by J. Kowallis
“What is it?”
Alaric presses his lips together. “A little something I whipped up for you. I was going to give it to you next month for your birthday, but I think you need it more tonight. It’s druzy.” He threads the sparkling gold chain through his fingers. “The stone helps to balance energy and alleviate feelings of fear or dread. Most importantly, it’ll give you strength. May I?”
I nod, remaining silent. Still. Alaric moves around behind me in the small bathroom and laces the bright gold chain around my neck. The glittering druzy stone catches the low lights hanging over the small vanity mirror. I finger it as my dad latches the clasp and steps away from me.
“Perfect,” he says softly. “He won’t know what hit him.”
“Let’s hope not,” I say with a nervous smile. “Now, I’ve just got to figure out how I’m going to get him to ingest it.”
“Easy, just slip it in his drink. He seems to know the method well,” Alaric jokes, leaning against the doorway with a smile.
That brings back memories and I shake my head. “He sure does. And if it is Coll, that means he’ll probably be expecting something like that.”
“True, true,” he nods. “Just make sure that no matter what you do, he doesn’t know.”
“Well, that might be difficult, considering the fact that the ‘alarm’ turns his veins black,” I sigh. “Short of shoving him in a dark cupboard and drugging him too, I don’t know if I’ll come out of this unscathed.”
And there it is. That’s where all my anxiety is coming from. I realized it earlier this morning, but I haven’t wanted to say anything. Knowing that I can’t let him become aware of what potion I’ve given him has seriously limited the places and situations that are a safe to administer the “test.”
My knees shuffle back and forth, me shaking out my nerves.
Alaric sucks on his teeth and clears his throat. “Guess you’ll have to get him in the dark. Lights out.”
“Over my dead body,” I reply, my voice sharp and cold. “I’ll figure something else out.”
“Taran.”
“What?” my voice clips. I jerk my head toward him.
He’s so careful, and timid as he answers, “Whatever you do. Be safe.”
With that, I nod, lean over to grab my handbag, and stand to face him. He offers me the wool coat I had hanging on the doorknob and I take it from him. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
Alaric tips his head toward me. And I travel out of the cottage.
* * *
I duck out of the black alleyway near Café Marguerite and tousle my curls once more before I see the decorative sign hanging over the restaurant’s main door. Seven tables are set up on the sidewalk patio, and all of them are occupied. Cars line the streets and with two pubs nearby and a few shops closing up for the day. The noises of clattering dishware, motors from small Vespas, the smell of cigarette smoke, and chatter from sappy couples and boisterous friends all combine into the evening’s regular ambiance.
I trace my hand around the fabric of my clutch, feeling for the small glass vial of powder. It’s still there. Along with the usual first date necessities: some liquid lipstick to touch up, fifty pounds in case of an emergency, and my cell phone. In the past, I would have had Evie—my best friend from home—call me with some kind of believable emergency in case the date was an absolute train wreck. Unfortunately, I don’t have that luxury tonight. Granted, I haven’t even really spoken to Evie since I got back from Bryden. There was one conversation shortly after, but nothing since.
I’m a shit friend these days. Then again, anyone else would be in the same boat after going through what I have.
Angie made some sort of joke earlier about slipping some “protection” into my bag, but I guaranteed that would not be a concern tonight. The only protection that might be needed would be on Coll’s part if he tried anything.
“After all,” I’d told her, “I’m much more practiced in the craft that I was the last time I saw him.”
I walk through the restaurant door, my heels clacking on the ground, and into the main lobby. The lights—mostly chandeliers that have been painted red—are dim. Exposed brick, red draping curtains, and dark wood beams along the ceiling all mishmash into a wonderfully enticing setup.
“Good evening,” the maître d says with a slight Norfolk accent when I approach him. The name Connor is engraved into his name tag. “Do you have a reservation?”
“I’m not sure. I’m meeting someone.”
“What’s the name?”
“Coll Donovan?”
“Ah,” Connor smiles looking up. “Coll.”
I’m about to answer when a strong voice with an Irish lilt takes the honor. “Yes, that would be me.”
I turn around to see him walk through the doorway. And I’m nearly knocked senseless. Somehow, somewhere in the last couple days, I forgot how delicious he really is.
Coll’s dark brown, almost black hair is swept back, the sides shaved tight. The three-day stubble he used to sport is gone and replaced by a cleanly-shaved surface smoother than velvet. Coll never shaved his face before. Not that closely. Then again, I only knew him for roughly a week before we went to Bryden.
A week? At most a week and a half. Is that all it was?
His black jacket, made from actual velvet perfectly complements the black shirt, black tie, and euro-cut black trousers he paired with it.
He takes one look at me, stops, and runs his hand across his jaw in study. When he does, I can see a gold watch glinting on his wrist.
“Damn,” he finally says. “I forgot how well yeh clean up, Taran.”
Taran. A part of me wants to grip his neck and throttle as I scream at him to stop calling me that. I quash all the heavy breathing that started to bubble up and I cock my head, completely overcome with a new emotion. Rage. Outside of the café doors, I hear the wind build to a blustering frenzy and I take a deep breath to calm myself.
“Bite me, Donovan.”
“Believe me,” he bites his lower lip. “I’d love to.”
My tongue dances around in my mouth. “Gag me,” I turn around. “Do we have a table?” I ask Connor.
“Right this way.” He hands two menus off to a waitress named Jasmine and she leads us to a booth table near the back. It’s more secluded from the other part of the café, which instantly makes me both anxious and calm at the same time. It might actually be dark enough to dose Coll with the potion powder.
“Thanks, Jazz,” Coll says, giving her a wink as I take my seat. The waitress smiles at him and lays the menus in front of us while Coll sidles into the booth right next to me. I’m instantly overwhelmed by how he smells. Feelings from three months ago, memories of our spell cast in his bedroom, our all-nighter in the library, and begging him to stay with me as I fell asleep. It all comes crashing back with a vengeance.
“Shite,” he mutters, leaning forward and looking at the candle votive on the table. “Wick’s not lit.” With a wave of his hand over the votive, the candle ignites, casting a very dim glow over the small center of the dark wood table.
I bite down on my cheek and delicately place my fingers along my collarbone, mesmerized by the mere presence of him. Perhaps not entirely out of anger for who I think he might actually be. That smell. That feel of him moving next to me. My fingers fidget in my lap after I quickly set my bag next to my hip. The longer I sit here, the shallower my breathing becomes.
After giving us the specials and taking our drink orders—a gin and tonic for me, and a whiskey for Coll—the waitress takes off, allowing us time to look over the menus and talk. For a moment I think about following her—partly because I don’t trust him, partly because I don’t trust myself, and honestly, I’m wondering if Sera might dose his food if I asked her.
I take a calming breath and decide against it, continuing to knot my fingers in the folds of my dress’s fabric. Anyway, Angie and I agreed it would be better if I stayed in control of the potion in the first place. Se
ra might dose the wrong food or even forget about it in the hustle and bustle of the kitchen. Not to mention the fact that it’s Sera. She hasn’t exactly been ecstatic when it comes to the hexen world. Who knows if she’d actually be willing to help.
“So, it’s been a while,” Coll cuts the silence, unbuttoning his velvet dress jacket and putting his arm around the back of the dark leather seat behind me.
“Three months,” I clarify, clearing my throat and trying to ignore the obvious rush of my pulse. “It’s not exactly an eternity.”
“Three months was enough for yeh to disappear.”
“Disappear?” I rear back, leaning away from him. “Sera told me not to contact any of you. And, by the way,” my tone intensifies, “I thought you didn’t remember anything. What’s with all this, ‘I forgot how well yeh clean up’ nonsense?”
My attempt to imitate his accent hasn’t gotten any better since the last time I tried, but I plow on anyway.
“You forgot everything about me when you left me in Bryden. Yet, you’re acting as if . . . what? It never happened? It somehow just came back to you overnight?”
The waitress arrives with our drinks and Coll nods to her as he takes his and taps the glass bottom a couple times on the wood table. It’s a casual, seductive move, though it’s still small and barely noticeable to anyone else but me.
I don’t touch mine. If I’m going to play this part, I’m going to need to play it sober as my Christian mother on Easter Sunday.
He takes a deep breath. “Yeh have no idea how many hexes I had to place on myself to get back my memories. Damn near knocked myself out ‘bout seven times.”
“Hexes?” I fold my arms, narrowing my eyes. “You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t expect anythin’ from yeh. Except ma’be a listenin’ ear.”
The waitress approaches with a smile as I gauge how far away Coll’s drink is from me. “Have you had a chance to look at the menu?” she asks.
“I’ll have the aged pigeon with endives,” Coll says, without taking his eyes from me. “She’ll have the Aubergine with black tea marinade and olives along with the white beetroot salad and goat’s cheese.”
“How do you know what I want?” I narrow my eyes, irritated and quite a bit offended that he’d order for me. “Did I tell you? Are you somehow tele-pathetic?”
“It’s telepathic.”
“No. I said it right,” I clarify my meaning.
Coll smiles, still staring at me. But still in that way that isn’t right. Detached, but focused. “Fine. I’m sorry, but it’s the only vegetarian special tonight. Yeh are still vegetarian, right? Besides, Sera knew we were comin’. She designed those two courses for yeh.”
I sit under Coll’s arm, uncomfortable and yet touched at the same time. Though it’s easy to believe that Frec or Ruhmactír would know I don’t eat meat (considering the fact that Ruhmactír was in Coll’s apartment the day Sera made me breakfast), there’s a part of me that’s beginning to hope I’m wrong.
I want Coll to be Coll. I want to be wrong about all of this.
“I appreciate it,” I finally acknowledge, “but, I’m perfectly capable of ordering on my own.” I eye him.
“So, you don’t want the Aubergine?” the waitress asks.
After a quick scan of the menu, a realization that it is in fact the only vegetarian item on the menu for the night, and after a brief glare at Coll, I look back up at her, my voice a bit less confident than it had been. “No, I do. Thank you.”
She smiles and tucks the menus under her arm before leaving us alone again.
“See? I’m rememberin’ things,” Coll mutters before taking another sip of his whiskey.
“Uh huh,” I angle myself so I’m a few more inches away, but at least I can look him in the eye. “My next question would be, which memories did you get back?”
“What do yeh mean?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow.
“When you and I went back to Bryden, things changed. History changed. Do you remember running away from home at fifteen, or watching both of your parents be murdered when you were a kid?”
Coll’s mouth slowly closes, and he sets his glass down on the table. What I perceive as “debating which story to tell me” could be pain at reliving memories. But all I see is hesitation. “I remember the beatin’s. Da, or should I say Frec, layin’ into me wit’ a whip.”
My timeline. So, the Coll that came back with me from Bryden’s past is the same one who I arrived with. My thoughts tumble as I try to figure out whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Even if it makes me feel better to know I’m not alone—I’m not the only person in this new reality that remembers what it was like before—it still leaves the matter of why Coll’s different, just hanging out there in the air. Although, it certainly would explain why Sera and Emilia feel uncomfortable around him. If he’s not exactly the same as the Coll they knew from their timeline, it would make sense. It just doesn’t explain why I feel so uncomfortable around him. I need to slip him the potion—if only for my own sanity and peace of mind.
I nod, fingering the shape of the glass vial inside my handbag. What if, I briefly wonder to myself . . . what if I didn’t have to slip Coll the potion? What if he’s exactly who I want him to be, and all this time I’ve been just angry, and terrified of nothing? What if he really is the man I want him to be?
Releasing the bag, I dip my head and decide to throw him a bone. “Which may explain why Sera and Emilia feel that something is different with you.”
He nods, pressing his lips together in a mocking smile. “That took yeh long enough to spit out.”
I breathe a laugh in spite of myself and run my fingers through my hair. “Sorry, I was thinking about how you must have felt. Knowing your sisters remembered a different life from you.”
“It’s been . . . hard.” Coll nods. There’s a softness in his eyes. Strained at the same time. Instinct makes me want to reach out and pull his face toward me. For a moment, I forget who I suspect Coll actually is and I lean in toward him. Breathing deep, carefully studying him.
“What happened?” I whisper. “After Bryden.”
Coll’s eyes swivel toward me again and he reads my face. “I forgot everythin’ that happened after my arrival in London. I forgot meetin’ yeh. I forgot it all. The more I talked, Sera and Emilia realized that I was rememberin’ our lives diff’rently. That was when I started to put things together. I even reached out to yeh once.”
I nod. “Yeah, I remember. I hung up on you.”
There’s a measure of humorous defeat in his face. “Yeh sure did. At that point, I realized I was on my own. Like I said, I started hexin’ myself to see if I could get the memories to sort themselves out. But they never matched Sera’s or Emilia’s. They came back, but they weren’t the same as my sisters’.”
With each word he says, I lean closer and closer to him. I’m searching for something, anything that feels like Coll. The moment I realize there’s only about two inches between our faces, I slide my hand across his thigh and his gaze darkens under the café’s shadows. The muscles in his leg flex lightly and my heart starts to pound the moment he presses his wide hand on my upper back, cradling me against his palm. I press my tongue lightly against the roof of my mouth and it’s then that I taste it. It floats in the air and almost lands on my taste buds as an afterthought. Ginger. A heavy amount of it.
I suck in my breath and shift back again. Ginger.
This isn’t the normal amount of Coll ginger. This is more.
I swivel around and clear my throat, playfully brushing my hair over my shoulder as I chide myself for letting my guard down. “And you did that all alone?” I whisper, looking away.
Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see him nod an answer. His fingers graze my neck. “And you?”
I try to steel myself once more. “Everything changed for me.” I’m about to tell him everything in order to keep my story straight, but I quickly remind myself of what I felt when
I spoke with him just days ago. The distance, the shallowness. And now, he’s using ginger again. But not . . . not in Coll’s way.
“I got home and found that my dad never died, but I hadn’t spoken to him for more than twenty years either. Apparently, I’d been practicing my craft a lot more as well and so, though I didn’t actually remember all of the studying, I had quite a collection of knowledge in here,” I tap my head. “But I haven’t been able to unlock it all, yet.” I tack on the ending to satisfy my need to keep Coll in the dark a bit more.
“Well, if I know yeh like I think I do . . . yeh will.” Coll’s eyes narrow and their tawny color flashes with smooth intensity in the dim lights.
As my heart beats, as thoughts of Coll’s arms around me while we lie in the dark of a university library room, I take a breath to shock myself back to reality. Again. “Thank you,” I softly say.
Coll tickles his finger up my neck, sending a flash of heat down my spine and over my chest, and I shiver. With his other hand, he lifts his whiskey to take a sip just as the waitress arrives with our meals.
“Coll, Sera says ‘hi.’ She says she’ll come out and talk with you when she gets a break,” Jasmine explains, setting each dish down in front of us.
“Tell her not to bother,” he says. Coll removes his arm from around me and rotates his plate around. “Taran and I have things we need to talk about.”
After a quick intake of breath, I smile. “Well, as much as Coll doesn’t want to see her, I’d love to. So, if she has time, tell her she’s wanted.”
Coll unwraps his utensils and lays his napkin across his lap, all without taking his eyes off me. His mouth curls slightly. “Is that so?” he asks, soon as Jasmine’s back is turned. “I wouldn’t think yeh’d want to discuss Craniarann in front of me sister.”
I place my own napkin across my lap and pick up the fork. “Who says we’re here to talk about Craniarann?” I ram the prongs of the fork into the white beetroot salad.