One Last Try
I’d waited my entire life, since I was a child of three or four, for this moment.
I leaned into the concrete barrier, a temporary but surmountable wall, and squinted into the heavy winds at the mist, the cliffs, and the sea. Mommy had told me stories of this place. I’d longed to see it, even though I wasn’t sure if it was because of the history or because I somehow associated this place with her and our last happy night together before I lost her.
The morning television news in the Doolin safe house had warned of an incoming winter storm that was not so much wet as windy. These were hurricane-force winds, much like back in Florida where you could lean into a wind, and it was so powerful that it would hold you up. I’d tried it a few times on beaches there when a Category 1 hurricane was inbound, but here, on the edge of the cliffs, I decided not to test the wind’s ability to keep me from falling over the edge to the sea, seven hundred feet below. It was said that it would take seven seconds from the time you stepped off the cliff until you met your death below. Or, as Illyria had joked, just enough time to take a selfie and send it to yourself.
I pulled the hood of my jacket back over my head, and once again, the wind whipped it off. Both the weather and the season were probably enough to keep crowds at bay, but nothing could have stopped me from coming here, not after all the years of waiting to see it for myself.
Everything seemed so big, so permanent, so timeless. In many ways, it reminded me of the Hill of Tara, where I could stand with my feet planted on the earth and feel the long line of humanity and time marching by. It was the same here, on the Cliffs of Moher. How many people had stood in these very footprints over the centuries—no, millennia—and felt the whole gamut of emotions? As an empath, I could feel them all now, as thundering in my blood as the wind in my ears. Hundreds of thousands of people who had walked along these cliffs and felt joy or grief, or the mere weariness of life after tragedy upon tragedy with small moments of happiness in between punctuating their lives and making them worthwhile.
My hopes, fears, and problems were no different from those who had gone before me and left their energy behind in their footfalls. The immense aloneness and connection to the world around me fell over me like a cape of protection against destruction and death. Was this what the people who lived here in the year 804 had felt? Mommy used to tell me how, according to ancient literature and stories passed down through the ages, a meteor—fire in the sky—had turned night into day, and a giant crack in the ocean had pulled the water away from the cliffs, then closed, sending it rushing back over land, then returning to the sea with, as history said, people and enough land to support a thousand cows.
This was a special place, one where Emry had told me I would find my ground again. She’d meant ground as metaphorical stability, but in fact it was literal ground beneath my feet. The trails of Howth, the Hill of Tara, and now the Cliffs of Moher.
A year ago, I might have been scaling these cliffs, challenging Death itself to come and get me. Now, even with the pain of Charlie’s betrayal, the possibility of ending my life didn’t carry the same lure. Since the day the cellar door had opened and I’d found myself free, I’d been a walking, talking death wish who’d felt I deserved nothing more, all because I’d been the one to survive. I hadn’t been the luckier of a monster’s victims: I’d always thought it would’ve been better if it had been me instead of my companion who’d perished in the cellar. Here on the cliffs though, with the fierce wind howling in my face and the energy of thousands of souls rushing through my blood, I had no desire to fling myself into the sea.
None.
I was on the precipice of another emotional disaster but this time, I was in a better place than I had been with Jakin or Ford or Clayton or Mommy. Something in my life was changing, and it was a greater purpose than just guarding library books for Dru. I was on the verge of something good, even if I felt like hell at the moment and my heart seemed to be an open wound outside my chest.
The wind hit me hard in the face, then died down. I closed my eyes and let myself feel… everything.
My stomach knotted and twisted. Anxiety swept through me. For a moment, I couldn’t tell if these feelings were mine or someone else’s. As an empath, I was used to that—sometimes feeling another’s emotions and realizing too late that they were not even my own or seeing my world through someone else’s emotional lenses. This felt familiar in a way. It was my high heart chakra that screamed voicelessly at me, that rarely acknowledged energy center between my heart and throat chakras, just below my left collarbone. At the same time, my third chakra—directly above my navel—flip-flopped with dread. I felt the emotions of people with whom I share some bond in different ways, and sometimes as heaviness in different combinations of chakras. Only one person’s fears and grief came to me with this particular energy signature.
Charlie.
I turned to face him before he could touch my shoulder.
“Jesus!” He jumped back, half-sliding in the mud. “I hate it when you do that!”
I started to apologize but stopped myself. I wasn’t going to apologize any more for who I was or what I was. Instead, I steeled my jaw and nodded once. “Charlie.”
Suddenly nervous—I could tell from the jerky look back over his shoulder toward the visitor’s center as well as the twisting in my third chakra—Charlie sank his hands into his jacket pockets. I’d never before seen dark circles under his eyes, and he positively reeked of old sweat.
And sex.
Not my sex.
“Hey, um, Lilah, um, can we talk?”
“Now you want to talk?”
He ignored my jab. “I, uh, I need a favor.”
“I see.”
“The Lost Teachings.” His eyes darted up to mine and away again. “Do you have it?”
“No.”
“I understand if you don’t want to tell me the truth.”
“What the hell? You’re questioning my honesty?” I leaned in toward him as a gust of wind took my words. I wanted to make sure he heard me. “You don’t have the moral authority to question anything I do. Anything.”
And I’m the one with a monster inside me.
“I-I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You asked a question. I answered it. Truthfully.” I wanted to hate him, but something in me pitied him more. Then I remembered that he and his… his whatever… had stolen the satchel in Dublin, thinking it contained the artifact. Surely, he’d realized by now that I knew what he’d done. Otherwise, why follow me to Moher?
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I kept a mental list now. I wondered which items he’d check off.
“Everything. I… I feel really bad.” He glanced up at me and then down again just as quickly. His blond hair, either dirty from lack of a shower or wet with Irish mist, hung in a clump across his forehead. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“Then why did you? You had a choice.”
“I didn’t have a… Okay, yes, I had a choice but it’s not what you think.”
“Then why?”
“It’s compli—”
“Please just shut the hell up. Don’t ever use that word with me. I told you before: it’s not complicated. You are the one making it complicated.”
He rolled his bottom jaw into a stiff line, then nodded. “You’re right. But Lilah, I need that book.” He finally met my gaze. “Desperately. I need a chance to fix things.”
“Then fix them on your own. You got yourself into this mess, and I’ve tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I… I’m at a loss.”
I turned away from him and stared out at the misty sea. I wanted to feel sorry for him. Being an empath did that sometimes. I could feel what he felt, including the sense of his feelings and actions being justified, and if I didn’t shield against his strong emotions, I’d take them on, wear them myself, believe them as certainly as he did, and I’d let him persuade me to give him anything he wanted. I breathed in the Atlantic breezes and reinforced my boundaries that he had so blithely skipped across.
“Lilah.”
He pulled on my jacket sleeve, the one he’d accidentally torn, but I didn’t budge. Finally, he stepped between the concrete barrier wall and me, shielding me from the wind but also from the view of the sea that kept me centered in the same way that in airplanes I always found some spot on the horizon so I wouldn’t get airsick.
“Why are you here, Charlie? For a book. Not for me.”
“But the book can fix things. All I need is a few minutes with it to let it work its magic, and everything will be all right. And that’s for you.”
“No. For you. For her. Please don’t insult my intelligence by telling me it’s not for her.”
“She needs my help. You know how meaningful it is to me to help someone in trouble.”
I shook my head and started down the trail, away from the visitor’s center and away from Charlie. “It’s all bullshit. You get your ‘fix’ by fixing other people, but you don’t think long term to how you hurt other people. We all have to live in the wake of whatever supposed self-sacrifice you need to feel better about yourself. It’s the source of your self-esteem.”
I worried for a split second that he might call me out for my own self-esteem issues, but at least he’d never been kidnapped as a kid and locked in a basement to starve. Or to witness another kid being tortured while waiting my turn. He’d never killed anyone either, while I’d been a killer since before my first menstrual period. To someone like me who’d lived with the monster inside all these years, Charlie and his martyr complex was amateur hour.
“You’re there for whoever needs you, then you move on to the next woman in trouble. I hate that I was that to you. Just someone to rescue so you could feel good about yourself. And I hate that I was so weak that I needed you. I thought you were a good man and strong and positive and grounded in ways I would never be. I thought I was the weak one who needed you to hang onto, so I didn’t float off the face of the earth, but I was wrong. It’s not that you were a stronger person. It’s that you have never until now been tested. And Charlie, you are weak.”
I watched him wince and was glad for it. Maybe it’s my lack of character, but I needed him to understand the depth of hurt he’d caused. I stood emotionally naked before him. He needed to see it all, what his carelessness with my heart had done.
“You asked to be my champion. I’d never had a champion. Ever. I’ve gone into the depths of hell alone, even as a little girl. No one ever offered to defend me, or protect me, ever in my life. Except my mom when I was little, but she left and she died. And Dru. But as for a man? No. I never knew my dad. Maybe he would’ve protected me if he could have. Romantic partners? Never. But here you come, Charlie Peterson, pleading to let you be my champion at a time when I didn’t think I could ever trust again.”
He flinched with every word, as if I were beating him. I wanted to. I wanted to hurt him like he’d hurt me. He couldn’t possibly understand the damage of asking to be a champion in the heat of the moment when he needed to be my hero and then moving on to be someone else’s champion the very moment the threats to me lightened or the second I felt safer. He’d taken the role of champion too casually. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered with someone else but given my history and the lifelong absence of a champion, I needed either a champion who stayed by my side for the rest of my life or no champion at all. Anything that was illusion rather than real was too cruel a joke.
“I’m sorry, Lilah. I never meant to hurt you. I couldn’t have made it last year without you. I was healing from a marriage that never happened. There were times when I wanted to give up on life, but you needed someone, and I knew I could be that someone for you.”
“Temporary,” I said. “Until your next needy person came along.” I hated myself for whatever dysfunctional and broken part of me had attracted him.
“That’s not fair. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“Didn’t stop you, though. You could have told me instead of leading me on.”
Charlie shook his head. Suddenly, he glanced back at the visitor’s center. I felt something fearful in him and knew.
Knew.
“She’s here with you, isn’t she?”
He started to say no, but instead pulled his hands from his pockets and waved his palms in front of me. “We need that book.” He hesitated. “I mean, I need that book.”
“We promised the senator we wouldn’t let it fall into the wrong hands. Charlie, she’s the wrong hands.”
“It’s not like that. She’s in trouble, and I can help her. No one can help her but me—”
“Oh, goody. You get to be a hero again. Or if it destroys everything in your life, you get to be the martyr. Either way, you’re happy with the fact that you get to make a sacrifice. You told me once that I should never underestimate your ability to sacrifice for others, but you said that to me because you were making what you thought was a sacrifice for me. I didn’t understand until this trip that for you, it’s all about the sacrifice. It’s like a drug to you. You will even sabotage yourself and everything good in your life for the self-esteem kick that it gives you.”
“That sounds bad. Like I’m really messed up.” He snickered that annoying way I’d come to understand was his way of denying the truth.
“Yeah, Charlie. You are. You may be the most compassionate person I’ve ever known but you’re more fucked up than I am.” My eyes stung with tears. “And I know how messed up I am, but I’m going to fix myself. I have someone in my life now who is willing to help. Not the quick fix, but the long-term fix.”
I was thinking of Raven, with his palms full of energy and him wandering the land overlooking the Aran Islands for a place to plant his hands against the earth and sink last night’s energy safely into the ground. But it wasn’t just Raven. I’d been feeling alone, and maybe that feeling was really Charlie’s and not mine. I wasn’t alone. Not like Charlie. I had Dru and Emry. Nike and Illyria. And now Raven. My circle was growing, not shrinking, and these were a higher quality of friends than in my past. These were people who genuinely supported me and cared about me. These were people willing to help me heal my past and find a better life for myself. Everything was becoming clear.
Charlie hung his head. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed, too low to be heard.
“I just wish you’d been honest with me. You hid things from me, and I knew you were hiding things, but I didn’t know why.”
“I didn’t want you to be upset with me like you are now.”
“Don’t you get it?” I leaned into his face, so he had to look at me. “If I don’t know what’s going on with you and you won’t tell me, I am always going to think it’s something I’ve done wrong. It may not have anything to do with me, and it may not even be a bad thing, but given my past, a past you know about, I am always going to take any unknowns to that dark place inside me and wonder what I’ve done wrong or what’s wrong with me.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong. I have.”
I sniffed and pulled my jacket more tightly around me. If he knew the information I’d given Illyria and Nike on him, he wouldn’t think I’d done nothing wrong. I’d given them all the evidence on him and his activities of the last four months as well as everything I knew about the mysterious Rune. I’d felt as if I were planning a funeral for my best friend, but I’d known I couldn’t do or say anything to protect him, other than tell them he was a really good guy with a really good heart and a deep psychological need for martyrdom that would destroy his own dreams one day.
I took a deep breath. I’d stripped down to my bare emotions with Charlie. I had pleaded with him to reconsider. But I wasn’t done. Whether I was being a masochist or just needed closure, I had to know.
“Charlie, is there any chance for you and me? Is there any possibility we can work everything out? I still love you.” And God knew, I was fond of broken things and willing to put up with their bullshit far longer than a woman who had grown up in a healthy, emotionally stable environment.
Charlie snickered, and my heart sank for the final time.
“Lilah.” He breathed my name, and I heard the sadness in his voice as well as the fear and resignation. “There’s so much I want to say. I know I promised I’d tell you everything later but… but there’s really no point. Whether I’ve done stupid things for the sake of helping someone or maybe I’ve become fonder of her than I ever expected or maybe I’m just still hurting from my last relationship and looking to feel better, I don’t know. None of that matters, really. What does matter and the only thing you really need to know is that you and I can only be friends. We have no romantic future.” He paused. “I do sincerely want us to still be friends.”
And people in hell want ice water, I thought wearily. Not only was he not going to explain himself—and maybe he couldn’t—but he still wanted the benefit of the best he had had of me. Still, I had to make one last effort. Why couldn’t I just give up and walk away? Maybe I just needed to know I’d exhausted all possibilities. I’d done my best.
“I fear for your future. Charlie, I see you losing everything, maybe even your mental health. The last two months, I’ve thought there was something wrong with me because you were hiding her. I knew something was wrong but I thought it was me. And now you’re in too deep. You don’t even know who she is.”
He glanced back at the visitor’s center and this time focused on the parking lot longer than before. I felt the twist in his gut and knew that the redhaired woman slowly walking toward us was her.
“I know all I need to know.”
“No. You don’t. She’s not what you think she is. She’s not who you think either. Her real name is Barbara Simmons Torrelli. And her nickname is Bambi.”
He shook his head. “You’re mistaken. It’s Rune. Her name is Rune.”
“And Charlie, the person killed in the Scholar’s Library while trying to steal The Lost Teachings—”
“Was her brother’s wife, Lovey,” he interrupted.
“No. Her husband, Marco Torrelli. Lovey is alive and well. She fled to Scotland late last night with her brother, Rafe. Charlie, are you listening to me? That woman has been manipulating you all along. And Christ, Charlie, it’s not like you’ve been lacking for sex, but I can smell her on you now.”
“No, you’re wrong.” No more strained snicker. He started to laugh. “I know her too well. You’re making this up. You’re jealous.”
I nodded, but I felt strangely okay. “You are correct about one thing. I am jealous as hell of her, that I’ve been with you and supported you this last year but when it comes to choosing, you picked a stranger and her magic pussy over me.”
His face contorted in pain. I wasn’t sure if he was angry with me or racked with guilt. “It’s my choice to make,” he said at last.
“Yes.”
Bambi, with her red hair and blonde roots and a knack for playing gullible men, started up the hill toward us. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t be anywhere near her.
“You made your choice, Charlie, and now you have to live with it. We all have to live with it.” I turned and headed south along the path. “Goodbye, Charlie,” I said, but the wind took my words and strewed them across the cliffs behind me.
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