Red Flags
“Do you want to talk about it?” Charlie swigged Guinness from his glass mug. He had barely touched the bangers and mash on his plate.
Lilah, on the other side of the pub table, shook her head and played with the lamb shank in front of her.
Good, he thought. I don’t want to talk about it either.
He wasn’t even sure what it was that Lilah didn’t want to talk about. Only that she had had an episode at the library that had had her running out, gasping for air, like a goldfish that had jumped out of its bowl. At least if he was asking Lilah about something that had upset her, she wouldn’t be talking about something that was upsetting to him. He took one last swig of the Guinness and set the mug beside his plate.
Things should have been different. He should have been happy. If he hadn’t screwed the pooch, he and Lilah might be both enjoying this pub right now. The food was fantastic. The service was fantastic. The ambience was fantastic. Everything in life was just so fucking fantastic, and he was about to ruin everything. But the most fantastic of all was the woman sitting across the table from him. The woman he had so desperately wanted in his life from the day Dr. St. Augustine had hired him and suggested he get to know his coworker better. If he made the wrong choice now, Lilah would never respect him again, and she’d certainly never love him again.
This could’ve been the best week of his life, ending with him taking Lilah to the Cliffs of Moher, the two of them looking for the legendary lost city of Cill Stuifín buried under the sea. He so wanted to be the one to show it to her and hoped that it would be with him that the waters would be clear enough that they could see what lay beneath. Then, last of all, he would take her out to the grassy cliff, as close as they were allowed to get to the edge without some park ranger freaking out, and he would fall to bended knee and propose to her at “the ends of the Earth,” as she had jokingly called it. It was a magnificent sight, he had been told, many times. It wasn’t just that he wanted to see it with Lilah, but he wanted her to see it with him.
“Is there something you would like to talk about?” Lilah asked from across the table. “You’ve been quiet all day.”
“Distant” was what she meant. “Disquieted” was a more appropriate description.
Silence had been easy since they left the library. They’d wandered first around the library at Trinity College, gawking at the walls and ceilings of the Long Hall and gazing at The Book of Kells, whose images were strikingly like those in The Lost Teachings of Dead Monks. From there, they’d returned to the rare books library they had mistaken for the Scholar’s Library and spent hours walking through the exhibitions. If they wanted to ensure neither of them spoke to the other, what better way than to spend the day roaming the noise-restricted halls of libraries? Still, he could’ve held her hand, or slipped his arm around her waist, or shown some kind of affection. Instead, he’d intentionally withdrawn himself as much as possible. It was best that way for now. He had a lot to think about.
Charlie moved one of his sausages around his plate, then set down the fork and reached again for his half-full mug. Would it kill him to tell her the truth? Hmm, probably. Right now, there was a chance, at least a slight one, that she would hear him out and forgive him. One more step in the wrong direction, however, and Lilah would be done with him. He’d never kneel on the Cliffs of Moher in front of her.
“Charlie?” Lilah shoved the plate of lamb and vegetables to one side. She’d barely touched anything on her plate, with the exception of two slices of brown bread slathered in Irish butter. She looked away from him and tentatively back. “Are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong?”
Charlie’s heart sank. He knew enough of her history to understand that she would always instantly blame herself for any misfortune of the heart. She’d been seeing a counselor for the last four months. Though she seemed lighter and happier in so many respects, she had not yet broken the pattern of always thinking that she was the one in the wrong in relationship matters.
“No, sweetheart.” He tried to shake off his guilt but couldn’t. “You’ve not done anything wrong.”
She stared off at the ornate, carved railings of dark wood that trimmed their booth. “I just don’t get it.” When she looked back up at him, her eyes were wet.
Oh, God. She was cutting his heart out with a spoon. “Get what?”
“A few months ago, we were so close.”
“We’re still close.”
“No, not like we were. You barely talk to me, except about work. We started out so close after….”
Charlie knew what she meant. After Jakin, they’d been friends and even lovers. After she’d found her purpose in life and had changed into a lighter, more vibrant creature, she and Charlie had been inseparable, as though they had been best friends all their lives. And the sex has been fan-fucking-tastic.
“Charlie, you and I used to talk all the time at work. Eight hours, nonstop, about everything imaginable. And then, after work, we’d go to the rock-climbing gym, and we’d talk whenever we could catch our breath from climbing. And then, we’d have dinner together. And then, afterwards, we’d each go to our separate homes and spend the next four hours messaging each other. Then, right after New Year’s, right after we talked about moving in together—and you, I remind you, are the one who brought that up—you stopped going to the gym with me. And we stopped talking as much at work, except about work. It was like you threw up all these guardrails. We talked only at work and when we went to dinner together. And that wasn’t every night anymore. And I hardly ever get any messages from you after hours. Charlie, I know something’s going on. When a man spends that kind of time talking to a woman every spare minute of the day and then suddenly, he’s not talking to her like that anymore, well, he’s talking to somebody. And you haven’t been talking to me like that. I’m not sure really what we’re doing, or what your plans are.”
Maybe I should propose right here, he thought. The sooner I’m married to Lilah, the sooner I can’t be married to anyone else. One person in particular.
But no, that was desperation talking. The diamond was still safely tucked under the mattress in their room back at the castle. Lilah had no idea of his plans on the Cliffs of Moher. What could he tell her and still keep her? How could he buy himself some time? Even a few more days. He wanted to believe he could turn things around, thanks to that damned book and its magic to make good things happen and everything right with the world, as well as the same magic that could destroy all his dreams. If he could use it for good, everything would be fine.
If only he’d known how to use the book before funneling his fears into it. He would’ve opened it with thoughts of Lilah happy, and happy with him. The two of them working for the St. Augustine Special Collections Library together. With Jakin having moved far away, and no longer interested in Lilah. With a small wedding, consisting of their friends at the library, and maybe a few he had known in college, maybe even his grandmother present. In a few years, the first of several babies. He’d always wanted a big family. Although he couldn’t imagine Lilah agreeing to five children, maybe she would compromise at three. He would’ve dreamed of rock climbing every day with her, of hiking through the woods on the outskirts of town, of turning off the TV every night while the two of them read. They’d have separate books in separate chairs but still be close enough to reach out and touch one another or maybe even read aloud some special passage to the other. He would have poured into the book his dreams of growing old with her, joyfully, surrounded by family and friends, all healthy, all happy.
What more could a man wish for?
And yet, he’d screwed it all up. One tiny electronic message at a time with the wrong person.
“My God, Charlie!” Lilah threw her fork onto her plate with a loud clank and buried her face in her empty palms. “Just say something. Just say anything. But please don’t keep throwing this wall up between us. You know I’m an empath. You know I can feel it. It’s like you have this steel wall around you, like you’re in a tower, and all I can see of you is part of your face through a narrow slit and birdcage wire. The worst thing in the world you can do to me is to withdraw and shut me out. If you think I’m going to—”
She stopped abruptly as if she’d said too much. She took a breath and lowered her voice. “If you think that you and I have a future together, it can’t be a future where you won’t let me in. I have to have all of you, not table scraps. Been there, done that! Please talk to me.”
Charlie hung his head. He couldn’t stand to see her like this, and it was all his fault. He wanted to be open with her, but he’d never been open with anyone else. He was just good ol’ Charlie; everyone loved him, but no one really knew him. Just Lilah. He’d never let anyone see behind his good-guy mask in the past, and yet all Lilah wanted from him was the part that was behind the mask. The real him.
“It’s… complicated.”
She stared at him. Blood rushed to her face. “No, it’s not complicated at all. It’s very simple. You’re the one making it complicated. Do you want to be with me or not? If you do, then be with me. Not Charlie’s mask but the real Charlie.”
An unintended laugh came out of his throat, and Lilah shoved back from the table. It wasn’t a laugh of humor but of nervous energy, and Lilah knew his tells well enough to know he was hiding something.
“I don’t care what you’ve done,” she blurted out. “God knows, I’ve done horrible things in my lifetime, but I’m trying to be a better person. I know what I’m here for now, and I’m determined to live as authentically as possible. If something’s wrong, I’m going to say so, and then I’m going to try to fix it. All I need is truth. Tell me the truth, Charlie.”
“It’s compli—”
“Don’t you ever tell me again that ‘it’s complicated.’ Truth is not complicated. Love is not complicated. You know what is complicated? Hiding stuff. What are you hiding, Charlie?” Her eyes were wild and swimming in tears.
Desperate, he reached across the table for her hand. “It’s hard to explain. Maybe I should just write it in a letter.”
“Just say it. Whatever it is can’t be as bad as how I’m feeling right now.”
Don’t count on that, he wanted to tell her.
“I….” He thought better of it. “I love you, Lilah.”
She softened visibly as if she might crumple, then squeezed his hand in relief. Her breaths came hard and heavy, just as they did in the heat of passion. He’d never known a woman as passionate as she was, and yet, he was considering a life without her.
“I love you, too,” she mouthed.
He carefully pulled his hand out of hers. “Lilah, I’m at a crossroads in my life. I have decisions to make.”
Her face fell. “What kind of decisions?”
“It’s comp—” He saw the look on her face and stopped himself. “I’m at a turning point. No. Wrong analogy. Crossroads isn’t right, either. Not a fork. A trident? I have more than one choice, but I have to make a decision. Soon.”
This week? Tomorrow? Maybe now.
“About what?” She rubbed her ring finger, where she normally wore a pretty gemstone ring that Dr. St. Augustine had given her several years ago. He might still put another ring on that finger, but only if he hadn’t brought disaster into his life and if he could find a way out.
“About you. About me. About where we go from here. About everything. I’m really confused, and I don’t want to make the wrong decision. Seeing that book—um, today at the library—and hearing that dude explain how it worked made me realize that things might not work out like I want them to.”
Lilah sighed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I can feel you hiding something.”
She wanted the truth? Okay, the truth then.
“I’m afraid I’ll make a mistake. I’m afraid I’ll do something wrong, and you won’t understand, and you’ll end up hating me. I don’t know how to fix the mess I’m in, and you can’t help me. But just because I’m confused doesn’t mean that I don’t care for you.”
“‘Care for you,’” she repeated. It had come out sounding cold.
“Give me some time. Please. A few days. I can still salvage everything. But I’ve got to get through this crossroads first. I don’t know if I’ll go forward or if I’ll turn back or go sideways. I honestly don’t know which way I’m going, and I can’t give you an answer until I know, but I’ve got to do something. I can’t stay in the hell I’m in.”
“You’re in hell because of me?” Her words came out in a trembling quaver. It was as if all the hurts ever done to her were wrapped up in her question. In a way, he was certain, they were.
“No, Lilah. This is my hell to work through. I’m sorry if I’ve brought you along for the ride.”
She shook her head. “And still, you won’t be open with me. Don’t you understand that no matter how bad it is, not telling me makes it a thousand times worse? That you would close me off….” She pushed herself to her feet, bundling her black jacket into her arms but not putting it on. “I’m going to take a walk. Clear my head. I’ll catch a cab back to our room. Or walk back.”
“I’ll go with you.” Charlie reached into his pocket for the credit card in the fake name, the card Dr. St. Augustine had given him to pay expenses on this assignment.
“No. Don’t worry about me. I’m far less fine in here than I am wandering around Dublin’s streets after dark.”
Charlie watched her walk away, jacket trailing on the floor beside her. He couldn’t be open with her for more reasons than she could guess. He also knew they wouldn’t make love this night. Would they ever again?
He’d send a message via the Fourth World app on his phone. He’d tell Rune he was out. He’d say he couldn’t go through with her request, not to save his career or reputation. He’d say he never wanted to see her again and wouldn’t help her. He’d say not to contact him again. He’d tell her goodbye and good riddance to her and to the stranglehold that had tightened ever since he’d answered that first strange message. Then he’d catch a cab and go back to the room where Lilah would be waiting, hurting, and he’d confess everything and beg her forgiveness for hiding it from her. He would put his most persuasive efforts to work to win back her respect because when Rune O’Maney’s brother was done with him, Lilah’s respect would be the only thing he’d have left.
He reached for his mug and finished off the Guinness. He was glad he was facing away from the door, with his back to the other pub patrons. It meant none of them could see how low he felt.
An auburn-haired, auburn-bearded bartender breezed past him with another Guinness and set the mug in front of him before he could protest. Maybe he couldn’t hide his feelings that well after all. The aroma of Irish stew on the bartender’s tray made him hungry all over again, but instead of presenting the bowl to the booth nearest Charlie, the bartender cleared Lilah’s plate and set the steaming bowl in its place, along with a glass of malbec.
Charlie caught the man’s sleeve as he started away. “I didn’t order that.”
The bartender cocked his head. “She did.”
A woman bundled in a red jacket slipped into Lilah’s still-warm seat. She had pulled a fuzzy, gray cowl over her head to hide her hair but a thick red flag of it hung down over her left eye so that only half her face was visible. She scooped up a spoonful of steaming stew and blew on it before slurping it. She didn’t bother to push her hair aside.
“What are you doing here?” Charlie demanded. His attention shot to the front door of the pub. Was Lilah gone? Had she seen Rune’s arrival?
“I’m having dinner with you, my sweetheart. Why so grumpy?”
He rose halfway and leaned across the table to complain quietly in her ear, so that nobody would notice, but she grabbed the back of his head and pulled him down into a kiss. He fought to remember where he was. Her kisses were sweet, not as passionate but tenderer than Lilah’s. She had a way of making him feel wanted, but he knew it was mostly because he needed to be touched and Lilah, for her own good reasons, often hung back, afraid to trust.
“Rune, no.”
His words came out muddled by her kisses. He broke free and dropped hard into his chair. He shook his head. He’d never kissed her. She’d kissed him. More than once. In Florida. At a conference in Virginia. In the bar at the hotel last night. He really hadn’t known how to stop her without drawing more attention. He’d been worried most of all that Lilah would walk in on them. He’d felt unfaithful, every time, even though he didn’t have a commitment to Lilah, he told himself. Not yet. They’d never said they were exclusive, even though kneeling at Moher would make it clear.
Rune, for her part, seemed unworried. Almost as if she were trying to tempt fate and be found out. She sat quietly and ate her stew, occasionally sipping her wine. She was different from Lilah in more ways than he could count. Lilah was a little defensive. Impatient. She worried too much. Not like Rune. Rune had a sweetness about her and communicated more through touch than through words. He felt wanted in ways he never had with Lilah. Not her fault but not his fault either.
That was how Rune had drawn him in. Not by seducing him but by being so innocent. There was nothing innocent about Lilah.
Rune was sweet, almost submissive. At first. Like an angel in her lightness and adoration of him. She’d told him she had complete faith that he would be her champion and he’d said yes, months ago, not realizing what he was getting himself into. He’d needed to feel useful, heroic, and Rune had tapped into that deep yearning.
Lilah never tried to seduce him with damsel-in-distress techniques, but she didn’t tend to manipulate him either. The hardest thing to tamp down was his need to be needed, and while Lilah ignored it because she was self-sufficient, Rune had found his weak spot.
“You’ve been following me, haven’t you, Rune?”
She bit into a chunk of beef. Her unnaturally red hair flopped over her left eye with each nod.
“How long?”
She shrugged. “All day.”
All day. He’d never noticed. Had Lilah?
“Since before your stop at the Darbyshire Library. I almost lost you at the exhibition library before that.”
Or maybe Lilah had known or feared they were being followed and planned that unnecessary stop at the wrong library?
“You two are very lovely together,” Rune added.
Charlie felt his face warm. She’d been spying on him all day. On Lilah. On the two of them wandering the streets of Dublin. On the two of them fighting here and Lilah walking out.
“Please don’t do this,” Charlie said. “Before you came into my life, I had a life.”
Rune put down the spoon and took a long sip of her wine. “You still have a life, Charlie. Remember that. We’ll have a good life together, you and me. I know this isn’t what you had in mind, but I promise I’ll be a good wife to you. You will never want for affection from me. Plus, I cook a mean shepherd’s pie.”
“He can’t make us marry.”
“He can and he will.”
This is insane. Insane.
Charlie refused to be blackmailed. Yes, he’d screwed up. He wouldn’t give up his career over one mistake and he sure as hell wouldn’t give up Lilah. He hadn’t slept with Rune, after all. He hadn’t even kissed back. He probably would never have responded to those first messages had he not thought Emry or one of the other library employees back home was playing a joke on him. When he’d actually met Rune for the first time, he’d felt bad about leading her on. She’d been sweet and … she’d been sweet. He’d felt like a dick for flirting with her when he thought it was a joke. She’d been a real woman, he’d hurt her feelings, and she’d let him know it instantly. Then he’d been apologetic, and he’d been nice right back to her and that’s when the noose had first tightened. It had taken exactly sixty days from their first contact to lose control of his life.
“I don’t know what kind of power your brother has over you, Rune, but I’m not going to be blackmailed.” Again, he thought but didn’t say aloud. “Don’t let him use you like this.”
She bowed her head. Her hair fell forward, skimming the stew as she sat with her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry,” she whispered so low that he could barely hear. She sniffed back a tear. “You’re a wonderful man. I’m so sorry I dragged you into all this. I never meant to cause you grief. I would never have done any of this, but I was forced to.”
He sighed and reached to brush her hair from her face, but she jerked away. Her hair bounced away from her left cheek.
What?
“Rune!” He waited for her to hold still, then gently brushed the hair away from her eye. Underneath the strands of red was swollen purple flesh, still more red than purple. Her eye was swollen almost shut. Further down on her cheek, another bruise had formed, equally angry in color. He wondered how many more there were, and if they’d been put there as a warning to him, a reminder that his compliance was necessary.
“It’s not your fault, my sweetheart.” Her hood had slipped, pooling in a cowl around her throat.
Charlie bounded out of his seat and slid into the booth beside her. She was close to Lilah in age but seemed so much younger. She didn’t deserve this. She’d done nothing wrong, only what she had to do to stay alive. She had nowhere to go and no one. No money of her own.
“Rune, I am so sorry.” He wrapped his arms around her protectively and she responded, nuzzling against him. “I’ll protect you. I’ll figure something out. I promise.”
“You’re such an incredible man,” she whispered in his ear.
If only Lilah thought so.
“I followed you to the Darbyshire Library. You should have found a way to let me in. Now someone’s going to get hurt.”
“Wha—?” Charlie pulled back. “There’s no way I could have done that. Lilah and I were there by appointment. It would have been suspicious if you’d shown up unannounced.” Plus, he couldn’t have hidden from Lilah’s empathic skills that he knew Rune.
“If my brother doesn’t get what he and his wife want, someone will get hurt. Not just me.”
He cupped his hands around her face, careful not to touch her bruises. “I can’t give him what he wants. It’s not mine to give. You’re asking me to steal a dangerous book.”
“You did it once to protect me. What will it hurt—”
“Shh!” He stroked her hair as she searched his eyes. “Don’t say that out loud. I made a mistake.”
“Protecting me was a mistake? Being my champion so he wouldn’t beat me was a mistake?”
“No. I mean… No. I shouldn’t have done what I did. It wasn’t an important book. It didn’t really matter, and I could’ve bought it with what I have in my checking account if Dr. St. Augustine had had a mind to sell it. I didn’t even ask. But I shouldn’t have stolen it.”
And that’s how it had happened. A pretty woman who was friendly enough and looked uncannily like an avatar he’d created for an online library forum. Then her desperate pleas for help. An insignificant theft to save her from her brother’s rage. After that had come blackmail. Demands to pilfer more important books. Demands to spy on Dr. St. Augustine. Demands to find a way to give The Lost Teachings of Dead Monks to Rune as soon as it was authenticated and blame it on a mugging by Northsiders from the supposed wrong side of Dublin. Demands to marry sweet, innocent Rune and use her as a pipeline for information about intended acquisitions for the St. Augustine Special Collections Library.
The demands had come over time, growing from gentle to deadly. All had been innocent at first. Then the threats had come suddenly, less than a day after he’d handed Rune an unimportant, stolen book. Her brother and his wife had turned from the friendliest people he’d ever met to a source of threats against Rune to very real death threats against him, his career, his reputation, and all his dreams, including Lilah. He’d gone from feeling sorry for Rune to feeling sorry for himself. He was trapped, and every time he thought he’d paid his ransom to go free, the ransom price multiplied.
“I’m so terribly sorry, my sweetheart.” She was sobbing now, his sweater soaking up her tears against his throat. “I’m sorry I ever dragged you into all this. Never in a million years would I have gone along with it if I’d had a choice.”
If it were not for not having Lilah in his life or at least not in his arms, would it be so bad to marry this girl? The way she needed him was like a drug. If he’d never met Lilah, he might’ve earnestly asked Rune to be his wife. One day. Not this quickly, but one day. He did love the way she put him on a pedestal. He was in too deep, and there was no escape. Like the quicksand of old movies, every twist he made pulled him deeper into the muck, made him more stuck than before. It would never get better.
He stroked Rune’s hair and held her close. He’d grown fond of her over the last few months, even if he wasn’t in love with her. He could learn to love her, maybe. If Lilah weren’t in his life. Or maybe he could ease Rune and her relatives out of his life, given enough time and opportunity. If he could keep Lilah out of danger by playing along and then eventually proving himself useless so that Marco and Lovey lost interest in what he could do for them. Somehow, he doubted that could ever happen.
“Shush now,” he murmured. “Why would a brother who claims to love you ever hurt you like this?”
“Because I didn’t bring back the book you took to the authenticator today. So he beat me because now he has to get it himself.”
Good luck with that. Raven the Viking will whoop his ass for touching those books.
The explosion from outside was deafening. The table shook beside them, forks and spoons clattering across the table and onto the floor. Frantically, he pulled Rune down with him, under the table, as glass shattered near the front of the pub.
When the shaking stopped, he peeked over the carved wood rails around their booth. Through a broken window overlooking the street below, he saw a glow of fire beyond the buildings on the opposite side. He didn’t know the city well, but he knew enough to know what stood near the heart of the fire.
The Darbyshire Memorial Scholar’s Library… and a medieval book of trance-inducing illustrations.
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