Aini was dead. Aini couldn’t be dead.
He had to see Thane, to tell him, to get him out of this hell.
“Ah, ah. Don’t do that. Go on, now.” The thin-lipped man had followed Bran down the corridor. “You don’t want to meet the man on the other side of that door.”
But Bran could hardly hear him over his own heartbeat. The carpet at his feet exploded. Over the ringing in his ears, he heard the man saying, “Move on, now.” Smoke leaked from his gun and a sulfuric scent rose into the air.
The Glaswegian had shot the floor right in front of Bran’s boot.
Bran couldn’t draw his own gun in time to do anything. His grenades were useless too. He’d only end up blowing himself up and possibly Thane too if he was on the other side of that door. Holding his hands up in defeat, Bran backed away, down the other side of the hallway, but before he left, he said, “We will get you back, Thane. Have faith, man.”
He hurried down the stairs and out a side door, finding the chaos of the rebels’ retreat.
Aini was dead. The Seer was dead.
Finding Vera, he began to run with her, but a tingling sensation spread over his back. He turned to see a man in a gray coat and white shirt, standing at a window. The room couldn’t have been far from the one Bran had broken into. The man smiled coldly and tipped his flat cap at Bran. They wanted the rebels to get away without much trouble.
Why? What was Nathair planning?
Bran blindly followed Vera—a shrieking leader speeding down the road, totally ignorant of the fact that not only had they not rescued the Heir but now their Seer was lost to them, to everyone, forever.
“Vera, we don’t have him. He wasn’t in there,” he said, his words flimsy against the hard sounds of the night—sirens and shouting, engines and gunshot.
“Don’t be fooled, my fellow Scots!” Vera raised a fist as she crashed through the streets, heading for the train station with Bran and the rest in her wake. “Nathair Campbell wants to poison you and blame the king! Don’t be fooled!”
Windows opened, and men with unshaved chins and women in nightgowns watched the rebels rage onward. Two girls in braids shouted down, excited but too young to know the horror and blood a rebellion delivered at innocent people’s doorsteps. Their parents tugged them out of the window and slammed the shutters closed.
“The Dionadair will rise again!” Vera’s hair came loose. It flew behind her, tangled and wild. She looked every inch a madwoman. “The true and loyal Campbells—the ones who love our country—will be with us too. Take up arms. Be ready. The Coronation Stone has spoken and we will listen and take down Nathair and the false king John!”
Bran’s feet were leaden as he did his best to rush through Edinburgh, toward the lorries and cars they’d parked at the train station. Questions swamped his mind as he ran. What had he just seen? Why had they shot Aini and let him go? Who was that man at the window, a man who obviously worked for Nathair but who had simply tipped his hat to Bran and watched him escape? Bran forced himself onward, throat thick with grief and chest tight with fear. What had Aini been thinking? What had she seen as she ran into the lion’s den?
Chapter 4
All the Roses Falling
Aini counted in whispers, watching the train station’s massive clock. “Three, two, one.”
Neve and the other operatives flinched along with Aini as the explosion punched the quiet evening. Aini’s heart pounded too quickly. She touched the knife at her belt to remind herself of who she was. The explosion didn’t hurt anyone and it was entirely necessary to draw as many kingsmen as possible away from where they held Thane.
Not waiting to survey the damage, Aini led her team away from the station and down the sloping road. With every step, she saw images of Thane. His smile when they finally had a successful taffy back in the lab. The determined look in his eyes when he’d addressed the Campbells and Dionadair at Inveraray. The mischievous grin he’d worn when she pulled his hips against her. Other images swamped her mind—worries about what was happening to Thane now. Blood running over a lip. A hand held against a bruised rib. The sadness in his eyes when he looked at his father.
“We’re coming for you, love,” she whispered as they veered around a corner. Her heart responded to her words, backing up her vow with a powerful drumming.
Neve’s thick, brown braid flew behind her as Aini and the team zigzagged down side streets in the dark. Lamps bled weak, yellow light onto the pavement and tiny pockets of ice made the cobblestones slippery. Aini had already eaten some Cone5 taffy. Along with the lingering taste of sugar on her tongue, she ran with the sight of ghosts all around. An elderly couple with a dog beside a store under construction. A girl her own age floating in the wispy memory of a sixth-senser cage, trapped by her own memories of fear and horror.
“Can you help us?” Aini asked over her shoulder as they sprinted by.
The sixth-senser ghost’s cage wavered until it was almost invisible. She streamed along with Aini in swirls of blue, green, and silver as the team found the street that would lead them into the action. Gunshots and yelling already crowded the nighttime air.
“How?” The ghost wore a dress from the time of the king’s great-grandfather, when it was rare for a sixth-senser to be found and caged. These days it was the new normal. The spirit’s hair was tied into complicated braids that had mostly fallen out. A dark bruise marred her cheek.
“I’m not sure yet. Are you able to come with me? To stay by my side?”
“Who are you talking to—oh…” Neve’s eyes widened at the air around Aini. She had guessed what was going on. Smart girl.
The spirit glanced at Macbeth’s knife hanging on Aini’s belt and swallowed. “I will try, Seer.”
“Thank you.” Aini was out of breath.
The street around the back of the government buildings was dark and damp. The steeple of St. Giles peered over the Signet Library and the old Parliament buildings. Neve pointed at an entrance to a sort of inner courtyard, through an arched, open door not twenty yards away.
Aini pulled everyone to halt beside a cluster of maples that reminded her of the tree in front of her home, the maple she used to climb. Moonlight leeched the color out of the leaves and highlighted Neve’s forehead and chin.
“The extraction team is in there.” She nodded toward the building on the right, beyond the inner courtyard.
Neve’s walkie talkie buzzed and a voice came through. She spun the knob so the words were barely audible. “…ordered the kingsmen not to shoot us, so do as you like, rebels!” Neve’s sideways grin lifted her cheek as she tucked the talkie away.
“Okay.” Aini eyed each member of her team to be sure they were listening. “A whistle will blow five strong times when they have Thane in hand. If you hear it, get back to the train station as quickly as possible. No further mischief. Do you understand?”
“So we’re headed in there to create more chaos while the extraction team works, aye?” The Campbell speaking had a slight lisp. He was a lean man with scarred knuckles and a mean look to him.
Aini was glad he was on their side and not the other way around. “Yep. Let’s go.”
They raced inside to find the fight.
Several groups were fighting hand-to-hand. One kingsman had a nightstick out and was using it to knock a rebel off his arm. A gun went off, but the kingsman holding the weapon had shot into the sky, only scaring off the rebel who’d come up to choke him from behind. A rubbish bin by a side door erupted into flames and two rebels cackled and ran through the arch and back into the street.
In an alcove leading into the building proper, a tall man stood. He looked very familiar.
Aini’s heart thumped like the time she’d fallen from that maple in front of her house.
“Thane,” she whispered, the sound was a prayer that it was him in the shadows.
The ghost girl hissed in her ear, but Aini ignored it. The man in the alcove definitely had the build of Thane. She could see one
side of him in the dim light from a window. She couldn’t tell if Thane held a gun or was waving to her. Squinting, she waited for a moment when all of Nathair’s men were occupied with fights and hurrying after rebels, then she ran.
“Thane!”
She shouldn’t have yelled, but his name was on her tongue before she knew what was happening. The warmth of his skin would wash the cold from her fingertips. The heat of his eyes would make everything all right again. He was the Heir. She was the Seer. This was how it was meant to be.
He lifted something. A gun. Aini twisted to see if an enemy was at her back, but there was no one, only chaos here and there, not immediately around her.
The man stepped forward and the moon caught the edge of his face. Not Thane’s proud nose. Not Thane’s strong jaw. The gun flashed. Not Thane at all.
The cloudy, night sky filled Aini’s eyes as she flew backward.
The sixth-senser ghost touched Aini’s shoulder. A strange mix of cold and hot seared her through. The aroma of magic stirred the air—sage and something similar to a match’s burning scent.
“What are you doing?” The cold overtook the hot. Aini shivered hard. “What’s happening?”
With translucent, shimmering eyes, the ghost watched the courtyard around them, hands on Aini’s chest and shoulder.
A song drifted through the air—or was it only in Aini’s head?
…when ye come and all the roses falling
And I am dead as dead I well may be
Go out and find the place where I am lying
And kneel…
With an ache that felt like a horse’s kick to the heart, the cold finally won, and the world went black.
Chapter 5
A Tortured Shout
Thane’s guard had left him for reasons unknown and he was going to use every second he had alone to try to get out of this hole. The piece of broken glass was where he’d left it, under the mattress. Careful not to slice himself up like a Christmas goose, he used it to cut a strip of sheet away from the fancy linens. Wrapping one end of the glass, he fashioned a sort of knife, then stood beside the door so he’d be hidden when the guard returned.
The sound of a single pair of boots knocked down the hallway outside, then the doorknob rotated. The door eased open a fraction, and a smooth and lilting voice crept into the room.
“Let’s see you cut me. With that glass you hid in the bedding? Yes, that would be a grand fight, I think. I’m up for it.” It was Jackie.
Thane looked to the ceiling and cursed the day he was born. With a mumbled Gaelic swear, he launched himself from his hiding place. Jackie went low and Thane went high. Thane threw his right hand toward the back of Jackie’s head as a distraction and simultaneously jabbed the point of his makeshift knife at the Brummie’s side, aiming up and under the ribs.
He felt the glass hit but they were tangle of limbs. Jackie’s knee rammed into Thane’s thigh, though the man had been aiming for the groin. Thane’s boot then connected with a knee. Jackie caught him with an elbow to the nose and Thane dropped the glass. Jackie had a gun out and cocked between Thane’s eyes faster than he could blink.
“Now settle down.” Jack bent to pick up the glass shard. He slipped it into his pocket, showing a small spot of blood on his vest, near his ribs. Nothing serious, unfortunately. “I’ve told you. Your father wants you alive and still handsome enough for the crowds to come. I don’t care to disobey him on this point, but if it comes to you or me, I know which side my gun lands on.”
Thane held up his hands. “Fine. I’m good.” He got to his feet because by God he wasn’t going to sit there on the floor with a gun to his forehead while Aini was on her way here. “I need to talk to my father.” He swallowed bile at the term. Nathair didn’t deserve it and never would.
Thane’s heart squeezed as he realized Lewis was the father he’d always needed. Lewis would be worried to madness when he heard what was going on. Bran too. Och. Bran. Poor man. He’d kill himself trying to free Thane. That was fact.
Jackie’s cool eyes studied the emotions that were most likely pouring over Thane’s face. But maybe it’d lend truth to his lie. “All right. We’ll visit your dad then. Though I may have to explain that bleeding nose of yours.”
Thane pushed past Jackie’s lowered gun and out the door. “He needs to schedule my makeover for my moment in the lights,” he joked through gritted teeth.
Jackie chuckled behind him and poked Thane’s back with his gun.
At the stairs, the sounds of guns and men and running echoed through the building.
“Back to your room, Heir.” Jackie rushed Thane down the corridor, then locked the door, putting himself by the window.
Someone knocked. “They’re here, Jackie. I’ll take this door if you want to leave.”
“No.” Jackie looked out the window and didn’t stop Thane when he moved to do the same. “It’s fine, Michael. You keep to that door and I’ll be fine here.”
Everything inside the building grew quiet.
There was a noise from the man, Michael, at the door. Then the unmistakable sound of him falling limp to the ground.
Thane stepped forward.
“Just stay out of it, Campbell,” Jackie warned.
Thane eyed the door, then the clear side of the window and the courtyard below. Shapes were moving in the dark. The street lamps’ light eased over the walls, casting a sallow gaze onto the scene of small groups darting this way and that.
An explosion blasted just one room away.
The muffled sounds of a fight mixed with two angry voices worked their way to Thane’s ears. Thane lurched toward the door, then felt Jackie’s cold hands grab his.
“I think you need some help keeping your control.” Jackie zip-tied Thane’s hands behind his back and thrust a snochterdichter into his mouth as a gag, the colonial cotton choking Thane. Jackie kicked the back of Thane’s knees and dropped him to the carpet.
Thane craned his neck to see out the window. Gunshots punctuated the night. A woman was hurrying across the courtyard, her hair like ink spilling out behind her. She chanced a look back as she sped up.
Thane knew that run. He knew that hair.
The woman rushed toward a dark alcove into nothing Thane could see. “Thane!”
“Aini!” The gag tortured Thane’s shout.
A gun sounded.
Aini fell.
Nausea washed over Thane as he watched blood pour from her shoulder, her mouth gasping like a fish out of water. She turned her head. What was she seeing? God, no, don’t let her die.
“Aini!” Thane threw himself against the wall, under the window, his whole body shaking and sweat rolling down his temples. “Aini.”
Something slammed into the door. Jackie looked from the window, to the door, to Thane before knocking Thane’s pounding head with the butt of his gun.
The world slipped through Thane’s fingers and he was glad to see it go.
Chapter 6
Torn
Aini opened her eyes to see blue light and a man in a long, gray coat. Two figures. One in this world. The other in a world between this and the next.
The light filtered away. A ghost, her mind told her. It was as if her mind and her body were two different things. Separate. One functioning. The other, not so much.
Thane had shot her.
No.
A man who’d looked like Thane had shot her.
“What kind of sick game are you playing?” She glared at the cocky man standing over her.
Surrounded by more men—mostly young and wearing more gray—the man smiled, showing a beauty that cut like the sharpest knife, a numb cut undiscovered until it begins bleeding. The man’s head brushed the green silk canopy above the bed she lay on, his hair dark and trimmed into perfect lines. Muscles bunched under his fine clothing and a ruby ring weighed down his finger as he flicked ash from his disgusting cigarette into a tiny dish on the side table. His eyes were so cold and his smile so warm. It made
Aini’s head spin like she was seeing things that weren’t there. Maybe none of this was real. She’d felt frozen on the cobblestones outside. After the gunshot. She’d known she was going to die.
“Why am I not dead?”
“Full of questions, this one.” The man’s half-lidded eyes moved like a bird’s as he took her in. “I’m Jack Shaw. I work for your man, Thane, and his father, the earl.”
“You don’t work for Thane. I wouldn’t be tied to this bed if you worked for Thane.”
“Then why don’t you answer your own questions if you don’t like my responses?”
“I will. You set up someone who looked like Thane to lure me close. You had me shot. I don’t know why I’m not dead…” Well, she did have a good guess, but she wasn’t telling this monster. “The rebels must have failed to take Thane back or you wouldn’t be grinning like a smug piece of shite.”
Jack put the cigarette between his horrible, sultry lips and clapped slowly. “You about have it. Things are about to get a little ugly though. Once we’re very sure you’re not going to pass on to the other side to see your mother.”
“What do you know about my mother?” Just hearing him say that word was enough to make her shiver.
Jack didn’t answer, he just spun on his heel, waved a hand at his men to come along, and left her alone with the ghost in the corner. Aini couldn’t see her now, but there was a strangeness to the light there.
“Did you heal me?” Aini asked the spirit quietly.
The sixth-senser ghost brightened and became visible for a moment. She nodded.
“You kept me from dying. Thank you.”
The ghost smiled although her eyes still looked desperate and sad like they most likely had when she left this life. “Do you need more?” The spirit’s voice was like a wind chime or maybe a wind through bare branches as she faded again.
Aini swallowed, the pain and chill in her shoulder threatening to tip into something she couldn’t control. The ghost didn’t wait for an answer. She floated to the bed—a whisper of shimmering light—and set a translucent hand on the gunshot wound. Despite the cold the spirit put out simply by being there, the ghost’s fingers released a stream of warmth that flooded Aini’s damaged shoulder. Aini let out a sigh. The sound of horses’ hooves, clinking glasses, and voices drifted through her ears.
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