Between Crossroads and Cliffs
Charlie watched Lilah walk away, the wind ruffling her jacket. Her long brown hair had escaped enough of the hood that the wind whipped it into tangles. He wanted to call to her, but he had nothing left to say. Nothing that she would believe anyway.
He wanted to run after her and to do something—anything—to make it right, but when he glanced back in the other direction, he saw that Rune was closer now. He still had a choice. Wait for Rune or go after Lilah. Maybe he’d always had choices. Maybe there was no crossroads. Only choices he didn’t want to make.
He looked again at the woman walking away from him and then at Rune, her face concerned but a smile plastered across it. Rune, coming closer. Lilah, stomping farther away.
Finally, as a coatless Rune climbed the windy incline toward him, her blue-green dress swirling at her legging-clad thighs and her red hair intermittently stringing itself across her face and her shoulders, he stopped looking in Lilah’s direction. It was too late now, as though he were standing on a Wheel of Fortune from one of Emry’s tarot cards and watching the window of opportunity quickly spin out of sight.
He wanted to tell Lilah that she had been right—not about Rune, but about him. He was emotionally and psychologically fucked up. He had been fucked up for the past year, maybe a lot longer. He needed to be needed, and he needed to be a hero, and when he couldn’t be a hero, being a martyr was even better. So many times, Lilah said such profound things to him that no one had ever said to him before. She had a way of making him think, especially about things he didn’t want to think about. Sometimes, it hurt. Usually not because Lilah meant for it to hurt, but because what she said was true, and he had no idea how to fix it.
Rune eyed him quizzically as she closed the distance between them. He extended one hand to help her across the muddy slope. She didn’t seem to notice the extreme beauty behind him, at least not the way Lilah had stared out at it with such a mix of joy and longing in her heart. In fact, Rune seemed completely uninterested in the green cliffs and the misty sea or any of the splendor of nature around them. She accepted his outreached hand and clung to it, looking past him in Lilah’s direction.
“That was her, wasn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
What more could he say? Anyway, he didn’t want to talk to Rune about Lilah or what he was feeling.
“Well, where’s the book?” No jealousy. No questions about whether he was all right or what he and Lilah had been arguing about during Rune’s approach. Her focus was only on the artifact.
“Lilah doesn’t have it. My bet is that the weird librarian-priest does. The guy with the long hair. In any case, I’m sure she will courier it back to Florida.” He had forgotten to ask Lilah if she had his passport or knew where it was or any way to get him back home. Not that Lilah would care and probably didn’t want to see him again. He groaned. He’d probably just thrown his job out of the window. No way would she want to work next to him in Dr. St. Augustine’s library and his boss definitely treated Lilah like the daughter she’d never had. If one of them had to leave the library, it wouldn’t be Lilah Burns, even if she wasn’t educated as a librarian.
“And you believed her?”
Rune’s voice snapped him back to the present moment. Charlie shrugged. “She doesn’t have the book, okay? And that means I don’t have it either.”
Why wouldn’t he believe Lilah? She had always been truthful with him. More truthful than he had been with her. Only a week ago, she’d referred to their partnership as the most honest relationship she’d ever had. Maybe that was true for her half of it.
Rune pursed her lips in an angry duckface and shook her head. The wind whipped her red hair across her face, and with one finger, she scooped it back over her ear. “Oh, Charlie, I’m really disappointed in you.”
He swallowed. “That makes three of us.” He realized what he said and amended it. “I mean, that makes both of us.”
“You know, maybe I should just leave and go back to Marco.”
“Wha—? Why?” He pulled her closer to him, but she yanked away. “After all we’ve been through, now you’re talking about going your own way? After everything I’ve sacrificed for you?”
Rune softened toward him and shivered involuntarily. She moved in close, both palms against his chest. The jacket around him was too thick, so she unzipped it halfway and slid her hands inside. He took it as a sign of affection, but he was sure also that her hands were cold.
She raised only her eyes to him. “Charlie, I’m afraid that Marco will kill you if we go back empty-handed, or if there’s no proof that you’ll be able to help him in the future.”
“I can help you.” Though he didn’t know how. “Just give me another chance.”
“He has given you another chance. And then another. If I stay with you and have nothing to show for it, he’ll kill me, too. Or at the very least, he’ll inflict more pain.”
Charlie reached inside his jacket and found her hands, small and cold, under his. He held them there. What was it Lilah had said? That it was Marco who had died and Lovey who had lived? Or that Marco had been her husband and not her brother? If that were true, then who was pulling Rune’s strings, and his? Why would Rune lie?
His mouth stretched into an involuntary smile. Lilah was wrong. She thought she knew better, but she was wrong. She was just jealous. And upset. And hurt. He had obtained his information firsthand from Rune, and who knew where Lilah had gotten hers?
Rune tilted her head back, finally letting him see her chin. The things this sweet and delicate woman had been through! The bruises on her cheek were days from fading. The same would be true with the ones on her thigh, even though they were now covered in black leggings that matched her long sleeves.
He tried to get it out of his head. Something wasn’t quite right, even if he didn’t want to think about it. Rune’s bruises had come after the explosion at the Scholar’s Library. She had a matched set of bruises from both before and after the explosion, and there was no way that she could have gotten such bruises if he had reached out from the grave. Who the hell had beaten her if not Marco? Lovey had died in the explosion, and Marco had lived to terrorize another day. It was that simple. Lilah didn’t mean to lie—that much he knew—but she had faulty information from someone. Probably that Raven dude.
Rune had never lied to him. She was far too sweet and innocent for that. Lilah had said he was being manipulated, but Lilah was wrong. He knew better. He wasn’t born yesterday, and he knew enough about human nature to know when someone was in trouble and needed help. It was the same with the sixteen-year-old girl, a brand-new driver, on the road in a storm the night of his wedding rehearsal dinner. Just one more person who had needed help, and he had been able to give that to her, to change her life for the better. Daphne hadn’t understood that. No more than Lilah had understood it now. Daphne had said it wasn’t just that one time, but that it happened time and again, and that he was so ready to have anyone else who needed him that he couldn’t be there the one time she had asked for him to be fully present for her—the entire twenty-four hours before and after their wedding. After all he’d done for Daphne, she more than anyone should have understood that he would help anyone and everyone he could and sacrifice whatever he had to. In that case, it had been a marriage to Daphne that he’d sacrificed. But he’d found love again.
With Rune, he’d sacrificed a marriage to Lilah. But he’d found love with Rune, and in the fog of it, there was nothing she could say or do that he wouldn’t make excuses for.
Maybe Lilah was right: he stayed fully engaged in a relationship only until the next person in more trouble came along. And that new person was the one he’d always fall in love with. Maybe Lilah was one hundred percent correct in everything she said about him, but she wasn’t right about Rune. She just couldn’t be. He needed the truth to be the woman he held close to him now on the windy cliffs. His sanity depended on it.
He searched Rune’s face for answers but found only her pleading eyes. She bit her lip, waiting to hear what he had to say. The next thing that came out of his mouth surprised even him.
Charlie fell to one knee, low enough to the ground that the concrete barrier kept the wind from scattering his voice. He caught her left hand in both of his as she looked down at him, the plump flesh at her neck doubling under her chin. Gently, he twisted the diamond ring she’d taken without asking around her finger. She let him.
Hot tears burned in his eyes. His heart pounded so hard in his ears that he could barely hear his own voice, the wind, or anything in the world around them. Something about Lilah walking away reminded him of the empty foyer in the back of the church and of being left behind because he didn’t make the right decision in time. And now Rune was about to walk out of his life, too. He had to do something to keep her. He’d never felt more desperate in his life.
“Rune O’Maney,” he whispered. He slid the ring off and back on again. Then all the way off to study it.
She frowned down at him, and he realized that from where she stood, his words were lost in the wind. She could only read his lips. He started over, raising his voice this time.
“Rune O’Maney, will you marry me? Make me the happiest man alive?”
He was pleading now, but his pleas had nothing to do with happiness. He didn’t need a little cottage with a white picket fence or a mini mansion in the suburbs. He didn’t need 2.5 children or a joint retirement account. He needed survival. He needed to be needed and she needed him, and he needed her. This. Rune.
He slid the ring back onto her finger without looking. All he wanted to see was Rune’s face and the knitted elevens between her brows relax into happy agreement. He needed that more than he needed his soul.
For a moment, she didn’t say anything, her blue-green dress swaying at her thighs, as she looked down at him, her hair still frenzied by the breeze. Then her face broke into a grin. In one joyful swoosh, she kneeled in front of him, throwing her arms around him. He caught her, but the motion was so smooth and fast that he lost his balance and fell backward into the muddy grass. But he didn’t let go of her.
She buried her head in his chest as he fell all the way back, flat on his back. He stared up at the fast-moving clouds in the sky and then dared to look even farther away, down the path, in the direction that Lilah had taken. He thought he saw her there in the distance, someone in a black jacket looking back at where he had first muddied his knee and taken Rune’s hand. Whoever it was, Lilah or some stranger, the person in the black jacket turned back to the sea for a moment and then resumed course.
When he looked back at Rune, she was backhanding tears.
“Oh, Charlie. You have no idea how happy you’ve made me. You and I can go back to Florida together and your job at your big library full of precious books, and we can start a beautiful life, and I promise you I will always be by your side. Sweet Charlie, let’s get married sooner rather than later. I don’t want you thinking that I’ll run away like the last one.”
Run away? Someone must have told her about Daphne, but it wasn’t him. The only person from his current life who knew anything about what had happened back in Chicago was Lilah, and Lilah had sworn never to tell anyone. Even Emry didn’t know the details. Dr. St. Augustine might have, but she wasn’t prone to gossip.
Charlie pushed himself to his feet bringing Rune with him. “I never told anyone about that.”
Rune flinched. “Of course, you did.”
“No, I’m positive I didn’t.” It was a point of pain in his life that he didn’t discuss with anyone. He regretted telling Lilah about it on their first drunken night together because it always made him look weak and unwanted. Lilah had never really gone out of her way to make him feel wanted, not like Rune. He wouldn’t have given Rune the chance to think less of him, not with him being such a hero in her eyes.
“Oh, my sweet Charlie, I’m not sure how to tell you this.” She cupped his cheek in her hand and stifled a grin.
Was there any truth to Lilah’s allegations? He needed to hear it, whatever it was.
“Just tell me. I want to know. I need to know. Everything.”
He needed to know everything, just as Lilah had needed to know everything. His insecurities ran deep.
Rune couldn’t stop laughing. Both her hands flew to her face, and she snorted before she stopped, then launched into a fit of giggles. “Has anyone ever told you that you talk in your sleep?”
“What?”
“Our first night together, back in the castle hotel, after you finished the wine and fell asleep, you told me the whole story. You also told me that your grandmother works in a library. That’s why you became a librarian. To carry on her legacy.”
Charlie shook his head in disbelief. How could Rune have known these things? Lilah had mentioned on maybe one occasion that he talked in his sleep, but she’d sworn it was gibberish. Maybe all their time together, he had been telling her his life story when he’d slept. That, at least, would account for why he was so deathly tired in the mornings, even when he had spent nine hours in bed.
He pulled Rune to him, pressing his face into her hair and pulling away just long enough to kiss her temple. “I love you,” he gushed.
She hugged back just as hard. “I love you, too, Charlie. You make me feel so safe.”
And you, he wanted to say, are the best thing a man could have for his ego.
She stood in silence in front of him and ran her fingers through his grimy hair. Neither of them was at their best, but Rune was beautiful. And she was his. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so loved and so important to any one person.
“You should let me talk to Marco,” he said after a while.
“Why?”
“I don’t want him blaming you for what’s happened. You’ve suffered enough. Besides, I need his help to get a passport and money to get back home. I know it’s yet one more thing but—”
Rune pressed one fingertip to his lips. “Don’t worry, my love. I’ll fix everything. I’ll find a way.” She stood on tiptoe to give him a quick peck on the cheek. “He’ll be so happy that you and I are together and with how much you’re willing to help me.”
He pulled her back to him. He needed to hang onto her. She felt solid and real, and he needed that.
“Sweet Charlie, if we go back to Florida, the book will go to Drusilla St. Augustine for safekeeping. You work for Drusilla St. Augustine. It may take a little longer than we planned, but some opportunity will arise. Either for The Lost Teachings or The Key of Hell and Death. Or some other wonderful book we don’t even know about yet. Marco will be satisfied with the possibilities. And you and I will be happy.”
Rune squinted in the distance, but this time Charlie didn’t look back. He had made a decision. He was out of the crossroads. He, unlike Daphne, would never go back on promising to marry someone. As soon as they had their paperwork together, and he had his real ID, he would make Rune officially his wife. Even if he had to keep their vows a secret for a while from Lilah, Drusilla, and Emry until their ruffled feelings calmed down. Unless he got fired first. He had a gift for talking himself out of bad situations, and the odds of whether he could this time were no better than a coin toss.
Rune wriggled out of his embrace. “Charlie?” She was still staring after Lilah. “Are you sure Lilah doesn’t have the book?”
“She said she didn’t.” He tried to remember anything about their conversation other than the hurt in her eyes. “I’m positive she didn’t have it on her. Which means… the priest still has it. He hasn’t given it to her yet. There’s no way she would just leave it somewhere. She’d keep it on her person.”
“Where can we find Raven Darbyshire?”
Charlie laughed. “Shouldn’t you be planning your wedding or something now? We’ll get the book later. Back in Florida. I have access to all four vaults in the library.”
Rune smiled sweetly. “It would be much easier if we could get it here. Then, I could get it to my brother, and you and I would be free to go to the States and start our new life and” —Rune stood on her tiptoes again, this time kissing his chin— “we’d be free of Marco. Do you understand, Charlie? We would be free. I would be free. Let me make things better. I’ll talk to Lilah myself. I’m positive I can convince Lilah to give us the book before she leaves Ireland.”
“What? No!” He wouldn’t put Lilah through that. “Look, we don’t know where the priest is or the two priestesses who were at the safe house in Dublin.”
The safe house in Dublin!
He dug deep into his pocket and pulled out the ornamental key with the runic symbol. He dangled it in front of Rune.
“But I still have this! The priest is supposed to hand over the artifact to Lilah once he’s authenticated it, and then she’s getting on a plane with it for the States.” A flight he would not be able to board without his passport. “Maybe they’ll meet back there at the safe house in Dublin for the exchange. I don’t know how likely, but—”
Rune yanked the key out of his hand and stared at it. “You fucking idiot! How stupid can you be? I told you to leave that key in the men’s room before we left Dublin.”
He blinked at her anger, confused, then shrugged. “I know, but why would I do that? Aren’t you glad I kept it so we can get back into the safe house, or if maybe this is the key to another safe house or—”
“Or?” She shook the key fob in his face. “The priesthood could be tracking every step we make. Don’t you know anything about them? Jesus, Charlie. They’re like the Illuminati or something. They’re super powerful and you don’t want to be on their bad side. Having access to their secret libraries can put us on par with them. Jesus.”
He stared at her. He’d never thought that much about all their weird activities. Just more pagan hippy stuff like Emry was into but a lot creepier.
“I should have looked at this key more closely when I went back to the safe house to get the book.” She eyed the fob intently. “I was too busy then. I should have noticed how heavy the key fob was. It’s 3D printed, some kind of odd filament I haven’t seen before, but something is inside of it, sealed in. That’s an old trick of the priesthood. You’d know if you’d done any of your research.”
“You think they’ve traced us here?” That familiar sense of being trapped was back again.
Rune shook it in his face again. “Yes, Charlie. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Or been listening to every word we’ve said. Who knows? They have better tech than any first-world country I can name. Jesus, Charlie. What have you done to us?”
She whirled on the cliff’s edge and hurled the key fob as hard as she could into the Atlantic. It was barely out of sight before they heard the giant boom, an explosion somewhere. Not the key fob, but somewhere further away.
Leaning over the concrete barrier, he and Rune squinted into the distance. The mist over the sea and cliffs seemed to dissipate as if it were being sucked away. The sea below had been crashing against the cliffs, white foam thrown over the path to the nineteenth-century O’Brien’s Tower on the next cliff. The crashing waves stopped. The sea sank lower.
“What the hell is that?” Rune pointed at something in the water. Stones. A black spire. It looked as if it were rising out of the water, but instead the water was draining away from it.
He shook his head. “It looks like… I don’t know. Some type of underwater city. Lilah said there are all kinds of legendary ruins in Ireland.”
The earth under them shook. Charlie grabbed for the concrete barrier with one hand and Rune with the other. He held her tight against him. The water started to rise.
“Earthquake,” he breathed. “Tsunami.”
He couldn’t move. He watched the water far below, rushing back in at first and, somehow, miraculously smoothing out below the cliffs until all was still again, and the stones and spires of whatever village they had seen was once again below the ocean’s surface, lost in the murky depths.
“I hope that was a good sign,” he choked out. When he looked back at Rune, he caught her halfway through an eyeroll.
“I need to talk to her. To Lilah. I can convince her to give me the location of that book. Hmm. No, I think I can convince her to give me the book itself.”
“Rune, no. We’ll find some other way. We—”
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