I pulled a knife from the drawer and ran it along the packing tape. The top flaps released, and I waited to see if anything moved inside. It wouldn’t be the first time I handled a live package. The last time I opened a mysterious package—or envelope—it contained the missing amulet.
“I’m not going to find David Oxford’s eyeballs in there, am I?”
He smirked. “I doubt it.”
Inside the packing box was a smaller cardboard box that looked about the right size for a pair of ballerina slippers. A piece of silver tissue paper unfolded as I pulled the lid off. Under that was a bundle wrapped in black velvet. I pulled it out of the box and set it on the kitchen counter. Whatever was inside was heavier than it looked.
Before unwrapping the mystery present, I glanced at Greer one last time. “Here goes nothing.”
I peeled the fabric back and stared at the double-sided blade. It was marked with symbols and looked like it could use a good polish. The handle was made of wood or bone, painted black and intricately carved into the shape of a bird’s wing.
“It’s beautiful, but why would someone sent me a dagger?”
Greer nodded toward the box. A strange expression crossed his face, and I could tell he knew the answer. At the bottom of the box was a piece of paper with a hand-written note. The note simply said, Come home, with the initials A.T. written underneath.
I looked up at Greer for help in understanding what was happening. His tired blue eyes walked over mine as the energy drained from his face.
“You know I hate when you do that,” I whispered. “You don’t get to look defeated.”
“Pick it up,” he said.
I took it and molded my hand around the intricate handle. It fit in my palm like it had been carved just for me, and I knew it was mine.
His face went cold. “I know who Isabetta Falcone is working with.”
ELEVEN
It’s your birthright.” Greer grabbed my wrist as I raised my hand to throw the dagger at the wall.
“It’s also my right to say I don’t want it.”
I lowered my arm and put the dagger back in the box. If there had been a return address, I would have handed it back to the UPS man the next morning.
Greer immediately recognized the initials as those of Alasdair Templeton, the man who I saw in the picture in Arthur Richmond’s office the night of his party, and the man who presided as high priest of my mother coven in Ireland.
“That blade is not just a knife, Alex. It’s an athame.” He warned me with his eyes not to do anything stupid as he began his trademark pace across the kitchen floor.
“Would you stop doing that, Greer? You make me nervous when you act like a caged leopard.”
He stopped and faced me. “It was Maeve’s.”
My eyes went to the box as the instinct to reach back in and touch it overwhelmed me. The fact that my mother’s hand once held it made me rethink the gift, regardless of the price to be paid for accepting it.
“Do you even know what an athame is?”
“No. Why don’t you educate me?” I relented and pulled the dagger back out of the box to examine it. The symbols along the blade were half hidden under years of tarnish, but the handle was perfect. When I looked closer I could see that it was actually green, a shade so deep that it appeared to be black.
Greer moved his hand closer but wouldn’t allow his fingers to actually touch it. “It’s black jade.”
“You’d think they’d take better care of it.” I ran the tip of my own finger along the dull blade. “Looks like it hasn’t been polished in years.”
“I doubt it has. An athame is a witch’s most powerful tool. It should never be handled by anyone else.”
I nearly dropped it. “Then why did you let me touch it? Damn it, Greer! You told me to pick it up.”
“Because it belongs to you now.”
“And if I don’t want it?” Of course I wanted it. It belonged to my mother, but I had a feeling there were some pretty hefty strings attached to accepting it, and I wasn’t about to give Alasdair Templeton the opportunity to tangle me up in old family business.
“You are a Raven—Fitheach. That is something you can’t change, Alex.”
My heart skipped when he came toward me and took my face in his hands. “They want you back. They plan to take you back.”
We were living in the twenty-first century. You couldn’t just take people against their will. But by the look on Greer’s face, he thought otherwise.
His expression sank as if his own words had triggered an unpleasant epiphany. I followed him as he headed for the library muttering something about a box.
“What are you looking for?” I asked as he rifled through the shelves, seemingly oblivious to the books crashing to the ground.
He found the book he was looking for and opened it. “If Templeton wants a war, he’s got one.” He pulled something from its pages and tossed the book on the floor next to the others. It was one of those fake books with a hollow compartment in the center.
The object passed through his fingers for a few seconds while the wheels in his head turned. Then he held it between his thumb and index fingers for me to see. It was a key.
The doorbell rang an hour after Greer ransacked his own library. When he opened it, Ava was standing on the other side with a metal box in her hands. Melanie Harris stood behind her looking timid as a scared rabbit.
“Thank you both for coming. I know it’s late.” He shut the door and led everyone into the living room.
“Are you kidding?” Ava laughed softly. “I’ve been waiting for this call since the day she stepped off that plane.”
I eyed the two of them, waiting to be let in on the secret. It was me, after all, that they were talking about. I was the one the Lord of Darkness was after.
Ava handed the box to Greer and hugged me like it might be the last time. I let go first and took a step back. “Which one of you is going to tell me what’s in the box?”
“Leverage,” Ava said with a sly grin. “Always take out insurance for priceless possessions.”
“Are you sure we should do this?” Melanie seemed to be the only one with reservations about what they were about to do.
“Stop being such a coward,” Ava scolded. “You agreed to this a long time ago, and this box has afforded you your freedom.”
Melanie shrunk back into a shorter version of herself, and I thought she might bolt for the door. Instead, her neck elongated as her shoulders squared. “A coward wouldn’t have done what I did.”
Ava gave her a hug. “You were very brave, but you need to be just as brave now.” She turned to Greer and told him to open the box.
The four of us gathered around the coffee table and watched as Greer fumbled with the small key. His hands were usually as steady as a surgeon’s, but today they seemed a little shaky. The lock disengaged. He paused for a moment before reaching for the lid, while the three of them seemed to debate the rationality of what they were about to do. The newly confident Melanie beat him to it and slowly lifted the lid on its hinges. The inside of the metal box was padded thickly on all sides, securing a smaller silver box with a removable lid. Like a bomb specialist, she lifted the four-inch box from the larger one and placed it gingerly on the table.
“Alex, why don’t you do the honors?” Ava motioned to the box with her eyes. “Just lift the lid. Carefully.”
Butterflies circled around my ribcage as I reached for the box, half expecting Tinker Bell to fly out of it. My hand seemed to have a mind of its own and refused to move as if the box was a mousetrap waiting to snap at my fingers.
Ava gave me a weak smile. “It’s all right, Alex. Open it.”
I removed the lid, and the four sides of the box collapsed outward, leaving the contents completely exposed. In the center was a moving mass of light and metal that looked like a three-dimensional hologram. A trio of gold rings orbited around a ball of light that alternated between blue and white. The rings moved in a per
fectly timed pattern, sending audible waves into the air that sounded like a singing bowl or a fingertip circling the edge of a crystal glass.
“What is it?” I asked without taking my eyes off of it.
“It’s the golden egg,” Ava explained. “You’re looking at a life force.”
“A life force? Of what?”
A nervous giggle escape Melanie’s mouth. When I looked at her, I thought she was about to burst into either laughter or tears.
“It’s the life force of the circle. To be more specific, Alasdair Templeton’s circle.” Ava placed her hand over the rings and the light intensified, illuminating straight through her muscles and bones. “The force exists as long as the rings move. If they stop spinning, the coven stops. The power dies.” She bent her finger in a mock attempt to knock them over. “It would be as simple as flipping a light switch.”
I could see the anxiety on her face, mingled with the fascination of the what-if scenario.
Greer was smirking when I glanced at him. “We’ve got him by his balls.”
“That we do,” Ava agreed. “We’ve been waiting twenty-seven years to play this card, and now we have a good reason to.”
“It’s been in this box for twenty-seven years?” That meant it was put in there just before I was born.
“Almost twenty-eight,” Melanie added.
“The coven wasn’t happy when your mother decided to leave. They thought they could force her to stay, and they would have if it wasn’t for a very brave soul.” Ava put her hand on Melanie’s arm. “Maeve just needed a little insurance, and Melanie was a loyal friend.”
“Why haven’t they come after it?”
Ava focused on the fragile mix of light and metal dancing on the table, and the silver walls re-erected around it. “Because it would be suicide. It’s a delicate decision to approach something teetering on the edge of a cliff. One poorly placed foot, and poof!”
“Don’t get me wrong, I think my mother was the best thing since sliced bread, but what made her so irreplaceable to the coven? Couldn’t they find someone else to do her job? It just seems like a lot of trouble to force her to stay.”
With her meek nature and lack of self-confidence, Melanie was the last person I expected to look at me like I didn’t have a brain in my head. “Do her job?” she repeated indignantly.
Ava glared at Melanie. “Let’s all just simmer down. Alex doesn’t know her entire family history.”
“There’s more?” Didn’t I have enough to digest? Could I handle more?
“I’m afraid so.”
“Easy, Ava,” Greer said. “Take it slow.”
“Destruction of what’s in that box isn’t the only way to destroy the circle. There’s another surefire way.”
She placed the silver lid back on the small box and secured it inside the larger one. “Alex, you have to remember what you are. You are the Oracle. For decades the Fitheach thought it was your mother, and her mother before that. It seems the family has been chasing false prophets for generations.”
“You mean, they thought my grandmother was the Oracle?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. She had the mark, and so did your mother. But it wasn’t quite right, was it?”
I’d discovered that little secret after finding an old book at the shop. It was my mother who led me to it. She knew she wasn’t the Oracle and kept that fact hidden to protect me, but it was looking like the secret was out, because my pseudo-family wanted me back in a desperate way.
“It started a long time ago.” Melanie began to tell the backstory of how we went from ordinary peasants to keepers of the most notorious artifact known to the world. “We were a small clan. Nothing particularly special about the Fitheach. We worshipped our gods, honoring them with the appropriate gifts. Then one day they decided to speak. Your grandmother—” She stopped and looked at me. “Did Maeve ever tell you her name?”
“No. She never told me about any of our family.”
She took a calming breath and continued. “Your grandmother’s name was Isla Kelley. She was a fierce witch. Not one for letting the inwards take control.”
“The inwards?”
“The visitors. It’s appropriate to invite them in and let them have a stroll through the soul.”
“It’s called invocation,” Ava clarified when Melanie started to lose me. “It’s when the gods are invited to enter your body.”
“Yes.” Melanie continued with the story. “Isla was respectful about the whole thing, but she didn’t like to give them control. Most priestesses just let the gods steer the boat, but Isla preferred to have a private conversation with them and then interpret their words for the clan. The gods were respectful of her wishes, but then one night, the words sprang from her mouth like Danu herself. The gods spoke of three prophecies and the vessels that contained them, and then declared to the clan that the blood of Isla Kelley would be the keeper of those prophecies. The storm hit a second later, and a bolt of lightning came from the sky, striking Isla on the side of her head. Burned the mark right into her skin.”
Ava watched me like a hawk while Melanie gave me the condensed version of the events leading up to the revelation of the prophecies.
“Where did my mother get the amulet?”
Ava completed the puzzle by revealing the last piece. “Isla went to her grave with a secret. The gods had given her the amulet, but she told no one about its existence. You see, Alex, ignorance and greed are a dangerous combination. She could have been killed for it. Isla spent the rest of her days looking over her shoulder.”
“So how did the amulet get exposed?”
“When Maeve was born, she bore a mark almost identical to the mark the gods had burned into Isla’s skin. That’s when Isla realized she wasn’t the Oracle, and she did what needed to be done to protect her child. It was on her dying bed that she finally gave Maeve the amulet and told her everything. Maeve wasn’t as afraid as Isla, though. But she should have been.”
Ava sighed heavily and shook her head. “The secret got out, and like a bad rumor the whole damn world got wind of it.”
“Is that why my mother left Ireland and came here? To hide?”
Ava hesitated, choosing her words carefully before answering. “Maeve had her reasons for coming to New York. She was pregnant with you at the time. When you were born—”
“She did the same thing Isla did.” When she saw my birthmark and realized the triangle had been completed, she knew I was the real Oracle. It was an evolution of the original mark left by the gods, and my mother was smart enough to know it. The amulet was passed to me as it had been passed to her, only I never got the family history because I was only five years old. My mother was killed before she could prepare me for the truth.
“Alex,” Ava put her hand over mine, “you are the blood of Isla Kelley.”
“We were given a task by the gods,” Melanie said. “In exchange, the coven was blessed with great power. If the coven fails, they’ll take it away.”
“So you see, Alex,” Ava continued, “you are non-negotiable. In the eyes of the coven, you and that life force sitting on the table are one and the same.”
I had a dream that night that I was kneeling in a large sea of blue-green grass. The blades were tiny fans of silk, alive and restless against my bare skin.
On the ground in front of me was a polished stone, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. I reached for it, and as I tumbled its smooth surface through my fingers, it began to grow. Soon it was bigger than my hand, and the stone leapt from my fingers and landed a few feet away in the grass. I watched it grow. As it got bigger, it began to take a different shape.
A bird flew over my head, and my eyes moved from the stone to the sky. When I looked back down, the round stone with the soft curves had become a large structure with hard edges and flat surfaces. The stone had become an altar.
The darkness suddenly lifted as candles lit up in a circle around me. I’d been in this place before,
only this time there were no dark figures with hoods separating me from the wall. There was no sense of my mother, and if I turned around I knew I’d find nothing but an empty space. I was alone.
One by one, the altar filled with objects. A pair of tall candles in ornately carved holders ignited, and then a plume of gentle smoke circled up from a silver bowl, releasing the smell of spice and something sweet into the night air. It was the same scent I’d smelled a hundred times before. It was the scent embedded in the drawers lining the two-story wall of Ava’s shop, and the incense that burned atop the mantel in our home. It was the scent of my childhood. It used to cling to my mother’s skin and clothes, and it was as familiar and comforting as the memory of her face.
I heard a flutter, and my eyes were pulled to the looming black shadow that filled the space above the altar. As my eyes adjusted, I could see the wings spanning past the edges of the stone. The statue was carved from the same black jade as the handle of my mother’s athame.
The bird’s head was angled slightly to the right, but the eyes were looking down at me—two black circles reflecting the light from the sky, inanimate but alive.
A scraping sound drew me away from the statue, and I saw the tip of my mother’s athame protrude over the edge of the altar. The light from the candles reflected off the metal, illuminating the liquid coating the edge. And then a single drop fell from the blade. As the blood descended toward the ground, it slowed. The crimson drop became a long black feather that floated playfully in the air. It swung back and forth like a pendulum as it continued down, catching the breeze each time it came within an inch of the grass, swooping back into the wind to start the dance again. On the fifth swing, it sailed straight toward me and jetted over my head, disappearing into the sky.
I tried to stand but felt something rub against the skin of my foot. A thin silver chain was wrapped around my ankle, and though it looked delicate enough to snap with a light tug, it felt as heavy as the steel of a ship’s anchor.
The Blood Thief (The Fitheach Trilogy Book 2) Page 11