Confrontation
I looked away.
Away from Charlie in the distance on one knee.
Away from the receding sea.
Away from any small chance of spotting Cill Stuifín somewhere in the depths below the cliffs where it had vanished below the surface over a thousand years ago.
But I didn’t run. I knew—I wasn’t sure how unless it was something I’d seen in the visions Raven had gifted to me—that I wasn’t meant to die this day.
Within a few seconds of the knowing, I heard the sea tumbling back. No mighty rush. No grand tsunami. I knew what had happened. Raven had taken the magic from last night, gathered in his palms, and planted it minutes ago into Mother Earth herself. He had talked of grounding the energy by placing his hands in grass or on stone and releasing what he held in his body from the rituals in the candlelit spiral. Somewhere in the Atlantic but not too far away, the earth had cracked upon accepting the energy wrought by a High Priest of Daegan. Rather than the destructive force it could have been, Raven must have smoothed the fissure with his hands, in some surrogate patch of grass or stone, and eased what might have been a disaster.
Are all earthquakes rooted in Daeganean rituals?
Sighing, I turned back to the sea, careful not to look toward where Cill Stuifín had stood more than a millennium before. Mommy had often told me the story of the lost village and how those who saw it over the last centuries were said to die within seven years or seven months or seven weeks—I couldn’t remember which—though if seeing it was the result of an earthquake and tsunami, sailors on the water likely died in seven minutes or maybe seven hours.
Still, I’d been raised on that legend, and I wouldn’t chance it. Not now. A year ago, yes. But not now. No matter how discouraged my heart was at the moment, my old death wish was gone.
I didn’t look back toward where Charlie had been bent on one knee. Emry had gotten it all wrong. Yes, she’d seen in her visions that Charlie and I would be on these cliffs, and she’d seen Charlie on one knee with a ring and a proposal of marriage, but it wasn’t me he’d asked to be his wife. It was her. Barbara Ann Simmons “Bambi” Torrelli. Emry had seen Charlie through his bride-to-be’s eyes, but they weren’t mine.
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t understand. My jaw tightened at the thought of it. My throat ached. How could this have happened? I didn’t want to throw myself off the cliffs, but the overwhelming sadness burned through my veins. How had everything turned around so quickly? Was I just not worthy of a good man, or could I simply not manage to find one? Perhaps I did not know what one looked like. Everyone would’ve said Charlie was a good man, the best. I couldn’t reconcile it—either that he was not the person I’d thought he was or that he had suddenly decided after all this time with me that he was ready to settle down—with someone else. I’d been patient these last few months because I wanted to give him whatever time he needed to get over his ex-fiancée. Well, he’d gotten over her this week!
“Lilah Burns!”
Before I could think about not looking back at Charlie then or ever, I jerked my head in the direction of my name. The redhaired woman ran toward me. I shook my head in disbelief and turned to walk away.
“Lilah!”
I ignored her and walked faster.
“Lilah! I must speak with you!”
Annoyed, I glanced back at her and beyond. In the far distance, Charlie took a few steps toward us, then stopped, then started again.
Good ol’ indecisive Charlie, always trying to figure out those crossroads.
“Lilah, wait!” The woman slipped in a puddle and skidded sideways, catching herself on a fence of rail and rocks. She went down in the mud, leaving much on the knees of her black leggings, and I laughed before she found her footing again. I couldn’t help it.
I was wearing hiking boots, far more sensible footwear for this muddy path. I turned my back on her and on Charlie and continued my trek to the next grassy cliff. With each footstep, I pressed my energy into the ground, both leaving and taking every emotion of this moment with me. I was alone and unpartnered, but I was okay.
“Lilah!”
The voice was closer, but I neither sped up nor slowed down. Then a hand grabbed my right shoulder and spun me around. Face to face, I stood in front of the woman Charlie had chosen over me. Over her shoulder full of magenta hair, I saw Charlie following as fast as he could without running.
“Don’t follow me,” I grated out. “Stay the hell away from me.”
You’ve been warned, I said in my head. You have no idea what kind of monster I am.
She looked back at Charlie and waved. Then the earnest expression on her face, once she faced me again, faded. She smiled. As fast as flipping a light switch. Not a smile, really. A smirk.
“I need your help, Lilah Burns.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “And people in hell want ice water.” My standard answer this week to ridiculous requests.
“Then I hope you have a bucket because I won’t take no for an answer.”
“Yeah? You don’t know me very well, do you?” I whipped the hair out of my face and spun on one heel.
She caught my shoulder, and I almost lost my balance.
“I know enough. I know you were kidnapped as a little girl and that you almost died. I know the boy who was with you in that cellar did die. He had so much more going for him than you did. How did you manage to survive when he was so much stronger?”
Leaning into her face, I lowered my voice so that it might have been the wind and not me. “Shut up.”
Too close to the bone.
I’d talked to almost no one about that incident, including Charlie, who’d asked me only once and I’d told only once. But I hadn’t told him the whole story. Now I never would.
Bambi Torrelli grinned at me, her words slicing through me. “I know you were in the military, and they didn’t want you. Nobody did. You got sent home because you did something bad.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. My fists clenched involuntarily. Good thing she didn’t know exactly what I’d done. I hadn’t been an assassin; I’d been something worse, enough of a monster that she should have been running away from me, afraid.
“You were a loner. Always. No friends. Just like you don’t have any friends now except those Drusilla St. Augustine pays to be your friends.”
She was wrong. Emry was my friend. Charlie had been my friend. Or so I had thought. It didn’t matter that Dru paid them as part of their work for the St. Augustine Special Collections Library. She didn’t pay them to like me or to be my friends. And maybe Raven was my friend now, too. And Nike and Illyria. Still, Bambi Torrelli knew me well enough to know what would hurt, and she targeted the weaknesses I showed to almost no one.
“I know men don’t really want you. They may be with you for a while but it’s only for what you carry between your legs. You’re not ever someone they’d marry, like I am. Once they know what they do want, they’re only interested in you as a friend, if that. You’re good enough for a while, but not for forever. That’s what Charlie told me a couple of nights ago when he made love to me all night long in the room next to you. He didn’t even think enough of you to check in on you.” She paused, savoring every syllable. “Why would he bother? He was in my bed.”
Sucking in my breath, I stepped backward. I had to. I desperately needed the distance between us, or I would have thrown her hateful ass over the cliff already. I looked beyond her smirk and saw Charlie climbing the trail, still too far away to hear the conversation. She saw, too, and dropped to her knees, clutching at the hem of my jacket, head thrown back, for all the world seeming to beg me.
“I need that book. And you’re going to give it to me.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
I swatted her hands off my jacket, but she clenched them together in a pleading gesture in order to continue fooling Charlie. He couldn’t hear her, only see her.
“You will get that book for me. You’ll give it to me before you leave Ireland tonight.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Then you’ll spend the rest of your life blaming yourself for Charlie’s death, just like you blame yourself for that boy in the cellar.”
I understood now. Illyria had told me that Bambi had spent her teen years as a receptionist and transcriptionist in her family’s marital counseling clinic; she’d clearly learned the art of manipulation from the client case studies she’d typed day after day. Rather than follow the family footsteps into clinical psychology, she’d taken the opposite approach. Finally, I understood how she’d targeted Charlie’s personality flaws, deepest desires, worst fears. Just as now she was trained on mine.
I grabbed the front of her dress and pulled her up on her knees. “What did you say? Are you threatening Charlie? You think you can intimidate me?”
Me, the girl with the monster inside. The most dangerous person she’d ever met. The one who might snap and cut her throat. The one who kept her demons just beneath the surface.
“Good. You still care.”
Damn it. She’s playing me.
Of course, I cared! I wasn’t sure if I love or hated Charlie at the moment but… but yes, I still loved him. I couldn’t have any harm come to him. Even if it served him right for choosing the wrong woman.
Behind her, in the distance, Charlie flailed his arms and called out something. He had started to run but slowed down now to avoid slipping and faceplanting in the mud and grass.
“I need that book, Lilah Burns. Now. You’ll take me to it. Charlie, too, if we can’t get rid of him.”
“I don’t have the book, and if I did, I’d never give it to you.”
I released her collar, and she instantly flung herself backward as though I’d pushed her. I heard Charlie cry out, louder this time.
“You’ll give that book to me sooner or later,” she said. “Or Charlie’s death is on your hands.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Charlie couldn’t make a commitment to me, but he’d picked this?
“Don’t threaten me, and don’t threaten Charlie.”
“Either you help me, or I’ll follow Charlie back to Florida and pry that book from his cold, dead fingers. Then you can have back what’s left of him.”
I wasn’t sure how she’d follow him anywhere. I had a plane ticket back to Florida. Charlie didn’t. I suspected she didn’t either. Though her resources might have been considerably greater than I had anticipated, and her poor little victim act probably was meant to appeal to Charlie.
According to Raven, Dru was sending backup—whatever that meant—to escort me back to the St. Augustine Special Collections Library where I would hand over The Lost Teachings of Dead Monks for safe keeping. Then that book, like so many others that dangerous, would disappear into an impenetrable bunker. Of the nine vaults, it would probably warrant Gate Eight or Nine, far above Charlie’s clearance or even knowledge that they existed. No, if Bambi Torrelli were going to get her hands on The Lost Teachings, it had to be before I boarded my departing flight in Dublin. This time, I was the one who was smiling.
Bambi Torrelli’s unbruised cheek flushed red. She crawled back up onto her knees and latched herself to the hem of my jacket once again.
Somewhere behind her, all Charlie saw was his fiancée apparently pleading with me. For what? Her life? The Lost Teachings?
I pulled away. “I’ve had enough of you.”
“Don’t test me, Lilah Burns. Get that book for me today and you never have to see me again. If you don’t, I swear I will follow Charlie back to America. I will fuck him raw, and the second he falls asleep, I will slit his throat.”
I couldn’t stop the awful laughter that bubbled up out of my chest. “That’s not really any of my concern now, is it? He’s yours. You’ve won.” I clapped my hand over my mouth.
“How can you just stop caring?” She looked confused. “When I’m done with him, you’ll be next. You’ll never know when or where, but I’ll be there in the shadows, waiting.”
I grabbed her collar and pulled her to her feet. “You want to threaten me? You wanna kill me? Do it now. Right here, right now. Give it a go. But for all the things that you know about me, or that you think you know, you better understand that I have no fear of death. If Jakin Crutchfield can’t bring me back, then Raven Darbyshire can.”
I caught myself before I could say more. Not everyone knew about the legendary Key of Hell and Death or the resurrection rituals, and I’d just spilled the Historical Society’s greatest secret to someone who was a known threat. I’d let my anger get the better of me.
Something sparked in her eyes, and I knew she’d heard me right. I changed the subject quickly.
“I know who you are. Your name is Barbara Ann Simmons Torrelli, and I know it was your husband, Marco, who had died in the explosion at the Scholar’s Library. He thought he could easily steal The Lost Teachings, but instead he got just far enough into the inner recesses of the vault area to trigger the security system. It was set to destroy everything rather than risk people like the two of you getting your hands on those books. Marco is the reason the explosion leveled everything, including Marco.”
Both her cheeks flushed a deeper red. Score! Now I was the one poking at sore spots.
“Why wasn’t it you in that library? Why aren’t you dead?” Then it hit me. She was the mastermind, not Marco. I’d known that in the back of my mind, but the picture was clear now. “You’re the reason your husband and partner-in-crime is dead.”
“Shut up!” she hissed.
“I know that Charlie isn’t your first rodeo either. You’ve committed bigamy—what? Five? Six times before? Plus one or two poor suckers you never married. All while you used those innocent eyes and became whatever they needed you to be.”
Still in my grasp, she shrugged. “What are you going to do? Tell Charlie everything you know?”
I said nothing. I hadn’t told him everything I knew, but I’d told him enough. If he had trusted me, if he had ever loved me, all he needed to do was check things out for himself and see that I was right. In my heart, I knew he wouldn’t. She was like a termite eating away at the ship beneath the waterline, and he couldn’t see until it was too late.
“Lilah! Wait!”
She ignored Charlie and wrapped her hands around mine so that I couldn’t pull away. In a wild move, she punched herself in the nose, using my hands as a weapon. Blood trickled down her lips as she grinned. “First Marco, now you. Look how badly you treat me. Charlie will hate you for it.”
What the hell?
“He’ll believe me, too. It doesn’t matter what you tell him. It doesn’t matter whether anybody else in the world believes me right now. The only thing that matters is that Charlie Peterson believes me enough to keep me in his life. As long as he’s working for Drusilla St. Augustine’s magical library, I’ll have access—or be able to get access—to everything I need. And that, Lilah Burns, is the only thing keeping him alive. The second he stops believing in me, I will cut his throat, and I’ll frame you for it. Everyone knows how sweet I am, but we all know that on the inside Lilah Burns is a monster.”
My empathic senses lit up around me like the feel of lightning in the air before it strikes your spine. She meant it. Charlie was just a pawn. I was both furious and hurt by what he’d done, but I didn’t want him dead. If I could talk to him one more time or find some other way to convince him, perhaps it would still be okay… For now, though, I needed to make certain that Bambi Torrelli was out of commission for the rest of the day.
But Bambi was laughing, low and under her breath so that only I could hear.
“You have another secret, don’t you Lilah? There’s something out there bigger and better than The Lost Teachings. You already slipped and told me. Not like I didn’t already know about it from Charlie. The Key of Hell and Death. I’ll find that, too, and bring back Marco. Maybe into Charlie’s body. Would you like that? Once I get my hands on that book—”
I slammed my fists into the side of her head. Her eyes rolled back even before she let go of my other wrist. She hit the ground hard and flat on her back, arms thrown out at either side.
Somewhere nearby, Charlie screeched my name, but I wasn’t thinking. Not about him. The monster inside me was on the verge of release. I could feel it coming out my pores in a blind rage to protect me.
I could barely breathe. Fear blinded me. Bad enough that this little thief was intent on getting her hands on The Lost Teachings, but she was a lot smarter than she pretended. For someone like her to go after The Key of Hell and Death, I couldn’t risk that. It wasn’t as if Charlie hadn’t had access to that artifact once before, even if he didn’t really understand its power and had been stupid enough to upload it to the Fourth World website as part of some sort of altruistic librarian philosophy. It had been taken down and was now hidden away inside Gate Nine of the security bunkers under Dru’s domain, but he might have kept a copy of the digital file he’d scanned. He’d sworn he hadn’t, but Charlie’s word was worthless now. Dru should’ve polygraphed him.
I wasn’t nearly as worried about what type of monetary profit Bambi Torrelli might make off such an artifact as I was that she would use it for her own means and that those of us who would need it one day after the death of our planet would no longer have it in our possession. I no longer had a death wish, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to step off of a cliff with an unconscious Bambi Torrelli in my grip. The mission of the Daeganean priesthood was more important than my life. That mission was the difference between the continuation of humanity and the end of humanoid life on earth. I didn’t really understand it all, but they needed The Key to resurrect and reincarnate in a mountain compound in Virginia when Ireland, Florida, and much of the rest of the world had been destroyed in the coming cataclysm.
I grabbed both of Rune’s wrists and tugged her toward the cliff’s edge. Seven seconds to hit the water. Seven seconds.
She was heavier than I had thought. I managed to get her up over one shoulder as I lurched closer to the edge of the cliff. Somehow the old Lilah had kicked in, the one who had been trained to survive and to eliminate any threat to the ultimate end goal. I wasn’t sure if it was instinct or the monster in me.
I could see the sea from here. Eternity. The wind was still blowing just as hard, but the mist had evaporated, and I was standing at the ends of the earth, looking across the Atlantic.
“Oof!” I went down hard.
Bambi Torrelli was still unconscious, yet somehow she flailed in the other direction. I squirmed under the heavy weight that pinned me to the ground and managed to wriggle around enough to see Charlie on top of me.
“What are you doing?” Charlie’s face contorted. I’d never seen him in so much pain. “What the hell is wrong with you, Lilah? Do you hate me that much for what I’ve done that you would take away any happiness from me?”
I stopped struggling. “Charlie, I’ve got to. I can’t let her hurt you or anyone else.”
“She’s not hurting me. You are.”
“You don’t understand.”
I had to make him understand. I had to. His life depended on it. The future Raven had shown me depended on it too.
“No, Lilah, you don’t understand. She’s a nice person. She’s always been good to me. She’s an absolute angel. You’re not.”
“But, Charlie, there’s stuff you don’t know. She’s not who she pretends to be. She’s—”
“I don’t care, Lilah. Even if she’s not who she says she is or there’s stuff I don’t know about her, it doesn’t matter. You’re not exactly who you say you are either. There’s plenty about you that would keep me from ever tying myself to you for the rest of my life.”
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