Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels
Page 106
She had so many questions...
But that man had been several steps ahead of her. He wouldn’t let himself be caught again.
Which meant her trail to find Milena’s murderer was completely dead.
She made a call and transported Luca back to Harmon’s shop, where Jos and Jaelle came out to retrieve him. He was fine, just shaken.
“Harmon will never forgive you for this,” Jos told her.
And she was right.
Brie
“What happened, Brie?” she heard Pilot ask as she stirred from sleep.
She slowly opened her eyes, adjusting to the harsh lights in hospital room. She felt a deep migraine coming on, building slowly with the pressure in her head.
“What happened?” she asked. “Where’s Adele? Andy?”
Pilot’s exhaled with relief, though his expression quickly twisted into anger. “You lied to me. You said you weren’t going out. You said there wouldn’t be guys there, and then you’re off with your boyfriend—”
“Dude,” Rykken said, his voice an endless calm. “Maybe give her a little space.”
She nodded at Rykken’s words, slowly focusing on him. But his words didn’t match his body language. He looked surprisingly worried about her too, with a touch of sadness or anger in his eyes.
“He’s not a boyfriend,” Brie said. “Just a friend.” She leaned back, closing her eyes again.
“Yeah, right,” Pilot said. “I have photographic evidence of just about everything that happened last night.”
“It’s not—” The pounding in her head increased. “We were just messing around. It was nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Pilot said. “Your supposed friends, boyfriend, whatever, took you to a bridge and let you jump off of it.”
“Dude,” Rykken exclaimed. “This isn’t helping her.”
“No,” he said, turning his back on Rykken. “I have to know. How could you even think of doing that to me? How selfish are you?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she muttered to her brother in between the pulsing against her head. “I just wanted—I don’t know. I wanted to feel free. I wanted to be near Mom.”
Her brother’s face fell. “I need to get you out of here,” he said with alarm.
“I didn’t jump,” she insisted, growing frustrated. “And I’m not suicidal. I don’t want to die. I wanted to feel something…” Why didn’t anyone believe her?
“So you didn’t jump?” Rykken asked.
Pilot looked back. “Obviously, she jumped. You saw the bridge. There’s no way to get over that railing unless you’re trying to.”
He turned his attention back to Brie. “All I can say is that I’m glad Dad is making us go to Honolulu. I want to get you as far away from these friends of yours who would let this happen to you.”
“It’s not their faults,” Brie said. “They were trying to help me.”
“Help you with what?” Pilot said. “Mom’s death?”
She shrugged, then shook her head. “The end of our old life.”
Pilot slinked back into his chair. “Everything’s changed, hasn’t it?”
She nodded.
“And it’s going to keep changing,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Honolulu might be a nice change,” she admitted. And even if it wasn’t nice, it would at least be a change. She had a feeling they both needed one right now.
They sat in silence for several minutes until Rykken suggested to Pilot that they might give Brie some more time to sleep. He reluctantly agreed, and she was left alone.
She couldn’t fall asleep again.
A few hours later, she felt a wave of calm wash over her, and then twin nurses came in to check on her.
“You’re looking better,” one of them said. Her ebony skin contrasted against her robin egg blue nursing scrubs. She smiled at Brie, warm and gentle. “Are you feeling better?”
“I didn’t jump,” she said.
This seemed to take the nurse by surprise. “How do you think you got into the water?”
The other nurse laughed. “We don’t need to ask her this.” She touched her, and Brie got a familiar feeling, something she vaguely remembered from her mom’s studio. A sense of deep peace, though something in her knew that it wasn’t coming from her, it was coming from… somewhere else.
Her body fell still, and she felt the dark shadow of sleep setting in easily now. Just before she drifted off to sleep, she saw a replay of her mother’s studio wall, where a flashing, blurry, inintelligible message had been scribbled across.
She still didn’t know what it said, but it didn’t matter now. Her consciousness released her into a deep rest.
Sirena
Sirena sat quietly on a Central Park bench, pretending to read a book. Inside, she was stewing over her next move.
Harmon wasn’t speaking to her. He shut down the Seven Brothers network and banned her from all their shops. He also threatened to expose her secret if he ever saw her back.
He didn’t have to do any of that though… Sirena already felt horribly guilty over what had happened to Luca. She knew she had put a target on the family, and she regretted that extra danger they now faced. She had gone to every shop in their network in secret, putting up protections on each one so that enemies couldn’t enter.
It didn’t feel like enough. It didn’t protect the individuals as they moved about their vibrant city. She hoped it was enough…
Cora walked toward her, walking past her without a sound and sitting on the bench at the other end. They agreed on the fourth dimension, where they should have good privacy, though the Archworld population was high in the city. They could still have eavesdropping passerbys, and likely more dangerous ones, so they needed to make their conversation quick.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Cora started, “so I’m just going to spit it out. Brie went out with her friends last night, they went to Jersey to the same bridge where Milena crashed, Brie maybe jumped off the bridge, though she denies it, and then we had to rescue her from the water and put her in the hospital.”
“What?!” Sirena cried out too loudly for discretion.
“She should have died,” Cora said, as if the situation were better with clarification. “She’s fine now, though.”
Sirena blurted out a string of curse words. Then, “You promised me you would look after her. What the—” She blurted another string of curse words.
“We are taking care of her,” Cora said brightly. “Clara has wiped the memories of all the other kids involved to keep it out of the media. We kept 911 away, we kept the paparazzi away, we kept the nurses and doctors and other health professionals away. We didn’t let her dad find out. It was a massive cleanup, to be honest, one of the biggest Clara and I have ever done.”
Sirena huffed; she could care less about the other kids or the earthlie media or how inconvenienced Clara was. “How are my niece and nephew?”
Cora looked down. “We decided to wipe their memories too. Pilot was a wreck from the minute he heard of it, and we didn’t think he should carry that fear forward after losing his mom so suddenly. Brie was also pretty shaken up. She claims she didn’t jump and wasn’t trying to kill herself, but she’s obviously more depressed than she lets on.”
Sirena buried her head in her hands. This was not happening. This was not happening…
“We want to get them to Honolulu as quickly as possible to get their minds off of things,” Cora continued. “We need to distract them.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” Sirena asked.
“They’re earthlies. They bounce back more easily from things than we do.”
“They’re kids,” Sirena countered. “The things that kids experience at this age define them for the rest of their lives.”
Cora shrugged. “We’re doing what we can. I mean, the problem isn’t exactly our efforts. Their mom is gone. And besides, that’s not even the most important thing I have to tell you.”
Cora wrinkled her nose. “When Clara was looking through Brie’s recent memories, she found one where Brie could see a secret message on the wall of Milena’s art studio. Both Clara and I have scoured the art studio and couldn’t find any message on the wall, but we think is must be a message written in the Archworld.”
“What does that mean?” Sirena asked. “That Brie can see something in the Archworld—” she paused.
“Nothing is confirmed or disproven yet. Sometimes earthlies have a slightly stronger connection to the Archworld, despite not having any powers or abilities.”
“Sure,” Sirena said, nodding. “She’s not a daughter of Michael though. It’s impossible, right? Her father is an earthlie.”
“Right,” Cora said, though she didn’t seem completely convinced. “Thessa wants to assure you that she doesn’t see any real signs of Brie getting powers or anything. She thinks it’s just a strong connection to the metaphysical that some earthlies experience. Either way, Clara and I looked everywhere for this message and tried everything to get it to appear on the wall. Nothing worked.”
“Did Thessa try?” Sirena asked.
“Thessa isn’t concerned about it. She doesn’t believe the message is for us—meaning her, me, or Clara. She’s finishing up preparations to get the kids to Honolulu, and she’s convinced that Milena would have told her if she needed something else. They leave in a few days, as soon as they get enough of their stuff packed up. Luckily, they already have rooms set up at their father’s house—”
“Who does she think the message is for?” Sirena interrupted. She already knew from Zane that Kerr Fitzgerald and he couldn’t find it either.
Cora shrugged. “You know Thessa doesn’t tell us things like that. Maybe you can give it a try?”
“Me?” Sirena shook her head. She’d heard about the message from two sides… it had to exist. It just needed the right person to unlock it. “Milena wouldn’t have left a secret message for me,” she insisted. “I haven’t spoken to her in eighteen years.” And now I never will again, she thought to herself.
“Ri, I just have this inkling. Just trust me. Stop by the studio, check it out.” Cora pulled a piece of paper and pen from her bag and wrote down an address. “Milena left a lot of unfinished business in her death. The message might help provide some context as to what she was doing before this happened. You probably won’t find it, but who knows.”
Sirena took the note from Cora, knowing that she was right, and desperate to avoid the task anyway.
She changed the subject. “How long will you stay in Honolulu with the kids?”
“Until the media dies down. After that, we’ll likely go back into hiding, so you won’t see or hear from me again for awhile.” Cora scanned their surroundings. “And what will you do, Sirena?”
She frowned. She had let Milena’s murderer escape and had no new leads aside from a message on a wall—a message that many of the strongest and most connected in the Archworld could not find or see, likely written before Milena knew of the danger she was in when she left on her trip.
She had no other business in New York City. The kids were being moved, Milena’s funeral was over, the trail to her murderer was dead, and most of her allies had fled the city. Harmon and the Seven Brothers would never help her again after what had happened, and Jaelle and Luca deserved to be teenagers rather than getting roped into Archworld business.
Sirena was leaving from New York with nothing more than she came with—no further direction, no more allies, no clearer purpose in life.
“I suppose I’ll go back into hiding too,” she said, though the thought of it nearly broke her spirit. For the last eighteen years, she had spoken to nearly no one and done nearly nothing of value. She had survived, but not lived.
This short trip to New York made her feel alive again. Her hunt for her sister’s murderer gave her purpose. Her small peek into her niece and nephew’s lives filled her heart with both joy and sorrow. She was proud of how close they were to each other, of how they were both trying to hold it together when the earthlie media was determined to destroy them. She was happy they were attuned enough to themselves to retreat from the only life they’d ever known in the city, to somewhere that would be safer for them. And she was grateful that Cora had kept her in the loop about their safety, since she couldn’t reveal herself to them. Cora didn’t have to do it. She just had a big heart—she had always had a big heart.
“Hiding sounds good,” Cora said.
“Or maybe not,” she said slowly. “Maybe it’s time to stop hiding.”
Cora tilted her head and stood up from the park bench. “Maybe now, especially with Milena gone, it’s not the best time to make drastic changes to your lifestyle.”
“I feel so awakened right now,” Sirena said. “Like I’ve been asleep for years and years and years. And I feel like I can’t abandon Milena’s mission, whatever it was. I owe her something. You know, I used to think I was so much better than her. I was laying low and doing my duty. She was the one being selfish. But now I see that she’s the one who had the guts to live, even when there was risk of pain and loss. She was brave. She was accomplishing things.” Sirena took a deep breath. “I don’t know if I can go back to a life of nothing.”
Cora took a deep breath as well. “Just don’t do anything to get yourself killed, Sirena. Whether you like it or not, you are the last daughter of Michael.”
She transported away, disappearing into the endless greenery of the park.
She had a point.
Then again, what good was being the last daughter of Michael alive, if she wasn’t going to live?
Sirena
Six weeks later
Sirena sat in The Sinclair bar near Harvard’s campus in Cambridge, sipping a beer by herself. She smiled at the gift she had received that morning from Luca and Jaelle, the latter of whom must have found her using her special power.
She didn’t know how she felt about that. If anyone found out what Jaelle could do and used it against her, it could be incredibly dangerous for Sirena.
Still, the gift was nice. Luca had created a pocketbook of the three tarot cards from her earthlie reading, with written notes about his interpretations of them after each one. On the back page, he wrote, “Stay cool and kind, Ri.” It was a bit like what a teenager would sign in a friend’s yearbook, but she loved the gesture all the same. She hadn’t spoken to Luca since the incident, but it was good to learn that he didn’t harbor any ill will toward her.
She turned her attention to the other thing in front of her.
It took Sirena nearly a week before she went to Milena’s art studio. She wasn’t ready to be disappointed, in case she couldn’t find the message, or in case the message wasn’t for her, or in case the message wasn’t a good one. She already knew she had abandoned her sister and thrown away years and years of potential bonding with her. And now that she’d seen Milena’s kids, the impact seemed even greater, as she had already missed so much of their lives and had no entry point back in.
Milena wouldn’t be thinking of her, no matter what she had been doing before she died. Her foremost concern was her family… and Sirena had made it clear many years ago that she had no desire to be part of Milena’s family.
When she had first gotten to New York, she felt like a bulldozer, ready to take out anyone and anything in her way. But over the last week, she had softened and slowed and allowed her heart to shatter over the death of her sister in a way she couldn’t have predicted.
Lost years…
Lost opportunities…
Lost connection…
Lost family…
Lost ally…
She had been protecting a cause this whole time, a cause she hadn’t even chosen. It had chosen her by the simple fact that she was one of the two who survived the slaughter of her family.
She realized too late that in the process of protecting her royal
Hallow bloodline, she had also weakened her family—the very family that might have helped her rise to power again.
Eighteen years earlier she had felt abandoned by Milena. She dreamed of the two of them banding together and rising up—Milena gaining supporters with her charm and grand vision, Sirena protecting their backs with her badassery, killer instincts, and ability to make the tough decisions. They had the perfect team, but Milena wanted nothing to do with it.
She thought that was the end of her abandonment—after all, Milena had her kids and chose to let her abilities wither away through aging. She was no longer a true Hallow or daughter of Michael, even alive.
But somehow, Sirena felt abandoned all over again in her death. Now, she was truly alone in her quest to restore the daughters of Michael to power. And that made it seem all the more hopeless that it would ever happen, or that any of her personal sacrifices to the cause had been worth it.
She stared down at the note. After going to the art studio, she had found the message written on the wall in the plainest of sight, with no encoding or encryption at all. She hadn’t needed to cast a spell or twirl three times on a full moon or use a special light or chant an incantation.
On the wall it said simply,
If you wish to read this sight you’ll
Need a touch of blood from Michael
The daughters will rise, rise
A touch of blood from Michael—she had more than enough of that. She only needed to be herself to see the note, and to be the only one to see the note—which meant that Cora was right and that the note was for her.
The part that she didn’t understand was the second verse, “the daughters will rise, rise.” Did Milena mean the two of them? Sirena by herself, or through having two daughters of her own?
What baffled Sirena still, and she had spent many weeks thinking about this, was that Milena did not want to be daughter of Michael. That was why she had kids in the first place. Had something changed for her sister in those eighteen estranged years?