tales of the last storm that had struck the western coast of Ireland and how this one was more wind than rain. One laughed raucously at what must have been his own mumbled joke, and the others lifted a mug to him.
The bartender was young enough to have been the granddaughter of any one of them. Her hair was short and bright red, but not in the way that Rune’s had been. This color was real and almost orange in shade. Not the magenta hue fresh from a bottle.
Nike caught the bartender’s eye. They nodded at each other, and the bartender inclined her head at the staircase.
“This way,” Nike said. “Meg will send up something to eat for us.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Nike raised one eyebrow. “I didn’t ask if you were hungry, now did I? I said I would have food sent up for us. You will eat it, too.”
“You seem sure of yourself. Did you see some future version of me eating it, like in a vision?”
“No. No vision required. And I am sure of myself. The Irish stew here is wonderful. No matter what has already happened today or what will happen tomorrow, once you smell it, you won’t be able to help yourself.” Nike reached the staircase and turned back to me. “Besides, I’ve been tasked with ensuring that you keep up your strength. You’ll have a long day ahead of you tomorrow and a trip back to the States. That, I’ve seen.”
“Alone. That much I already knew. Didn’t need a psychic Daeganean priestess to tell me that.”
She flinched and frowned in a way that was meant to shush me in a public area, though empathically, I had impression that no one in this building was an adversary of the priesthood.
“You won’t be going back alone. We’ve seen to that. As I told you, your escort will be meeting you tomorrow morning.”
“Illyria?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”
I followed Nike up the staircase. Unlike the one at the previous safe house, this staircase was wide, dark, and carpeted. The top of the stairs opened into a small foyer, a table at the center.
I gasped. “That’s Charlie’s stuff.”
I waved at the collection of items that covered the entirety of the tabletop. Each had been placed carefully, single and separate from each of the other items. Somehow it reminded me of debris from a plane crash where someone had tried to reconstruct the catastrophe. His backpack had been carefully placed at the far side of the table. Everything else I recognized. Socks, spare jeans, spare underwear. The clean stuff on one side, the dirty on the other.
Nike had walked past the table before she realized that I had stopped to stare. “We collected both your things and Charlie’s from the hotel and safe house in Dublin. Your things are in your room here as well as fresh clothes and all your papers for the trip home. Plane ticket, too.”
On the corner of the table, nearer to me than all of the clothes and backpack, was a small dark blue book with the word Passport in gold lettering. I picked it up and flipped to Charlie’s photo. Dru had outsourced the forgery, of course, or it could even be something her contacts at the State Department had put together for her.
He was as handsome as ever in that picture, one that looked to be a couple of years old, when his hair had been a little blonder and more sunlit, and his eyes had been happier than they had been this week. Everything else about the passport was a lie though. From his name to his address to his date of birth, to even the date of the passport.
Dopamine hit, I heard Nike say in my head. Stop torturing yourself.
My passport had been just as good a fake, which now made me suspect that Dru had help from the highest levels of government. Maybe even from Aoife Jung, the Secretary of State herself and the one person that the senator had made Charlie and me swear would never get her hands on The Lost Teachings.
Watching me, Nike shrugged. “I, um, peeked. He was too nervous back at the safe house. I saw it in him from the second I shook his hand and put the fake Teachings on the chair. I could almost hear his heart thundering in his chest. He walked right out and left his passport packet on the table. All he could think about was alerting Torrelli and how to get the key to her after Illyria and I left for the day, and he got you out of the building. Torrelli didn’t bother to retrieve his passport once she thought she had the artifact. She didn’t think she’d need Charlie. Isn’t that a riot?”
“Charlie’s expendable.”
“Mmm, yes. Expendable and in danger.”
“Then why even go to the cathedral? To taunt me? She could’ve taken off with the fake and left him hanging.”
“She doesn’t know what the artifact looks like. She’s only heard stories of it. From her… father? From an old man she loved.” Nike squinted as if seeing something in the air that I couldn’t. Peeking, again. “She needs Charlie to verify it before she cuts ties with him. She didn’t think then that she still needed him, but she knows now that she does. She’ll keep him around. At least for a little while longer. As long as he’s of use to her.” She frowned, seeing something else. “Or as long as he’s connected to Drusilla’s library and the Daeganean books there. He’s the access she needs. That’s why she picked him.”
I almost felt sorry for Charlie. Almost.
I spotted something else on the table and dropped the passport where I’d found it. Fingers trembling, I reached for a small black box. Aware that Nike was still watching me, I held my breath and pulled open the top part, hoping against hope. Empty.
“Illyria and I found it like that,” Nike said from across the room. “It was in the room next door back at the hotel.”
I jerked my head up. “Next door?”
“You’re not going to like this, Lilah. Torrelli rented a room next door to the one that you shared with Charlie. We found her suitcase there. Dirty laundry, cosmetics, food wrappers, wine bottles. Nothing significant enough to help us to locate her in the future or to find her accomplices, but we did find things belonging to Charlie. He definitely spent time there.” She paused, and I knew there was more she wasn’t telling me. “He even went back after you caught him in the corridor with a breakfast tray, but Torrelli went out the window to meet her accomplices.”
Any spark of empathy I had for Charlie flickered out. I didn’t feel sorry for him anymore, not even almost sorry. I wasn’t sure how much of what Nike was telling me was from her psychic spying and how much from good old-fashioned surveillance, but I was grateful to have answers, however hard they were to hear.
I snapped the box shut and set it down a little too hard on the table. No wonder he’d been so close by. He’d been in the room next door. I had been crying my heart out, waiting for him, wondering what had happened to him, worrying about him, begging him to respond to me, and he’d been next door, all along, with her.
I swallowed the tightness in my throat. I wanted to hate him. I wanted even more to feel nothing. I wanted the opposite of hate; I wanted indifference.
Instead, I asked, “Does Dru know?”
“Everything. As of an hour ago, she knows everything.”
A part of me could hardly wait to get back to Florida to see what Dru did to Charlie, for stealing from her as well as for lying to me, not to mention for breaking my heart. I never really had a man who was my champion, even though I had thought Charlie would be, but Dru had been my champion every time. She had been more than a mother to me, more than any Prince Charming, more than a cavalry, all coming together to save the day. If anybody understood how much this hurt, Dru would. Charlie wouldn’t have a job the moment his airplane landed.
I started to laugh. I couldn’t help myself. Nike looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
“Charlie’s passport. He doesn’t have the new one with him. He doesn’t have his old one with him. How is he supposed to get back to Florida? And his credit cards.” I bent forward and tapped at an array of credit cards with his fake name on them. “Charlie has no ID on him. No money except what’s in his pocket. He’s all alone here in Ireland. He has no contacts. And he’s got to know by now how badly Dru is going to be pissed off at him.”
Nike shrugged. “You’re forgetting. He does have a contact here. Bambi Torrelli.”
Of course. For the first time, a blinding rage hit me.
Nike smiled grimly. “Let it all out. Go ahead, I’d be angry too. But what neither you nor Charlie realize is that his life is in danger. He will pay the ultimate price for his martyr complex.”
Suddenly, I wanted to cry. I wanted to hug him. Why couldn’t I just hate him and that be it? Of course, his life was in danger around this woman! Illyria had shown me Rune’s dossier back at the safe house in Dublin. I’d seen photos of her with prim and proper blonde hair and a French twist with manicured nails and a designer dress to match. Photos of her with short black hair in a goth chop, heavy eyeliner, with white foundation and hair so black it was almost purple. Dressed in boots and velvet and Stevie Nicks shawls. I’d seen photos of her with her hair long and wavy, light brown with highlights. And her in a red flannel shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots.
The one thing she had in common, all these different identities of hers, was a husband who was now dead and a fortune now missing.
Charlie wasn’t rich, but he did have something else. Nike was right about what Bambi Torrelli wanted with him. Charlie, through his job and his association with me, had access to the world’s most dangerous books, whether they were books on ancient weaponry, secret genetic experiments, notes of time travel theories, or books on how to make your dreams come true in a way that made even the best of self-help books look like kindergarten picture books.
The other men in her past had had other things to offer, namely money and corporate power, but Charlie had access to a different kind of power. It made me wonder what she had on him that he would act this way. Then again, maybe she knew him better than I did. I knew Charlie as a giver, and one who could, theoretically, be manipulated into almost anything. I had simply never considered using my knowledge of his weaknesses to get from him what I wanted.
I realized I was no longer laughing. I was still staring at the only physical evidence that Charlie had ever been in Ireland, and at the box, which, a few days ago, had represented my dreams of a bright future with someone I considered to be a good man.
The empty box was like that dream now. It told me that, once again, I wasn’t worthy. Once again, a man in my life had chosen someone over me. It didn’t matter how close we had been, or how good I had been to him, I was not the one he wanted to spend his life with.
Stop beating yourself up. I heard Nike’s voice in my head. Biological reaction to his absence.
“Lilah?” Nike was beside me now. She laced her fingers through mine and gave me a very gentle hug. “Come on, Lilah. Let’s get you some food. I can’t promise you’ll forget all about him, but tonight, we’re going to give you something worthier to think about. You’re going to take part in a Daeganean ritual.”
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