by J. Kowallis
Coll smiles. Full beam.
“Why’d you call me?” I ask, feeling the very tendons in my neck flex.
Coll keeps his eyes on me while he takes another swig of beer. “Memories started to come back. Yeh know. Thought yeh could clear some things up for me.”
“Ah,” I return a smile. Or at least a variation of one.
“So, yeh were talkin’ ‘bout me. Please. Don’t stop. I quite appreciate bein’ the center of attention.”
“Don’t I know it.” A chuckle follows, and I clear my throat. “Your sisters were just worried about you. About your memories, I mean.”
“Were they?” he asks, looking at the two blonde women.
“We thought,” Emilia struggles to put words together, “we thought yeh . . . would . . . that we could get some more answers from Taran. Yeh just, wouldn’t talk to us. And we wanted to know.”
“And yeh traveled all the way over here to talk with them?” he asks me.
“They were already over at Angie’s, Coll,” Sera pipes up, and it makes me stiffen. For some reason, I’m not sure I want Coll to know we were already over here. Not only that, I’m not sure I want him to know that we’re staying with Angie, or why.
Having probably felt the same way, Angie puts an arm around Emilia and I glance back just in time to see her pinch the girl’s upper arm.
“Why?” Coll grimaces, as if the thought of spending time with Angie is repulsive to him.
“Angie’s a friend of mine,” Alaric finally says something. “Haven’t seen her in a long time. Figured I’d introduce her to my daughter.”
“Your daughter?” Coll looks at me. “This is your dead da? I’d ‘ave thrown ‘im back.”
I frown, about to lash out as Alaric clears his throat. “Well,” he pats his thighs and looks at all of us after taking a breath—his own attempt at stifling the pressure in the room. “I think we’ve overstayed our welcome. We should probably get going.”
“Ah,” Coll’s voice drops, sounding harsh and dictatorial. “We hadn’t even started to talk about me yet.”
“I’ll tell you what, Coll,” I walk toward him and stick my hands in my back pockets, hoping that by giving him a hopeful promise, he’ll back off, “give me a call sometime and I promise we can focus the entire conversation on you.”
My voice sounds tight with tension. Hell, everything feels tight right now. I can practically smell the tension getting thicker by the moment. And inside, I’m dying. Something isn’t right, and all I feel is anger, fear, terror.
“I’d appreciate that, Taran.”
I press a false smile making it look genuine. Standing this close to him, seeing the faint lines around his amber eyes, and smelling the cypress radiating off him, I feel sad. Distant, for some reason. As if I’ve even forgotten who he is.
“I know.”
I notice the way Coll pulls up the corner of his lips. Not unlike someone else I knew. Adrian, of all people. That day in the bank, when I told him I was going to go home, he told me to stay. He gave me that smile. And while Coll’s always been an impeccable dresser, his style hasn’t ever been quite so uptight. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wear a tie. Then again, most of the time I knew him, I rarely saw him even wear a shirt.
My eyebrows flinch as I frown. It can’t be. I mean, I’m not one to brush off suspicion when I feel it, and thank goodness, neither are Sera and Emilia, but . . . no. I try to think back to that day in Bryden. What happened that day? What did we do? Even worse . . . what did I not see?
Rubbing my hand nervously over my stomach, I look back to say “thank you” to Sera. Angie gives Emilia a quick squeeze of her shoulder and moves to stand up. Goodbyes are quick, hurried, and soon Alaric, Angie, and I step out of the apartment building.
I blow out through my mouth and turn to my dad. “Angie, Alaric . . . uh—”
“Not here,” he says, looking up toward the windows. “Let’s get back to Angie’s and talk.”
Angie travels first. Followed by Alaric and me almost simultaneously. The warm tingle of the magic still dissipates under my skin when I walk through the front door and begin to pace. Alaric walks in moments after me, and Angie already waits at the kitchen table.
“What are you thinking, Taran?” Angie asks, her voice measured. “You have an idea. I can see it.”
I swallow and stop. It’s just paranoia, I tell myself. That’s all it is. Coll’s always been a dick, he’s always been cold.
Lie. Yes, he was always a dick, but rarely cold. Never cold. Not like that. All the hope I had dries up. Vanishes. Panic sets in and I lick my lips as my eyes mist in the corners. With both hands on my hips, I face my dad.
“Have you ever seen someone who looks through you?”
“Taran, what are you—” Angie cuts in, staring at me.
“I think the Coll we just met, like Sera and Emilia said, isn’t acting like Coll. He’s close. He’s almost like Coll, but something’s not right.” I take a quivering breath, and sniff before asking, “What . . . what if Coll got hit with two different spells that day in Bryden?”
“What do you mean?” Angie replies.
“I mean, what if the spell that actually hit Coll the hardest wasn’t the memory hex?”
Alaric steps closer, and I feel like the very air is pressing in around me.
“I was hit with a memory hex too. It didn’t rip me off the ground and send me flying.” I bite down on my lip and fold my arms. “I don’t know for sure, but just now, Coll acted like he was trying to be Coll. But there were small things that were just . . . wrong.”
“Like?” Alaric prods.
“Like, the fact that his facial expressions aren’t right.” I finally look at him, realizing I’ve been staring at the ground. “Like his clothes, his inflections. Alaric, when he used to look at me, I felt like I’d been stripped bare. Like he could see underneath everything. And then he’d say something stupid and I’d get pissed off. But this Coll? He makes me feel uneasy. When he looked at me, it was the kind of look you get from someone who looks at you, and you know all they can see is what’s on the surface.”
My dad clears his throat. The look on his face is one of apprehension. Or some variation of it. If I didn’t know any better, that one guttural gesture just told me he’s concerned. But not about Coll, about me.
“Look, I got to know Coll fairly well. Not really well,” I clarify with a defensive wave of my hand considering the taut look on my dad’s face, “but . . . I saw things in him that no one ever pointed out to him. And the same was true for him. I mean, for the first time in my life, I spoke with a man who actually saw me. The Coll we just met—”
“I know what you mean,” Angie interrupts me, staring at her hands. “You don’t need to explain it any further. But, Taran, are you suggesting what I think you are?”
Unease settles over me. Chills ripple through me, and I nod. “I think Ruhmactír possessed Coll.”
Eight
Something pierces Coll and throws him against me. Another spell—I can smell it, like sulfur and patchouli—flies in front of my face, hitting Coll’s opposite side, hurtling both of us into a spiral.
The words, “Coll, no!” exit my mouth like a whisper. But it’s not a whisper, is it? I was screaming. With all the chaos, the ringing in my head, there could have been a foghorn going off, and I wouldn’t have noticed.
I feel his hand slip from the staff. His frantic and furious gaze locks on me. I watch him fly north in slow motion, colliding against the rock walls of a home. A spell flings me to the south—an offensive impact spell—and I slam against the stone table’s edge. An unbelievable pain shoots up and down my spine and legs while my breath knocks from my chest. I gasp for air, rolling over, struggling to get my lungs to respond.
The memory becomes clearer the more I try to bring it forward. I remember more details. Like, where I saw Garrit out of the corner of my eye, and the jolt of Craniarann’s magic whenever I said a spell. The
one thing I’m still not sure of is where did that second spell come from? Who cast it? Sure, there are new characteristics of Coll that suggest possession, but by whom? Ruhmactír is the easiest choice, but—
“And you’re sure you smelled the sulfur?” Angie asks, pacing.
“Yes,” I sigh. “Although, it wasn’t just sulfur. It was like brimstone and patchouli. Like an old hippie lady tried to cover up a fart that . . .”
“Hey,” Angie eyes me, daring me to continue.
I dip my head. “Sorry.”
Angie’s mild offense wears off and she starts to pace again. “So, Coll might be possessed. But by which brother?”
“Hold on,” Alaric lifts a finger, tapping it on the kitchen table. “We don’t even know for sure if he is possessed. Before we start building a plan to expose his possessor and possibly designing an herbal potion that might very well kill him, I think we need to find out if he’s even possessed in the first place.”
“Believe me, he is,” I mumble.
“And you know this how?”
“Because he called me Taran.”
“That’s your name.” Alaric folds his arms.
I shake my head. “He never called me by my first name. At least . . . not casually.”
Dad looks up at the ceiling. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Taran, we can’t afford to make decisions based on gut feelings,” he growls.
I slide my eyes toward him slowly and glare. “How dare you. You know what? Stupid or not, that’s Coll.”
“All right. I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Don’t be sorry, just be helpful. How do you suggest we proceed? I doubt he’s going to answer in the affirmative if we just come out and ask him if he’s Ruhmactír.”
“Of course not,” Angie scoffs. “In fact, we can’t let him know at all that we suspect he’s possessed by one of the Geri brothers. Because if one of them actually possessed him, we could put Sera and Emilia at risk by indicating that we know. And for now, he hasn’t tried to hurt them. I’d prefer to keep it that way for a while.”
My clasped hands drop to the table and I look at her blankly. “For a while?”
“Until we know for sure,” she clarifies. “The girls have lives and pulling them out of their homes and dragging them out here seems like, for now,” she emphasizes when she sees the apprehensive look that must have appeared on my face, “overkill. Your father is right. We need to know who or what we’re dealing with here. Unfortunately, I don’t have a spell for that in my collection. With body possession outlawed in hexen craft for thousands of years, I doubt that anyone we know actually has a spell for identifying the possessed.”
“We can design one,” Alaric answers.
This piques my curiosity and I give my dad a dead stare. “Design one. How?”
My dad takes a deep breath. “I’m guessing it’ll take some sort of potion, though, perhaps a short verbal spell too. Ang?”
She nods. “I can get started on it. It’ll require a lot of herbs and ingredients I don’t have on hand, but while I’m trying to figure out the right mixture and balance, that’ll give you two a chance to practice more. If Coll is indeed possessed, then you’ll need to be ready.” She eyes me. “The last thing we need is to be throwing you right into Ruhmactír’s hands again without Coll to strengthen you.”
I roll my eyes.
“Hey!” she snaps her fingers at me. “Don’t give me that. Now, you’re near thirty. I’m not saying you’re not a strong, capable hexen woman. But I am saying that you and Coll were meant to defeat this bastard together and if Coll is truly indisposed, you’re at a disadvantage.”
I sigh, like Alaric, and nod. “Okay.”
“Good. Now,” she looks at my dad, “we all need lunch and then we need to get to work. Alaric, can you whip up something to eat, I’m going to run to the herbalist in town, and Taran?”
I look up.
“You’ll be coming with me. The moment we get back, your father is going to take you outside for more training.”
Without argument, I stand up and stick my hands in my back pockets. “Where are we going?”
“In the car,” she answers. “I want to use the drive time to clear my head and think about what we’ll need.”
I loll my head to the side and eye her. “You want to keep your head clear and think at the same time?”
She pauses, clinking her keys around in her hand. Slowly, she turns on me and I look at her with a raised eyebrow. “Get in the car, smartass.”
The corners of my lips flicker and I follow her to the door while Alaric huffs warmly. Just before we leave, I see him snap his fingers and start the oven at the same time he summons a pot from the cupboard. The door slams shut behind us and I jog to keep up with Angie. Her little red Corsa looks pretty good for its age. Inside, it smells like Angie’s distinctive patchouli and amber with just a faint fruity waft of cranberries.
The moment the engine turns and the tires begin to roll, I open my mouth. “So, what do you really want to talk about?”
“What do you mean?” she asks. Angie turns the car around and heads down the straight rocky path that leads away from her cottage and to one of the main roads. And by “main roads” I mean one that’s narrow enough for one small vehicle to squeeze through with only a couple inches between metal and a moss-covered rock wall. But at least it’s paved.
“I mean I know you already have enough ingredients in that house of yours to get started with research. While you may need a few things, I know you didn’t bring me along just to bounce ideas off my head. We both know that I won’t be able to help you in that department. We’ve only made it through anise, allspice, aloe, ash, barley, dill, dandelion, garlic, and ginger.”
“And which of those can be used to promote good health?”
“Allspice.”
“And which promotes passion and sexuality?”
At that, I slowly turn my gaze to her and she briefly takes her eyes off the road to return the glare. “Which one?” she asks again.
“Barley.”
“Consumed or burned?”
“Why are you asking me these?”
Angie licks her bottom lip, this time her voice sounding more irritated. “Consumed, Taran, or burned?”
Realizing that I should just learn to play along with her game, I straighten my shoulders and fold my arms. “It’s strongest when consumed. But not cooked. It needs to be soaked. It can also be crushed and used in love spells along with ginger to ignite existing ties between parties. I’m sure there are other ingredients, but we haven’t gotten that far yet.”
“Good.”
“Why are you asking me about passion and love?”
“I also asked you about good health too. I don’t see you complaining about that.”
I take a deep breath and hold my stare. “Angie,” I demand.
Her eyes soften, even though they’re glued to the road. “Honestly, I’m not unaware of your . . . feelings for my foster son.”
“My feelings?” I raise my eyebrows.
She briefly gives me a look, daring me to refute her. “I know the prophecy. Not only that, but I know Coll. And if I know Coll the way I think I do, I can imagine you fought hard. Possibly kicking and screaming to some extent. But, in the end, you fell for him just like I did.”
My lip curls involuntarily in disgust. “You?”
Angie laughs out loud. “Not like that. Spirits, no. No, Coll was quite the stubborn little shit when he came to live with me. Charming as a prince when he wanted something, but still a little shit. I always liked him as a little boy, but if I had to pick my favorite of the Donovan children, he’d be at the bottom of the list.”
“I thought mothers didn’t have favorite kids.”
“Well, that might be true for birth mothers, but I did not birth those children.” She gives me a little side-eye. “Coll’s problem was that he spent his life trying to cover up the fear and pain he felt. The p
ain from watching his parents be murdered. He acted out in school. Bullied others—after which, I’d kick his little ass and make him figure out a way to make it right— he pestered teachers, broke quite a few rules and curfews. Being disciplined in magic was the only thing that centered him. Still, he continued to hide it. Through high school and university, he took on this,” Angie dramatically flips her maroon hair, “grandiose personality.”
“Let me guess. He took to girls, partying, fine clothes, and an attitude that combined all the worst egotistical traits of masculinity.”
This makes Angie laugh again. She sighs. “I worried that he’d get lost in the darkness. I mean, his façade really was just a wall.” After another beat, she tacks on, “I asked you to come with me to the herbalist because I wanted to gauge how much you like him.”
I turn to look at her again, my ears having listened, but my eyes zoning out on the blurry green scenery out the window.
After a sigh of my own, I reply, “I don’t know.” A complete lie.
“Taran,” Coll’s voice sounds in my memory. So similar, yet so unlike the voice that spoke to me earlier. By the spirits, his eyes were so focused on me that day in the library. And although he made some lame-ass joke about it, I know that what he said next was sincere.
I never meant to make you feel like less of a person, I repeat again in my mind. As if I can hear him all over again. If I’m bein’ completely honest—I’m afraid that if I start usin’ your name, I won’t be able to stop.
He said my name intimately. As if by saying it, he was admitting something. Telling me a secret.
I sniff and brush my hair out of my face. “Angie, I just want to get him back the way he was. Then I can start thinking about how I’m feeling.”
She makes a fart noise with her lips.
I pivot in my seat, rearing back. “Excuse me?”
“First of all, I’d call that an oxymoron, but I think it’s just moronic. You don’t think about how you feel, you just feel it.”
“Well, pardon me, but ‘just feeling’ things has a tendency to get people into a lot of trouble. Look at Romeo and Juliet. Look at Tristan and Isolde. Or . . .” my mind reels, thinking of another example, “Buffy and Angel!”